Tories in search of a policy (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conferences of the major political parties are convenient and useful affairs. Delegates make speechlets on the ”Platform’s” proposals without really affecting them in any way. Other delegates politely listen. On occasions they even clap or cheer these speechlets. Such a social gathering helps to generate a feeling of amity and good-fellowship suggestive of the atmosphere of the Annual Outing or “Beano.” For the party leaders it is an admirable sounding-board by which to magnify their personal influence over their followers. It also enables them to indulge in those spell-binding speeches which do so much to rekindle the fires of their supporters’ political enthusiasm. Fires, which often tend between one Conference and another to burn dangerously low.

This, of course, really covers the water front of the Brighton Conservative Conference. Nevertheless, incidentals arising from it might paint a moral or adorn a tale.

Bernard Shaw’s “A Black Girl in search of God” has nothing on a Tory Party in search of a Policy. In the past such mundane things as detailed policies have rarely troubled them. Maintenance of Law and Order ; Preservation, of Our Glorious Empire; and an occasional red-herring like Tariff Reform have been considered ample for securing votes. With these and other nebulous promises they successfully moved the Electorate. Neither can they claim that the Electorate have been unduly fickle or faithless. Apart from two short and not highly significant breaks of the 1924 and 1929 Labour Governments the Tories enjoyed political power for eighteen years. Forty-odd years of Labour Party “Nationalisation” propaganda, among other things, provided some useful spade-work for digging a hole round the Conservative castle. It was through this hole that the Tory majority finally disappeared. The working class at length decided to give “Labour” a chance at running things.

The need of finding a rival policy to attract votes from the Labour Party has caused consternation in the Conservative ranks. Last year, at Blackpool, they began their search for one. This year’s Conference has shown it is not to be found in Brighton. To be restored as the “rightful claimants” of political power by the Tories time-honoured expedient of holding a successful General Election Inquest on the Labour Government's failures, appears the only hope.

Unfortunately for the Tories their failure to find some concrete alternative to the Labour Party programme lies deeper than any apparent inability to formulate one. The need of British Monopoly Capitalism compels the State to become more and more an active partner in its affairs, and so unify the diverse elements in accordance with the requirements of capitalism as an economic unit. This leads to that rigorous uniformity of political measures which is so marked a feature of modern capitalist administration. The main task of alternative Government is in essentials to supplement and extend what the last Government began.

Thus it can be said of any real alternative policies for running Capitalism what a geological text book once said of “Snakes in Iceland”—”there are none.” That is why, to use an Irishism, the more the Tories are different from the Labour Party the more do they seem the same thing—only even more so.

The Tories claimed that their Charter was “a bold advance in political and social affairs.” The merest cursory glance shows it to be a retreat into the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of vapid platitudes and cloudy generalisations. Mr. Eden once again took on the role of drummer-boy for the Tory, Brave New World. Although sounding the tocsin valiantly he could produce nothing more than The Need of Real Leadership : a Properly Balanced Budget; More Production, and Streamlined Controls. All of which led the Manchester Guardian (3/10/47) to say: “The seven points of the Charter would have been subscribed with equal fervour by most members of the Labour Party.”

Even the Tory Daily Telegraph could only lamely underscore Mr. Eden’s speech by saying that “in the first essentials of Government the Conservatives could provide better men.” It also significantly commented : “an alternative Government can be found which will either do other and better things—or the same things better.” This suggests that the Conservative Campaign will boil down in essentials to the exhortation: “Play the game you Labour cads. It’s our turn to bat.”

Because political parties exist for the requirements of Capitalism as a whole the Tories could not afford to indulge in sterile controversy about the alleged principles of Nationalisation. The Telegraph simply stated :—”Nationalisation had gone far. enough.” The mines will not, then, be denationalised in the event of a Tory Government. Likewise no indication was given that Railways, Electricity or Gas would be returned to Private Enterprise or, more correctly, Private Monopoly. Neither have they suggested that shareholders in the Bank of England or stockholders in Cables and Wireless should yield up good Government scrip signed by a Treasury official for something signed by a company director. As for the suggestion of denationalising the Steel Industry time will come for that when the Labour Government has finally made up its own mind on the matter of nationalising it.

Such a decision to preserve the already accomplished projects of the’ Labour Party implies, no reversal of the economic traditions of the British Capitalist Class. Whether it bo the Post Office, the B.B.C., Municipal Gas or Electricity, Governments in the past have never hesitated to take them from private control where it has been thought necessary for the interests of the Capitalist Class as a whole. If further evidence was needed there is Mr. MacMillan’s book, “The Next Five Years,” suggesting that Armaments, Transport, some forms of Insurance, and Electricity, were suitable for State Control. Mr. Churchill in the 1918 Election also urged a measure of State Control over all monopolies, especially Transport and Power, a fact which the adroit Mr. Morrison reminded them of in the House of Commons Debate on The Address. (Times, 21/11/46.)

Even the Tory cry of “Give Private Enterprise a chance” merely echoes the Labour Party’s oft repeated claim of leaving, after Nationalisation schemes had been carried through, eighty per cent. of Industry in Private Control. Mr. Morrison informed his own electors at Lewisham that Nationalisation must be carried through where necessary in the interests of efficiency, but most of Industry should remain private and prosperously enterprising. (The Economist, 10/5/47.)

The Tories also propose to retain Controls even, to the point of “streamlining them.” Mr. Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, has also announced : “Controls will be streamlined.” (Evening News, 7/10/47.)

Even that last stronghold of Toryism—Imperial Preferences—has fallen. It has been taken in the rear by that doughty “Empire Free Trade” Crusader, Mr. Bevin. Perhaps the bitterest quarrel that may yet ensue between “Labour” and Tory may be over who are “the true breed” of our great Imperial Traditions. Mr. Eden taunted the Labour Party with the fact that they are mere recruits who have only recently begun to think imperially. (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47.) The Daily Herald (3/10/17) stung to the quick of its Imperial pride, retorted that “unlike the Tories who have only thought Imperially, the Labour Party acted Imperially.”

The leading article of the same issue told its readers that the Tories had put forward no practical measures beyond those already put in force by the Labour Government. Indeed its general tenor was to the effect that the Conservative proposal really supported what the Labour Government were doing. It is surely a strange logic by which to justify its own policy. How often in the past have Labour Party spokesmen condemned the Tory Party as the Party of Wealth and Privilege?

It now finds that acceptance by the “wealthy” and “privileged” of their main planks is a source of comfort and even congratulation. For the honest and humble “Labour” stalwart the fact that his party shares so much common political ground with ”The Traditional Enemies” of the working-class should be a source of embarrassment and shame.

There is, of course, the vexed problem of rival bidding for working class votes. While the Tories may not want to offer more inducements than their Labour Party rivals they cannot make it seem that they are offering less. In a class system of exploitation based on private property ownership of the means of living they propound the tragic jest of a nation-wide community of property owners. Mr. Eden in his opening speech (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47) could offer no more than some future vague ownership of largely mythical houses for the working class, and the dangerous expedient of Co-partnership and Profit Sharing.

Ownership by workers of their habitation does not mean ownership of the means of living. It is only ownership of mills, factories, railways, raw materials, etc., which constitute that. These things are the monopoly of a privileged class and provide the sole means which enable them to live on the unpaid labour of the workers. This class privilege will remain as long as Capitalism endures.

Co-partnership is equally a tasteless joke. There can be no partnership between owners of the instruments of wealth production and non-owners. Evidently the Conservatives view it as a means to stimulate greater productive activity from the workers. But, as The Economist (12/10/46) in dealing with the Tory pamphlet on the subject said, “There is nothing to show that such schemes would be more successful in the future or as a means to incentive for greater production.” The Economist even agreed that Co-partnership as it stands “is an empty mockery.” It will, of course, remain an empty mockery under whatever form it appears. They commented that the Tories had much to learn about Industrial Psychology. They even suggested “Sir Stafford Cripps knew a lot more about how to get increased output from the workers.” Recent events might -suggest how right they were.

As befits a great leader, Mr. Churchill repeated his Blackpool performance by absenting himself from the three days’ Conference proceedings. The old gentleman nevertheless turned up as usual on the Saturday afternoon. The delegates then enjoyed a rare display of oratorical fireworks. So a good time was had by all.

