Not fare (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The famous “Fares Fair" scheme, by which some Labour members of the Greater London Council tried to ease London Transport's financial worries (and win some votes), pleased some people but enraged just as many more. Some complained that reduced fares were being paid for by higher rates while businesses claimed the increase would drive them to the wall and cause even more unemployment.

In the end the scheme was thrown out by the House of Lords and LT fares were doubled in March. This decision greatly pleased those other reformers, the Tories, but it did not solve LTs financial problems — the consequence was a massive jump in fare-dodging.

This fare-dodging has been a longstanding worry for LT but just recently it has come to a head because of several articles in the London evening newspaper, the Standard. Its August 10 article Find the Fare Fiddlers was all too reminiscent of similar headlines during the last two decades.

Back in January 1971 the Socialist Standard carried an article on this subject. At that time LT claimed to be losing only £1 million yearly due to fare-dodging, but as the article in the Socialist Standard stated: "The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million . . . will be shown to be hopelessly underestimated”. In 1972 LT admitted that the losses were £5 million. By 1978 the figure was £12 million and in 1982 the loss is expected to be an astonishing £30 million — or over 5 per cent of LT's total income.

In 1966 plans were made to instal automatic ticket gates to control passenger entrance and exit. This was to have cost £10 million at 1966 prices but the rapidly escalating costs of the system have resulted in its partial introduction only. As most stations have no automatic gates many passengers simply pay the collector at the other end a fraction of the real cost of the journey.

In the past you could hand over a fivepenny piece and walk through the barrier with no trouble at all. but nowadays there is a marked change in the attitude of the collectors. They arc much more zealous in their duties, not out of any new-found loyalty to LT, but because many of them realise that the more they collect in excess fares the more they can keep for themselves. LT reckon that another £10 million is being lost to staff using this method, plus a variety of ingenious variations.

Not that Underground employees gel all of this £10 million to themselves, for LT’s bus conductors also have ways of keeping part of what they collect. These include the use of Black and Decker drilling machines to wind back the counters on ticket machines and. according to the Standard newspaper article, more than 2,000 of LT’s 13.000 bus conductors have already been cautioned for fiddling fares.

This conflict between LT and its employees is actually part of the ceaseless struggle between employees and employers, whether the latter be private companies or state or municipal concerns. The main bone of contention is usually wages and conditions of work but workers will also claw back a bit of what they can't get legally. Rare indeed is the worker who never goes for a read or does a “homer” in the company's time, never uses the photocopier for his or her own purpose, never takes home the company’s stationery or arrives late or leaves early. And it’s the same with the army of fare-dodgers. True, they aren’t employees of LT (no doubt many of them think LT belongs to them!) but hard-up workers will always try to supplement their earnings with a bit of free travel if they can.

Vic Vanni

On the buses (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Confronted with some socialist literature and an SPGB candidate at the last GLC election, one local newspaper responded in amazement that, while everyone else was worrying about problems like urban decay, unemployment, rubbish in the streets, high rates, inflation and the lousy bus service, our only solution was the prospect of a classless, moneyless world community. A candidacy like that, said our local rag, was eccentric to say the least.

As long as there are so few socialists then what we do is bound to seem eccentric to the rest; so let’s give the local newspaper their conventional point. But from our side of the fence the policies promised by the other political parties as solutions to the problems of the day are not just eccentric, they are laughable; and when workers keep their wits about them they agree with us. During the GLC campaign some members of the Labour party toured the constituency of Islington in an ancient, open-topped, double-decker bus, all festooned with balloons. Two women were talking on the pavement as it passed. They looked up and one remarked, “that must be the extra bus they promised in their election leaflet!”

Better than the most comprehensive set of facts and figures, heartfelt graffiti on the bus shelters reflect the situation; “They don’t bury people in Finsbury: they just stand them at bus stops”. All of the other political parties had promised to do something about the bus service in London it’s the one truly inexhaustible political concern. Voters can forget the bomb, but never the number nine bus.

A Dose of Capitalism

In the 1930s congestion, lateness and dropped services were blamed upon the trams, which were considered to be noisy, uncomfortable, expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of traffic jams at junctions. So they were phased out. In the 1950s the blame was put upon the trolley buses, which were considered expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of delays when their pantographs slipped off the overhead wires. So they too were phased out. Since the 1930s too we have seen the end of private enterprise when London and General were bought out by the London Passenger Transport Board in a partial nationalisation scheme; followed later by the London Transport Executive. Since those days when big was considered beautiful, London Country Services have been bought out by the omnivorous National Bus Company (which grew big by snapping up corporation bus systems that could not meet their financial deficits out of the rates) and the National Bus Company itself has become as famous as Beeching for cutting services.

The range of this history takes in what the politicians are offering today. With the rise in the price of oil since 1973 all concede that electric trolley buses would now be cheaper to run than diesel buses; but nobody can afford the outlay on a new overhead system. Others favour high subsidies from the rates, while their opponents insist that local industry is being crippled by the existing rate burden and that private enterprise buses are the only answer. So it’s back to trolleys, the London and General and square one perhaps. Meanwhile the buses suffer from a really bad dose of capitalism.

Runners and Chokers

Why does reality so rarely match the promise? What stops public transport from being a public service? The bus industry provides a set of jobs that display perfect symbolic parodies of the capitalist and worker relationship; so that, even without the administrative and technical problems above, it is unreasonable to expect anything except what you get.

The job routine can turn workers into mechanical beings, jack-in-the-boxes who pop up when the alarm clock triggers them off. Who better to observe this than the bus driver on an early turn?

There was I, driving along without a care in the world, I turned a corner and runners came at me from all directions. They seemed to come up out of the very drains, running, shouting and waving their arms. In two stops we were chock-a-block, I got three bells from my clippie and the old RT groaned along on sagging springs, steering like a pregnant camel. Four stops later they all poured off at the factory area and we were empty. Rape must feel like that.

A London Country driver 

This is not an essay in cynicism. To the bus company accountants there is no difference between hauling coal by road and hauling people, except that on the buses the load gets on and off of its own accord at each stop. The attitude of the bus crews to the passenger-commodities is a measure of the dualism that goes with production for sale. Passengers are both mere bundles of exchange value and living characters who kick when they are treated like cattle. What can a poor conductor do? If he takes the passengers’ side that buses should be a public service based upon need, then he would run the bus as the users desire, collect no fares, make detours from the schedule and get sacked when an inspector found out. If he takes the company side then he has to dawdle and pick up the maximum number of passengers, yet keep to the timetable within an accuracy of one minute, collect all fares on his fully loaded bus by every third stop, while helping mothers with push chairs, children and the disabled on and off the bus. Telling all and sundry the time and how long the next bus will be (time you bought a watch and twenty-seven feet).

Them Versus Us

It used to be worse of course. During the blitz in the last war the employers forced the crews to suspend the rule of five only standing downstairs (in the interests of national production) and for a time the throughput of passengers on London Transport approached that delight of first world war infantry, the French cattle truck, with its plate bearing the legend “cheveaux 8, hommes 40”.

Then, after years of austerity, in 1949 the bus crews flexed their trade union muscles and tried a half-day strike to wipe out a long-standing anomaly and achieve time-and-a-half for Saturday afternoon work and double-time for Sundays. The employers promptly invoked an agreement forced through during the war and threatened legal action against the strikers (this in a nationalised concern and under a Labour government). Fortunately the bus crews faced down the employers and got what they wanted.

But, as if to show that trade union action unlinked to a movement for socialism is futile, in 1971, when the crews were desperate for a pay rise, the employers faced them down over a strike and offered them half of what they wanted, on condition that they worked Saturday and Sunday at flat rate. The crews accepted and things got worse again.

There may exist a more tricky bunch of accountants than those employed by London Transport, but you'll never convince the crews that this is so. It is legendary at all garages that just before a pay claim goes in the fleet of cars that are held for the use of the managers at administrative centres like Chiswick, Crawley and Marylebone are all renewed. So, whatever the true trading position, the accountants can demonstrate to any tribunal that the board cannot possibly afford any wage increase.

