Editorial: Two budgets (1952)

Editorial from the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budgets are the concern of the capitalists, not of the working class, though it suits the Labour Party, like the other reformist parties, to pretend otherwise. The workers are not poor because of the Budget, but because the capitalist class own society’s means of production and distribution. It was admitted by the Economist (25th December, 1943) that:—

"1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent. of the adult persons in the country, own 85 per cent. of the private property and draw 28 per cent. of the individual incomes of the country."

The Economist said that their readers would be surprised to team this. Why they should be surprised was not explained; this inequality has been a feature of social life in Britain and the rest of the world throughout the capitalist era, and is equally true now despite all the talk of redistribution.

The capitalist State has to meet the cost of its civil service, armed forces and re-armament programmes and all the rest of the organisation necessary to the capitalist system. It does this through taxation the burden of which falls on the shoulders of those who alone can bear it, the propertied class. The wealth the workers produce belongs to the capitalist class and what the workers receive as wages and salaries is far below the value of what they, the workers, produce. That is how the workers are legally robbed and why they are poor. Rises or falls of prices, rises or falls of taxation and changes from one form to another, do not affect the fundamental position of the working class—at most they have temporary effects. White capitalism continues, the only sound policy for the working class is to struggle at all times to the fullest extent that conditions permit, to raise their wages and resist downward pressure.

During and since the war, under the abnormal conditions then existing, and with unemployment at a very low level, successive governments used the system of food subsidies in order to discourage the trade unions from pressing for higher wages. It was linked with high taxation on drink and tobacco, and, from 1946, the grant of children’s allowances to level the condition of the workers. The whole scheme was a device to lessen the movement for a general rise of wages and to divide the married workers against the unmarried. With it went the incessant demand of the Labour Government that the workers should refrain from "unreasonable” wage claims. Now that the fierce struggle against foreign competitors is hotting up again in the markets of the world, the policy is being modified because it has served its purpose. It was merely a wartime interlude in the running of capitalism, which is now getting back to normal pre-war conditions.

Against this background it will be seen how nonsensical is the Labour Party case against the Butler budget. They call is a “rich man’s budget,” as if any budget could be anything else. Mr. Douglas Jay, Labour M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on 17th March, accused Mr. Butler of "robbing the poor to pay the rich”—as if the details of any particular budget were of any importance by comparison with the ceaseless exploitation of the working class \\hich went on unchanged during six years of Labour government.

They charge the Tories with raising the cost of living, forgetting that while they were in power it went up about 40 per cent. They say that he is against wage increases, as of course he is, but forgetting the years in which they also preached "wage-restraint.” They denounce him for reducing food subsidies, but forget that it was Sir Stafford Cripps who decided not to permit any increase in the subsidies even though that meant a rise of the cost of living; a flat departure from the statement of his predecessor, Mr. Dalton, who in 1945 said:—

“I have decided to hold the present cost of living steady until further notice, even if this means an increase in the necessary Exchequer subsidies." (Hansard, 23rd October, 1945. Col. 1877.)

It was on that occasion that Mr. Dalton admitted the purpose of the subsidies as being "to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates,” and paid tribute to the "steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard.”

In April, 1951, when Mr. Gaitskell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeated the decision not to increase the food subsidies, he admitted that this decision would mean a further rise of food prices and indeed the official food index figure rose from 131 in April, 1951, to 143 in October.

Other Labour Party critics charge the Tories with tenderness towards high profits, and one misguided Labour journal Forward, in its issue for 23rd February, 1952, chides the Tories on the ground that company profits repented during January, 1952, were up by £10,000,000. What it overlooked was that the company reports issued in January, 1952, related to profits made under the Labour Government in 1951!

Now that the Labour Party is in Opposition it will wage the sham fight about the details of running the capitalist system, but there was every justification for the jibe of the Liberal leader, Mr. Clement Davies, that if Mr. Gaitskell had been in Mr. Butler's place his Budget would have been "much of a muchness.” All budgets, no matter who introduces them, are designed to promote capitalism, not to undermine or abolish it.

Mr. Butler’s budget of 11th March had been preceded on 6th March by the budget report of the Russian Finance Minister, Mr. Zverev. They differed by five days, and little more.

The Russian Budget

The Russian Finance Minister’s budget report was reproduced in full in Soviet News (12th March, 1952) published by the Russian Embassy in London. It makes interesting reading particularly as evidence of the similarity of capitalism's problems and their treatment in the two countries.

They both have their re-armament problems; naturally both offered as instruments of “ defence,” not of "aggression.”

In 1952 the Russian Government plans to spend "for the defence of the country” 113,800 million roubles (£10,346,000,000 at the Russian official rate of exchange of 11 roubles to the £).

The amount of money to be raised from State loans in 1952 is set at £3,864 millions, and the estimated expenditure on the lottery prizes and interest to bondholders (“to pay out winnings to the population and interest on loans”) is estimated at £800 million. This latter figure relates, of course, to the interest, etc., on the total amount of loans outstanding, not merely to the additional loans to be raised during the year; at the average rate of 4 per cent. it implies that the total amount of bonds outstanding in 1952 will be about £20,000 million.

Turnover Tax (similar to the British purchase tax) brought into Budget revenues in 1951 the amount of £22,500 millions, an increase of 4.9 per cent. over 1950. It is to be increased this year by another 4.9 per cent. 

Mr Butler stepped up the taxes on profits by means of the Excess Profits Levy. His opposite number in Russia, Mr. Zverev, is going to do the same.

“Total profits in the branches of the national economy will amount to 88,100 million roubles in the current year as against 74,700 million roubles in 1951. The rise in profits makes it possible to leave a substantial part of them at the disposal of enterprises and Ministries for expanding production. At the same time, the profits tax paid into the State Budget will be increased and the share of this tax in the State Budget revenue will rise from 10.2 per cent. in 1951 to 12.2 per cent. in 1952.”

“The profits tax paid by State enterprises will be increased by 14,000 million roubles, or 29.2 per cent. more than last year. . ."

Conservative and Labour Party speakers are always urging the workers to produce more and lower the cost of production. Mr. Zverev’s report contained numerous remarks of the same kind. He reported that in 1951 “the labour productivity of workers in industry rose, by 10 per cent. compared with 1950.” But he was not satisfied with this and asked for more. His report also contained many complaints about industries which had failed to keep down their wages bill and operate sufficiently profitably:—

"It should be said that certain Ministries, enterprises and economic organisations are for from making full use of available potentialities for the further reduction of production costs, cutting trade outlays and making the work of economic organisations more profitable.”

“One of the main requisites for the further reduction of production costs is also the improvement of the organisation of labour at enterprises and the frugal expenditure of wage funds. Not all enterprises, however, live up to those requirements.”

For example, he complained that the Ministry of Paper and Woodworking Industry “permitted the mills to cover the over-expenditure of the wage fund,” and the Leningrad engineering plant of the Central Textile Machinery Administration of the Ministry of Machine and Instrument-making Industry “did not fulfil its production plans last year and overspent 13,500,000 roubles on wages.”

Time and time again he came back to this theme of not spending too much on wages, improving the control of “labour per unit of output,” and watching over “the expenditure of wage funds” and of “the timely and complete receipt of payments into the Budget.” Numerous branches of industry were named as being among those which illegally “overdraw the wage funds.” Others were charged with allowing expensive machinery “to stand idle a great deal,” thus adding to production costs, and many State farms were criticised because they “do not yet have a sufficiently high productivity of labour.”

