Voice From The Back: Weakest Link—for real (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Weakest Link—for real

Employees at one of Britain’s fastest-growing and most respected companies, FI Group, are being offered a £1,000 bounty to name colleagues who could be replaced by cheaper workers from India. . .

Financial Mail on Sunday, 24 December.

How it’s done

Former BMW boss, Bernt Pischetsrieder today admitted that he had deliberately provoked Rover’s crisis two years ago to weaken union bargaining power. Mr Pischetsrieder, now a top executive with Volkswagen and running its Seat subsidiary, admitted he had undermined the launch of the Rover 75 as the “last chance saloon” in front of the world’s press at the Birmingham Motor Show in 1998. He said BMW had been deep in negotiations at the time over company demands to boost productivity and the ploy was needed to win concessions from workers as the strong pound started to hurt the business.

Evening Mail, 13 December.

Only joking (?)

“This Christmas, indulge in a little blackmail, extortion and torture.” Advertisement for an Olympus camera.

How the wealth is spent

Forget Monte Carlo and Belgravia, for the very rich in 2001 the ideal home has no postcode. Instead they are trying to secure one of the few remaining apartments aboard the world’s first residential cruise ship . . . With no fixed abode, residents are not liable to pay tax and one Monaco-based oil trader is already arranging the transfer of his entire business to his new floating home . . . apartments on the 12 decks cost between $2 million (£1.4 million) and $5 million . . . one Saudi businessman signed for his £3.5 million pad, with its £250,000 annual service charge, within 15 minutes of reading the brochure.

Times, 27 December.

How the wealth is made

The [European] Parliament will be told that clothes for Adidas were made in two factories using child labour, forced overtime and sexual harassment. Representatives of workers in two Indonesian factories supplying the German company will tell Euro MPs that in the Nikomax Gemilang and Tuntex factories, in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, children as young as 15 were: made to work 15-hour days; expected to do at least 70 hours a week and punished for refusing to do overtime; paid less than $60 a month, rates below the International Labour Organisation’s demand for a living wage; penalised for taking leave during medical difficulties and had illegal deductions taken from wages as punishments for minor misdemeanours . . . Pay at the Nikomas plant was increased to more than 9,000Rs (75p per day) following the campaigners complaints, Adidas said. 

Observer, 19 November.

How the wealth is lost (1)

More pensioners died from cold last winter than during any winter since 1976. If latest wealthier predictions are correct, the death toll this winter will be even worse. Almost 55,000 people died from cold-related illnesses between last December and March, new figures from the Office of National Statistics reveal. The figures will acutely embarrass Ministers who had pledged to end pensioner poverty. “It’s a tragedy that people in Britain are still literally freezing to death and a main reason is poverty,” said Ben Harding of Help the Aged. “We deal with thousands of cases where older people can’t meet the costs of heating their home. They need heat all day and sometimes at night are particularly vulnerable.” 

Observer, 26 November.

How the wealth is lost (2)

The number of people in Britain classified as very poor has increased by half a million since 1997 when Labour came to power, according to an independent report. The number of people living in households with less than the 40 percent of the average income is now 8,750,000. The study, published today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, also reveals an increase in the number of people living below the poverty line—defined as less than half the national average income—to 14,250,000 over the past two years. That is one million more than in the early 1990s and more than double the number of the early 1980s. Older people are suffering more according to the survey. Since 1993 the proportion of elderly households helped to live at home by their local authority has fallen by 30 percent. 

Times, 11 December.

Voice From The Back: Land of the Free (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Land of the Free

Behind all the bombast of “land of the free, home of the brave” national anthem in the USA lies a sinister reality. “From the 1880s to the 1960s, at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. The noose remains a terrifying symbol, and continues to be used by racists to intimidate African-Americans (who made up more than 70 percent of lynching victims). In the past decade or so, only about a dozen noose incidents a year came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the huge Sept. 20 rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands protested what they saw as racism in the prosecution of six black youths known as the ‘Jena 6,’ this country has seen a rash of as many as 50 to 60 noose incidents. Last Tuesday, for example, a city employee in Slidell, La., was fired after being accused of hanging a noose at a job site a few days earlier. These incidents are worrying, but even more so is the social reality they reflect. The level of hate crimes in the United States is astoundingly high — more than 190,000 incidents per year, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.” (New York Times, 25 November)

Death in a Harsh Society

The latest figures on deaths in winter make for harsh reading and illustrate the fate awaiting many British workers when they are unable to work anymore. “More than 23,000 people died of cold last winter despite it being one of the mildest recorded, according to the Office for National Statistics. Of these deaths, 19,200 were among those aged 75 and over. Charities called it a ‘national scandal’ and gave warning of more deaths this winter because of higher fuel prices and colder temperatures.” (Times, 29 November)

Heiress On The Run

She was left $12 million but it was a mixed blessing as she received threats from blackmailers and kidnappers. “Their threats forced concerned friends to bundle her onboard a private jet under a new identity and take her into hiding. Her location is a closely guarded secret but she is reportedly living somewhere in Florida under 24 hour guard.” (Times, 4 December) It is reported that her annual upkeep is $300,000 but this includes a rotating security team. Oh, did we mention she has weekly grooming visits and has to visit the vet for her liver condition? Yes, the vet! For she is a white Maltese dog called Trouble whose former owner was the hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley. Go on tell us that capitalism isn’t crazy!