These board members cannot be got at by the crews, but there are surrogates—the inspectors or jumpers, who jump the buses and have to get the crews to sign their cards so many times a day. An index of industrial friction at any shed is the number of crews who refuse to sign the inspectors’ cards, or do so only “under protest”.

Jumpers and cash

The bus crews and the jumpers are at war with each other, either openly or concealed, and the result is occasionally an absurd farce that can only be appreciated long after the event.

You’d never believe what we used to get up to. There was a rota with a dead journey from Luton back to Hitchin at 3.15 every Wednesday (dead because nobody ever travelled on it). My conductor at the time wanted to build a garden shed, but couldn’t afford new wood. So 1 rushed the bus out to a builder’s scrap yard in Luton at 3.15. In pissing rain we loaded the lower deck with half a ton of old timber and dashed back to his house at Hitchin. Halfway, I came over Offley Hill and there was a bleeding jumper with his arm out at a stop. If I picked him up we’d have both got the bullet. So I sailed past to his pitiful cries and covered the bleeder with spray. But the bastard saw the wood as we passed and there was hell to pay when we finished the rota that night. We stuck to the story that we didn’t see him in the rainstorm and as he couldn’t prove anything got away with it. But they came down on us all like a ton of bricks over the tiniest fault for months afterwards.

A London Country inspector (ex-driver) 

But most of the aggro between jumpers and crews centres on fiddling of fares. A wise conductor will be tardy over collecting upstairs fares on a bus where the passengers alight at a terminus. As they come down the stairs he'll run off a string of tickets at the lowest fare and pocket the difference between them and the real fares handed to him. Cunning ones will not dump the scroll run off this way in the used ticket box, because equally cunning inspectors search the boxes for them as the first pointer to a fiddler. The cash clerks at the shed, who receive and inspect the take at the end of a rota, here link up with the roving jumpers. Every journey has to be logged by the conductor and the take broken down into the number of tickets of each denomination run off; in this way the cash clerks build up the history of all such journeys. So when the take on a regular rota falls below the average and the number of low value tickets rises above the average, the word gets around and the jumpers start hiding behind cars and lurking in doorways at strategic points to catch the culprit.

It puzzles some people why services with a fare-box facility beside the driver are not supposed to provide change. Most drivers will oblige of course as it provides a fiddle that is impossible to trace. You give the driver fifty pence for a twenty pence fare, he gives you thirty pence change and as you move away he drops two coins in the box. They may be pennies, tuppences or fivepences, depending on how far the driver is pushing it. The only answer the company has to this is to police the buses with a large plain-clothed inspectorate.

The Political Terminus

Work on the buses is not unique, but it provides a caricature of the shifts and subterfuges, the collisions and the wrangles that go on wherever workers handle the revenue that keeps an institution going. Over the years the characteristically cynical attitudes of the bus crews to the passengers has been formed by their experience in the “public service vehicle industry” and any politician who fancies the chances of cutting through the omnibus jungle, uniting the employers, crews and passengers in a real public service is indulging in self-deception.

Even the abolition of fares would have little overall effect. To be sure the bus companies would save on fare machinery, the wages of conductors and cash clerks; while the omnibus jungle would be thinned out as each bus journey ceased to be a transaction between the public and the company. But another jungle of political wrangling would spring up around the problem of who pays for the service. Should the burden be equally loaded on the rate bills of shops, offices, factories and householders; or should the money come from central government? Such questions are the perennial concern of governments, whose battles are fought in the capitalist jungles of council meetings and offices, parliaments and civil services. You get ideological glimpses of these battles at elections and ultimately you may be called upon to do a government’s international battling when the fighting becomes real in war time.

There you are, just one industry, just one problem that all politicians promised to reform at the last GLC election. Yet it proved to be as tangled as the whole capitalist world.

Who are the eccentrics now? The socialists, who want production for use and free access—or the politicians who promise the earth for nothing?

B.K. McNeeney

GLC Election Campaign Results (1973)

Party News from the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party’s GLC election campaign was a success in terms of activity, publicity and literature sales. Some 60 to 70 London members were involved in one way or another to distribute 50,000 leaflets, sell 500 Socialist Standards and hold a number of outdoor meetings. Publicity included, besides local and London evening press reports, a brief television appearance during which our spokesman was able to make the point that we were contesting the election to put over the case for Socialism, oppose the parties of capitalism and demonstrate our view that Socialism can be established democratically through the ballot box. There were also two even briefer interviews on Radio London. These broadcasts were a start, but came nowhere near our demand, as a matter of democratic principle, that all parties contesting elections should have equal time on radio and television to present their views in their own way under their own control. No doubt if this had been allowed we would have had many more enquiries. The results accurately reflect the present low level of Socialist consciousness amongst the working class and demonstrate the need for increased Socialist activity to overcome this. For the record the detailed results for the 11 constituencies where there were Socialist candidates are set out below:

Hackney North and Stoke Newington:

Pitt (Lab) 6529, House (C) 2524, Goldman (Comm) 621, Carter (Soc) 250. 

Hampstead: 

Wistrich (Lab) 12458, Clarke (C) 9823, Benad (L) 2824, Champion (Comm) 466, Cox (Soc) 191. 

Holborn and St. Pancras South: 

Kazantis (Lab) 7437, Weeks (C) 3520, Elithorn (L) 1085, Davies (Soc) 99, Fierz (Ind) 72, Goulstone (Ind) 60. 

Hornsey: 

Bains (C) 10,361, Warren (Lab) 10,078, O’Brien (L) 3450, Van den Berg (Comm) 483, Porter (Soc) 144. 

Islington North: 

Bondy (Lab) 7463, Yeo (C) 2798, Buick (Soc) 284. 

Lambeth Central: 

Grieves (Lab) 9231, Pritchard (C) 2707, Kane (L) 1026. Jackson (Ind) 143, Baldwin (Soc) 115, Solomon (Ind) 103.

Norwood: 

Livingstone (Lab) 11,622, Malynn (C) 8007, Drake (L) 1819, Young (Soc) 95.

St. Marylebone: 

Plummer (C) 7930, Gordon (Lab) 4971, Darvas (Ind C) 485, Temple (Comm) 276, Weidberg (Soc) 84. 

Streatham: 

Geddes (C) 10,492, Walker (Lab) 9426, Mitchell (L) 2114, Simkins (Soc) 120, Boaks (Ind) 57.

Tottenham: 

McIntosh (Lab) 8043, Croft (C) 3360, Conev (Ind) 2924, Young (Soc) 109.

Vauxhall: 

Carr (Lab) 10821, Bottomley (C) 3396, Henry (Comm) 365, Sansum (Soc) 121.

Running Commentary: Retired unhurt (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Retired unhurt

Before he became a well-known television tyre salesman, Robert Mark worked as the chief of London’s police but he may not have enjoyed the job because he once described the Met as an organisation where corruption was routine. Under his rule there was a re-organisation in which some policemen found themselves moved to less sensitive work and others were persuaded to slip quietly out of the Force.

Then came the bible salesman. David McNee called himself Hammer because he claimed to have battered the criminals of Glasgow into submission. His success was not apparent to anyone who actually observed or experienced the agonies of that impoverished, violent city. McNee asserted that he hated crime through a stern religious conviction, which might have misled many people into believing that under his dour management corruption in the Met would wither and die along with improper police practices. The evidence shows that nothing of the sort happened. Most efforts at exposure continued to be frustrated in the traditional way, or succumbed through lack of official support.

So McNee left the Met in no better shape than when he arrived with his burning religious zeal. Even worse, there were important, unanswered questions about illegal police activities on the London streets; for example, the killing of Blair Peach, the riots in Brixton.

But somebody, somewhere — in fact quite a lot of them — thinks that the Hammer did a good job. Plainly he fits in well with ruling class requirements for filling important, sensitive jobs. First, he has retired on an index-linked pension of £22,000 a year. Then there is no lack of companies eager to employ him. Lord Matthews has taken him on as a non-executive director of Fleet Holdings; he has a similar post with the Clydesdale Bank paying him £5,000 a year and he gets £10,000 a year as a member of the board of British Airways.

This model of Christian rectitude, who was wont to discourse on the lack of moral restraint in society, has sold his memoirs to the busty Sunday Mirror whose gratitude extends to their paying him £120,000.