We are told by Communists that in Russia the trade unions have control over the fixing of wages. What they do have (a very different matter) is the right to discuss the way the “wages fund” is allocated to different grades of workers; but of course the real control resides with those who fix the total amount of the wage fund for each enterprise, that is the Government and its agencies. How true this is can be seen from the Finance Minister’s report. Not once does he even mention as a possibility that the workers or the unions might have pressed for a bigger expenditure on wages. In each of the dozen cases that he refers to he tells the managements firmly that once the Government has fixed the wage fund they have got to stick to it and devote their energies to cutting down production costs and increasing the workers’ output.

British capitalism’s financial wizards and productivity experts would feel very much at home if transplanted to Mr. Zverev’s department.

It is only necessary to add that the Budget Report was unanimously approved. The session ended as follows, according to the Soviet News account:—

“Stormy, prolonged applause. All rise. A prolonged ovation in honour of Comrade J. V. Stalin resounds in the Kremlin Palace.”

It seems to have been like the Tory cheers for Mr. Butler.

The Socialist comment on British and Russian budgets is simplicity itself. The aim of the working class should be to end private and State capitalism and bring the means of production and distribution into ownership by the whole community as the basis of Socialism. While the workers continue to neglect this real issue and devote their attention instead to capitalism’s budgets and taxation they will remain a poverty-stricken exploited class and the exploiters will continue to be safe in the enjoyment of the privileged position that capitalism bestows on them.

Notes by the Way: Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement (1939)

The Notes by the Way Column from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement

An interesting situation has arisen in Bombay, where there is a Congress (i.e., Indian Nationalist) Government. The Government, which has the support of the so-called Congress Socialist Party of Bombay, introduced a Trade Disputes Bill, whereupon the trade unions denounced it and called a one-day general strike as a protest. In the disturbances that ensued the police fired, and 75 persons were wounded, one of whom died.

The Indian Labour Journal (October 23rd. 1938) reports that the Labour group in the Legislative Assembly opposed the Bill, “The Government, however, is adamant, and is bearing down all opposition with their overwhelming majority, consisting not only of Congress members but also of representatives of the interests of capitalism. The Bill has been welcomed by the latter.”

According to Dr. Ambedkar, “The Bill takes away the legitimate, constitutional and powerful weapon of the workers, namely, the strike, by declaring it illegal, and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.” (Labour Journal, October 23rd.)

Other critics allege that the Bill will encourage the formation of “company unions” at the expense of genuine trade unions.

This and other inevitable conflicts between Indian workers and Indian capitalism will in time teach the workers that Nationalism, to the capitalist, is only a means to an end. As the Indian Labour Journal sadly recorded on July 17th, 1938, when Congress Governments replaced the former Governments capitalist interests behaved just as they did before, “everywhere the attitude of the employers remains the same.”

* * * *

Corsica, Nice and Tunis

Mr. W. N. Ewer, in an article in the Daily Herald (December 12th, 1938), did a useful service by recalling the history of the Italian demand for various French territories. In the first place, the demand did not originate with Mussolini: —

“Signer Mussolini has his own purposes in the organisation of these ‘spontaneous demonstrations.’ But Italian patriots were shouting for Corsica and Nice and Tunis before he or Fascismo was born.

The cry for Corsica goes back to the great days of the struggle for Italian unity. For Mazzini it was Divine will that all the Italian peoples should be joined in one Italian state. Garibaldi called himself an atheist : but he felt much the same.”

France got Nice and Savoy in 1860 as part of a bargain by which Napoleon III of France promised to help turn the Austrians out of Northern Italy and thus help the movement for Italian unity. The Italians complained bitterly that Napoleon only half fufilled his promise, but he got his price, the transfer of territory being covered by a fake plebiscite on the most up-to-date lines. “In the town of Nice only eleven votes were cast against annexation.”

Tunis has an equally interesting history. Except that the chief brigands arc different, it reads like a dress rehearsal for the imperialisms of our own day: —

“Italy began to look on Tunis as her predestined share in the coming partition of Northern Africa. And so it might have been. But at the Berlin (Peace with Honour) Congress, Salisbury, to get French assent to his taking of Cyprus, suggested that France might find ‘compensation’ in Tunis.

Bismarck, for his own ends, cordially backed the suggestion. All this, of course, in deadest secret.

Italy’s suspicions were aroused. She asked and got assurances from France : took them at face value : waited too long. In ’81 there was an incident on the Tunis-Algiers border. The French troops were ready. Within a few weeks Tunis was a French protectorate.

Great Britain, tongue in cheek, solemnly protested against the aggression she had suggested. Italy raged furiously : and has been angry ever since. For nearly sixty years the ‘Tunisian question’ has troubled Franco-Italian relations.”

* * * *

Cyprus under the Heel

As Mr. Ewer points out, the British Government encouraged France to seize Tunis while England took Cyprus. The apologists for British Imperialism will say, of course, “how lucky for the Cypriots to be under British rule.” But the Cypriots think otherwise, they want to join Greece, so Cyprus is now under rigid suppression following an outbreak in 1931. The Manchester Guardian summarises the present position as follows : —

“. . . repression is still the manner of rule. The former representative system of government remains suspended: close restrictions are kept on public meetings ; trade unions are discouraged the Press is suppressed or censored on the flimsiest of pretexts at the will of the Administration.” (Manchester Guardian, October 13, 1938.)

* * * *

Was J. R. MacDonald a Fraud? 

Mr. L. MacNeill Weir, M.P., was Parliamentary Secretary to the late J. R. MacDonald for eight years, from 1924 to 1931. Naturally, when he published his “The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald” (Seeker & Warburg, 15s.), and roundly condemned the character and conduct of his former hero, he placed himself under the obligation of explaining his own conduct. If he knew long before 1931, why did he not resign and tell what he knew? If he did not know until the end, that, too, wants explaining. When Mr. Weir’s position is examined he, and the Labour Party, come out in a very bad light. So do the other leaders of the Labour Party.

Mr. MacNeill Weir, replying to letters of criticism published in The Times, wrote, on December 3rd, 1938, defending himself. Here is a remarkable passage in his letter : —

“I am blamed for taking the post of Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1924 when I believed all the charges I have made against MacDonald in the book. In 1922 I was one of the Scots contingent who voted to make MacDonald leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We never believed Snowden’s repeated assertion at that time that MacDonald would sooner or later let the Party down.

It was not until the beginning of 1931 that suspicion of MacDonald’s bona fides arose, and suggestions began to be made of a change of leadership. All sorts of rumours, canards and defamatory aspersions circulate around public men—especially politicians. The fact is that MacDonald was a man of mystery, a human enigma, his real character only revealed in the passing of the years. We can be blamed for our unswerving loyalty to Dr. Jekyll during these years, but surely we are not to be condemned for not believing in the existence of Mr. Hyde.”

The S.P.G.B. opposed MacDonald always, i.e., onwards from 1904, when the S.P.G.B. was founded, but nothing we said of MacDonald ever stated such a strong case against leadership in general. We said that the popular theory of leadership of political parties included glorifying the party leader in order to make him an impressive and romantic figure in the eyes of the rank and file. There has to be a kind of conspiracy among the lesser leaders to deify the great ones in order to make the members loyal. What we did not contemplate was that the lesser leaders would fall for the same clap-trap themselves. Yet Mr. MacNeill Weir asks us to believe that, right up to 1931, he was being cruelly deceived by the man he knew intimately.