Mr. Churchill, as an accomplished political quack of long standing, had no difficulty in showing to the satisfaction of those present, that the famous “Tory blue powders” were superior in every way to the Labour Party’s “pink pills.”

According to an American authority on the subject the rate of output of suckers is one per minute. Undoubtedly if increased production could be applied here it would greatly assist the Tory “Confidence men” to pull off their political “Three Card Trick” once again.

It has been suggested in what may be well informed quarters that an early Conservative election victory might in the long run prove disastrous for them. The return of either a Tory or Labour Government will certainly prove disastrous for the real interests of the working-class; both in the long run—or short run.

Ted Wilmott

Greasy Pole: Death of a Buffoon (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quintin McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone in the City of London, who was “a sweet, dear man” (Woodrow Wyatt); a “political genius” (Harold Macmillan); a “cantankerous old man” (Margaret Thatcher); “a gentleman” (himself) died last month. He was 94 years old and his life was richly productive of the kind of material beloved of fawning obituarists, who did him full justice. By the time we had absorbed that he was a kind, effervescent, clever, intellectual giant we could only wonder how the world would survive without him. Could it really go on, with its wars and disease and poverty, untouched by the death of one of capitalism’s more arrogant and volatile politicians? Should we not reproach ourselves for failing to value this paragon more appropriately when he was alive? Except that Hailsham, was not quite like his admirers make him out to be.

He came of a family of lawyers and politicians and ended his career in politics seemingly welded to the Woolsack, holding the job of Lord Chancellor longer than anyone since the days of Lord Halsbury at the end of the 19th century: “. . . he couldn’t go on being that for ever” said an exasperated Margaret Thatcher when she was contemplating removing him from that office. His father held the same job in the 1920s and was the MP for St. Marylebone. His son Douglas is an MP and has held some minor ministerial jobs – although not to wide acclaim or without controversy. A daughter is a High Court judge. The Hogg family looks likely to carry on into infinity, producing volatile eccentrics who are willing to play their part in running British capitalism in the interests of the class they are born into.

Eton and All Souls

Hailsham was educated at Eton; where else could a boy like him have gone to school? He was said to be the cleverest pupil there, too clever for some of the masters and he was fully aware of it, being known as “. . . a disagreeable boy, academically clever, but emotionally arrogant and extremely self-centred”. Of course he was elected to Pop, that self-appointed aristocracy above the aristocrats of the school. Members of Pop wore fancy waistcoats and walked about arm in arm, they were fawned on by many of the masters and feared among the other boys for their arbitrary powers of flogging and the enforced servitude known as fagging. Clearly, Eton had little to teach the young Hailsham (or Hogg, as he was then, before succeeding to the title) about asserting himself as a member of the ruling class. He was notorious for the gusto and frequency with which he beat other boys (his half-brother, Edward Marjoribanks, was “passionate” about it and had a reputation for sadism). It was a useful education in guiltless suppression of anyone classified as socially inferior.

After collecting a succession of prizes at Eton which proved how clever he was Hailsham went to one of the more traditional of Oxford colleges, got a first class degree and was accepted as a Fellow of All Souls. This is a kind of Pope of the university, although more sober and industrious. It was founded in 1437 with the main purpose of praying for the dead (part of its landholdings include Willesden Junction, a grimy part of North West London where the inhabitants need rather more than prayers to give them some hope). Hailsham began his time among the brains of All Souls as a “Screw”, whose job was to decant the after dinner port which was drunk in such quantities. Places like All Souls, with their exclusivity and their rituals, play a part in informing the working class that they must accept their inferior status in society, the running of which should be left to their betters. How reliable a concept this is can be judged by the kind of politician to have passed through those privileged doors – recent examples were Keith Joseph and John Redwood, who have gone down in history as eccentric blunderers. We shall see how Hailsham measured up to the popular expectations of him.

Suez

He burst onto the political scene as Conservative candidate in a bye-election at Oxford City in 1938, supporting the Chamberlain policy of “appeasement” of Nazi Germany against an all-party candidate. This took some living down later, when appeasement became a nasty word and Chamberlain was universally unpopular. Hailsham survived the war with a slight wound and continued as an MP with a reputation as a kind of verbal blunderbuss in his attacks on the Labour government. Some time after the Tories won power he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, which pandered to his need to behave like an attention-seeking adolescent. But behind his posturing the fact was that, although he was one of the Service ministers he was kept in the dark about the secret negotiations between Britain, France and Israel which laid the plans to justify the Suez invasion. Hailsham denounced the Egyptian take-over of the Suez Canal as “wholly illegal” (as if such concepts are of the slightest consequence in capitalism’s wars) and never doubted that Britain and France were right to “intervene” (as he called it) in the war between Israel and Egypt. It was not the most penetrating analysis of that sordid affair.

Under Macmillan’s prime ministership Hailsham, who succeeded to the title when his father died in 1950, was given the kind of jobs which could have paved his way to the top. Appointed party chairman, he seized the opportunity to engage hysterically with the membership. In 1957 at the Tory conference in Brighton he made his first appearance in the early morning on the beach, wearing baggy trunks and plunging briskly into the sea for a swim. It was not coincidence that he was accompanied (although not into the water – there are limits to the call of duty) by a posse of newspaper hacks. At the end of that conference Hailsham grabbed the chairman’s bell and rang it in a frenzy, declaiming the poet’s words about who the bell tolls for – meaning the Labour Party. The party faithful loved it, stamping their feet and cheering but others – particularly his rivals in the party – were sourly uneasy at his vulgar publicity-seeking.

Flat Cap

This behaviour was rewarded in 1963 when Hailsham was given not one, but two, jobs involving responsibility for sport and for injecting some hope into the North East, where unemployment was at 4.5 percent compared to 2.4 percent nationally. The region’s most important industries – steel, shipbuilding, coal – were in decline. Hailsham was not a sportsman – he regarded the very idea of a minister of sport as akin to fascism – and he was not an economist. This did not disqualify him from holding the jobs but it did make the appointment look like a typical piece of Macmillan gimmickry. Hailsham did nothing to dispel this by touring the region wearing the kind of flat cap usually seen in working men’s clubs, or the dole queues. Later he tried to explain this away as a matter of chance; he had left his bowler hat in his car in London and was offered a choice of a pork pie hat or the cap. He chose the cap because it would be useful when he was out shooting. But the impression endured, that he was either making fun of the hard-pressed workers there or was clumsily trying to convince them that in spite of his Eton education and his large house in Sussex he was really one of them. “I do not pretend” he wrote later “that the plan (which he drew up after his visit) succeeded to the extent that my visit to the North East permanently solved the chronic difficulties of the region”. Well no, it didn’t but at least he got a nice new cap out of it, for his times on the grouse moors.

Later that year his big chance arrived, when Macmillan decided to resign and the Tory party descended into the kind of frenzied back-stabbing which should have had no place in what was called, in the days before Thatcher, the gentleman’s party. It all happened at their 1963 conference where, after Macmillan’s announcement, the atmosphere was, according to William Rees Mogg, “ugly”. Hailsham was Macmillan’s first preference as his successor but he had to get rid of his title and return to being plain Mr. Quintin McGarel Hogg. Without following the custom of first informing the rest of the cabinet he launched his bid for the top job in a carefully stage-managed announcement at the end of an otherwise dull meeting, which erupted into hysterical applause at the news. Randolph Churchill roamed the conference pinning large badges with the letter Q onto anyone unwise enough to stand still within arms reach. Hailsham got himself photographed spoon feeding his one year old child in the hotel foyer. All of this was not to Macmillan’s taste and so from the chaos of ugliness emerged the unlikely figure of Douglas-Home. Hailsham had blown it.

Relief

Which must have been a relief to the many people who had him correctly summed up, not as a genius but an arrogant buffoon, isolated by his conceit from the real world around him. Throughout his life he was buoyed up by the assumption that he and the rest of his class were superior, born to rule in the best of all possible worlds which is capitalism. The rest of us should only be grateful that there are people like Hailsham who are willing to exploit, degrade and ridicule us. To anyone concerned for society and its people Hailsham will not be missed.

Ivan

By-Elections: The Government’s reverses (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

That was an interesting flurry of by-elections. Now that the votes have been counted, the shouting has died and the government are left with some nasty wounds to lick, it is time for the summing up. Not, mark you, in the sense that the political correspondent of the Daily This or the Sunday That has summed up. They can tell us efficiently enough why one candidate beat another, and what effect this might have upon the government. There is need, now, for a different perspective to be put on these matters. What are the by-elections worth? Will they change anything?