And in case anyone should doubt that all of this money-grubbing conforms to the unctuous moralising and denunciations of Christianity, McNee has taken yet another job. He is President of the National Bible Society of Scotland, to help teach the workers of that country to accept their depressed lot with meekness and gratitude.

Year of peace?

Having failed to cut London's fares because a judge said it was illegal to do so, Ken Livingstone’s GLC are turning their attention to rather wider issues.

In London, 1983 will be Peace Year — something which all Londoners will hope the other side remembers if World War III breaks out between now and December 31. Presumably to inform potential breakers of the peace, the GLC have invited several mayors from foreign cities. There will be peace conferences, peace concerts, peace community events.

Two defenceless and innocent shire horses will be named Peace and Friendship and will be in the Easter Parade in Regents Park. A statue (of a woman, of course; Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher have proved how much more peace loving women are than men) has been erected in the garden near Red Ken’s County Hall.

What does all this mean, apart from a bit more publicity for Livingstone and his party? The “peace” movement, like all the other movements, exists under the delusion that demonstrations, festivals, dedications, have some effect on the problem they are concerned about.

In fact, in themselves such movements are ineffective — except that, by contributing to the maintenance of the very conditions which cause the problems, they can be said actually to worsen the situation. While peace movements and anti-nuclear demonstrators proliferate, the bald fact is that the weapons have got more dreadful and more widespread.

What really counts is the idea behind a demonstration. Marching, or sitting down, against the effects of the social system we live under does nothing to end that system. So it leaves the root of the problems untouched, to flourish and propagate.

The example of Livingstone’s Labour Party is typically illustrative. In power, they have always clearly stood for the production, and when it suited their purposes the use, of nuclear weapons. That fact is not wiped away by their organising this spurious event now.

A demonstration properly against war, or weapons, could take only one form; it would be a demonstration against the very social system which gives rise to them and it would extend a long, long way beyond the boundaries of any city.

No joke

For some reason obscured by time and the complexities of upper-class japes, Private Eye relentlessly calls him Lord Whelks. Upper-class japes are, of course, always relentless. In other circles he is known as the noble Lord Matthews who at his peak was boss of the mighty Trafalgar House empire which encompassed ships, hotels, property, newspapers.

Now Matthews has stepped down on the peak and will be devoting more time to one of the combines which made a part of Trafalgar — Fleet Holdings, which includes the Express newspapers. He also threatens to make more speeches in the House of Lords, where they may well be hoping he will not inflict on them the world famous Express style: "There may for all I know be no truth in the rumour that Princess Diana is really a buxom go-go dancer. But I think we ought to be told".

For Matthews is really torn between patriotism and profit and an occasional difficulty in reconciling them has given him much anguish. He it was who wanted to register Trafalgar’s ships under flags of convenience and crew them with foreign seamen. Only an embarrassing splurge of publicity. inciting protest from those who stubbornly live in the days of Victorian naval power, excluded the QEII from this arrangement. Matthews made no secret about his motivation — British seamen, because of their trade union organisation, were higher paid than those he could recruit abroad.

This was the argument he used again, when one of the Trafalgar companies put out for tender the rebuilding of the Atlantic Conveyor, the container ship lost to an Exocet at the Falklands. Matthews was clear that the contract should go to the yard promising the cheapest deal. Patriotism is for the likes of those who perished with the Atlantic Conveyor, always useful to persuade workers to act against their interests, not for hard-nosed businessmen with allegiance to the profit figures.

But Matthews is no figure of fun; he must be taken very, very seriously. Not one of the modern, enlightened, smoother breed of capitalists, he represents the authentic morality of private property society in which achievement is maximum exploitation and the only worthwhile human being is one who can be profitably put to use.

GLC Election (1981)

Party News from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elsewhere in this issue there are details of public meetings and activities for the Party’s GLC election campaign in Islington South and Finsbury. Since last month’s column, which announced that Barry McNeeney will be the Socialist candidate for the election, there has been a significant change in the state of affairs in our constituency: Douglas Eden, the “leader” of the Social Democratic Alliance, has announced that he will be standing in Islington South and Finsbury "to appeal to Labour voters who remember the Labour Party in the mould of Lord George Brown’’. (We presume that he will be trying to find them in the local pubs.) Lord George "will be campaigning for him in Islington’’ (Islington Gazette, 13/3/81). Combined with a proposed electoral pact with the Liberals, we suspect that this might be the kiss of death for the so-called social democrats. Eden is to be challenged to come and defend his views on April 16th when a public meeting at the Prince Albert pub, Wharfdale Road will be asking “Who Are The Social Democrats?" The Islington Gazette has published a letter from a Party member which made clear the SPGB's principled opposition to all other parties. We are hoping that the correspondence will continue (there has already been one letter in response from a "social democrat"). The campaign is going to cost us more money than is readily available and so we once again appeal to you to dip into your pockets and send us whatever you can afford towards the greatest cause facing humanity today.

GLC Elections: 13 April 1967 (1967)

Party News from the March 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

More on free transport (1970)

From the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free public Transport in London (see May Socialist Standard) is still under serious public discussion. It is finding supporters in some strange places.

The April issue of Commerce International, the journal of the London Chamber of Commerce, asked various people to comment on the suggestion that “London Transport without fares would b# more efficient”.

Some, like Sir Desmond Plummer Tory leader of the GLC, were against this on the grounds that it would encourage “financial irresponsibility”. By which we assume him to mean that the capitalist maxim of “no profit, no production” would not be applied so directly. Others, including the chairman of the Chamber of Commerces own Transport Committee, were in favour. Some of the figures given reveal the waste of capitalism. According to Tory Islington councillor John Szemerey “at present some two fifths of London Transport’s annual working expenditure is spent on collecting the money to pay for the service”.

The British architects’ association commented with remarkable insight in the May issue of their RIBA Journal:

  To abolish fares on all city public transport would make economic sense, social sense, and moral sense. And it would be practical and more efficient. It is a common sense reform which would immediately make life better for a lot of people; and in present conditions in London, it would be perhaps the simplest and most effective way of making the city a bit more tolerable for its inhabitants. You don’t even have to be a liberal, let alone a radical, to agree with this. But it isn't going to happen, of course, because it’s still too far fetched to make political sense. Moral: when people are told that something is 'utopian', it usually means that some other people don't want them to do it. (our emphasis).

Their views were commended by Labour councillor Sir Norman Prichard in a GLC debate on 12 May. He also pointed out that the Woolwich ferry across the Thames was an existing example of free transport paid out of the rates.

Although of course in a socialist society all transport would be free, to implement free public transport in London on its own would merely be another reform of capitalism which would at best only palliate the problem of traffic congestion. What interests us as socialists is that a proposal to abolish prices is getting such serious discussion. We want to extend this discussion and to hear the arguments of those who advocate free transport against our proposal that everything should be produced free for people to use and that all prices should be abolished, on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

To those who have their doubts as to whether this is practical we can only repeat: when people are told that something is ‘utopian’, it usually means that some other people don’t want them to do it.

Our GLC opponents (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact that all other parties are reformist is fundamental to the case of the SPGB. This means they seek not to abolish capitalism with its class division, wages system, state and frontiers, but to modify it a little this way or that in a futile effort to legislate away its problems and inhuman consequences. It follows that there can be only one party seeking to end capitalism and to establish democratically an entirely different world system, called Socialism. The abolition of the wages system, the end of trade, profits and frontiers follows naturally from the new basis of common ownership of the means of production and distribution. These unique principles of the SPGB can be amply demonstrated by reading the manifestos of all or any of our opponents, and then reading ours. Though our opponents may differ on what they see as most important in the continuing evils of capitalism the common approach of them all is reformist. Doctor the effects — leave the cause alone.