Old Age Fears

In so-called primitive societies that practiced a hunting-gathering existence, the elderly were protected and respected as knowledgeable members of the group. In modern capitalism the old are looked upon as a burden as can be seen from these findings. “Britons are living in fear of growing old in a society that fails to respect the over-65s or provide adequate support for those in need, a Guardian poll reveals today. …The ICM poll found: 40% of Britons fear being lonely in their old age. Two thirds of the adult population are ‘frightened’ by the prospect of having to move into a care home; More than 90% said they knew they could not survive on the state pension and would need to rely on savings.” (Guardian, 3 December)

Promises, Promises

Back in 1999 the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair promised to halve the number of poor children in 10 years and eradicate child poverty in 20 years. “The government’s approach to tackling child poverty has lost momentum and is in ‘urgent need’ of a major rethink, a charity has said. A Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) report said there has been no sustained progress in the past three years. One in three UK children live in poverty. A report by the Treasury select committee fears the pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 is in doubt.” (BBC News, 3 December) This is typical of reformist politicians – make promises, preferably far into the future and they will probably be forgotten when the next election comes along.

The Price of Gold

About a quarter of a million mineworkers downed tools on Tuesday in South Africa, the world’s top producer of gold and platinum. “This year’s death toll has reached 200, mostly owing to rock falls and explosions in several mines. Many mines have been unchanged for decades but recently reopened, thanks to high world prices that have made them profitable again.” (Times, 5 December) The miners are concerned about the lack of safety in the mining industry which one striker described as “dripping in blood”. The average wage of a miner in South Africa is about $200 a month. None of them will be wearing gold or diamonds, that is for sure.

Voice From The Back: Cold (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cold 

The death rate from cold in Britain is higher than in Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Greece . . . Every winter 26,596 elderly people die in London alone—3,129 in every million-compared to 2,457 in Northern Finland. Evening Mail, 19 September.

Hunger

Britain is not the only country in which the government and charities help to keep wages too low to live on: “According to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, which supplies food to about 420 pantries in the region, roughly 12 percent of the population, or 150,000 people, used a food pantry last year. ‘Half of the adults who get food from us are working,’ said David Sharken, executive director of the food bank. ‘It is a hidden part of this economy. The hidden part is that, while there are jobs and the unemployment rate is fairly low, the kind of jobs that most people have found, for the most part, have no benefits or health care.’ The increased use of food pantries has kept in lockstep with the progress of the Welfare Reform Bill, which went into effect in Massachusetts in 1996 and gave able-bodied welfare recipients two years to find jobs before they were cut off from state cash assistance.” Berkshire Eagle, 15 September.

Disease

The suffering, degradation and death that lies behind capitalism’s glitzy exterior of modernisation and progress is exposed when the facts are analysed: “More than 800 million people, 13 percent of the world’s population, suffer from hunger and disease linked to malnutrition, the UN Food and Agriculture said in a report released yesterday.” Herald, 16 September.

Stress

The workers of the world are, according to a United Nations report, united in just one thing these days: record levels of stress. What is more, the report warns, anxiety levels are set to dramatically increase in the coming years as globalisation continues its relentless march, and the economic costs for business will be massive. In a landmark survey examining stress in the workplace in five countries, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that levels of anxiety, burnout and depression are spiralling out of control. The problem is costing employers billions of pounds in sick leave and lost working time, and often leaves frayed employees grappling with a series of complex mental disorders for years afterwards. Guardian, 12 October.

The coastal dustbin

The catalogue of disasters revealed by the recent survey carried out on the UK coastal waters by the World Wide Fund for Nature should frighten even the staunchest supporter of capitalism: “All the coastal habitats studied have been extensively damaged, ripped up and reclaimed for development—and two thirds of our fish stocks are over-exploited and heading towards commercial extinction. Many mud flats are so polluted by ‘gender-bender’ man-made chemicals, that male flounder are now displaying female characteristics and even producing eggs. There are serious concerns over plankton, one of the world’s most important sources of oxygen, a vital carbon sink, and the basis of all marine food chains.” (Herald, 20 September.) All of these problems could be solved inside socialism, but in capitalism, a society whose only drive is to make profits, the problems just intensify.

Progressing—backwards

We’ve had Thatcher’s “Land of Opportunity”, Major’s “Classless Society” and Blair’s “Third Way”. But behind the glossy promises what is the reality? “Narrowing the gap between rich and poor could prevent as many as 10,000 premature deaths each year in Britain, according to a report published yesterday. Even a modest redistribution of wealth, restoring inequalities back to their 1983 levels, could save 7,500 under-65s a year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report says. Many studies have shown that poverty, unemployment and disadvantage lead to poor health and earlier death. These inequalities have been widening in recent years.” Times, 26 September.

Globalising medicine

Just as it is cheaper to produce running shoes in Asia or Africa, so it is proving cheaper and more “efficient” to conduct clinical trials of drugs in the developing world . . . Given this looser environment, some researchers, particularly in America, have been conducting studies they could not get away with at home. Particularly appalling is the fact that such studies are increasingly backed by the very institutions who in their own nations are the watchdogs of public health . . . Debate has been fuelled by Public Citizens 1997 exposure of unethical Aids research in Africa and Asia under the auspices of US National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Thousands of pregnant women with HIV were given placebos rather than AZT, known to be an effective medication . . . “Putting it bluntly,” says Dr Lurie, “as elsewhere in the globalising economy, we are witnessing a race to the ethical bottom.” Guardian, 5 October.