The government are certainly in difficulties although there is of course nothing unusual in that. Have we ever known a government which has not run into squalls in its attempts to organise capitalism? Even so, at least one of the present problems is in some ways unique. We refer, of course, to the Common Market negotiations, which face the British capitalist class with their most agonising decision for a long time. The gamble they took years ago, that the European Economic Community would not become a viable enough organisation to cast doubt on the value of the Commonwealth Preference system, has not come off. This has left the British ruling class in the humiliating situation of having to bargain away some of their cherished advantages for a chance at the European market—provided they can also break the stony resistance of de Gaulle.

Should they abandon New Zealand to its fate in the world meat and dairy market? Can they persuade the six in Europe to let them keep the protective tariffs for some Commonwealth products and still take advantage of the Common Market? These problems are such that the Empire builders in the palmy days of Victoria never thought to be confronted with. Neither did their modern counterparts in the Conservative Party. That is why the Tories—and the Labour Party, for that matter —are split over the Common Market.

Nor is all well on the home front, where the government are desperately trying to hold a broken line on their wages policy. Keeping wages in check has always been a problem for capitalism's governments, in this country and abroad. For governments are there to run society in the interests of its ruling class, who rule because they own. The ruling class are the people, in one way and another, whom we work for and who pay us our wages. The big problem, for us as well as for them, is that the more we get as wages the less they get as profit. That is why wages are such a persistent cause of dispute to capitalism and why governments have to try to hold them down. Since the war, with employment at a high level, the pressure has been for wages to go up. And since the war, from Cripps' freeze to Lloyd’s pause and guiding light, governments have tried to keep them in check.

The Tories have presented their wages policy as sober and responsible and have damned anybody who runs counter to it as the blackest of black sheep. Mr. Macmillan told the last Conservative women’s conference:

Some employers, selfishly secure in the knowledge that they can recoup themselves from higher prices at home, may give in too easily to unreasonable demands. Some unions, arrogant with organised power, will try to grab too large a slice of the cake.

This, and the other speeches in the same style, may have impressed the well-hatted Tory women but its effect upon, say, the dockers and the nurses (who, said the Prime Minister, should have a large and immediate increase — “ If we could be guided solely by our hearts ”) and the other workers in the pay queue was probably negligible.

Because workers, whether they are “respectable” civil servants or less “respectable” dockers, and whether they are called selfish and arrogant or any other name, will always struggle to improve their wages. They cannot get away from it; the relationship of worker to employer which pervades capitalist society sees to that. While capitalism lasts, there will always be a class struggle over wages and other conditions of employment.

But if the Common Market and wages are two of the government’s worries, can we say that they had any influence on the by-elections? Do workers weigh up such matters and cast their vote accordingly? If they do, there must be a crushing majority in this country in favour of the Common Market, to judge from the lost deposit of the anti-Common Market candidate in Derbyshire West. And if the workers do weigh up the issues involved in an. election, how thoroughly do they do so? They apparently missed the fact that the post war Labour government, despite its professions to having human interests at heart, started the British hydrogen bomb programme and took this country into the Korean war, which might at one stage have exploded into a world conflict. Whatever the reasons for the Labour Party's defeat in 1951, its zeal for prosecuting capitalism's wars was not amongst them.

Similarly, the Conservative Party is kept in power by the ignorant docility of the working class. The Tories do not see their votes decline as a result of their being the men who gambled with world war in their Suez adventure. They do not lose M.P.'s because they are the government in charge of the British bomb tests, which play their part in poisoning the atmosphere in the search for an all-powerful weapon of destruction. If the Tories do suffer a decline, as they did in 1957 and 1958, it is not for these reasons and they can soon come bouncing back into favour and into an even more secure majority, as they did in 1959.

Why, then, are the votes at present running against the government? The people who profess to know —the newspapers’ political correspondents — have their theories. The Guardian thinks that it can be put down to “impatience” (they are impatient with the government themselves); The Economist has spoken of ineffective public relations; another observer has said the electorate are “bored” with the government. If these reasons have any substance, it would be nice to know why the electoral mood can change so easily. Were the workers bored and impatient in 1958 but patiently interested enough in 1959 to put in an overwhelming Tory vote? And why, basically, are they bored and impatient?

The truth is that workers vote for capitalism, whether it is capitalism organised by a Labour or a Conservative government. These governments can often be made to look foolish and impotent by the caprices of the very social system they are trying to run. The Attlee government did look foolish over the 1947 fuel crisis and over potato rationing. The Tories are impotent to control the opposing pressures of wage claims and the temptation to inflate the currency. It is an easy thing to poke fun at a government which is in such difficulties. Yet simply to vote against a government, to switch support from one capitalist party to another, is just as foolish and futile. And worse; because to do this is to fly in the face of all facts, all the evidence, all history, it is a depressingly ignorant thing that the millions of working class voters do at election time.

Yet we do not need to look very hard at the world around us to realise that there is a desperate need for an end to the political ignorance of the workers. Consider, for example, the letter which The Guardian published on June 1st. last; a tragically moving letter from a mother whose little girl had died from leukaemia. This mother is convinced that her child's death was caused by radiation from bomb tests and perhaps she is right. Some radiation, we know, is natural but we also know that bomb tests can cause leukaemia and other frightful illnesses. And the men who decide on the bomb tests also know this, of course. The mother wrote bitterly of the world’s important statesmen assuring us that the danger from tests is “negligible” and of what the word means. For her, ‘negligible” risk meant a baby obese from the multitude of drugs which were pumped into her, a baby choking on its own blood in the night and crying for help to a helpless mother.

This is capitalism. The bomb tests go on, regardless of the pain and suffering they cause, because they are necessary to capitalism, and that is what the bored and the impatient and the ignorant vote for. That is the perspective in which we must view the by-elections. The dead child's mother pleads for the major political parties to take notice of what the ordinary people of this country want. But in fact she can only get the sort of world she wants when the ordinary people decide that they will not leave their wants to be interpreted by political leaders, major or minor. It is worth thinking over this one, the next time we have to put those crosses on the Ballot papers.

Ivan

The Passing Show: On The Bomb (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

On The Bomb

What sort of picture does that title paint for you? Probably one of unparalleled destruction and misery, of thousands of people wiped out in a matter of minutes; of a shadow of mixed gloom and terror which has darkened the world ever since those fateful days in early August, 1945, when the fruits of the hideous “Manhattan Project” were delivered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I well remember the giant newspaper headlines and the sloppy, hypocritical editorials, bleating about “international control” of this new super weapon, saying how it could be perhaps a “force for peace” if it were kept “in the right hands,” etc, and expressing thanks that it had at least been used to speed the end of the war against Japan and save many allied lives. This has since been nailed as a lie, and the fact made known that the war was kept going in face of Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations, so that the bomb could be dropped. Nevertheless, the lie is often repeated by capitalist politicians, plus the new one that the bomb is necessary as a deterrent to “the other side,” so that this uneasy lull they call peace can be maintained.

Socialists think it is a tragedy that workers in any part of the world should lose their lives in the defence of capitalism’s interests, and this has typified our attitude to all weapons of war. But to the patriotic British or American worker in 1945 it was a case of “Thank God we got there first!” Well, now the wheel has turned quite a few times and the nuclear club numbers five members, with others like India and West Germany wondering whether to join. In the past 20 years the bomb has become a diplomatic weapon of the first importance; one might almost call it a first-class admission ticket to any of the top international conference tables.

It is against such a background that you should consider movements of protest like CND, which have sprung up in this and other countries over the past few years. When we say that these movements must fail, this is not to underestimate the sincerity of many of their members. It is simply that they take no account of the social conditions which have fostered such horrors as the bomb. The roots of war, atomic or otherwise, are in the capitalist system and none of its conflicts yet have been fought with kid gloves.

Once born, man's atomic knowledge cannot be destroyed. It will be refined and developed, and under capitalism perverted for base ends. Within private property society there is no sensible meaning to the term "for peaceful purposes". Only in a Socialist world could we guarantee that atomic energy would be used solely for human welfare, and the monstrosities of nuclear bombs be but a ghastly memory.