There is one thing Mr. Weir cannot get over. MacDonald’s speeches and writings were always empty of sound Socialist knowledge and principle, why did Mr. Weir not see through them? Another Labour M.P., Mr. Hugh Dalton, writing in the Daily Herald (November 18th, 1938), says that when he re-reads MacDonald’s old speeches now they give him “a sense almost of physical discomfort.” The answer is, and must be, that Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, and all their followers, did not know the difference between Socialist teaching, which endures, and social reformism, which depends for appeal on the trivial issue or the emotion of the moment.

The real tragedy is not the conduct of MacDonald, who, after all, was not a bit worse than his rival Labour leaders, but the admission made by Mr. Dalton that MacDonald’s empty rhetoric captivated his followers. After saying that the speeches were valueless, Mr. Dalton has to add, “But how his audiences loved them! It is a terrifying memory.”

Of course, Messrs. Weir and Dalton think that the Labour Party is healthier now. Perhaps it is. Perhaps experience has taught the rank and file a few things about the dangers of leadership. But if so, they owe little to Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, for both of these gentlemen are of opinion that the Labour Party “backed the wrong horse in 1922, when it made him (MacDonald) leader in place of Clynes.” As if the member of a war-time Coalition Government, who himself in 1931 was in favour of some kind of three-party Cabinet, was any more of a Socialist than MacDonald !

Before leaving the subject, it is worth while placing on record the claim made by a Communist, Mr. Idris Cox, in the Daily Worker (November 18th, 1938). He says that “MacDonald’s political record and ruinous policy was exposed by the Communists for 15 years before his death.”

This puts the Communists in a worse position than Mr. Weir. He says he sinned in ignorance. The Communists say they were well aware what MacDonald was, at least as early as 1922. Why, then, were the Communists, in 1922 and afterwards, urging the workers to vote for MacDonald?

* * * *

Mr. Middleton Murry to be a Church of England Clergyman

Six years ago, when Mr. J. Middleton Murry, the well-known critic and author, became active in “left-wing” politics, it was suggested in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD (September, 1932) that, unless he succeeded in overcoming his obvious failure to understand the principles of Socialism, he would, in due course, drift out again, disappointed. It is now announced that he is training as candidate for the Church of England priesthood. From an interview published in the Sunday Express (December 11th, 1938), it appears that the turning point for Mr. Murry was when he listened to a Hitler broadcast in June, 1934: “You may think me fantastic, but I said to myself : This is what the Bible meant by anti-Christ.”

One thing that can be said of Mr. Murry’s incursion into politics is that the freshness of his writings on Marxism and current problems must have given many people an interest which they would otherwise not have had. Along with some serious misunderstandings he wrote many things that were worth while.

* * * *

Admissions about Spain

At the beginning of the Spanish civil war, now become more and more a war with Italy and Germany, the British Government and the supporters of Franco vied with each other in suppressing important facts. It will be recalled how the authorities, month after month, disclaimed knowledge of German and Italian intervention, until the truth was too well known to be hidden. Now, late in the day, we have Mr. R. S. Hudson, Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, saying, in the House of Commons on December 1st, 1938, that “clearly one of the main reasons” why there are more German than British ships going to Franco territory “is the large quantity of munitions that the German Government are sending to Franco.”

Another recent admission was in the Evening Standard (December 2nd, 1938), where Mr. Aylmer Vallance showed that the assassination of the Conservative-Monarchist leader, Sotelo (often represented as the excuse for the rebellion), was not the only act of its kind. It was itself an act of vengeance for the assassination some days earlier of Lt. Castillo, a police officer, who was a member of the Socialist Youth League.

The Times, too, has several times admitted that air raids on Republican Spain are carried out from Italy. On July 23rd, 1938, for example, their correspondent at the Spanish frontier said:

“Some of the Italian airmen start out from Italy, rest at Majorca, then raid the Mediterranean coast, and return to Majorca for a few hours en route to their aerodromes in Italy.”

Among recent interesting features of the Spanish war was the promise made by Franco to Britain and France during the recent crisis, that he would remain neutral in the event of war (Manchester Guardian, December 1st, 1938). This may help to explain the continued pro-Franco attitude of British and French circles, which might have been expected to fear a Franco victory, lest it strengthen Italy and Germany in the Mediterranean.

* * * *

The Duchess of Atholl and her Supporters

The Conservative Duchess of Atholl fought West Perthshire against the Conservative Party because she wants the Government to take a strong line against Germany, Italy and Franco. Forward (December 10th) asked a number of well-known people how they would vote if they were in the constituency. Among those who said they would vote for her were Alfred Barnes, M.P. (of the Co-operative Party), Ellen Wilkinson, Tom Johnson, J. F. Horrabin, and H. N. Brailsford. They all gave much the same reason, approval of the Duchess’s foreign policy.

Among those who said “no” were Ethel Mannin, of the I.L.P. She said that, “as a revolutionary Socialist . . . I should not vote at all, my attitude being ‘a plague on both your houses.'”

Lord Elton (“National Labour“) said he would vote against her because “Chamberlain saved civilisation at Munich.”

Cecil Wilson, M.P., “Pacifist,” said he would write on his ballot paper, “War and all preparation for war is wrong.” “I stand for Peace, Freedom and the Brotherhood of Man.”

Lord Sanderson, “Pacifist and Socialist,” said he would vote for the Chamberlain candidate.

The Sunday Express (December 4th), has the following comment about the Duchess: —

“She makes a terrible howl about the troubles of the little children in Barcelona. But she is not so anxious about her own little children in Britain. She took the view, when the question of raising the school-leaving age came up, that children must be set to work at fourteen.”

* * * *

President Roosevelt Believes in Capitalism and Scrambled Eggs

“Actually, I am an exceedingly mild-mannered person, a practitioner of peace, a believer in the capitalistic system, and for my breakfast I am a devotee of scrambled eggs.” (Daily Mail, December 6th, 1938.)

* * * *

The Communists and Daladier

Since Daladier used Conscription and the armed forces to defeat the General Strike, the Communists are heaping abuse on him. The Daily Worker (November 28th) quotes, with approval, the statement that, in Berlin, Daladier, ever since Munich, has been regarded as a “Hitler man,” and says that the Daladier Government “represents the interests of the big monopoly capitalists, among whom are the closest friends of Hitler.” On December 8th, in the French Chamber of Deputies, a Communist, pointing at Daladier, said : “We, the Communists, are telling you to get out.” (Daily Express, December 9th.)

Who, then, is this Daladier? He is a leader of the Liberals (known as “Radical Socialists”), who formed part of the Popular Front along with the French Labourites and Communists. He was Minister of National Defence and War in Blum’s first Popular Front Government in 1936, and, as recently as April 13th, 1938, when, as Premier, he asked for a vote of confidence and for certain special powers, he obtained 570 votes to five; The Communists were with the majority and acclaimed Daladicr enthusiastically.

After the 1936 General Election, the French Communist Party expressly claimed that the Popular Front had not only helped their own and the Labour candidates, but had also helped to prevent Daladier’s party from losing seats.

So much for “Popular Frontism”!