Voice From The Back: “Planets rule capitalism” (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Planets rule capitalism” 

Astrologers have come up with an alternative explanation for the latest market losses: the solar eclipse. According to Jane Bowles, a financial astrologer, eclipses are often associated with share losses—the 1987 crash occurred just 12 days after an eclipse. Ms Bowles, writing with co-author Graham Bates, predicted in 1994 that this August would prove difficult for investors. She said: “This eclipse promises to be one of the worst of the century.” Times, 11 August.

Nice work! 

Union bosses have clocked on for record salaries after inflation-busting wage rises of more than five times those won for their members. The biggest pay rise went to Derek Hodgson, hard-Left leader of the Communication Workers Union representing postal and telephone workers. His pay and perks package rocketed by nearly 30 percent to £92,000, compared with an average 4.5 percent increase for most workers. Hodgson was closely followed by Lew Adams, outgoing chief of rail union ASLEF, who received a 23 percent rise. Adams, who was ousted by a member of Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, saw his basic wage rise from £52,980 to £65,073. Pension and perks bumped the package to £105,489. The increases are revealed in figures compiled and realised by the Certification Office, which regulates trade unions. Mail on Sunday, 18 July.

Life in the capitalist class

Her monthly florist’s bills are more than $5,000 alone. And her frock habit is legendary: she is the one who is said to have paid £350,000 for a single outfit from Chanel. But who’s counting when your jewellery collection includes a single 30.34 carat diamond worth more than $2 million? Observer Magazine, 8 August.

Life on the scrap heap 

Last winter, 20,000 older people died from cold-related illnesses—with adequate insulation in their homes many of them would have lived. Even the mildest winters can be lethal to vulnerable older people. As soon as the temperature drops, many have to choose whether to keep their heating on—or eat. They simply can’t afford to do both . . . Elsie’s home is so poorly insulated that heating it adequately is almost impossible-—and certainly more than her pension allows for. “I’m frightened to put my heating on for very long because I’m on Income Support. When it gets really cold I stay in bed to keep warm.” With your help, we can insulate homes like Elsie’s to make them more energy efficient and reduce fuel bills. Leaflet from Help the Aged and Scottish Gas.

Feudalism lives on 

There are tens of thousands of bonded labourers living in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, despite a 1992 law outlawing the practice, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The group has freed 7,500 people since 1995, when it started raids on plantations so remote that few people ever venture there . . . A video the group secretly made in 1996 shows dozens of male labourers in leg irons, while at work cutting cane on a farm near Hyderabad. The group estimates that there are roughly 50,000 bonded labourers in Southern Sindh. Most are low-caste Hindus from the nearby Thar Desert, a group that remained in the area when Britain’s Indian colony split in 1947 into primarily Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Because most labourers come from traditional nomadic communities and are illiterate, they are helpless to defend their rights. Boston Sunday Globe, 18 July.

Owing space 

News that the private company SpaceDev plans to claim the near-Earth asteroid Nereus as its own property is an exciting boost for the belief that the Solar System will be colonised by private industry. Space-Dev’s chief executive, James Benson, doesn’t know whether his proposed take-over of Nereus will prove legal, but nobody else does either. Space treaties prohibit nations from owning celestial bodies, but say nothing about private companies . . . industrial chemists in space will be able to make and sell virtually anything. They will create a trading economy that will be entirely self-sufficient. But since it will require very long term investment—although there will be short term profits—there will be no room up there for terrestrial politicians with their five-year attention span. In space, the capitalist will be king. Astronomy Now, 11 August.

New Labour copies Old Labour 

In an unusually direct intervention, Mr Howarth said the government “fully supports the employers”, regards fire-fighters conditions as “outmoded and unjustified” and believes strike action would be a “relic of an old and discredited confrontational approach to industrial relations”. Tony Blair is understood to have discussed proposals by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, for the government to outlaw industrial action in the fire service and impose binding arbitration, but decided not to act until a national strike is called . . . And with a shortage of military fire engines and the armed forces overstretched in the Balkans, ministers have been warned against being drawn into a showdown with a popular group of public service workers. Guardian, 7 August.

Correction: “Ice-Cold Death" (1985)

From the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the item “Ice-Cold Death" in the Running Commentary feature in the March Socialist Standard we stated that blood pressure rises when a person is suffering from hypothermia. In fact, this should have read that blood pressure falls; the effect is as stated — the patient may have a stroke caused by cerebral thrombosis, an effect of hypertension. Apologies.

Editors.

The N.H.S.—Was it worth it? (1975)

From the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are still many people who will tell you that the British NHS offers the best medical attention, for patients of all social strata, in the world. In fact, nearly all its original claims have proved to be miserably false.

When discussing the “welfare state” one still often hears the completely false claim that “nobody starves to death in Britain any more.” Thousands of people die here every year from lack of food, clothing, blankets and fuel. The respectable term for this starvation is ‘hypothermia”. Strictly translated this means “low heat” and indicates that the victims suffer from an insufficiency of calories to support their basic vital metabolic needs. They starve from lack of calories.

An article in the November 8th 1974 issue of the periodical General Practitioner reads as follows:

Dr. Geoffrey Taylor, of Ilminster, near Taunton, retired Professor of Medicine in Lahore, India, and a leading campaigner in the nutrition and problems of old people, plans to ask local health officials and Somerset County Council to help him set up a team of volunteer street wardens.

These wardens, armed with room thermometers, will check the homes of old people to make sure the rooms they are living in have a temperature of at least 70°F. If necessary, they will block draughts, check insulation and advise the old people to live entirely in one room. “Very large numbers of old people suffer heart attacks as a result of extreme cold”, he said.