The shock of going out to work

I never used to believe my parents when they told me that my schooldays were the happiest days of my life. I began to believe them in earnest on the first day I went out to work. Not that school life is that much of an uplifting experience, as we know; for most of us it is only a training for the workaday world we have to face at some stage in our adolescence. But when that world at last closes round us and the irrevocable step has been taken, we realise with a sudden jolt that the comparatively carefree days of short hours and long holidays are gone for good.

From now on we begin to covet those two or three weeks of holiday a year and the precious evening and weekend leisure hours. Suddenly we seem to be too short of spare time to do the things we’d like to do—neither do we have the necessary cash—and we begin to find the restrictions of factory and office routine irksome to say the least. Perhaps we haven’t yet grasped the full impact of what has happened, but sooner or later the awful truth begins to dawn on us that this is the beginning of our wage earning years, stretching away before us through a lifetime of care and struggle. 

There is the job, and a pay packet at the end of the week or month, and the terrifying prospect of doing something we don’t want to do for the next 40-odd years. Many people try to dodge the issue by changing jobs when the boredom gets too acute, and it’s nothing unusual for boys and girls nowadays to have had a whole series of employers within a year or two of leaving.school. But whichever way we turn, the black ogre of wage slavery confronts us, devouring the peak years of our lives in dull unfulfilling and often stultifying activity. No wonder we set such store by our spare time. It’s usually the only part of the day we can even think about doing something which really interests us.

For work under capitalism is not a means of expressing and developing ourselves to the full. It is merely a means of getting a living wage, and for the employer of course of getting his profits. And this state of affairs is doing a lot of harm to a lot of workers everywhere.

On Authority 

In Ludovic Kennedy’s book on the Stephen Ward Trial, there is an interesting paragraph or two on the functions and activities of “The Establishment” in a time of crisis. It was Kennedy’s contention that whatever Ward’s morality he had committed no legal offence, but had roused the wrath of those in authority by ratting on his former politician friend Profumo. The scandal rocked the government at the time, but says Kennedy, the Establishment closed its ranks and earmarked Ward for special treatment.

Socialists have long realised the ability of the ruling class to stand together when the occasion demands, and ruthlessly destroy anyone who threatens to bring its authority into public ridicule and contempt. For mass loyalty and “respect for their betters” by the working class is certainly essential to our masters if they are to get support for (or at least acquiescence in) the continuation of their system of privilege and exploitation.

Our press and politicians will try to tell us that this is “our” country and that we have a vested interest in being proud of it. In support, they will point to the various institutions, such as the Church and Royal Family, which we can look up to because they are supposed to be above “sectional interests” and therefore bind us all together in common interest. And although risqué jokes may be tossed about at times, this version dished out by authority is generally accepted by workers.

Now both the Church and the Royal Family are exceedingly rich and are symbolic of private property society, and for this reason alone would earn the Socialist Party’s hostility; but it would not really be true to say that they are above politics. True, they make no political pronouncements but they are part of the constitutional set-up in Great Britain and are expected to co-operate with the government in its day-to-day administration of capitalism. The Queen, for example, signs Parliamentary Bills, calls Privy Council meetings and generally does what she’s told. Neither the Monarch nor the Church has any power to resist the will of the capitalist class. That matter was settled a long time ago.

Which in itself is an answer to those who advocate a republic. Whether or not the Monarchy has any power makes precious little difference to the essential division of wealth and the subject position of the working class. France, U.S.A. and Russia, for example, all operate without a monarchy. And they are just as much capitalist states as Britain or Sweden.

Gaspers

“A Labour Government will not be a soft option.” (Jim Northcott, in Why Labour. Penguin Books, 1963).

“My politics were confused. 1 was a Liberal-Radical, a Tory-Democrat and a Fabian Socialist.” (Harold Macmillan—The Winds of Change).

“He (Mr. Wilson) has put aside promises now. He is giving us threats instead. Why? The fact is that he simply has no choice. Britain (like it or not) is a capitalist country, living in a predominantly capitalist world.” (Charles Curran, Evening News, 15.7.66).

“This journal will do anything in its power, short of betraying its principles, to support a Labour government.” (New Statesman. 15.7.66).

“Labour members must realise how wrong they are to describe stop-go as Tory policy. It has been the policy of all governments since the war.” (Selwyn Lloyd, Commons debate. 27.7.66).

Eddie Critchfield

Right honourable gentlemen (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who spends an afternoon observing Members of Parliament, after prolonged and copious lunches, reeling about their business in the House of Commons, may be surprised to learn that those same Members are expected to conform to what are called Standards of Behaviour. It was a failure to keep to these standards which finished off John Profumo and John Stonehouse and which will, if he is convicted of conspiring to have Norman Scott murdered, also end the political career of Jeremy Thorpe.

It is necessary to exercise a great deal of caution in this matter because (although this will be no comfort to Thorpe) not all politicians who plan to kill people are automatically drummed out of that experience known as Public Life. In fact there are many — some of them hold down jobs in one or other branch of the Ministry of Defence — who are paid fairly high wages to do exactly that. But there are guidelines, outside of which it is not permissible for a politician to stray; within them he can lie and cheat and organise mass killings and, if he keeps it up long enough, expect to end his days in the House of Lords with a few directorships to buoy up his income. Outside them he may end up in the dock.

These are customary demands of a political career and some of the people subject to them adapt more easily than do others. Most governments include one or two ministers whose single-minded devotion to an odious duty, whose readiness to carry out any dirty work which their dogged loyalty to capitalism persuades them is necessary, marks them out as being of abnormal ambition. They usually accumulate a few honours at the end of their days and richly deserve every one of them.

One such was Selwyn Lloyd, who died recently. Lloyd, who looked everyone’s vision of a stiff-necked bank clerk, was so drab it was almost exciting — he had, in fact, been a barrister and we can only hope he was able to present a more optimistic image to his clients. Moshe Dayan, when he was the Israeli Commander-in-Chief, wrote of him that he

. . . may well have been a friendly man, pleasant, charming, amiable. If so, he showed near genius in concealing these virtues.

Beneath his pin stripes, Lloyd nurtured a steely fidelity to British capitalism, in whose cause he was always ready to conspire and to deceive and to organise enterprises likely to result in the death of a lot of other people. One of the historical episodes in his career, for which he will always be notorious, was the 1956 British and French invasion of the Suez Canal Zone. That invasion provoked a storm of opposition, some of which was fuelled by evidence that the British, French and Israeli governments had hatched a plot to provide justification for the attack. The plot, in the words of Anthony Nutting, who was Minister of State at the Foreign Office at the time,

. . . was that Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsular and that France and Britain, having given the Israeli forces enough time to seize all or most of Sinai, should then order ‘both sides’ to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, in order to permit an Anglo-French force to intervene and occupy the Canal on the pretext of saving it from damage by fighting. Thus the two powers would be able to claim to be ‘separating the combatants 'and ‘extinguishing a danger- out fire’, while actually seizing control of the entire waterway and of its terminal ports, Port Said and Suez. (No End of a Lesson.)

At the time Selwyn Lloyd, and the British government, steadfastly denied the existence of any such arrangement. On October 30 1956, the day the Israeli forces started their attack, the then Prime Minister Anthony Eden told the House of Commons that it had come as a complete surprise to Whitehall. The next day Lloyd backed up this denial with the slippery answer to a question in the House of Commons about collusion:

It is quite wrong to state that Israel was incited to this action by Her Majesty’s Government. There was no prior agreement between us about it.

On November 2 1956 General Keightley, who was in command of the British forces in the Suez landings, told journalists that “There has never been any contact between Israel and the Allies". (Secrets of Suez — Merry and Serge Bromberger).

Well that was a long time ago and now that the dust of Suez has settled there is an abundance of admitted evidence that Eden, Lloyd, Keightley and the rest were simply lying when they denied any pre-knowledge of the Israeli attack. In fact Selwyn Lloyd himself later gave an account of the affair which, describing a secret meeting at Chequers when the French general Challe and the acting French Foreign Minister Gazier outlined a plan to invite Israel to invade the Sinai peninsular, exposed himself as a liar. According to Anthony Nutting, who was also at Chequers that day, Eden was at once in favour of the suggestion and Lloyd later backed him up in this. That meeting took place on October 14 1956 — over a fortnight before Eden, Lloyd and Keightley were denying, as honourable men should, any collusive encouragement of an Israeli military action against Egypt. A week after the Chequers meeting Selwyn Lloyd was sent incognito to France to discuss the plot with, among others, the Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion and General Dayan.