* * * *

Prayers to Fill Empty Stomachs

The following appeared in the Daily Sketch (December 5th, : 1938): —

“Mayfair churchgoers, many in fur coats, prayed in the fashionable St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, W., yesterday, for the poor of the East End. They lowered their gaze as the Bishop of Stepney (the Rt. Rev. Hamilton Moberly) told them what life was like with the dole and faint hope of a job. He told of the “constant state of poverty, never enough money coming in to keep a family in decency—wives going out to work and becoming the main support of the family.”

He urged them to pray for the poor of the East End—’not just now and then’—but to make a habit of it. He felt that if only half a dozen people present were to support the Church’s work there by their prayers, something would be achieved. . . .”

* * * *

Ulster Democracy

From the Manchester Guardian (November 23rd, 1938: —

“Fourteen youths who were arrested when about forty Belfast police raided the McKelvey Recreation Club in a Nationalist area here recently were to-day transferred to Belfast Prison, where they are being held under Special Powers Act detention orders, which enable them to be held without trial for a prolonged period.”

* * * *

Jewish Employers and Sweating

Fascist propagandists make much of cases of sweating or non-payment of trade union rates when the employer is a Jew, and they are specially active among furniture trade workers. The reason, according to the Daily Herald (December 14th, 1938) is that not more than 10,000 London furniture workers receive the trade union rates and conditions, while 50,000 do not, and “the offending owners are practically all Jews.”

On the other hand, “the stigma does not apply to all Jews. There are about ten Jewish firms regarded by the unions as fair, and which have an honourable record.”

In the case of the furniture trade the whole industry is largely controlled by Jewish firms, but exactly the same kind of situation has arisen in numerous other trades, i.e., one group of firms paying trade union rates and another group underpaying. In the grocery and drapery trades the unions and the employers’ federations have jointly approached the Ministry of Labour to secure the enforcement of standard rates on the large number of employers not paying them. Yet nobody claims that the offending employers in those trades are mainly Jewish.

There are also Trade Boards in about forty industries, set up to prevent “sweating,” and it has been estimated that as many as twenty-five per cent. of agricultural workers are being paid less than the minimum wage legally applicable to them. It has never been suggested that twenty-five per cent. of the farmers are Jews.

Another point of more importance is that capitalism is an exploiting system, even when the trade union rates are paid. The employer who organises his concern on the basis of paying a relatively high wage does not do so from philanthropic motives. He takes good care to select the most skilful and bodily fit workers, and is able to do so because the higher wage attracts more applicants; and, being a capitalist, seeking profit, he, even more than his sweating colleague, introduces labour-displacing machinery and dismisses men when he no longer wants them.

Lord Nuffield is not a Jew, and he pays a relatively high wage, but on November 16th, 1938, he received a deputation representing 1,500 workless men formerly employed by him. (News Chronicle, November 17th, 1938.) “Many of the jobs were eliminated by the adoption of all-steel bodies.”

The most that Lord Nuffield could promise was to find work in other departments for men whose jobs are eliminated, and to re-engage the unemployed men as soon as possible. Some of the 1,500 have been out of work already for six months.

Capitalism is the enemy of the workers, and that will not be remedied by changing the nationality, religion, race, or politics of the capitalists.

Edgar Hardcastle

Slings and Arrows: The Wages of Philanthropy (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wages of Philanthropy

A poet of the eighteenth century commented that “Virtue is its own reward.” That thought is often quoted and applied, especially when workers want a rise in pay. It is nice to know, however; that occasionally virtue brings other and more tangible rewards than the mere satisfaction of knowing one has been virtuous.

When, in 1892, Lord Rowton built the first of his enormous lodging-houses, he did so because he believed (Daily Express, 30/4/53) “every man should have a room to himself—with a door—for 6d. a night.” Five such lodging houses were established and although every man was entitled to pay his sixpence and get his room—with a door—only the poor turned up. The rich, either ignorant of these facilities, or not wishing to stop the poor using them, continued to reside at the Ritz or Claridges. But time has a habit of evening things out and in due course the rich were duly rewarded for their consideration, as we shall see.

It is a far cry from the nineties of the last century to the present time but Rowton Houses still go on and although the price has increased to 2s. 3d. per night nevertheless there is a constant demand for accommodation. So much so that the dividends on the capital of Rowton Houses Ltd. has recently been increased. Its properties are reputed to be worth £2,000,000, and the shares, if the firm were sold, would have a break-up value of £10 each. The City Editor of the Daily Express tells us that although the share and property dealers are envious and would like to do a deal in Rowton House shares their chances are slender, for the shares are held by people “who put service to the not-so-wealthy before profit.” It is perhaps a coincidence that the shares of Rowton Houses are regarded as gilt-edged and that that institution of putting “service before profit,” the Britannic Assurance Co. hold 11,000 shares. When “service to the not-so-wealthy” is accompanied by an increased dividend then virtue gets more than its “own reward,” and when Ecclesiastes wrote “Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return after many days ” he little dreamed that it would return buttered.

The Rest is Silence

Dr. Dalton, bright star in the Labour firmament, has published the first instalment of his three volume autobiography. Apart from a few admissions and statements, the book has no merit either as a work of literature or a study of political events. In the normal course of events this book would not be mentioned in these columns as it would be a waste of space to do so. But some of the disclosures are worthy of comment because they throw a significant light on the present Labour leaders who pretend to be more prescient, and more faithful to the cause than the idols of yesteryear.

Dr. Dalton tells us in 1953, that he knew in 1924 or 1925 that Ramsay MacDonald was vain, conceited, snobbish and untrustworthy. But between those years and 1931 Dalton was his supporter and indeed served under him in the second Labour Government. Never, until after the debacle of 1931, did Dalton and the rest of the gang who pretend to have known all along, say one word which would lead either the electorate or rank and file Labourites to believe that all was not well with the Party leadership. On the contrary their mouths dripped honeyed words of admiration.

Dalton quotes Tom Johnston as saying “If the party meeting only got to know of a few things like this, they’d all be climbing up the walls, not just the I.L.P. but the soberest trade unionists in the Party.” But if Dalton knew and Johnston knew how was it that the Party meeting did not know? The truth was concealed.

We are left then with two conclusions. If MacDonald betrayed the Labour Party and was suspect all the time then those who suspected him were culpable. If on the other hand, they did not know, but pretend to do so in order to appear wise, then what reliance can be placed on them? Here they were, working day by day with men whom they now call traitors and they remained blithely innocent of the fact. Are these the leaders who ask for support because of their qualifications?

We are also indebted to Dalton for telling us something of the quality of the Labour leadership. He tells us that when the Labour Government was being formed in 1929, would-be Ministers besieged MacDonald and some of them wept and fainted in their anxiety. What a disgusting spectacle.

That is the sort of thing that goes on when Leaders take refuge in secrecy and when they rely for support as they must do (or they wouldn’t be leaders), on the political ignorance of their followers.

Who knows but that in another twenty-five years we may be reading some future Dalton on some present day traitor or betrayer of the Labour Party. For judging on past experience we don’t know.what goes on in the hierarchical section of the Labour Party; the Party meeting does not know and the rank and file do not know. We can only guess. And we are on reasonably safe ground if we venture to predict that the present day Labour Leaders are as anxious as those of the past to remain leaders, and to take power in order to run capitalism.

Whose Mother isn’t using Persil?