“About 700,000 have core temperatures of 95.5°F, and are on the verge of hypothermia in mild winters. In cold winters there must be three or four times that number. It is a question of action now. Our problem is getting volunteers”.

But the warden scheme is only a short-term answer. Dr. Taylor is hoping to persuade councils to back his long term scheme for district heating. He explained: "District heating uses waste material now thrown away to boil water which can heat homes.

Elderly invalids living alone are often victims of loneliness and depression. Rightly, they should have constant nursing attention and company. They often need frequent cleaning and changing and assistance with feeding and using the toilet. In the enormous numbers of homes that have no fixed bath or inside lavatory this is very difficult. Relatives with their own family responsibilities often just cannot properly cope with these cases. Yet there is a great shortage of hospitals for the frail and old — with waiting lists which will become even longer — since Mrs. Barbara Castle has intimated not only will there be no increased expenditure in this field but expenditure will have to be less for some years to come. An article in the General Practitioner of July 13th 1973, reads:

Strongly associated with chronic disability were low income, age, widowhood and living alone. More than a third of all persons living alone were chronically limited by disability and this proportion rose to 44% in the over sixties.

The proportion of chronic sick varied between 35% and 41% in families with a total income of £5 to £12.50 a week.

So much for the Welfare State. Did we really “never have it so good?”

It was once boasted that the NHS would provide free specialist treatment for all, and that the needy would not have to suffer ill health any more because of their poverty. But now, with waiting periods of months for specialist appointments and years for routine operations, this is an empty promise. When told of these waiting lists workers often ask how much it would cost to “go private” and so have their case dealt with much sooner. When told the probable fee, some struggle to find it and others turn away amazed and disappointed. Yet another example of the broken promises and boasts of the NHS was that patients would be able to receive treatment without having to pay the monstrous prices of drugs. Yet now, being handed a prescription, poor patients sometimes ask if one or more of the items prescribed for their health can be deleted because finding the extra 20p is beyond them.

The profits of drug manufacturers are enormous but they claim that these are necessary, to plough funds back into research for new drugs. But it is well-known that many drug companies manufacture and sell products introduced by other firms under different proprietary names. Their subsequent propaganda often points out that their product is more than just a pharmacological equivalent because, say, it is better absorbed or has less side effects. This one drug may be bought at different prices, in different make-up and under different proprietary names. Admittedly some companies spend a lot on research and introduction of completely new drugs. Nevertheless, far more of their returns are spent on advertizing their own brands in opposition to the pharmaceutical equivalents made by others. Figures vary, but it has been said that in certain cases five times as much is spent on advertising them as on research.

In a sane order of society research would be made finding the most efficacious and side-effect-free product and this alone would be manufactured and used. Such massive duplication with its attendant wastage would then be pointless.

R. B. Gill

Cold Comfort (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A doctor has sent the following two items to us. First, a cutting from the Daily Mirror of 22nd December 1975.

  A thousand babies are doomed to die this winter — because their parents can’t afford the cost of heating their homes. This “slaughter of the innocents” has already begun with the deaths of 212 babies aged less than a year. This is on top of the normal infant mortality rate. The babies are dying of infections caused by the cold — mainly bronchitis and pneumonia, says the charity Child Poverty Action Group, in a report out today. The charity’s director, Mr. Frank Field, said yesterday: “Infant deaths are swinging wildly up . . . Recent huge increases in fuel prices are to blame. Thousands of people can’t afford to heat their homes. Mass disconnections are taking place.”

Second, a letter to the doctor from Beecham Research Laboratories, headed “Hypothermia: A complimentary aid to diagnosis.”

   This potentially fatal condition needs to be identified promptly . . . Many authorities are now calling for the routine use of special wide-range thermometers that operate throughout the hyporthermis and pyrexic range (75°F-105°F). We are very pleased to be able to offer you one of these wide-range thermometers with our compliments, and we are sure it will prove to be of value to you in your practice.

   The elderly also number amongst the patients who are ‘at risk’ from infection. Many doctors have found Magnapen to be particularly well-suited to the treatment of the more worrying infections such as seen in patients with acute-on-chronic bronchitis, cellulitis and otitis media . . . Please sign and return the enclosed reply-paid card and we shall ensure that you receive a wide-range thermometer with additional data on both hypothermia and Magnapen.

The doctor’s note to us says: “It’s an ill wind, isn’t it?”

Capitalist "Solutions" to Hypothermia (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The popular lie, often put forward by champions of Britain’s welfare state, that “no one starves to death here any more” has currently been exposed as such by the recent high-lighting in the media of the condition known as hypothermia.

But hypothermia (or “low heat”) is nothing new. Old people have died by the thousand from lack of food, fuel and clothing for years under the welfare state. But only lately has there been significant publicity about it. From the Sunday Express 1st February 1976 we learn, “Soaring fuel costs which lead to thousands of old people economising on home heating were blamed yesterday for a massive rise in the number of elderly patients being taken to hospital suffering from effects of cold . . . One theory being put forward for the higher than ever toll is that pensioners, many living alone on small incomes, are frightened of using heating and lighting appliances because of the cost. So they sit at home without heating . . . Pensions, with the present price of electricity and food, don’t go very far”

From the Daily Mirror 2nd February 1976: “The tragedy spotlights the problem of hypothermia which claims an average of 45,000 lives in Britain each year . . . Ninety thousand old people have been given a twin death sentence—by the coldest weather for four years and rocketing fuel prices . . . The Department of Health and Social Security recommends a minimum temperature of 70 for homes. Yet a survey shows that 89 per cent of pensioners’ living-room temperatures were below the Government standard. And that was before the increased fuel prices.”