The subsequent invasion of the Suez Canal Zone broke no less than three agreements which the British government was signatory to. There was the United Nations Charter, of which so much nonsense was talked; there was the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 (in which Britain, France and the USA made themselves responsible for preventing either side starting another round in the Arab/Israeli conflict); and there was the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty which bound Britain to send troops to the Suez Canal only if asked to do so by the Egyptian government. When these kinds of agreements are signed they are presented to us as great peace-keeping measures; Suez showed again just how little such assurances are worth.

In spite of the evidence that the Suez invasion was a typically disreputable episode, Selwyn Lloyd stubbornly defended it all as necessary and honourable. He cheated, he lied and he conspired in something which he knew would end in the killing of a lot of members of the working class. That, of course, was his job as Foreign Secretary. His reward, after the collapse of the Eden government and the appointment of Harold MacMillan as Prime Minister, was first to keep his place as Foreign Secretary (when he might well have been expected to lose it, as one so closely associated with Suez) and later to get the equally important job of Chancellor of the Exchequer where, it may have been expected, his dreary cynicism was likely to have a depressing effect on workers’ wage demands. MacMillan seemed at first to admire him greatly:

Selwyn Lloyd . . . had both the experience and the intelligence, also, I believed, the political agility to undertake a new task. (Pointing the Way — Harold Macmillan.)

This admiration persisted through several crises (“. . . the Chancellor of the Exchequer in capital form . . “. . . Selwyn Lloyd has been splendid all through. He has been calm and confident.”).

But as the storm clouds over British capitalism refused to be dispersed by Lloyd’s stolidly uninspiring policies, MacMillan became abruptly disenchanted with his dog-like Chancellor. (“ He seemed in some distress about wage claims . . ‘‘Selwyn . . . seems to me to have lost his grip . . . Lately, he seems hardly to function in some vital matters — eg this Incomes Policy affair.”) (At the End of the Day — Harold Macmillan.).

The government’s difficulties with the economic crisis were aggravated by a series of bad by-election results and, in a panic to give the cabinet a facelift, Macmillan decided to sacrifice several ministers, including Selwyn Lloyd. Even at so crushing a moment, when he might have shown some anger, Lloyd remained as stiff-necked as ever; he refused a peerage because, he said, he wanted to stay in the Commons to defend his financial policies and he wrote to Macmillan:

Dear Prime Minister, You have told me that you would like me to resign and this I willingly do.

Lloyd’s dismissal caused some wrath in the Conservative Party, where it was obviously thought that anyone who could be so utterly relied upon to do any dirty work deserved better. His old boss, Anthony Eden (who was by then savouring his reward for the Suez bungle in the House of Lords) made a rare return to political matters to say that Selwyn Lloyd had been ‘harshly treated’.

Lloyd seemed to be the only one not to be complaining. He came back briefly, as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House, until the Tories were beaten in 1964. In 1970 he was elected Speaker, which to some extent took him out of the political battle and gave him a job in which he clearly upheld all the traditions of the House (which, when an MP says it, is taken as the highest compliment although it may not be clear which tradition he is referring to) until 1976 when he was made a Life Peer. At one time or another Selwyn Lloyd was a director of, among other companies, Sun Alliance and the Rank Organisation.

His was an iniquitous story, although unexceptional. The leaders of capitalism pose as people who are concerned about human interests and who, because they wield considerable power, are anxious to conform to the highest standards of honesty. On this image they ride in and out of power; each time a worker votes for them it is a demonstration of confidence in them to keep to their promises and to live up to their image.

Reality is a lot more sordid. Capitalism can only work against the interests of a majority of its people. At the same time it is a chaos of conflicting interests — of one firm against another, or one combine or international alliance against the rest. Harmony, cooperation, plenty — these are concepts utterly foreign to the priorities of this social system.

By the same token capitalism cannot work on freedom or honesty. Secrecy, deception, double-dealing are essential to its operation. Very few firms can be open about their production and marketing plans and it is common for them to keep secret important matters which it is in their customers’ interests to be aware of — for example the standard of testing of thalidomide. Then imagine a Prime Minister who openly admitted the truth — that his policies were designed to protect the interests of the ruling class minority against those of the majority, and that he intended to hood wink that majority into voting for their own robbery and humiliation.

The more customary, because less disruptive, way is that of Selwyn Lloyd, to maintain an image of bland respectability behind which to behave like a Sicilian bandit. At times the ruling class may lift the veil on the deception, to allow the workers to see a little of how they have been misled — but this only shows with what contempt the ruling class regard the people off whose backs they live.

It is not that capitalism would be better if its leaders were consistently honourable. The point is that we live under a social system in which cheating, lying and murder are a natural currency. Capitalism could not survive on any other terms. It is a measure of its boundless cynicism, that its Right Honourable Gentlemen are anything but that.

Ivan

Struggle for power in the Tory Party (1963)

From the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the facts to come to the surface of the murky waters of the Profumo affair is that there is now a serious split in the Conservative party, at any rate in Parliament, over who should lead them at the next election..

For some time Tory M.P.s have been harbouring considerable dissatisfaction with Mr. Macmillan's leadership. Men like Nigel Birch, Lord Lambton and Sir Harry Legge-Bourke have made no secret of the fact that in their opinion they stand a better chance of coining back to Westminster next time under a new, younger leader. It seems safe to assume that this feeling is more widely held than the number of abstentions in the Profumo debate would indicate. There is some fairly sound evidence that many Conservative M.P.s agreed to go into the government lobby thad night only after their doubts had been stilled by a promise that Mr. Macmillan would resign as soon as it was possible for him to do so without losing too much political dignity. If this is true, then Mr. Macmillan's television announcement that he still hopes to be the Tory leader in the next election was a very fast one to be pulled. It was a typically shrewd move by a master at the game of staying in power. But more of that later.

For the moment, let us observe that another of the blows which Mr. Profumo dealt his party was that he deprived them of their cherished image of unity. It has long been a useful electoral move for the Tories to publicise the searing splits in the Labour Party and indeed Labour has had their share of them. These splits have also provided the Tories with some useful bogy men—particularly, of course, the late Aneurin Bevan. In contrast, the Conservative Party has usually seemed like a haven of peace. Nobody asking awkward questions. Nobody getting at the leader. No splits, at any rate on the surface. But now all that is gone. And to heighten the Tories' discomfort, the Labour Party now seems to be calmly united. Mr. Wilson has trod craftily since he became leader of the Opposition; his admonition to the 1922 Committee to call off their attacks on Mr. Macmillan, was typical, of his aptitude for political warfare. At this distance, Mr. Wilson seems to be one of the cleverest of Labour's post-war leaders. He seems to have pacified his Party, although he has undoubtedly been helped in this by the fact that Labour's electoral hopes are so high. Nothing concentrates the mind of a capitalist political party so much as the realisation that power is almost within their grasp. It is anybody’s guess how long this will last. If, after all their lip-smacking over the gallup polls and the by-elections, Labour lose the next election, Wilson may well get the blame and find his grip on his office considerably weaker. For the moment, it seems to he getting stronger as the days go by.

Despite the Tory split, it was always on the cards that Macmillan would not in fact go over Profumo. Clever indeed was the question, put in another context by The Economist, ". . . may the Government, or rather the Prime Minister, of Britain be about to be overthrown by a 21-year- old trollop? " How many M.P.s would answer yes to that question?

Perhaps not many Tory M.P,s would realise that in any case it was beside the point. Apart from the distressing—for the Tories—thought of Miss Keeler giving Mr. Macmillan the sack, there was the urgent question of who to replace Mr. Macmillan with. The Prime Minister has cleverly pushed all of his likely rivals out of the running. Men like Butler, Hailsham and Macleod, all of whom were once well fancied for the succession, have been sidetracked and in some ways discredited. If Britain had succeeded in the application to join the Common Market, Edward Heath may have been in line for the job. As it is, however . . . Selwyn Lloyd has been banished and into the bargain he has been held in check, his energy diverted into work like his recent instigation into Conservative Party organisation. The strongest challenger now seems to be Mr. Maudling but apart from anything else, he would operate under the handicap of leading a government full of aspirants for his job.