The Labourites

After their abysmal efforts at running capitalism they still have the audacity to present themselves to the workers and seek their votes. They were even brazen enough to charge 20p for their manifesto. This offered the usual reforms aimed at making poverty more tolerable, instead of seeking a mandate to end the system which generates poverty. In their clash with the Tories over “free” bus rides for old people they cynically exploited the poverty of the elderly to gain votes. If workers would only see the contradictory position of the Labour Party they could understand that ministering to poverty pre-supposes its continuation. After fifteen post-war years of Labour government old people still cannot afford bus fares. One of Labour’s own leaflets quotes a Mrs. Kitchener of Leatherhead on concessionary fares: “The passes are rotten value, and people can’t afford them anyway.” Can anyone imagine Wilson, Callaghan, Foot or Castle, or the head of any nationalized industry, spending their last years of life worrying about cheap bus rides in off-peak periods? These people have done quite well out of capitalism. They posed as your champions, to fight for you. Now they are well off and you are still poor and needy!

The same with housing. Where they find workers willing to be photographed smiling outside those little boxes of bricks called working-class “dwellings”, shown in the Labour candidate’s address, is hard to imagine. They called them “decent homes”. The blurb underneath should have read “good enough for workers but not fit for Labour leaders". Labour’s boast on education included:

  “We are now doing much in the education field for the training of young people for industry . . ."

Training workers for wage-slavery. Not a word about closing down teacher-training colleges, slum schools, and crowded class-rooms. No mention of the class-divide in education. The children of the ruling class are not trained “for industry”. The typical Labour leader is educated at Oxford. Lady Falkender, for example, was reported in the Daily Mirror (22nd April 1976 to be choosing Westminster public school for her two sons. The fees were £1,254 per year for a boarder and £789 for a day boy.

The Tories

With seventeen post-war years of Tory government and four years at County Hall and all the horrors of capitalism remaining to testify to their political bankruptcy, the Tories tried to counter Labour reformism. It is easy for them to make capital out of workers’ misery by saying “the GLC is probably the largest slum landlord in the world”. It was no different with them in power. In Lambeth Central the Tory candidate was Roy Hatter; he drew attention to two thousand houses in Lambeth boarded up, and seventeen thousand people on waiting lists. His claim to working-class support rested on having broken the world record by making a political speech that lasted over twenty-nine hours. If only words could build houses! Like most Tories, Mr. Hatter has the habit of calling Labourites “Socialists”. If he does not know the difference his long speech must have been painfully boring. He is himself an employee, a member of the working class, yet he embraces the system of his masters which exploits him as well as the rest of us.

The "Communists''

The election address of the so-called Communist Party followed similar reformist lines to the rest. Full of platitudes, promises and catch-phrases. A typical example was:

  "Pensions. End the scandal of poverty, neglect and deprivation for the elderly. They fought for and built London for us”.

Poverty! Neglect! Deprivation! Yes, under a government they urged workers to vote for. Poverty is produced by capitalism. It is glib and cynical nonsense to promise to end it while retaining the system.

These political commotionists can never resist the chance to pose as patriots. They might do better to ask themselves whether slums and poverty are worth fighting for? If by “us” they mean the working class, London was never built for them but for the capitalist class who own it. Much of London is so old that no elderly worker suffering poverty today had anything to do with its building.

Those former intrepid “revolutionaries” who used to train with broom-sticks for “heavy civil war” have become law-and-order men. They are now demanding that the Metropolitan Police should be under the control of the GLC instead of the Home Secretary. What relevance that has to “Communism” is impossible to conceive. They also demand “More Democracy” — a prime piece of hypocrisy for a Party built on reverence for Russian State-capitalism, the biggest and longest-running police-dictatorship in the world.

National Front

With the flag of British capitalism appropriately upside-down, the National Front leaflet, launched a tirade of bunkum about immigration. By “immigrants” they mean black people and ignorantly gloss over the fact that most immigrants are of white skin. Blaming the blacks for everything is a favourite get-out for the simple-minded. They claim that “Inner London is now a multi-racial slum”. Much of London has always been a slum. National Front only recognize slums when they are “multi-racial”. Black people did not create the slums. Many of them live in them, as do many of their “white” fellow-workers. Slums arise because capitalism produces cheap housing for workers. Overwhelmingly, slums are built as slums.

They seek to “immediately repatriate” any immigrant convicted of a crime. What an idiotic idea. Nearly half the black people in Britain were born here. If every country adopted the same policy, then all those Britons who have emigrated would be sent back here if convicted of a crime. As the emigrants outnumber the immigrants, there could well be a higher “criminal” population here at the end of the process! Their attitude betrays complete indifference to the social causes of crime.

They advocate segregated education. Anything that further confuses and divides the working class. As we have seen in dealing with the Labour Party there is already class-segregated education.

The “village pump” narrowness of the National Front is a snare for unthinking workers. Nationalism is an ideological disease. The Labourites, Tories, Liberals and “Communists” all sponsor nationalism. National Front merely carry the nonsense further.

The I.M.G.

This group makes the fraudulent claim to be Marxist and Socialist. Their manifesto sought only to outbid the others in the number and range of their reform proposals. They openly set out to gain “protest votes” from Labour. The fact that the National Front draws much of its support from disillusioned Labour voters did not seem significant to them. Such voters are politically muddled, and having despaired of the Labour Party are looking elsewhere for easy answers within capitalism. Nothing lasting or worthwhile can be built on such a base.

The IMG wants capitalism without its economic consequences. Their concentration on wages, prices and jobs shows they are void of any ideas beyond the present system of buying and selling and wage- labour. They seek to ‘nationalize all firms creating redundancies”. They have forgotten the redundancies in British Rail, state education, the mines, etc., and have yet to learn that state-capitalism works no differently from private capitalism. Far from being extreme in any way, IMG stand roughly where the Labour Party stood sixty years ago, still demanding a “national minimum wage”.

Their policy of “No platform for National Front” is absurd. False ideas cannot be banished by such methods. IMG linked up with the Communists and various Constituency Labour Parties in a group called alarm (All Lambeth Anti-Racial Movement). With each affiliated party seeking votes at the others’ expense, this can be only a very tenuous alliance. “Alarm” invited our candidate for Lambeth Central to address a meeting in support of their limited objective, jointly with the other candidates, excluding National Front. We circulated an open letter giving our reasons for not joining them to fight the effects of capitalism and arguing the need to end this system. In opposition to the platform our candidate was allowed to state the Party case from the audience. Copies of their invitation and our reply were sent to the South London Press but were not published. The Guardian also failed to publish a similar letter dealing with the rival demonstrations in North London on 30th April despite the publicity they had given the event for two days before.

The SPGB stands alone (in this country) as the one party which rejects the system the others want to reform and retain. Socialism depends upon understanding. Only a conscious majority gaining political power can achieve a world of common ownership where production will be solely for use with free access. Class rule and subjugation will then be replaced by human society.

Harry Baldwin

Free transport in London (1970)

From the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the more obvious examples of the waste of capitalism is the common practice of making people buy a ticket before they can travel. Under this absurd procedure men and women are employed to issue pieces of paper for other men and women to punch holes in. People who cannot afford to pay for these tickets cannot use the buses and trains, while those caught travelling without one are liable to be brought before the magistrates and fined.

In a socialist society on the basis of common ownership travel, like everything else, would be free. Buses and trains would be provided for people to use as and when they wanted to.

Faced with this common-sense proposition many people are at a loss and can think of no sensible objection. They often do not know that even under capitalism public transport is provided as a free service in some places. Such people must have been thoroughly confused during the recent Greater London Council elections. For here there were Tories and Liberals, Labour and Homes Before Roads candidates, all saying that the GLC should run London Transport as a free service.

For instance, the “Homes Before Roads” group who stood in most boroughs declared:

  We believe that within the next ten years we will have to consider the idea of free public transport as a feasible solution to the congestion and pollution caused by the private motorist.

But it was not only amongst the minority party candidates that this was canvassed. In Islington, the idea had an able advocate in Councillor John Szemerey, a Tory. He wrote:

  It is six years since I first proposed to Conservative Central Office that public transport in London should be provided free as a public service, financed jointly from the Exchequer and from the rates. With all the resultant savings on manpower and machinery, increased mobility of labour and utilisation of public transport, and reduction in travel by private car, I still think there is a good case for this. (North London Press, 6 February).

When asked how much it would cost to provide free public transport in London the Tory GLC leader replied that “the abolition of fares on London Transport’s red buses and Underground trains would be equivalent to a rate of 3s. 4d. in 1970, or approximately £30 a year for the average householder’’ (North London Press, 6 March).