Among the American prisoners released by the Koreans are a small group, who according to the Authorities have been infected with Communist propaganda. And, since the United States is a land of freedom, and the right to think as one pleases is upheld by the American Constitution, this small group has been sent to a hospital for treatment. The treatment will consist of reading books and seeing newsreels approved by the authorities, so that they may be cured of their infection. The State Department announces: “The privations, and dangers suffered by prisoners of the Communists, may have made them susceptible to the Communist brain-washing techniques.”

Here is some peculiar reasoning. Are we to understand that the way to make people agree with and become permeated by one’s ideas is to make them suffer privations and dangers? If it is true, as we have been told by sundry journalists, that American prisoners of war were badly treated by the Chinese and Koreans then how could a “small group” become infected with their oppressors ideas? No one has heard of any Jew who suffered in concentration camps at the hands of Hitler, having to be "brainwashed” because he had become convinced that the Germans were a "Master race.” How then could prisoners subjected to "privations and dangers ” by their captors become convinced of the benefits to be derived from their ideas?

If it is because of the ill-treatment, are these returned prisoners to be even worse-treated so that they may become imbued with the benefits and joys of the "American way of life ”?

As if these unfortunate prisoners have not had enough, psychiatrists have been turned loose on them in order to "brainwash” them back to a belief in free enterprise, democracy, and Americanism. It has not yet occurred to these psychiatrists and “brainwash” experts that men who have been held prisoners for many years and whose subsequent release is dependent upon their change of attitude, will "brainwash” themselves so fast as to outdo any claim made by the makers of Persil soap.

If it were not so tragic this whole episode would make a good subject for an Aldwych farce!

S.A.

Blogger's Note:

The February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard carries an interesting article by 'Ivan' on Rowton Houses.

Is this what Labour voters wanted? A world made safe for investors (1946)

From the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a country where the whole adult population have votes and where the overwhelming majority of the voters are workers, the art of administering capitalism is a delicate, tricky business. To attract and keep the support of a majority of voters the party in power must have a programme that promises to introduce improvements in the miserable conditions of the poor; but in order to make capitalism function at all the government must not at the same time frighten and antagonise the rich, whose investment and spending has to go on unless industry is to slacken towards a standstill. Until such time as the workers recognise that their interest demands Socialism, the party that succeeds in persuading the electors that it can both please the workers and conciliate the capitalist will be the party that wins elections. The Labour Party succeeded in doing this, and is now carrying out its pledges, or some of them; but how many of the Labour voters who were attracted by the promises of more work, higher wages, social security, houses, etc., studied and understood the other half of the programme, the half that was directed to the capitalist class? How many of them observed that if wages rise and other things remain unchanged, then profits must fall; and that if profits go on at the old level (or increase), wages can only be prevented from falling if the total output of industry is increased? There has been plenty of Labour Party propaganda designed to make the workers believe that a Labour Government would reduce the wealth of the rich in order to help the poor, though this was not stated explicitly in the literature got out for the purpose of the general election. Workers can already see what is happening. War-time earnings, enlarged by overtime and various temporary bonuses, are now falling, and the changes introduced in the income tax, while decreasing somewhat the amount knocked off wages, also reduced Excess Profits Tax levied on companies, and reduced the total amount of tax levied on surtax payers. Mr. Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made two revealing statements in his Budget speech. While declaring that many surtax payers are idlers, he went on to announce that his Budget reduced their income tax. 

“The truth, in fact, is . . . that a large number of the surtax payers do nothing at all. They subsist on very large investment interests. Many of these have been inherited through many generations in the past, sometimes along with noble names, sometimes not. As a consequence of this, there is, in the total surtax income, a great quantity of completely unearned income, conglomerated in huge lumps around people who have inherited it, obtained it by luck, or other means." —Hansard, 19 Nov., 1945. CoL 152.

“ I repeat . . . that in terms of income, next year everybody will be better off, including surtax’ payers . . ." —Hansard. 28 Nov., 1945. Col. 1358.

The principal feature of the Labour programme at the election was the pledge to nationalise certain industries. In some vague way never clearly explained this was supposed to benefit the workers. It will, however, be noticed that since the Government entered office, the theme of numerous speeches by Cabinet Ministers has been that the compensation terms would be "fair" or even "generous" to the capitalist investors, while to the workers the Labour leaders' reiterated appeal is for harder work, austerity, and greater production.

This contrasts oddly with some of their speeches and writings during the war. Two examples, both from Cabinet Ministers, illustrate this. In 1942, Mr. Bevin, now Foreign Secretary, but at that time Minister of Labour in the Coalition Government, made a speech in which he said:— 

"At the end of the war we should be able to buy goods only for goods. The rentier, comfortably living on interest, would certainly be gone. It will mean that we shall have a nation at work, and that will not be an unhealthy thing."

—Daily Herald, 16 July, 1942.

Then there is Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of Fuel and Power. In his book, “When the Men Come Home” (Gollanz, 1944, page 41), he laid down the principle “that any physically and mentally fit individual who fails to make a useful contribution to the work of the community shall not be fed, clothed and housed at the expense of those who do work."

How are Mr. Bevin and Mr. Shinwell, and their Cabinet colleagues, progressing with their healthy doctrine that there should be no non-workers, comfortably living on interest, clothed and housed by the labours of those who have to work? It is only necessary to look at the nationalisation schemes to see that, far from abolishing interest receivers, the principal achievements for which this Labour Government will be remembered is that the “rentier, comfortably living on interest,” is being vastly increased in number and their position consolidated. The so-called epoch-making change brought about by the Labour Government is merely the transformation of some capitalist investors holding company shares, into holders of Government bonds. It was a development already making headway under the Conservatives before Labour came into power. Here are some examples of that nationalisation or State capitalism, wrongly described as Socialism by the Labour Party. The Central Electricity Board has over £50 million of stock outstanding and pays interest each year to the stockholders amounting to over £2¼ million. Port of London Authority, £34 million of stock, paying £1⅓ million interest. Metropolitan Water Board, £58 million, interest £1,790,000 a year. London Passenger Transport Board, stock, £112 million, paying interest of about £4½ million a year.

Then there is the buying out of owners of coal royalties, just completed, with payments of £66 million, available for investment elsewhere. This was a measure backed by the Labour Party though not introduced by them.

Since the Labour Government came into office the Bank of England has been taken over and the stockholders are to receive £58 million of Government stock on which the interest at 3 per cent, will amount to £1¾ million a year.

The Daily Express City Editor (20 Nov., 1945) gave the following rough estimates of the total cost of the Labour Government’s nationalisation schemes:—

Taking interest at, say, 3 per cent., this will involve payments by the Government of about £60 millions a year to the stockholders in exchange for the dividends they are at present receiving on their shares in the various companies. They will on the whole receive a lower rate of interest than before, but will get in return the greater security of bonds backed by the Government. 

As far as the workers are concerned, their position as wage slaves, exploited to maintain a propertied class in luxurious idleness, will not be altered. The State to an ever increasing extent will be the medium through which the exploitation is carried on. The accumulated wealth of the country (the means of production and distribution) will still be concentrated in the hands of the same small minority of individuals, the capitalist class, who own it at present. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Full Employment? Another Labour Party Fallacy (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is full employment for the working class possible? What exactly does it mean? By whom is it desirable? Or is it a stunt to inspire the workers with hope and trust in our so-called Socialist Government?

 

These are not some of the questions asked in Parliament, or other public places. On the contrary, there seems to be general agreement, especially in the press, to keep up the fiction that full employment is possible, not merely for the repair of war damage, but indefinitely.