The fact is that Mr. Macmillan has never allowed a Crown Prince to rise from the Tory ranks. When Churchill was Prime Minister there was no serious doubt that when he went he would be succeeded by Anthony Eden. Churchill was firmly enough in the saddle to be able to tolerate this situation. In contrast, Macmillan's rule has seen a number of potential challengers rise only to fall again into comparative obscurity. This may yet be the fate of the genial Mr. Maudling. Macmillan has played this card—a strong one—for all he is worth, together with the other trumps he holds— his unprecedented election successes and the threat to dissolve Parliament, with the implied follow-up that this would mean throwing a lot of potentially rebellious Tory M.P.s to the electoral wolves. We may be sure that nothing is more calculated to dampen the fires of revolt in the well-cared-for bellies of Conservative members.

If Macmillan pulled out all his aces in the Profumo battle, it can only be because he was literally fighting for his political life. The last few years have seen his government facing a series of crises, many of which he has been able to dismiss with an audaciously airy phrase. Thorneycroft's resignation was “ alittle local difficulty." Selwyn Lloyd went because, perhaps, he was "tired." He has even tried the same trick in his latest crisis. “ I see," he said, a couple of weeks after the Profumo debate, "the Gallup Poll is going up again. These things come and go." Yet this was surely his gravest hour, with a lot of the Tory press after him and no end of whispers of even worse to come, when we knew the identity of the naked butler and of one or two other curious figures.

Perhaps the crucial point in the Profumo crisis was when the news got out that Mr. Enoch Powell and Sir Edward Boyle were considering resigning over the way the affair had been handled. This was dangerous news, because these two men could have been the gathering points for other rebellious Tories. In The Spectator of June 21st Henry Fairlie, who wrote up the story of the threatened resignations for the Daily Express, contributed a dramatic article which claimed that the story was given to him by a Conservative Member of Parliament, " . . . a source which not only was reliable but made the story credible. . .” Fairlie also gave his opinion that the impending resignations were leaked as part of a deliberate political move by his informant, a move to get Mr. Macmillan out.

This story, if true, is an indication of how deep is the split in the Tory party and how tricky was the situation which Macmillan faced. This is in no way diminished by the fact that Mr. Fairlie's informant, plotting against Macmillan on one hand, supported him in the voting on that fateful night. Mr. Fairlie, indeed, is as impressed by this as we would expect an experienced political journalist to be. “(It) only shows,” he commented, " that politicians are politicians.”

Should we, then, leave the matter there, so casually and with such a worldly cynicism? The row which is going on now in the Conservative Party, and which has been going on for so long in the Labour Party, is about one thing: power. They are all of them fighting over which policies and which leaders may give them the best chance of persuading enough people to vote for them to return them to power at a future election. It does not matter if they have no Intention of carrying out their policies. It does not matter if the leader they choose is dishonest or callous as many, in the past, we know have been. Provided they deliver the goods the policies and the leader get the support they need.

And the goods—the votes—come from the very people who have nothing to gain either way in the struggle for power. The majority of voters in this and every other capitalist country are members of the working class. They are the people who have to spend their entire lives working to build the wealth of capitalism and who make possible the very luxuries and privileges which power struggles are about. They organise and administer capitalism in all its aspects and at every level. Without their work, capitalism could not carry on. Yet although they hold this powerful position, the working class never exert it to the full. They could get rid of capitalism; yet they accept it as part of the natural order of things. Although they may not like some of the effects of capitalism, the working class generally think that there is little or nothing that can be done about them. If they lose confidence in one capitalist party they are content to put another to govern in its place. They accept the notion that capitalism’s leaders are as effective as the leaders themselves like to think. They pine for strong leaders, or clever leaders, or peaceful and humane leaders. They never reflect upon the fact that, no matter who is at the head of capitalism, it ticks over as unpleasantly as ever.

This is the human material with which Macmillan and the other politicians work. These are the people who fall for the smooth slogans and the big ads., the people who are convinced that they have never had it so good. These are the people who are fed with the newspaper revelations of the latest sordid sexual adventures of public figures. Is it any wonder that capitalism's leaders are hard and ruthless men?

One day the full story of the Profumo affair will be written and it will not make pleasant reading. It will be a story, familiar enough to us now, of lies (not just Profumo's) and double dealing. And by the time it is on the bookstalls there will have been many more scandals, many more political deals, much more ruthless struggling for power. It will probably be a best seller.

Ivan.

Ted’s all at sea but does it matter ? (1971)

From the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard 

If we accept their own evaluation of themselves, there can be no doubt that our politicians do a wonderful job. Toiling night and day, they control the economy to a hair’s breadth accuracy — stimulating here, damping there, so that we all enjoy the most marvellous prosperity ever known to man. And if anything goes wrong with their control, if they stimulate when they should dampen, or vice versa, they are ready with a number of amazingly generous schemes of social security which ensure that even when we are out of work we are almost as prosperous as before.

Then there is the matter of defence. We all know that we live in an extremely dangerous world where everything we hold dear, like our motor car and our back garden and the Royal Family, is under the threat from Russia and China and Egypt and many other uncivilised countries. To ward off this threat the politicians have arranged a fantastic armoury of weapons which are enough to frighten away the most insensitive Oriental ever born. Of course at the same time as they claim the credit for the production of these weapons the politicians also tell us that they have attended numerous conferences and signed numerous treaties with the professed object of ensuring that the weapons are never used, But that apparent contradiction should prove to everyone except the most cynical what wonderful men our leaders are.

With all these tremendously good, and time consuming, works being done for us the wonder is that the politicians ever have any time spare for anything else. Yet many of them are active in all sorts of other fields. Churchill, for example, used to spend a great deal of time eating and drinking; Attlee was clever enough to be able to doodle silently while the great affairs of state were being fought out all around him; Macmillan and Douglas-Home were both fond of the grouse moors. But now we have a Prime Minister who is better than all of them because he is an international sportsman.

It is possible that some sport fans will he misled by that description into thinking that Ted Heath has been recruited into Alf Ramsay’s squad and will shortly be taking on George Best for the glory and honour of Old England. But before any of them have a heart attack at this idea, it should be made clear that Heath’s international sporting is confined to yachting, in which he has represented Great Britain.

Perhaps Heath’s public relations men think that his hobby — if that is what it can be called — fits in well with his image of the small seaside town grammar school boy who made the top. This, you see, is the age of the Daily Mirror dinghy, when almost any worker who is not actually out of work can probably afford to buy or build his own sailing ship for a fairly modest outlay. Unfortunately Heath’s rather elephantine publicists seem to have overlooked the vital fact that his boat is larger and more expensive — something like £20,000 more expensive — than all those little do-it-yourself boats.

In addition the Prime Minister is providing the Labour opposition with some handy ammunition, because as he has been absorbedly sailing backwards and forwards there has been an escalation of the current problems of British capitalism which he as the top politician should be able to solve. In Ulster the violence flares even higher, with more and more deaths. The world is in the throes of yet another currency crisis. At home, among the usual poverty problems like housing, unemployment has become an issue and is likely to reach the dreaded million mark this winter.

The Labour Party have always been adept at picturing leisured Tory ministers callously at their sports while the workers are suffering. On the face of it, it seems reasonable to expect, politicians to be energetic and committed to their work. But it needs only a little probing beneath the surface to put this assumption in a very different light.

Of the men who have held the job of Prime Minister since the First World War, one who provoked a lot of criticism by his apparent inertia and lack of concern was Stanley Baldwin. He was a man who was always ready to make a sentimental speech about the beauty of the English countryside but who preferred to spend his holidays in Southern France. He exploited the image of the comfortable, fatherly, pipe-smoking leader talking to the people like a family doctor — which he rather spoiled by being photographed looking affectionately at a pig. Chamberlain referred sarcastically to his ‘‘poetic temperament” and whatever truth there was in this sneer, Baldwin was capable of coining some memorable phrases — like his slogan of ‘‘Safety First” for the election of 1929, when there were a couple of million unemployed in this country who might have been expected to want anything but a policy of caution. Nevertheless the workers were so fascinated by Baldwin’s promise of tranquility that they gave him almost enough votes to get back into power.