Szemerey’s Labour opponents in Islington were delighted. They challenged him to say he stood for “a 3s. 4d. a rate increase to make travel free on all the London Transport buses and Underground trains”, an obvious appeal to what they thought were popular prejudices against the idea. In Camden, incidentally, the same challenge was made to the Liberals by a Tory — a revealing illustration of the sham that conventional party politics is.

Szemerey replied, arguing in effect that even from a capitalist standpoint his proposal could be justified:

  My point was that the savings from having no tickets (savings in manpower, materials and machines) put together with the savings on road maintenance and improvements (many more would use free public transport and leave their cars at home) might well justify a totally new look at public transport policy and treating it as a public service paid from local and national taxation (rates and Exchequer).
  The statement by the leader of the GLC that free red buses and undergrounds in London would cost a 3s. 4d. rate or some £30 per year for the average householder, if paid entirely from the rates underlines my point. The balance of payments from rates and Exchequer still needs to be worked out, but even if paid entirely from the rates £30 a year per household would present an actual saving for most families . . . And for the old, who nowadays have to think twice before spending 6d. on a bas fare, it would open a new life. They could visit friends, go to the shops, make outings to museums or parks all at no direct cost to themselves (Islington Gazette, 20 March).

Because abolishing tickets was proposed by a conventional politician it got this serious hearing. Nobody suggested that, with free access to transport, there would not be enough seats for everyone. Or that the buses and trains would be jammed full of people travelling nowhere in particular just because it was free.

Free travel on London Transport has nothing to do with Socialism, as the fact that it finds such a keen advocate in a Tory shows. It would merely be another reform which, with class ownership and the wages system continuing, would exert a downward pressure on wage levels.

It is the implications of some of Councillor Szemerey’s arguments that are of particular interest. He argues that resources would be saved since there would no longer be any need for tickets, ticket machines, ticket collectors or accounts, and that people who now cannot afford to travel too often will have this restriction on their enjoyment of life removed.

But these arguments can be applied with equal validity outside transport. Think of the saving if other things like food and clothes and housing were to be provided free. There would be no need for any cashiers or accountants or bank clerks or security guards or rent collectors or salesmen. The list is almost endless since very many people are employed in jobs which have to do with the buying and selling rather than the actual production of wealth. There would be no need either for cash registers, safes, counting machines or sales ledgers. The saving would be enormous and could go some way towards providing the extra things that people would ask for if prices were abolished.

What an indictment of capitalism it is that there are old people who, as Councillor Szemcrey admits, “have to think twice before spending 6d. on a bus fare”. These same people also have to think twice before spending money on the food and clothes they buy and on the rooms they rent. The abolition of price-tags really would open up "a new life” for them.

Of course free access to wealth according to need is not possible as long as a privileged few own the means of production. It would first require a real social revolution changing the basis of society from class to common ownership, as opposed to the comparatively trivial reform Councillor Szemcrey proposes. It is up to him to explain why his proposal to abolish prices is restricted to transport. He must say why he wants to go on wasting society’s resources on the trappings of buying-and-selling and why he still wants to force old people to pay for the food and shelter they need.

Adam Buick

Tories win again (1970)

Party News from the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tories retained control of the Greater London Council in the elections on 9 April. Once again over three-quarters of a million electors had a chance to vote directly for Socialist candidates. As expected, in a low poll, only a thousand or so did.

This was the first large-scale election in Britain where Party names appear (not loo prominently however) on the ballot papers. Our 14 candidates used the description “The Socialist Party of Great Britain". We were in fact the only people to use the word “socialist" at all, a fact which should help our campaign to stop the Press and Tories referring to the Labour Party as such. A Party spokesman was also interviewed for three minutes on Thames Television on 24 March. This was the first time the Party case has been presented on television in London, though it had been put a number of times in other regional programmes. We have yet to be allowed a formal Party Political Broadcast or even an appearance on a national television programme.

Two other incidents are worth recording. In Camden, at a meeting on transport held on 23 March, the Labour candidate, Luke O'Connor, was the first to protest when he was mistakenly introduced by the chairman as the candidate of "the socialist party". At another meeting in Ealing on 2 April, in which all the parties in the election there took part, the candidates of the so-called Communist Party and Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement sat next to each other. This contrasts with the attitude the Communist Party adopted towards a meeting at Bristol University on 23 January which their candidate at the Swindon parliamentary by-election refused to attend on the grounds that the general secretary of the Union Movement had also been invited. It would seem to show that the Communist Party has come to realise that, as our speaker at the Bristol meeting pointed out, debating with fascists in no way condones their views but is in fact a way of opposing them.

In Haringey a group of anarchists put up six candidates for the three seats under such labels as the “Bread and Circus Party” and the "All Night Party" in order to demonstrate their mistaken view that elections are a fraud and a farce. Their candidates are shown as A in the results below; HBR means “Homes Before Roads", a single-issue reform group:

CAMDEN: O'Connor (Lab) 26,265, Collins (Lab) 26,140, Kazantzis (Lab) 25,731, Lemkin (C) 24,416, Townsend (C) 24,346, Mansel (C) 24,047, Calmann (L) 2,565, Peacock (L) 2,252, Benad (L) 2,208, McLennan (Comm) 1,692, Peacock (HBR) 1,311, Walker (HBR) 1,249, Jacka (HBR) 1,037, Cox (Soc) 391, Davies (Soc) 323, Grant (Soc) 299, Elliott (UM) 195.

EALING: Dobson (C) 43,219, Farrow (C) 43,130, Patterson (C) 42,904, Young (C) 41,608, Hughes (Lab) 35,206, Eckles (Lab) 34,983, Mason (Lab) 34,955, Newson (Lab) 34,299, Lewisohn (L) 3,195, Davies (L) 3,165, Hankinson (L) 3,026, Bailey (L) 2,804, Foley (HBR) 2,010, Greeves (HBR) 1,683, St. George (HBR) 1,626, Spence (HBR) 1,594, Tank (Comm) 1,190, George (Soc) 735, Wilson (UM) 708, Buchanan (Soc) 695, Rose (Soc) 392, Sawyer (Soc) 293.

HARINGEY: Bains (C) 26,716, Gilbey (C) 26,471, Malynn (C) 26,156, Chaplin (Lab) 25.625. Morrisey (Lab) 24.949. Gurr (Lab) 24,890, Fox (L) 1.997, Parker (L) 1,928, Edwards (L) 1,910. Morris (Comm) 1,337. Ramsay (Comm) 982. Hicklin (HBR) 461. Phillips (HBR) 458, Carter (Soc) 443, Buick (Soc) 374. Thompson (HBR) 353, Cooper (A) 234, Waite (Soc) 212, Borowski (A) 212, Whittaker (A) 154, Kibble (A) 149, Summers (UM) 145, Kerner (A) 133, Hood (A) 77.

LAMBETH: Geddes (C) 34,111. Grieves (Lab) 33,936, Crofton (C) 33,918, Livingston (C) 33,868. Gumbel (C) 33,774, Jones (Lab) 33,738, Chesworth (Lab) 33.645. Ponsonby (Lab) 33,045, Delaney (L) 1,952. Beaven (L) 1,847, Larkin (L) 1,784, Barker (L) 1,781, Grier (HBR) 1,186, Keelan (HBR) 1,100, Luckett (HBR) 1,004, Thomas (HBR) 956. Hope (Comm) 888, Styles (Comm) 745, Garnham (Soc) 620, Phillips (Soc) 536, Boaks (Ind) 366, Sansum (Soc) 337, Simkins (Soc) 295. Archer (UM) 293.

Greater London Council Elections: The Socialist Programme (1973)

Party News from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Click on the image to enlarge.

This Election Is About Capitalism

Don’t get bowled over by the possibility of ‘free’ transport. By the threat or promise of Labour taking over all the rented property in London. By the promise that the Ring Road will actually improve the environment. This election, as with others in the past, is to decide which Party is now going to run capitalism. We reject this. Our candidates will seek your support only on the clear-cut issue of Socialism.