To the Socialist the answer to the problem would seem obvious. Food, fuel and clothing, like all other needs should be freely available (not only to the elderly) to all human beings.

But what are the capitalist solutions to the problem? Call in on elderly neighbours to find out if anyone is actually dying. (Milkmen are regarded as being useful here.)

Doctors can obtain special wide range thermometers so that if they find a cold, collapsed old patient in a cold house, lacking food, fuel and clothing they’ll be able to pinpoint the diagnosis.

And, so public-spirited is the Daily Mirror that on 7th February 1976 they devoted a front page to the problem. Indeed, the way they launched their “campaign” one almost got the impression they were offering to finance food, fuel and clothing themselves. But, in fact, what they came up with was a free “cut-out” sos sign for those dying of hypothermia to put in their windows for the milkman etc. to see. And listen to the further contributions of these philanthropic crusaders:- “If you know old people who live on their own, make sure they have a copy of the warning poster” (and the Daily Mirror supplied it free remember.) "If you see the Daily Mirror's SOS sign in a window, see what help you can give. Knock on the door and give all the help you can”.

But the altruistic Mirror also gives a good capitalistic reason for donating SOS signs to the dying. It quotes Mr. Hugh Faulkner, director of Help the Aged who “welcomes the Mirror's campaign.” “The plight of the old is frightening this winter. The winter weather has really hit us now. Food and fuel bills are higher than ever before and pensions have just not kept pace with inflation. Someone, sometime will eventually realise it is cheaper for the nation to keep old people warm and well fed in their own home than have them go to hospital.” (our italics). So please help “the nation” to do it cheaper, chaps!

Still the Mirror:- “Everyone can help to alleviate the suffering and misery which is piled on old people year by year”, (they don’t say by whom). Then, in thick type:- “Today, the Daily Mirror appeals to everyone to help the old to survive winter. Be a busybody and you could save a life.” Then a broad hint that the neighbours should come up with the necessary funds: - “Check that the old man or woman living down the road is all right. Make sure they are warm and have enough food. If not, get in touch with the local welfare services and run a few errands to stock up their food larder.” Other advice the beneficent Mirror gives free is:- “make sure there is an efficient heater. . . . and they need at least one hot meal a day and frequent snacks and hot drinks.”

Actually, another newspaper takes the prize. The Stoke-on-Trent Evening Sentinel comes up with this:- “A cheap thermometer to alert old people to the dangers of cold and hypothermia went on sale at Stafford today. The thermometer at 20p, is being marketed by an Essex firm as a non-profit making venture.”

Four chemists in the Stafford area have agreed to sell the thermometers which are blue and white. When the temperature falls to the blue zone—below 60 Fahrenheit—it indicates danger to the old people from cold. “This may not save lives but could alert people who may not realise they are in danger”, said Mrs. Jane York, the firm’s social representative. “The see-at-glance thermometer could also warn social workers and visitors of old people at risk,” explains Mrs. York.

What useful gifts—stick one of these on their wall and the pensioner dying of cold will be able to see exactly why.

It makes one marvel at the bitter irony and cynicism which can unconsciously be spewed out by people not wanting to face the obvious. Were it not so tragic it would be hilarious.

R. B. Gill

How to arrest the police (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of the people who have come through the experience archly known as "helping the police with their enquiries" will be unsurprised at the case of the five youths beaten up by policemen in the Holloway Road and by the attempt to cover it all up. It is true to say that illegal violence is freely used by the police — perhaps to induce some hapless suspect to put their name to an incriminating statement, or to put down over-effective pickets, or even at random on the streets. In the first issue of Today (whose proprietor has cause to be thankful to the police) Derek Jameson protested: "The streets of London are becoming like New York with young coppers running wild". That may be a typical journalist’s overstatement but what can't be denied is that recent events have not helped to give the police a happy image. Last year Scotland Yard paid out a record £207,537 in damages to people who had been assaulted or "improperly" treated by their officers. One case outside London involved the Manchester police in agreeing damages of £2,000 to a deaf, disabled man who was beaten up by three policemen and left bleeding on a cold December night. What is remarkable about the recent notorious events is not so much that they happened as that they were publicised. Nor is it exceptional, that the police should find it difficult to unmask culprits in their ranks. Blair Peach was bludgeoned to death by a member of the Special Patrol Group when the streets were swarming with police yet his killer has never been officially identified.

In spite of these examples — and others like the police operations during the coal strike (of which more later) or how the Wiltshire police dealt with the Stonehenge hippy convoy or the incidents which sparked off the riots in Brixton and Tottenham — British capitalism cannot be described as a police state. Whatever happens behind the cell doors, there is a legal protection of the rights and safety of suspects in police hands. When the police deny those rights they are acting outside the law. whereas a police state would legally sanction any degree of repression. In practice this may well be the sort of thin distinction to wring hollow laughter from anyone who has been interrogated by the British police, or who knows of someone who has mysteriously died while in police custody. So yes. there is a problem; how do we deal with it? How do we control the police?