Just after he got back to the Premiership in 1932 he

. . . declared himself by no means overwhelmed by his responsibilities ... He was going to the theatre tonight!

(Neville Chamberlain’s diaries; 23.5.1932).

And while Baldwin was so gay and carefree Sir John Orr was telling the world, which included the politicians, that the cost of an adequate diet — nine or ten shillings a week — was beyond the purchasing power of one third of the people. A little before this Baldwin had announced to the Junior Imperial League that “This is a glorious age in which we live . . . the whole world is sick” but he did not mean the same thing.

After a time his lethargy and stone-walling became a liability. In addition he once made the statement that “You cannot palter with the truth for the sake of votes”, which must have seriously unnerved his fellow' politicians and, more than anything else, convinced them that he had to go.

Baldwin was succeeded by the scrawny Neville Chamberlain, who may have been the most unpopular Prime Minister of recent times. So old fashioned was he that he regarded the fountain pen as a new fangled instrument of torture. Chamberlain belied his appearance because, apart from recurrent gout, he was a robust and physically tireless man. He took the chair of every Cabinet committee dealing with major domestic policies; he was the one minister in his government who could always be relied on to read and digest every paper before the Cabinet; when he was seventy and would tire out his police bodyguard by dragging him on long, hard hikes over the Chiltern Hills. And of course there were those famous flights to meet Hitler — in those days quite an adventure for a man of 69.

Although Chamberlain championed many of the methods of running British capitalism which might have been put forward by the Labour Party — for example state welfare schemes and what he called a “managed economy” — he was the image of the stiff, grim faced Tory. Yet none of his opponents could accuse him of lethargy; indeed, when he later became damned with the memory of Munich the Tories must have wished miserably that he had not been so energetic. Perhaps a bit more of Baldwin’s casualness would have saved something from the wreck which emerged as Labour’s victory of 1945.

But in the nature of capitalism’s politics the Tories recovered and after Attlee’s men, many of whom were so energetic in their efforts to defend the interests of the British capitalist class that they worked themselves into an early grave, came the Age of the Grouse Moor. As it happened Macmillan was a one-time admirer of Baldwin’s and shared many of his characteristics as a slick performer on the political tightrope. He too made slushy speeches, once persuading a deputation of railwaymen to call off a strike by tearful reminiscences of the 1917 battle of Passchendaele.

Macmillan was a man who presented strongly contrasting images. He liked to affect the “effortless superiority” of one who had gone to a posh Oxford college yet he could also sponsor policies like the Premium Bonds which some Tories thought were vulgar. One of the many surprises he sprung was to become energised by taking on the job of Prime Minister. Before that he was thought to be worn out by his time as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But as Premier he blossomed; crisis suited his acting talent and he quickly dominated his party, stifling any gestures of opposition with elaborate yawns and deliberately boring speeches.

Nevertheless, behind the facade of the dandy in a fashionable play Macmillan was doing a tricky political job. He played a large part in recognising the necessity of, and organising, the retreat of British capitalism from the old Empire so dear to Tory hearts. He signalled this policy in a speech which passed a new catch phrase — the Wind of Change — into common usage and which infuriated those Tories whom Macmillan had allowed to believe that he would carry on with Eden’s policies in areas like the Middle East. Years later, in an interview with Nigel Lawson (Listener 8/9/66), he described the process of this trickery:

Lawson: Would you say it is easier for a Prime Minister in this country to do one thing if he says he is doing something else?

Macmillan: It is a very common method, yes.

As in the case of Baldwin, Macmillan’s popularity waned and his grip on his party weakened, with the growing impression that he pursued too casual a style while crisis mounted all around him. In the end he panicked, he came to admit in the Profumo debate that he was out of touch with the times and, after one last effort, he retired from the Premiership. Even his influence on the choice of his successor Douglas- Home provoked such a split in the Tories that they never used that method again.

After Douglas-Home, Wilson came roaring into office with a reputation for crushingly hard work. He was another grammar school boy made good — in fact the original, authentic article with his simple life style and comfortable family. Wilson was said never to relax, giving up even his Sundays to reading and to preparing his speeches. He said he thrived on work; only boredom made him tired and the most responsibility he had the more relaxed he became.

For a time this was effective; we all remember how pleased the voters were with their new, bustling Prime Minister after those thirteen years of Tory snobbishness and lethargy. It was only as reality forced its way into the picture (yet again, for the umpteenth time) that Wilson was discredited. He himself probably helped in this process, by persisting with the image long after it had been exposed as a sham and the man of action written down as a slick purveyor of empty clap-trap and blatant trickery. It will need a massive confidence trick now to reestablish him as a creditable politician worth any of the millions of votes which will be cast for capitalism at the next election.

It would be possible to go on like this for some time, but every example would lead us back to the same conclusion. The personalities of our politicians — whether they are stupid or clever, energetic or lazy — have absolutely no effect upon the world they are supposed to control and improve. The tragedy is that, as political leaders are necessary to capitalism, the working class assume that they will always be necessary in any society. In fact, a successful politician needs many of the talents and qualities of a good actor, which means that he cannot represent reality. It is not uncommon, when a play is no good, for the customers to enforce its shut-down by the simple method of not supporting it. In the same way the working class could bring down the curtain on the destructive farce of capitalism.

Ivan

The Passing Show: Cat out of the bag (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cat out of the bag

Upton Sinclair once wrote that “even Von Papen had to tell the truth sometimes, if only to rest his mind." The saying applies to all politicians. The time comes when even the most diplomatic will blurt out the real motives of the British ruling class.

For example. Sir Anthony Eden. At Norwich recently he said:

The United Kingdom’s vital interest in Cyprus is not confined to its N.A.T.O. aspect. Our country's industrial life and that of Western Europe depends to-day, and must depend for many years to come, on oil supplies from the Middle East. If ever our oil resources were in peril, we should be compelled to defend them. The facilities we need in Cyprus are part of that defence. We cannot, therefore, accept any doubt about their availability.—(The Times 2.6.56).

The Prime Minister here admits that British capitalism's need to protea its profits—which it could not do without oil supplies—comes before the promise which Britain has made, as a member of the United Nations, to uphold the principle of self-government. Socialists have been saying for a long time that capitalism always put profit before principle, but it is not often that a politician as eminent as Sir Anthony confirms it so explicitly.

Hobson’s Choice

Do Socialists support self-determination? As the term is used now, they do not. Self-determination now means freedom for the workers to decide which group of Capitalists will exploit them. Socialists stand for a world in which there will be no exploitation, and in which, as a result, there will be no artificial division of the world into competing and warring states. No group will use war or terrorism as a means to gain independence, for not only will every country be independent, every individual will be independent too. There will be no foreigners under Socialism. The human beings of the world will freely participate in one voluntary society, because in that way will they best satisfy their needs.

Prophets of Doom

Whatever the condition of the country—whether there is war or peace, boom or slump—one factor, according to what we are told, remains constant and unchanged. It is this: if there are wage increases, disaster will overwhelm us all. Repeated warnings are poured out over the years by representatives of the ruling class: we must win the war, or we must reconstruct the country after the war, or we must defeat foreign competition. The use of “we,” incidentally begs the question; these problems are problems of the ruling class, although, of course, the Capitalists will (and do) solve their problems more easily by fooling the workers into giving their support to the drive for war-supplies, or the drive {or exports, or what-have-you.

Mr. MacMillan joins the chorus:

“At first our main competitors—Germany and Japan—were out of the race. Now they were coming along very fast. We must not relax; on the contrary, we must make even greater efforts. . . . Another round of wage increases such as there had been in the past two years would be disastrous. (The Times, 26.5.56.).

The jest of the situation is this. The workers ask for wage-increases, not in the main to increase their share of the goods they produce (and thus reduce the amount of surplus value which is filched from them), but merely in order to maintain their present standards of living in face of constantly rising prices. And what makes prices rise? One of the main causes is that the amount of currency in circulation is continually being increased. And who has the chief say in deciding whether the amount of currency shall be increased? Mr. MacMillan! So Mr. MacMillan is in the position of berating the workers for actions which he himself has forced them into.