Labour, Tory, Liberal, Communist and the others are in favour of a system where you will remain members of the working class. They support capitalism, which basically is a system where the means of wealth production are owned and controlled by a small minority of people, the capitalist class, and where the vast majority — you, the working class — have to work for a wage or salary in order to exist. It is a pernicious system. It is based upon buying and selling, with profit as the motive for production. Where money is the determining factor and ‘Will it pay?’ the first question. How often have you read of a ‘good’ scheme which cannot get off the ground because of the cost? It is a system that generates waste, greed, corruption, suspicion; it throws up social problems like an erupting volcano.

Housing, slums, transport, roads, medical centres, open spaces; these will all appear yet again in the manifestoes of the other parties as problems which must be urgently solved, and for which they all have the solution — if only you will vote for them. But all these parties have had the ‘solution’ in the past; the only trouble is that it has never worked; capitalism has seen to that.

The Greater London Council is part of the political machinery for running capitalism and as long as you are prepared to continue voting for the parties which support capitalism then so long will the system last and so long will you bear the brunt of social problems. If you are prepared to live with a system that deprives you of a creative and happy life, then go on voting as you’ve done in the past.

But we think you have the potential, not only to envisage a different type of world, but to take the necessary political action to get it. Let there be no misunderstanding. We are not putting forward candidates who will make you any promises. We are not saying that we have better leaders than those of other parties. In fact, we have no leaders, but do have a set of ideas, which although at first glance might be new to you, we feel sure you will on reflection agree have something which is worthy of your consideration.

We have already mentioned that our issue is that of Socialism, and when we use this word we mean something specific. Socialism is a world-wide community with common interests. Where the land, and all the means of production will be owned by mankind as a whole, with democratic control. Where the sole motive for production will be the satisfaction of your needs. Simply put — bread will be baked because people want to eat it — just that. Money will play not part at all in this society because there will be no need for money. Decisions by the community will be taken on their merits. The wages system will be abolished along with all the other stupid trappings of the present system. Socialism will be a system of co-operation; where each will give according to ability and take according to need. Mankind with its knowledge, harnessed to the riches of the earth, is capable of producing abundance. Why be satisfied with a world of shortages?

Socialism cannot be introduced by waving a magic political wand. It will be the outcome of understanding and hard work; your understanding, your hard work.

We are not asking you to vote for the Socialist candidates because you are fed up with the others or because you think we should be given a chance. We only want your vote if you agree with our case, our object and declaration of principles.

Take a momentous step for your future by making further enquiries about the Socialist Party of Great Britain; by reading our literature and making up your own mind, whether at last in this election, you will have nothing more to do with capitalism, but will throw in your weight and resources with the Socialist movement.

Westminster

Why Are We Contesting

Fellow Workers,

Capitalism is the system of society which dominates the world today. It is a system where, either privately or through the State, the capitalist class own and control the means of production. It is a system of riches and poverty, of slums and palaces, of wages and profits, strikes, unemployment and war.

Under capitalism the vast majority of people are members of the working class who live by selling their abilities to work — for wages. It is through the exploitation of the working class that all the wealth of the world is produced.

Capitalism denies workers access to the wealth they create beyond the extent of their wages. Truly it is a system where wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, where the market and the profit motive are supreme. Capitalism is administered by politicians given power mainly by working-class votes. Everything the Greater London Council does is overshadowed by capitalism. The GLC is part of the administration of capitalism. Every sphere in the vast scope of its activity is restricted by cost consideration and ultimately decided by the overall effect on the profits of the system as a whole. Whether it be houses, hospitals, health, or education, where the money is coming from is always the first question.

Human need must come second in a society that lives on profits. Capitalism has never been any different. The only possible solution is to change society.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the only Party contesting these elections on this fundamental basis. Whether they are called left-wing or right-wing, Labour, Conservative, Liberal or Communist, every other party is a reformist party. That is to say, all of their schemes, plans and promises are aimed at adjusting capitalism— not getting rid of it. If you think “they are all the same once they get in” this is because you vote on the basis of promises — promises to keep capitalism going.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is contesting these elections because we understand capitalism — and we want Socialism. The vote is the means whereby the working class will gain control of political power; it is therefore a barometer of working-class understanding. When a majority have ceased to be deluded by personalities and promises, they will vote for Socialism.

Socialism as an idea has been twisted and misrepresented by the Labour Party, the so-called Communist Party and the various Trotskyist groups. Socialism does not mean Labour governments, nationalisation, or the type of system in Russia or China. These are examples of state capitalism. Socialism means a way of life where the whole world and its resources will be held in common by all mankind. A classless world community with production solely for use and free access according to need. No longer will wages, markets and profits blight and restrict our lives. People will co-operate to produce an abundance — and then enjoy it.

Socialism will be run democratically; that is why we have always stressed the need for understanding.

Your vote can help decide whether the misery of capitalism will continue.

South West London

Let's Have Free Access 

The real issue at the forthcoming election is not whether to elect a Conservative or Labour councillor. The real issue is quite simply that of which kind of society are all of us to live in. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that only a fundamental change in the basis of society will solve the problems that affect almost everyone. It is therefore not because we wish to take over the administration of the Greater London Council that we are campaigning in this election: we are rather taking the opportunity of spreading knowledge of our ideas and aims. We do not ask you to vote for us in return for the promise of some petty — and perhaps actually harmful — reform; we ask you to study our ideas, and, if you agree with them, to make contact with our local branch so that you can find out more about them.

And what is this fundamental change that we stand for? Briefly, we wish to establish a system of society where every single person will be able to take freely from the store of social wealth whatever he or she needs. Such a system — which we call “free access” — means quite simply what it says: there will be no restrictions (such as are imposed today by the size of your wage-packet or salary cheque) on the amount of goods or services which any individual consumes, enjoys or uses. We maintain that an abundance of wealth, which such a system implies, could quite easily be produced if production were motived by the desire to satisfy people’s needs, not by profit as at present. Profit acts as a barrier to production, since if a thing cannot be sold at a profit, it will quite simply not be produced, no matter how many people would like it. And we have all read in the newspapers of fruit and so on, which has already been produced, actually being destroyed in order to keep prices up and to serve the interests of profit. Again, think of all the people (bank clerks, ticket collectors, in short all those whose work is concerned with money) who do not produce socially useful wealth; under a system of free access their abilities, and those of countless others too, including those unemployed at present, could be put to producing goods which people really need. What we stand for, then, in this election as at all times, is a world-wide system of society where there is no money, no government, no war, and where the production of wealth for use alone, is democratically controlled by everybody.

We make no apology for introducing ideas such as these into a local council election, since we believe that it is the existence of a wages system and production for profit which causes the problems about which other parties will be campaigning to gain your support. Housing, for instance, cannot be planned in the interests of all as long as most people find the type of accommodation they can afford limited by what they earn. We maintain that, whoever sits on the council, decisions such as those concerning house- and road-building are bound to be made above the heads of and against the interest of the vast majority of the people concerned, simply because the very basis of society means, firstly, that only a small minority of people take vital decisions, and, secondly, that these people have to act in the interest of profit rather than in the interests of the people whose lives are involved. That is why we are not just another party trying to run the present system in a slightly different way — we wish to change the system fundamentally, since this is the only way to solve the problems which both you and ourselves suffer from.

If you agree with the views expressed above, we ask you to do two things: firstly show it by voting for the Socialist candidate; second, and far more important, take steps to acquaint yourself further with the case we have put forward in this address — the case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Haringey

We Fight G.L.C. Elections (1973)

Party News from the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The E.C. have made preliminary arrangements for the Party to contest certain of the constituencies in the forthcoming Greater London Council Elections — Polling Day Thursday, April 12th. At time of going to Press, we shall be putting up candidates in the following areas: Camden — Hampstead, Camden — St. Pancras North, City of Westminster — St. Marylebone, Lambeth — Vauxhall, Streatham, Norwood and Central. In addition candidates will be put up by Haringey Branch in North London and we hope that one or two other constituencies will be contested.

These elections give us a good opportunity to state the case for Socialism amidst all the rubbish that will be turned out by other Parties. But it means work. All London members can help. Literature selling, canvassing, Manifesto distribution etc. Please contact those Branches that will be running campaigns; you will be given a job. It also means spending money. No deposit is required but printing bills, etc., have to be paid.