A favourite response of the left wing to these questions is that the police should be made "accountable", should carry out their job through popular consent. In fact "police accountability” and "policing by consent" are slogans almost as popular among left-wingers as "Second Front Now" and "Nationalise the Mines" used to be. In practical terms, they mean that the police should be answerable to, and so controlled by, some elected local body. Through a little disconnected logic, the argument then proceeds to claim that this would make the police democratic because they would be operating within the wishes of the majority. The case was put by Margaret Simey, who chaired the Merseyside Police Committee:

  I believe that over the past five years, the Merseyside Police Authority can claim to have explored the day-to-day actuality of whether, and if so, how policing by consent can be made a reality. All the work we have done in scrutinising our own responsibilities for finance and administration and in striving to involve the public in the provision of the service, convinces me that policing by consent is practically possible. (Guardian, 7 March 1986).

Hacking through the luxuriant verbiage of that statement, we come to an awkward question: if the people of Granby Ward in Toxteth, which Margaret Simey represents as a County Councillor, should decide as a majority to eke out their dole by helping themselves to essentials like food and clothes, how would this relate to policing by consent? Would the police themselves consent to it? The theory sounds cosily reassuring but, like all left wing nostrums, it is crippled by some basic flaws.

There are in fact examples of the police operating under what might be described as majority consent and control but these are not helpful to the likes of Margaret Simey. In the Deep South states of America the police have often been open and assertive agents of racist repression. Far from protecting human rights and safety they have been known to collude blatantly with, or even themselves commit, the murder of black people or of civil rights workers. And this happened although the major law enforcement officers — police chiefs, sheriffs — were popularly elected. Because the majority in the South wanted blacks to be repressed, the police were more or less mandated to act as racist thugs. Such examples as exist in this country are no more helpful. The GLC had something called the Police Committee which could be relied on to fulminate against excesses but which had no real influence and which the Metropolitan Police, which is answerable to the Home Secretary, effectively ignored. It is a similar story in those places — like Simey's Merseyside — which had Police Committees with closer links with the police. They were in persistent conflict with their chief constables — notable among them were Anderton of Greater Manchester and Oxford of Merseyside — who took little account of the committee's opinions. Simey described this:

  The unwelcome truth is that though much bombast is uttered about the principle of accountability. the stark reality is that the machinery for measuring that it works in practice has rusted up to the point at which it is virtually unusable.

Which brings us to the question that, if the police are to be accountable, who or what are they accountable to? The left wing argue that it must be to the community. But it is the job of the police to arrest and prosecute people for stealing, for taking wealth which they as a class have produced but to which they have no right unless they can buy it. When the police are called to arrest someone for shoplifting they are not acting in the interests of the community, which demand that all human beings have free access to things like food and clothing. They are acting in the interests of the owners of the shop.

Another example is the work of the police in helping to break last year's coal strike. Since the miners were defeated the National Coal Board have pressed on with their programme of closures. Nearly 30 pits have ceased production and over 35,000 miners have left the industry, with many more in prospect. Yet while the coal lay uncut and the miners were being labelled as redundant, the suffering among old people during the cold during February exposed — as if this was again necessary — how much need there is in the community for fuel. One survey (Sunday Times, 2 March 1986) of pensioners' homes in Croydon found that on average their living rooms were heated to 14.7°C and their bedrooms to 8.8°C (at the same time the House of Lords was enduring 21.1°C). In such conditions old people die of the cold — through hypothermia. chest infections, accidents caused by numbed senses. Hospitals were overwhelmed; one in Scotland was expecting 20 cases of hypothermia a day and a consultant geriatrician in North London predicted an extra 8,000 deaths for every degree below average in winter (Observer, 2 March 1986).

So whose interests were the police asserting, when they helped to break the strike? Certainly not those of the pensioners shivering and dying in their homes, nor of the nurses and doctors battling against the effects of cold-induced sickness and accidents. They were asserting the fact that under this social system coal and all other wealth will be produced only when it is profitable, regardless of human need. They were reminding us that we live in a society based on the class ownership of the means of life, which means the denial of access to wealth — coal. food, clothes or whatever — to the majority.

It is quite clear that there is a conflict between the function of the police and the real interests of the community. The police exist to enforce the minority property rights of capitalism, with all that they entail — the privileges of the parasitical minority, the poverty of the productive majority. That is why the police cannot encourage people, however needy, to help themselves to wealth. That is why, when the miners resisted the capitalist principle that the ''uneconomic" production of coal must cease, they met the opposition of the police, one of whose functions is to enforce that principle. Those functions ensure that the police cannot be a democratic organisation. They cannot, for example, publicise that they are about to raid the home of someone suspected of handling stolen property. They cannot consult every constable whether they would agree to go out to intercept a bunch of armed robbers. Bodies like police committees, and left wing theories like "police accountability" and "policing by consent", exist on the false assumption that capitalism can be refashioned into a benign, humane, open society and that the capitalists' privileged position can somehow be related to the interests of the community. These are clashes between reality and delusion, between the deceptions of reformism and the inexorable demands of a society based on class ownership. What it amounts to is that the police are accountable — to the class who employ them and to the privileged interests of that class. Policies for reforming the police out of their character conflict with that reality and are doomed to impotence. Discussions about how to control, or democratise, the police are futile.

There is one last vital fact to be considered. At every election the working class vote for capitalism to continue — which means for class privilege, state coercion, police repression, to continue. People like Margaret Simey airily ignore that fact but it will not go away until the working class face the realities of capitalism and of their own power to abolish the system. But the grim outlook is that many more workers will be beaten and killed by the police before our class comes to trust themselves in a truly democratic society.