Honesty takes a back seat

The soap-and-detergent war among the three or four giant concerns which dominate the market for these goods continues. Each firm has three or more runners in the race, and the attention of the consumer is continually being assaulted by advertisements on the printed page, on hoardings, on the television screen and elsewhere, each claiming that product “A” (or “B,” or “C”) washes clothes cleaner than any of the others. All these allegations cannot be true. In a race it is just possible that all the competitors will arrive at the winning post at the same time; but it is impossible for each of the entrants in one race to beat all the others. But what do Capitalist concerns care for truth?

The sales of one product are boosted by means of a particularly shrewd trick. With each packet of this soap-powder is given—free!—a new duster. Buyers naturally assume they are getting more for their money than they did before this device was introduced. But in fact they get less. For the duster is placed inside the packet, thereby reducing the amount of soap-powder inside it. And the manufacturer saves more on the soap-powder than he has to pay for the scrap of cloth which constitutes the “free" duster.

The right attitude to the job

Mr. James Crawford is a paid trade union official—he is President of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives. Recently he decided he would be serving his members' interests best by giving some advice to the boss on how to become popular with the workers. In a speech to the Annual Conference of the Advertising Association recently he declared:

  “In British advertisements, the top executive—if he is not depicted as a harassed old man on the point of breaking down with an executive neurosis or ulcer—is at any rate seen to be a pretty smooth and leisurely type. This sort of thing builds up a mythical picture of the ‘boss’ in the minds of average employees, and is only a few points better than the Communist cartoonist’s picture of a gross, top-hatted, cigar-smoking Satan, with his tail curling menacingly round his striped trousers. In American advertisements, the executive is much younger, much healthier, and has much more the appearance of a man who actually does some work. At times he is actually seen with his coat off, not sitting at a desk, but talking to the men on the job.” (World’s Press News, 18.5.56.).

Mr. Crawford said the advertising profession should “help create among people at work the right attitude to the job." Mr. Crawtord is chairman of the Productivity Council, which has the task of increasing output. The ruling class has a high opinion of the “responsibility” and "common sense" of the majority of trade union leaders in this country; its confidence is evidently not misplaced in Mr. Crawford.

Life is grim, and life is earnest

From the Sunday Express, 154-56:

“Lady Portsmouth’s daughters, Lady Phillipa, 18. and Lady Jane Wallop, 17, economise at their coming-out cocktail party next week by serving Spanish champagne—about five shillings a bottle cheaper than French non-vintage.”

But don’t send round the hat yet. This isn't a permanent measure. “For their dance next month, which will probably be attended by Princess Alexandra, the champagne will be best French vintage."

These upper-class parties are so much trouble that one wonders why anyone bothers to give them. In the Sunday Express of June 10th we find: 

"Lady Crosfield is again having difficulty in planning her annual pre-Wimbledon tennis party. . . . This year she finds that she has picked on the same day as the Garter ceremony at Windsor. ‘It is too late to alter my date, so I shall have no royalty here,' she says."

Life is full of tribulations, Lady Crosfield. But don’t worry—you’ll probably survive this one.

Alwyn Edgar.

Greasy Pole: Tories In Trouble (1999)

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

There was once a young Conservative MP who, when he arrived to take his seat, was taken aside by an elder statesman and advised never to forget that the party had a secret weapon, which was loyalty. For a very long time the Tories have traded on that impression—that they are a party which prizes loyalty and unity above all else. There is very little evidence to support this. Even when that new Member was being given that advice the Tory record on the issue was anything but unblemished. In fact their history is studded with examples of splits, intrigues, back-stabbing and manoeuvring to unseat the leader.

For example the 1922 Committee got its name from a rebellious meeting in that year at the Carlton Club which was responsible for toppling Austen Chamberlain from the leadership and thereby bringing down the coalition government under Lloyd George. In 1958 a huge rift opened up in the Macmillan government when all the Treasury Ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, resigned—an event which Macmillan famously brushed aside as “a little local difficulty”. A few years later Macmillan showed what he thought about loyalty and unity when, in a panic about a little local difficulty at some by-elections he sacked a chunk of his Cabinet including his ever loyal, never complaining Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd who had always made it clear that he was ready and willing to any job, no matter how distasteful, required of him by the government of British capitalism. In more recent times there was the ruthless business of Michael Heseltine and the men in grey suits toppling Margaret Thatcher.

This fractious tradition is still going strong. It is arguable that the Conservative Party has never experienced such disunity and disarray as it does today. What is more it has had no compunction about revealing its splits to the voters at large.

Memoirs

Consider the matter of the ex-ministers’ memoirs. These are very often a welcome source of income and consolation for those who are no longer in the seats of power and who pine for their chauffeur-driven cars, the media attention and the other trappings of office. One difficulty is that the higher sales usually go to the more revealing—the more bitter, scurrilous and bilious—memoirs. If there was ever such a thing as a united government it would be unlikely that its ministers could write their account of life in the Cabinet with the desirable degree of titillation. Of course this is not a problem for the people who so gruesomely ran the government when Thatcher and Major were in Number Ten.

John Major has had his say about Margaret Thatcher, writing her off as a bossy, overbearing and stubborn obstacle to proper government. This is not an example of what is meant by Tory loyalty because Major was Thatcher’s favourite son—the man she wanted to succeed her in 1990. The same might be said about his criticisms of Norman Lamont, who managed Major’s 1990 campaign to succeed Thatcher as Tory leader. Lamont’s reward for this was the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer but unluckily for him this coincided with the kind of financial crisis which Chancellors are supposed to be able to cure but which are beyond them. The so-called Black Wednesday in September 1992 when the Bank Rate went soaring and Sterling was removed from the Exchange Rate Mechanism illuminated how powerless are the experts and the politicians in the face of capitalism’s crises. The decision to take sterling out of the ERM was in stark contrast to Major’s assurance that this would not happen because the solution to British capitalism’s problems was to be a member of it. So Lamont had good cause to be aggrieved, and even more after Major sacked him and now that Major is largely putting the blame for the crisis on his shoulders.

Black Wednesday

Lamont clearly thought that his efforts to get Major into the premiership deserved a more grateful response. Of course had he been practising that Tory loyalty he should have held his tongue, accepted his downfall and given his all in supporting the government, even if that did mean rewriting history a bit. In fact he has been busily engaged ever since in attacks on Major, of varying degrees of subtlety. The version of Black Wednesday in his memoirs differs from that of Major and, as might be expected, does not take the blame for it on himself. Cynical and bitter, Lamont is now a pathetic figure—exiled to the Lords, penning the odd newspaper article, trying to persuade us that Pinochet saved Chile for civilisation and that all those people who disappeared there at the time have gone missing of their own accord.

A lot of this disunity came bubbling sulphurously to the surface at this year’s Tory conference. Naturally they gave William Hague the customary standing ovation but this did not obscure the fact that his grasp on the party leadership is as precarious as ever. Almost as soon as he got the job Hague was under fire, as if the MPs who had voted for him suddenly woke up to the fact that they had made a terrible mistake. Hague has done all kinds of things to win a few friends—married a pretty blonde who smiles nicely for the cameras, eaten spicy Caribbean food in the street at the Notting Hill Carnival, been seen in public wearing a baseball cap, had a skinhead hair cut. No man could do more. But none of this has done him any good.

While attention has been diverted by these distasteful antics Hague has silkily got rid of most of the leading Tories from the days of Thatcher and Major. Clarke and Heseltine more or less deselected themselves and are now standing critics on the issue of Europe. Lilley was sacked after a typically clumsy attempt to discard his past reputation as the scourge of single mothers and benefit claimants. Michael Howard was persuaded that he should spend more time with his prejudices. The only remnants of those former days of power are Redwood and Widdecombe, neither of them completely in touch with the reality of vote winning.

Shadows

No doubt there are some fascinating reminiscences now burgeoning in the embryo memoirs of the likes of Lilley and Howard. Meanwhile Hague has a Shadow Cabinet whose public presence is—well, shadowy. They are unrecognised, almost anonymous. Hague will have a hard job to convince the working class that these are the leaders who should be trusted to run British capitalism, swamp world markets with British made goods, progressively enrich the British capitalist class while bludgeoning the workers into a docile acceptance of their role as the exploited wealth-producers. In this he will endure for as long as he may be seen as a vote winner. If that changes he will be ruthlessly discarded by this party which likes to boast of its unity and loyalty. If—or perhaps when—that happens it will be his turn to write his memoirs, to complain about an ungrateful party and of how he was, in effect, hoisted with his own petard.

Ivan