According to a leading article in the Daily Telegraph for November 16th, the Government's plan for full employment is much the same as that of the Coalition Government's in 1944. They say :—

“It differs little but in omissions and change of emphasis from the policy for maintaining 'a high and stable level of employment' which the Coalition Government set forth in 1944. That policy commanded general support as a well devised means of smoothing out booms and slumps, the main obstacles to full employment." 

Neither the Coalition Government, nor the present Labour Government, have so far explained how, by smoothing out the booms and slumps, fuller employment is obtained. Neither do they, or the Daily Telegraph, show how, when one dead level of employment has been reached, it is possible to achieve a condition of full employment. The plan is to spend on public works during the slump, leaving the booms to keep the workers busy during the few years—or months—they last. The Daily Telegraph, while hopeful of the results, is dubious of the ability of the Government and its experts to forecast the slumps, and adjust, their spending on public works accordingly.

Having once made the assertion that ''booms and slumps are the main obstacles to full employment," which is false, any deductions they make on that premise will undoubtedly be wrong. If, instead of eating all my cake to-day, I save a portion for to-morrow, obviously, nothing is added to the total.

In the same way, if a capitalist Government postpones its public works schemes to provide work during a slump, it creates no new employment. All it does is to arrange a levelling out, with little or no fluctuations.

If the unemployment figures during a boom are one million, and during a slump three million, cut out spending on public works during the boom and spread it over the slump and you get approximately two millions throughout both periods. The new arrangement is of no benefit to the workers. On the contrary, the advantage is on the side of Big Business, which has a well stocked labour market on which to draw at the very time world markets are expanding.

The Labour Government, in taking over the Capitalist bag of tricks, have taken with it its superstitions. Ever since the "South Sea bubble" there has been profound dread among capitalists of trade crises. "There's a slump on the way," or "a boom is just round the corner" were common expressions, generally spoken with superstitious awe, as though it were some great convulsion of nature. This dread impotence before the economic blizzard is still prevalent. According to the Daily Sketch (Nov. 23rd, 1945)), Mr. Dalton had said:—

"We must also arm ourselves with anti-slump powers, so that never again, as in past years, shall prices and productivity and employment all fall away through the failure of private enterprise."

The Daily Sketch leader commented as follows : —

"Even Mr. Dalton's Fabian audience must have caught their breath at the sheer ineptitude of that pronouncement, for there is no means within the capacity of man which would leave us an exception to the general experience in the event of a world slump. That will prove to be true Whether this country is run under state control or private enterprise."

For the last 30 years the workers have been unable to see much difference in the amount of unemployment during booms and slumps. They certainly do not become more prosperous during the booms. Big business, even when it gets really busy, cannot absorb more than part of the unemployed millions left over from the previous slump, Booms and slumps are no longer a mystery to all capitalists. This fact is made clear in a book by Roy Glenday, "Economic adviser to the Federation of British Industries," and entitled, "The Future of Economic Society" (Macmillan & Co., 1944).

Mr. Glenday gives facts and figures that shed much light on the subject of trade, both internal and international. In the production and marketing of motor cars, for instance, he says: The huge and complex plant necessary for standardisation and cheapness would be uneconomic without assurance of an ever expanding market. When saturation level has been reached with the ready money section, hire purchase methods are resorted to; which only puts off the evil day of partial, or even total collapse. When it is remembered that this is the normal process of big business in the production and sale of such things as radio sets, cycles and electric appliances of many kinds we can readily understand how this mad race for profits leads to crises.

Mr. Glenday has a convincing array of facts and evidence, from which he argues that Capitalism cannot survive its present crisis without some kind of adjustment in its environment. But contrary to what we should expect from an adviser to the Federation of British Industries, he envisages some form of “communism" the next step in human progress being what he calls the service state. Where, in return for security and a retiring pension, the individual will have to give up the right to choose his job, and must be prepared, not only to move from one locality to another, but also to change his job; undergoing a period of training, if necessary, to fit him for his new job. According to the Conservative press, something like this “service state” is contemplated for this country by the present Government, and already exists in Russia. They (the Conservatives) call it the servile state. But capitalism, whether British, Russian or American, means servility for the working-class always and everywhere. The right to choose his own job is of little value to the individual worker, the majority of whom consider themselves fortunate when they can find any sort of job and hold it down. Booms and slumps mean little to them.

Much depends on the point of view. From the capitalist viewpoint, it is eminently desirable that the workers should be kept busy; though not too busy in case they get independent. And not only because they are a source of profit; but also because many unemployed workers are a menace to a smoothly running system, and they have to be fed anyway.

The worker's point of view is different. He knows that the overstocked condition of the world's markets is the result of working-class energy. Of working-class efficiency combined with modern methods and machinery. The machinery itself being the result of working-class effort. In short, all the ingredients that go to make up overstocked markets are included in the phrase "human energy and the nature-given material," capitalists being excluded.

Under a rational system of society the machines would not belong to the capitalist, but to the people, and the people, while participating in the work of production and distribution, would arrange the conditions for themselves. They would do so through a real democracy worked out by themselves. The idea of finding or making work would be illogical and absurd. Under Socialism only the work necessary for the satisfaction of human needs according to an agreed standard of life and culture, would be performed. Booms and slumps would disappear along with the poverty and unemployment that spring from the wild scramble for profits.

F. E.

"Socialism" for the City (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Little did I ever dream that I should live to see the City Fathers cheer a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had recently introduced a Budget on behalf of a Socialist Government that had achieved Power!

"Yet this happened yesterday when, before the Mansion House luncheon, the new Lord Mayor of London greeted, one after another, Morrison, Dalton,, Bevin and Bevan, Shinwell, Jowitt, Lawson, and the rest, and, finally, Attlee and his wife.

"None had a better reception that did Hugh Dalton!

" 'A Socialist Budget would ruin the City,' we have always been told. Actually, the City applauded it!"

— (Hannen Swaffer, Daily Herald, 10th November, 1945.)

The Festival of Capitalism (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may have been part of the general optimism of the good times ahead that pervaded His Majesty’s third Labour Government in its early days, that induced “Old Moore” Morrison to announce in December, 1947, the Government’s plan for a national display to mark the centenary of the 1851 Exhibition. Possibly it was thought then that festivals were to be part of the usual scheme of things that was to be “ours” in the “Brave New World.” Alas! it was not to be. In fact the attitude generally expressed is for Christ’s sake let’s go to the Festival and forget Korea and raw materials just for one day.

As always, only this time more so, the main problem confronting trade unions is the standard of living. As is to be expected, resolutions calling for wage increases are the order of the day.

In line with their political thought trade unionists have in the past few years made many sacrifices; the outstanding instance being the wage freeze. But the harsh realities of the capitalist economics expressed in the continual increase in commodity prices make a mockery of present day wages—the wage increases of last year, last month, or even last week, have already been gobbled up—and force unions to go forward with new demands in the attempt to catch up with the rising cost of living.

One of the slogans that carried the Labour Party into power was “Fair Shares For All.” This, like many of the catch-phrases bandied around the political arena, is an ambiguous statement; just as meaningless as “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” Supporters of the Labour Party would claim, however, that “Fair shares for all ” and “Redistribution of wealth ” mean simply: that the rich get poorer, and the poor get richer. But the evidence of six years of Labour Government bear out once again the correctness of “Tin Pan Alley ” who said in “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” You would think then—if we accept for a moment the seeming logic of the Labourites—that if the workers are up against it, then the capitalist class should be really on the floor. The position, however, is to the contrary; published figures for the five months up to the end of May show that the aggregate profits of some 1,300 companies hit the all-time high of £700,000,000. This indeed is festival year for British Capitalism.