1. We want your assistance.
2. We should like a donation. Send to

The Treasurer,

S.P.G.B.,

52 Clapham High Street,

London, S.W.4

Marked ELECTION CAMPAIGN.

Socialist Action (1981)

Party News from the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May 7, the workers of Islington South and Finsbury will have a chance to register a vote for world socialism: a system of society in which human beings will stand in social equality to the means of living. That many of them will not wish to cast their votes for social revolution cannot be denied, but that every effort will be made to persuade them is certain. The socialist campaign is already underway and even if the workers who reside in the constituency do not yet know it, they are about to have their minds assailed from all directions by the powerful case for a world without poverty or deprivation.

Why do we contest elections? Firstly, because to confront and defeat the arguments of the pernicious apologists for the profit system at election time has considerable propaganda value. Secondly, because socialists are democrats. No, not the defenders of that perverse "democracy’ which requires the working class to follow like sheep their political leaders. We are democrats in that we stand for a new system which will not be characterised by the divisions of class, sex, age or race. Only when a conscious majority want and understand socialism will the new social order be created. The ballot box is a means of registering that consciousness. And thirdly, because election campaigns help to organise workers in a particular area. Islington branch hopes to come out of the campaign with new recruits to our recently increased numbers.

Why are we contesting Islington South and Finsbury? The branch is a strong and enthusiastic one and the local workers are in just as much need of fresh political thinking as those in any other constituency. Every household will be receiving an election manifesto. Houses will be canvassed; street corner meetings arranged; eardrums blasted by our loud-speaker messages; indoor meetings held to clarify the electoral issues. Any worker in the constituency who does not want to come into contact with socialists (lest he catches a dose of political intelligence) had better keep away from the area as from April.

Those local workers who want to lend a hand are invited to help us in the following ways:

1. MANIFESTO DISTRIBUTION. From mid-April, manifesto distributors will be required on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. The meeting place is the Angel tube station at 7pm. If you cannot make those times or if you want to do some distributing on your own during the day, make contact with the election agent who will give you some manifestos and a list of houses to cover.
2. SOCIALIST STANDARD SELLING. The Party only wants politically conscious votes, so plenty of literature will have to be sold in the constituency in the month before the election. Either come to Chapel Street market any Saturday in April from 11am until 3pm or get in touch with the election agent who will book you a place on the rota for tube station selling.
3. ATTEND OUR PUBLIC MEETINGS. Come along to the public meetings in Islington in the weeks before the election. Bring along any friends who can be persuaded to come, even if you know that they are not yet in agreement with socialist ideas. Details of all meetings will appear in the Socialist Standard.
4. DONATIONS. This campaign will cost money. Manifestos have to be printed, halls have to be booked. Members and sympathisers may not have much to spare, but any coins, notes, postal orders and cheques will be gratefully received and acknowledged by the election agent. We will report on how our funds are going in future issues of the Socialist Standard.
5. GET IN TOUCH WITH THE BRANCH. Let us know any ideas you may have for furthering our propaganda during the election campaign. Send us names and addresses of anyone in the Islington area who may be interested in hearing from us.

Remember, we cannot promise you “Socialism in one Borough”, but we can urge you to reject Sir Horace Cutler and his opportunist colleagues in County Hall and make the great political leap from poverty to freedom.

Islington Branch

Greasy Pole: Red benches and Red Ken (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

If anyone needs any odd jobs doing – mowing the lawn, walking the dog, putting up some shelves – they might bear in mind those well-preserved people who now have time on their hands because they are no longer allowed to spend their days snoozing on the red leather benches of the House of Lords.

The Commons vote to abolish the rights of hereditary peers – or at least for most of them – was hailed as a great victory for democracy and proof that New Labour is a government which keeps its promises. This, we were told, was the will of the people. The people had read Labour’s manifesto and liked what they read and gave the government a clear mandate to get on with the job (actually only 44 per cent voted for it but never mind). And everyone knows that there are no stauncher defenders of the people’s democratically expresed will than Tony Blair and his New Labour enforcers.

In the past Blair has always been quite clear about the urgent need to do something about those people who had the right through birth to interfere with the processes of running British capitalism. “Ancient and indefensible practice” he called it in 1984. “In principle wrong and absurd . . . a drinking and dining club” was his view in 1996. And in Labour’s 1997 manifesto “The right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute”.

A Deal 

No two ways about that, you might think. What was not promised in the manifesto was to abolish the rights of only some of the peers, leaving the rest of them to carry on while everyone gives the matter further thought. That was the result of a covert deal between the government and one of the bluest-blooded of the peers (which cost him his place in the Shadow Cabinet). Why Blair, with his huge majority, should have accepted this compromise is not entirely clear, unless it was that it was just another manifesto commitment to be mangled, enfeebled, delayed . . . It has not been so with all that the government has done. When thinking up new ways of punishing criminals, or reducing legal rights, or attacking the poorest and most vulnerable people, they have acted with memorable urgency. But of course in those cases they were not dealing with people of wealth and influence.

It could hardly have been, that the government were impressed with the Lords’ own defence of their privileges. One of them – Lord Campbell – had the nerve to describe the abolition of their undemocratic rights as “a great denial of democracy”. Lord Strathclyde claimed to be in touch with public opinion on the issue in this country and beyond: “We do not want it. The public does not. The outside world does not”. In this deluded state the noble Lords were capable of believing that the people were about to take to the barricades to preserve their rights, in gratitude for the days when they occasionally gave Margaret Thatcher some grief and so were able to pose as defenders of the democratic rights of the common people. At that time there were signs that some peers were appalled at the crudeness of all those car sellers and estate agents braying on the Tory benches in the Commons, none of whom were ever likely to touch their forelocks to anyone.

One example of how the Lords behaved then was when they debated – if that is the right word – a final vital amendment to the Bill which was to abolish the Greater London Council. On that day there was no open rebellion because there was simply not enough of them in the chamber. The Daily Telegraph reported that “Lord Denham’s (leader of the Lords) face froze with horror…(He) gazed over the thinned out ranks of unsocial Tories behind”. The reason for the unpopulated benches on that day was rather less romantic than any last ditch stand in favour of Ken Livingstone and his Council. Many of the noble heads were at Ascot, where it was a big event – Ladies’ Day. It was an appropriate comment on how seriously the self-styled champions of democracy took the obligations implied by their privileged position. The Tory whips rushed around frantically, rounding up peers of a lesser pedigree while the “debate” was kept alive through a lordly filibuster. When they had enough votes the amendment was voted on and lost, the GLC was on the way out and the peers could congratulate themselves over their port and nuts on their value to the machinery of democratic government.

Livingstone 

There is, then, a certain ironic symmetry in the fact that the House of Lords and Ken Livingstone should be in the news at the same time and that in both cases there is an issue of whether democratic procedures are under abuse. In their 1997 manifesto the Labour Party promised that London would have its own elected strategic authority headed by an elected mayor. What they did not promise was that, whatever popular opinion was on the matter, the Labour candidate would be someone who was guaranteed not to upset Blair and his Millbank cronies in the same way that the House of Lords and Ken Livingstone once upset Thatcher.

In September 1993 Blair told Brian Walden, on London Weekend TV, that the block vote was “the brake on the enthusiasms” of Party members. “We are going to have One Member One Vote coming into many, many of the decisions of the Labour Party” he assured the viewers. That may have persuaded many members of the Labour Party that OMOV would be used to select their candidate for London’s mayor. The snag was that, had that been allowed to happen, Ken Livingstone was well fancied to win the nomination hands down – which would have been something akin to a nightmare to Blair. Since Livingstone could not be persuaded to stand down the system had to be changed along with the candidates to oppose him. So out went the likes of Trevor Phillips and in came Frank Dobson, who was the leader of Camden Council when it was prominent among those local authorities damned as loony lefties and who is renowned as a talented reciter of shockingly dirty jokes but who would do what Blair wanted. Out, too, went OMOV and in came the electoral college with the block vote, now no longer a brake on enthusiasms but the way forward to the kind of democratic decision making which Blair approves.