Ivan

Voice From the Back: The Charity Fallacy (2014)

The Voice From the Back column from the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Charity Fallacy

There are many examples of the madness of capitalism but surely this short, stark statement by Oxfam pinpoints the brutal inequality of this insanity: ‘The world’s 85 richest people own the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest. The wealth of the super-rich grows greater whilst world poverty bites deeper’ (Times, 8 November). Oxfam herein concisely expose the madness of the production for profit system but their proposed solution is completely useless. They believe that charity is a solution and claim that if they get enough donations they can solve the problem. It is not charity that is the answer but the complete revolutionary transformation to a society based on common ownership and production solely for use.

Poppies And Poppycock

Under the headline ‘Joy and song bloom with poppies at the Tower’, the following piece of news appears: ‘As the last of the poppies was planted in the Tower’s moat … most of the attention has concentrated on the extraordinary crowds that have queued patiently every day to see the display of 888,246 ceramic poppies, one for every British and colonial life lost in the First World War’ (Times, 8 November). One spectator is reported as saying it was fantastic and when the crowd burst into song the crowd absolutely loved it. It is understandable that newspapers are ‘celebrating’ the event, after all it is their job to promote mindless patriotism, but why are workers doing the same? They must lead particularly strange lives if the deaths of 888,246 workers in their masters’ quarrels lead them to this outlandish behaviour.

Mamma It’s Cold Inside

The headline announced the chilling fact that an elderly person dies every seven minutes due to fuel poverty. The article goes on to explain that millions of pensioners are worried that they will not be able to keep warm this winter. ‘Every winter 25,000 old people in England and Wales do not survive the bitter weather – 206 deaths a day. Those living in the coldest houses figure most in the excess winter death rates and illness statistics according to Age UK’ (Daily Express, 11 November). Needless to say this problem does not affect the owning class.

Hollywood Fantasy

Everybody is aware of all the old repeated military movies that the TV churns out. John Wayne or some such hero performs wonderful acts of bravery against the enemy. It is a complete fantasy of course. This is nearer the truth. ‘Jeremy Sears, a Marine who had served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, walked onto a shooting range outside San Diego on Oct. 6, placed a handgun to his head and calmly pulled the trigger. It was a local news story but didn’t attract attention outside San Diego for the most tragic of reasons. Military suicides have become so common – since 2001, more active-duty U.S. troops have killed themselves than have been killed in Afghanistan’ (Washington Post, 11 November). War, far from being an ennobling experience is degrading to human beings and leads to these tragedies.

Homeless For Christmas

The number of tenants homeless in England and Wales evicted from their houses has hit record levels, with cuts to social security among the factors leading to more than 100 evictions a day. ‘Number of tenants evicted hits record bid as benefit cuts slide. Figures show that more than 30,000 tenants thrown out by the end of September which social landlords say is due to bedroom tax’ (Guardian, 13 November). Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that 11,000 were repossessed by bailiffs between July and September, the highest quarterly figure since records began in 2000. Shelter forecast that 90,000 kids will be homeless this Christmas.

Another Winter Of Discontent

With the advent of winter the government has had to allocate an extra £700m extra for A & E, but the rest of the NHS system is under pressure as these recent figures show: ‘90,000 more patients waiting for an operation than a year ago. 62 percent day target for cancer treatment missed for last 6 months. 24 per cent of patients say it’s ‘not easy’ to get through to GP by phone’ (Guardian, 14 November). Ever helpful, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that there will be pressure to deal with an ageing population and suggested that a visit to the pharmacy rather than a hospital may be advisable!

Sting in the Tail: 30 Wasted Years (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

30 Wasted Years

The Labour Party is often described as "the mass party of the working class" yet the national membership of its youth wing, the Young Socialists, is now only 350.

When the YS was formed 30 years ago various Trotskyist groups moved in to control it. Recently it has been dominated by Militant but in earlier days It was Keep Left, another group of Trots who were dominant

This Trotskyist influence has been such an embarrassment to the Labour Party that it will probably be glad when the YS finally dies.

So it's goodbye to those bear-garden conferences where the YS passed all those resolutions denouncing the party leaders along with just about every bit of Labour Party policy.

And what did all the rebelliousness mean? Absolutely nothing. Indeed many YS are now staid Labour Party officials, councillors and even MPs, the same kind of people they once spent so much time attacking. It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

Shop Steward's Dream

Tommy is a typical shop steward we know. When he speaks about "bread and butter" issues like overtime, sick pay and holidays he makes good sense, but on most other subjects he is a fount of prejudice and ignorance.

Prejudice? Jews are his pet hate although the Arabs ran them close during the Gulf war and you should hear him on about "Darkies"! By the way, Tommy always votes Labour.

Ignorance? The other day he was on about health -

  The rich aren't any healthier than us. You're either born with good health or you aren't. Money doesn't come into it.

Of course the left-wing with their absurdly idealised view of shop stewards would see Tommy as part of the "industrial vanguard in the struggle against capitalism".

But Tommy’s ideas are little different from those of most other workers or even shop stewards. His vision of a better world goes no further than society as it is but with more job security, a few pence extra on the hourly rate and Neil Kinnock in Downing Street

You Dirty Rat

Alastair Cooke, in his "Letter from America", (Radio 4) told an interesting story about the mayor of New York who, faced with a massive deficit, announced the probable slashing of public spending (surprise, surprise).

Among the possible casualties could be the sanitation department, which could result, according to experts, in an increase in the rat population of one million.

The mayor, who is either a shrewd vote-catcher or very naive, came up with what he undoubtedly thought was a unique proposal. He invited the "ordinary" people to come and tell him the solution to the city's problems. So for one week they queued up outside his office to lay it on him.