The ever increasing announcements of record profits have even astounded some of the most devout supporters of Capitalism. The City Editor of the Sunday Express is promoted to the front page, leading article, on June 17, 1951, where he asks, “Are Prices Too High Because Profits Are Too High? ” He wrote thus:—

“These [profits] in the aggregate total more than £700 million, compared with £587 million in the previous year.

“Profits reported last month were on the average 5/6 in the £ higher than in May, 1950.

“City experts I have consulted believe that by the end of the year the total profits to be announced may be nearly half as much again as in 1950, which itself was one of the lushest years for money making.

“On all the evidence never before has British industry experienced such a profit boom as it is enjoying now."

Here are four examples showing the fantastic increase in profits: —

Usually the last ten or so pages of the Economist each week, are given to reports of company meetings, together with a summary of the accounts. To read some of the comments of the chairmen, when trying to explain away the high profits in terms of high taxation, and the high cost of replacing plant, you would think they were one step away from the workhouse. Workers also have to contend with higher costs—the high cost of existing. Only they start off with a measly six or seven pounds a week.

They can, though, if they will, comfort themselves from the following nonsense:—

“ . . . that the higher the increase the greater has been the rise in the average price of goods and services bought. The wage-earner has therefore improved his comparative lot to an even greater extent than is indicated by the income differences already calculated.”

(Economist, 16.6.51)

Therefore take the example of two men, say, ten years ago. One could afford a car, the other couldn't. To-day, neither of them can afford a car. This, then. makes the person who couldn't afford a car in the first instance, relatively better off than the other. Or so this cockeyed writer in the Economist would have us believe.

We see in another direction how the facts belie the claims of the Labour Government. Those in the past who styled themselves socialist, often stated in round figures that 10 per cent. of the population owned 90 per cent. of the wealth. For comparison we give these recent figures of Mr. Hugh Dalton: —

“One per cent, of the people still own 50 per cent. of the wealth, and five per cent. of the people still own 75 per cent. of the wealth. Official figures show that we still have several hundred millionaires among us. and it is notorious that, apart from the large incomes assessed for tax. many people have been living on capital gains and many have been tax-dodging.”

(Sunday Times, 17.6.51.)

Although Mr. Dalton does not go into the top flight and give comparative figures of to-day and pre-war, so that we may adjudge his party's claim of “redistribution of wealth,” we would say that there is very little difference. Before we leave this point let us give an illustration, using Dalton's figures of five and seventy-five. Let us say that both population and wealth equal a hundred. This means then, that five persons have £15 each, and the remaining 95 have approximately 5/3 each. This is the sum total of the “redistribution of wealth.”

Members of the Labour Party in debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain have claimed the respective aims to be identical. Where the Labour Party have it over us, so they say, is that they will arrive first by reason of their practical approach. Before leaving the reader to decide which party is on the road to Socialism—that is a classless, wageless society—may we remind you again of the words of Mr. Dalton that “ five per cent. of people own 75 per cent. of the wealth.”

Ray Guy

Greasy Pole: Is There Life After Tony Blair? (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even by the standards we have come to expect from them, it was an outrageous piece of New Labour spin to tell us that the leadership handover between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would be “smooth and orderly”. For one thing Blair and his cronies must have known that announcing his intention to resign on some unnamed, unpredictable date in the future ensured that the handover would take place after a long period of chaos as a succession of hopefuls – and no-hopers – pushed themselves as potential leaders. We had already had the sly briefing about Gordon Brown’s alleged “psychological flaws” (which must apply to many politicians). The infighting could have been prevented by settling on a firm date but whenever this was raised with Blair he brushed it aside by saying that he would go when he had done his job of clearing up a few trivial matters like crime, the wars in the Middle East and Iraq, the NHS, education, poverty… The very idea is laughable, that there will ever, can ever, be a day when a political leader can pass into well earned retirement because they have succeeded in making all the necessary adjustments and improvements to society, so that from now on all will be smooth and orderly. While there is no evidence that Blair is an avid student of history it is clear that he has absorbed many of its essential lessons in the sleazier arts of politics.

Morrison

What can be said, on that score, about Gordon Brown? When he made that deal, across the Granita table, with Blair, did he not have an inkling of what he was committing himself to? Was he entirely innocent of any doubts about politicians’ readiness to keep their word? Did he not reflect on the examples of other nominated heirs to a party leadership who had failed miserably to achieve it? When the Attlee government was elected in 1945 the Deputy Leader of the party was Herbert Morrison, a canny, cocky political operator with the common touch. In contrast, Attlee was understated, not to say drab; when he was made Leader in 1935 Hugh Dalton, who was later Chancellor of the Exchequer, bemoaned “. . .  a wretched and disheartening result . . . And a little mouse shall lead them”. After Labour’s emphatic win Morrison made it clear that he had no intention of agreeing to Attlee as Prime Minister and that, before he accepted he job, Attlee should submit himself to a vote of confidence by the Parliamentary Labour Party.

This was the kind of situation which, in recent times, must have provoked an incandescent row between Brown and Blair. Attlee, however, was in a different mode. After his election triumph he went quietly with his wife for tea at the Great Western Hotel in London and it was there, among the delicate china and the scones, he was told that King George VI was anxious to fill the vacancy for a new government for British capitalism and would he please go to Buckingham Palace to set the royal mind at rest. Attlee took the view that the monarch should not be kept waiting while the Parliamentary Labour Party made up its mind so he went at once to the Palace where “without quibbles” as he put it, he accepted the top job. (He got his vote of confidence the next day – as if an hysterically triumphant, desperately ambitious, party would ever have dreamed of denying it to him).

Churchill

Attlee later described the notion of Morrison being party leader as “fantastic” – seriously out of touch with reality. He continued as leader after his government were defeated in the 1951 election, leaving Morrison to sulk and snipe, fretful in the knowledge that the longer Attlee stayed on the weaker his chances of succeeding. It was clear at that time that if the Labour Party was to have any hope of clawing their way back into government they would need to undertake a comprehensive overhaul of their policies and presentation but Attlee was too weary after his years in government to do anything about it. That was probably the time for him to retire but instead he kept going, which had the effect of stifling Morrison’s leadership chances (Morrison was, of course, convinced that this was the motivation). After Labour was defeated again, in 1955, Attlee carried on for a few months and then suddenly resigned, going to the House of Lords. The delay in his going had had its effect; Hugh Gaitskell had emerged as the likeliest leadership candidate and he won the ballot over both Morrison and Aneurin Bevan, leaving Morrison to nurse his bitter disappointment.

The Tory government which followed had its own inheritance problems for Winston Churchill had always made it clear that he would be succeeded as leader by his Deputy Anthony Eden; for example in 1942 Churchill told the King that if he failed to return from one of his trips abroad Eden should be asked to take his place. In spite of the Tories’ calamitous defeat in the 1945 election Churchill hung on as leader (in any case he never made any secret of his reluctance to take account of his party’s wishes). But he was bored in opposition and he might have resigned then except that his “Iron Curtain” speech seemed to revive his confidence in himself as an historic figure so he stayed, while playing on Eden’s loyalty by throwing out occasional hints that he would hand over in the near future – rather like Tony Blair today. At the same time Churchill made it clear that he would regard any suggestion that he should resign as base treachery. Even when he had a succession of strokes, notably in 1949 and 1953, which progressively disabled him, he kept himself in the job. It seemed as if he would never go.