Tinkering 

But Livingstone’s popularity would not go away so there had to be more tinkering; this time so that more time was allowed between the settling of the short list and the final selection of the candidate, with the object of giving Dobson an opportunity to organise a more effective campaign. You may call all this moving the goal posts or gerrymandering or fiddling the system. What you may not call it is allowing a democratic vote on an important issue.

In these irrelevant squabbles about who should be in charge of the organs which run, and try to control, British capitalism nobody should be deceived by Labour’s claim that their reform of the House of Lords and the establishment of an authority to run London is driven by any democratic principle. When they need to the government treat democratic procedures as irritants and obstacles. Democracy for them is what pleases their leader and what pleases their leader is the imposition of policies which are based on Labour’s need to protect and prosper the interests of the British ruling class. That is why, when the voters of London go to choose their mayor, they may well find that they can vote for anyone they like as long as it’s Frank Dobson.

Ivan

GLC: working for capitalism (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1963 the Local Government Act set up the Greater London Council. At the time the Labour Party opposed the creation of the GLC, arguing that it widened the boundaries of the old London County Council too far and would lead to a built-in Tory majority. In fact, Labour won the GLC election in 1964 and that put an end to their campaign against the GLC. Twenty years after the 1963 Act the Tory manifesto for the 1983 General Election proposed the abolition of the GLC on the grounds that it was "wasteful and unnecessary". This contrasts with earlier Tory attitudes to local government:

  There are plenty of people who feel that local administration is wasteful and extravagant and hold that there should be a much tighter degree of Treasury control over spending. I pray you will never lend substance and ammunition to that charge.
(Earl of Home, quoted in Local Government Campaign Notes. 15 April 1954. p.8)

Again, in a document entitled Background Material for Election Address, issued by the Conservative Party Central Office in 1953 it is stated that

  Conservatives believe that local government should be local and that decisions on local matters should be made with reference to local conditions, not in obedience to the rigid direction of a central . . . machine.

So. why the change in positions: why in 1983 did we see the Tories advocating the elimination of the GLC as a local government and the Labour Party fighting to keep it? The immediate answer is party-political. The fact is that the Tories lost control of the GLC, as well as the Metropolitan Counties which it also sought to abolish, and. rather than having a local government marching in the opposite direction of a powerful central government, it decided to abolish the former. This political distaste for the GLC was admitted in a speech by the Tory Opposition leader on the GLC, Richard Brew:

  Leaving aside the ideologically committed, he (Livingstone) is seeking out the feminists and the gay activists. He is topping up these with the ethnic groups and the Irish. He is mobilising the anti-police brigade and he is seeking out the pressure groups CND. Babies Against the Bomb and so on. In other words he is going for the nutters.

(Quoted in Citizen Ken by John Carvel, p.208)

And when "the nutters" are in a majority you abolish elections. They have psychiatric hospitals for such "nutters" in Russia and Brew shows that the Tory reasoning in abolishing the GLC was not very different from any other centralised state which refuses to hold elections because the electors cannot be trusted to vote properly.

The Labour-led "Save the GLC Campaign" has been a popular reformist movement in London and, as Edward Heath pointed out in the House of Commons, the Tory decision to abolish the GLC has had the totally unintended effect of making Ken Livingstone one of the most popular politicians in London. If the polls are to be trusted, it seems that abolition is sufficiently unpopular to result in serious Tory losses in London constituencies in the next General Election. Patrick Jenkin, the Minister responsible for pushing the abolition Bill through the Commons, is now politically ruined and the government appears to have handed the Labour Party a gift.

As the GLC is buried a myth is in danger of being born: the myth of “GLC socialism". It is a common belief amongst many leftists that the GLC under Livingstone was responsible for making moves towards socialism in one city, and the further we drift away from the period in which this is supposed to have happened the more elaborate the legend will become. Let us look at what these so- called socialist measures were which the GLC implemented.

Firstly, they lowered the fares on London Transport, only to have this action ruled illegal by the capitalist Judges. As we pointed out at the time of the so-called Fair Fares campaign, socialists want no fares, not low fares. The trains, the buses and the rest of the transport system should belong to the community as a whole and when they do we will not have to pay to use them. Such free access, and nothing less, will be socialism. The GLC move to lower fares by rate subsidy was an understandably popular reform and was in line with transport policies in other European capital cities. But it was not compatible with the profit system and was thus ended by the central state. This is the inevitable fate of any city government which attempts to impose rules upon capitalism which are unacceptable to the capitalists on a national level.

Secondly, the GLC gave grants to several organisations of workers seeking facilities which would not be granted by central government. We are not denying that many of these facilities were put to good use (we refer to those which were not politically reformist causes) and that the GLC won many friends that way. But, as GLC defenders were at pains to point out throughout the anti-abolition campaign, these grants to radical groups amounted to only 0.6 per cent of their annual budget. In a socialist society women would not need to fill in numerous forms and negotiate politically with leaders before they can have a centre to meet in; if Irish people living in London require a cultural centre they shall have free access to the space and buildings available and will not have to be beholden to some government body in a socialist society.

Thirdly, the GLC has acted controversially in declaring London a nuclear-free zone. What exactly does such a declaration mean? Are we to expect that London will no longer be a target for nuclear missiles because of this absurd nominal gesture? In fact, if the GLC had wasted less time upon such pious nonsense and a little thought on considering the cause of war (namely, the capitalist system) workers could now be organising to abolish the cause of war rather than wasting time pretending to be free from its effects.

Fourthly, the GLC set up the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB), the "socialist" function of which was to persuade capitalists to invest more money in exploiting London's workers and to convince unemployed and other workers that by setting up capitalist co-ops they could succeed in business. This is hardly the action of any movement intending to replace capitalism with socialism.

In fact, there have been some positive changes in London in the early 1980s. but these have not happened because politicians have legislated for them. Workers in London are taking a more conscious attitude to racism and to the problems of women; after many years gay men and lesbian women are less afraid to come out in the open than they used to be; community groups, such as tenants' organisations, are trying to take more social responsibility over their areas — although they still do not own or control their areas and their efforts are all too often hijacked by Labour opportunists who use workers' organisations for purposes of vote-catching. There are some positive developments, but that is because workers are in certain respects becoming more socially conscious and there is little doubt that such consciousness will continue to develop with or without the GLC.

The myth that the GLC somehow humanised capitalism in London must be resisted, for if it wins workers' minds we will see yet another political diversion of workers organising to return to "the good old days'' of the GLC. The fact is that in those "good old days" the GLC was evicting council tenants who could not afford to pay their rents, NALGO and NUPE workers employed by the GLC had to fight hard to exist as wage slaves, there was widespread deprivation within London and the GLC, like any other capitalist government, was impotent to tackle it.

It is a major waste of energy for workers claiming to want socialism to be fighting to retain a level of government. Socialists are opposed to all government, because the state, both local and national, is but the executive committee of the capitalist class. Why should workers campaign for the right to be governed? Of course, we must see through the sordid political opportunism which led the central government to abolish the GLC and we must recognise the contempt which the capitalists have for democracy when they are losing the elections. But it should be remembered that there is no government or ruling class which could abolish democratic facilities once workers have a class-conscious interest in democracy. It is the workers who elected the capitalist national government, just as it was workers who elected the capitalist local government of London. As soon as workers are socialist-minded we shall democratically conquer both local and national governments and these will be used to dispossess the capitalist class of their wealth and power. There will be no socialist state: local and national government will not wither away in a socialist society, but will be abolished because in socialism there will be no propertyless class to be governed and coerced.

Socialists possess no blueprint as to how administration will be conducted within a system of common ownership and democratic control, but two points are quite clear. Firstly, socialism will not be a centralised society. After all, we are talking about a world society (socialism cannot be established in one country or city) and it is inconceivable that there will be a single global administration. Secondly, it is very likely that there will be plenty of opportunities for local community involvement in decision-making in a socialist society, with local bodies and global bodies feeding ideas and initiatives into one another on the basis of dynamic democracy. But not until society and everything in it belongs to the people who inhabit it can we speak of genuine democracy, so instead of shedding any tears over the passing of the GLC and the Metropolitan Counties workers should think enthusiastically about a society in which democracy means a lot more than the right of Ken Livingstone to sit and make decisions in County Hall.

Steve Coleman