Eden

The grinding pressure of disappointment aggravated Eden’s emotional and medical difficulties; at the time of Churchill’s 1953 stroke Eden was convalescing abroad after an operation, which prevented him taking over. In any case Churchill, in the words of his son Randolph, “fought his way back to health with a Roman mastery of mind over flesh” so that he was still Prime Minister when he turned 80 in November 1954. He resigned in April 1955 and Eden came at last into his inheritance, except that it was a procession of disasters. Under scathing criticism from a normally loyal Tory press – the Daily Telegraph ranted about “changes of mind by the Government; half measures; and the postponement of decisions” – the breaking point for him was his obsessive but doomed attempt to revive the standing of British capitalism in the Middle East by the Suez invasion (his wife later told how at times she had felt as if the Suez Canal was running through their living room). By now a very sick man, virtually living on prescribed drugs, Eden gave up and went to the West Indies to recuperate. After all that waiting, he had been Prime Minister for less than two years.

Spite

A common factor in these episodes, as with the present clash between Blair and Brown, is the absence of any differences in policy. The disputes were not about whether to run capitalism but who should be allowed to indulge their ambitions by doing so. From those roots a tangled growth of spite and venom has flourished, in which Brown abruptly ceased to be the assumed, widely welcomed, successor to Blair and instead became the target of vicious personal attacks, some of which originated from people who were themselves far from blameless. “Compulsive obsessive”, “autistic” and “childish vanity” were among the kinder assessments of Brown.

Perhaps most audacious of all was Charles Clarke’s charge that Brown is a “control freak”, which overlooked the fact that when he was Home Secretary Clarke was a relentless, determined advocate of Identity Cards. The winner of this “smooth and orderly process” among contestants who lay down laws which are designed to instruct us how to behave will be whoever emerges with the least shredded clothing and the fewest wounds.

Ivan

Editorial: Trade Unions on the Rocks (1946)

Editorial from the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a confused welter of argument about unofficial strikes, big and little unions and the "Closed Shop,” what is by far the most fateful aspect of the trade union situation is being disregarded, though it is the underlying trouble of which the others are largely symptoms. What has happened during the war, and still more since the Labour Government came into power, is that the trade unions have increasingly ceased to be independent organisations of the workers in the struggle against the employers over wages and conditions of work, and have become instead organisations for disciplining the workers in the interest of the Government’s wages and production policies. The present Government, having taken over from Churchill the responsibility of administering capitalism, puts at the forefront of its programme an intense drive to find markets abroad for British exporters in competition with the capitalists of other countries. The plan has several features that are related to each other. One is the continuation of “ austerity ” at home so that more goods can be sold abroad. Another is the effort to lower costs of production to a competitive level in the markets of the world, partly by modernising the technical equipment of various backward industries and partly by seeking the co-operation of the workers, through the trade unions, in the campaign to increase production. The third part of the plan was the Government’s belief that by retaining the control of prices for essential goods, clothing, etc., wages would remain more or less unchanged at the level reached at the end of the war. Not wanting to take the very unpopular step of preventing wage increases by making them illegal—as some governments have done—the Government here hoped to keep wage increases in check by appealing to the workers, and particularly by appealing to the Trade Union executives, to moderate their demands. In short, it was regarded by the Government as essential, if British capitalism was to regain its overseas markets, that the trade unions should largely abdicate their proper function of struggling to raise wages in the present favourable situation, and should instead act as a brake on the demands of the workers. That this is a correct reading of the minds of the Ministers is shown by Mr. Dalton’s speech ill the House of Commons on October 23rd, 1945, when introducing his budget. He pointed out that the Government was spending some hundreds of millions of pounds a year subsidising food and other articles in order to keep prices down, then he went on to talk about the effect on wages : —

“It has also helped to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates, which, if it had occurred, might have disturbed the whole balance of our economic life, and might have sucked us into the fatal whirlpool of inflation. Here I wish to pay tribute to the steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard. . . . Wage rates . . . have climbed steadily all the time, and that has been right; yet there has been no break-away rise, no uncontrolled rise such as we might easily have seen had it not. been for this continuing cooperation between the Government—in this case the Coalition Government—and the trade unions, both recognising that the common interest was best served by this joint effort of the two parties to keep prices and wages on an even keel.”

Mr. Dalton calls it “co-operation” between the Government and the trade unions, but in fact it has been co-operation between the Government and the trade union executives to hold back the natural and correct desire of the workers to struggle for higher wages before unemployment and eventual slump make it impossible to do so.

Mr. G. D. H. Cole, himself a Labour Party supporter and one who approves of this damping-down policy, described it in very appropriate terms in the Observer (8/9/46). He sees that the workers are restive because they feel they no longer control their officials, and feel that the unions are “merely a bureaucratic machine run by the officials for the purpose of keeping them in order.”

Mr. Cole seeks a remedy, but adds:—

"This is not too easy, now that most wage bargains are national in scale, and wage demands have to be squared with the requirements of a national wages policy—as they have in fact, even if the existence of such a policy is disclaimed. The Trade Unions have become, perforce, instruments for disciplining their more unruly members, as well as for representing them; and this sets up a tension that will be cured only by time, as people settle down to the changed conditions.”

Mr. Cole has correctly diagnosed the cause of the present discontent of trade unionists which shows itself in unofficial strikes and efforts to break away from the discipline imposed by the officials on behalf of the Government, but he and the trade union officials who support that policy are quite wrong in their belief that the workers should, or will, go on accepting it. The trade unions must regain their independence and freedom of action or they will become moribund and useless. The unions are not being endangered by the virile independence shown already by some trade unionists; they are being throttled from above by the fatal tie-up with the Government. Their health will tie restored only when the members can again know that they are able to exercise democratic control over union policy and are free, when they deem it wise, to use the only weapon they have under capitalism, the strike.

It is popular in Labour circles to denounce totalitarian regimes under which trade unions are State organs, and strikes are forbidden. Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party, on his return from Russia, wrote about the Russian unions: - 

"I am not sure that the workers’ organisations can be regarded as ‘trade anions' in the British sense that they are free agents to act and speak as their members demand, irrespective of Government stricture. The very fact that strikes are illegal seems to dispose of any pretence to freedom of action as we know it ” (Daily Herald, 21/8/46).

It would not be a bad idea if Mr. Phillips would now take a look at what used to be independent trade unions in this country and observe that, by a less brutal and less obvious process of deterioration, they are heading towards the state of the Russian organisations. It is plain that the unions here will not be rescued from that fate by the Labour Government or by the trade union executives who have been responsible for the present state of things. Salvation will come from the members themselves when they wake up to the fact that Labour government cannot abolish capitalism or the class struggle inseparable from capitalism, and when they regain control of their own organisations for the purpose of defending their interests on the industrial field.

It should be added, however, that while Socialists support sound trade union action they have to point out, too, that trade unions, though necessary and useful organs of working-class resistance, cannot emancipate the working class from capitalism—that can be done only by a Socialist working class politically organised to take control democratically of the machinery of government, for the purpose of abolishing capitalism and introducing Socialism.