However, since there have been no reported cries of "Eureka" or the hip equivalent emanating from the inner sanctum, we can safely assume that none of the queuing hopefuls came up with the only solution; the abolition of the buying and selling system. All of which must have come as a relief to the capitalist class, not to mention the rats.

Caring Capitalism

Nowadays when capitalism is widely regarded as the altruistic saviour of mankind it comes as a pleasant surprise when someone sees it in its true colours.

Writing in The Independent (5 September) Suzanne Moore observes that while Gerald Ratner honestly described the cheap jewellery his shops sell as "crap", Anita Roddick of the Body Shop wraps her products in a haze of mysticism, 1960’s idealism and 1980's green awareness. By using her products you can, apparently, be healthier and do some ecological good at the same time.

Suzanne Moore sees Anita Roddick's guff as part of the growing trend to portray 1990's capitalism as a marriage of material values and spiritual good. Believe that, she says, and ". . . you'll believe that capitalism really can be "caring." and warns that behind this newer, softer, gentler-on-the-skin approach "business Is still basically about buying and selling."

She is mistaken, however, In thinking that — "any idea of a genuine alternative to capitalism is collapsing."

Socialists propose that capitalism be replaced by a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use. Now, Suzanne Moore that really would be a genuine alternative, wouldn’t it?

Cold Comfort

The thermal underwear company Damart in conjunction with the organisation Help the Aged recently produced a little leaflet entitled Hypothermia - The Chilling Facts.

Chilling facts indeed; the leaflet points out that compared with the number of summer time deaths an extra 40,000 elderly persons will die in a mild winter and in a harsh winter this will rise to 80,000.

In a section entitled So, Who Is At Risk? it has this to say:

  We know that two groups of older people are particularly 'at risk'. They are the very elderly — from late seventies onwards — who are more likely, because of the ageing process, to have low body temperatures.
  And they are the pensioners who receive supplementary benefits — studies show that they are more likely to be living alone, less likely to have central heating, less likely to use electric blankets and more likely to be underweight — all these factors can lead to a lower body temperature.

Among the proposed solutions to the problem the leaflet lists warm clothing, adequate domestic heating systems and a better diet. All of which isn't much consolation for those who are on supplementary benefit. The fact is that it is poor people who are dying from hypothermia.

It is not more legislation or better hand-outs the elderly poor need. What they must have if this scandalous state of affairs is to be ended is World Socialism.

That is the only society in which everyone young and elderly can have unrestricted access to all the food, clothing and heating that society can provide.

A Racist Utopia?

There Is a sunny utopia called Oranla. Scores of workers have gone there on the promise of a better life and hundreds more are expected soon.

In case any reader is tempted to follow them we should explain that Orania is a small "white homeland" in South Africa. It is owned by some rich Afrikaners who have ejected all the black people and imported unemployed white South Africans to do the menial jobs previously done by the blacks.

These white workers now complain that, besides being underpaid, their bosses, regard them as "white kaffirs"-

  "We can’t even sit down and have a smoke break or a chat. It's just work, work and more work all day long"

The Sunday Times (1 September) 

The bosses answer to this is a familiar one — there is no room for laziness in creating the new white nation. The Sunday Times says of Orania -

  It has a lot of appeal for blue-collar workers who have the most to lose from the new South Africa but what they don't realise is that they are going to have to do for the well-off, upper-class Afrikaners what the blacks used to do. A system of servitude based on race is being replaced by one based on class.

Hypothermia in the old (1986)

From the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every winter thousands of old people face the agonising choice of heating their homes or buying food. Unable to accumulate sufficient savings for retirement from the meagre wages paid during their working lives and forced to subsist on inadequate pensions, they spend time each winter huddled in blankets in badly heated homes, trying to make their small stock of food last until the next payment of their pension allowances. The onset of each spell of cold weather leads to considerable numbers of the elderly being admitted to hospital suffering from accidental hypothermia and, if the weather is particularly severe, the death toll can be quite high.

Hypothermia is a medical condition in which the central (or deep) body temperature falls below 35 degrees centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit). If a further fall in temperature continues unchecked the victim passes through the various stages of shivering (though sometimes this does not occur in the elderly), confusion, memory loss, abnormalities of heart rhythm and muscle rigidity, semi-consciousness, more serious heart abnormalities, irreversible coma and death. The condition is called "accidental hypothermia" to distinguish it from the short-term, deliberately induced, hypothermia for therapeutic reasons.

Unfortunately, accidental hypothermia can be caused by an interplay of factors — exposure; impaired regulation of body temperature; decreased metabolism; drugs. It is. therefore, extremely difficult to determine how much accidental hypothermia is due to living in cold conditions, or to poor nutrition leading to decreased metabolism, or to a combination of several causes of which poverty is the final straw. Hypothermia may also occur in the summer months, or even in hospital as a result of medical conditions which lower the metabolic rate.

Nevertheless, even when other factors are taken into consideration, elderly workers are prone to suffer from hypothermia because they are poor. More than half the substandard housing or property lacking in basic amenities is occupied by the elderly. It is much more difficult adequately to heat and keep warm in damp, draughty properties with outside toilets, which are also less likely to have central heating. Open fires can present a problem for the frail elderly who, because of poor social services, may then have to rely on the goodwill of relatives or neighbours to ensure that a fire is lit for them.

Where the "head" of a household is elderly the average income is only 53 per cent of that of all households (Central Statistical Office. 1976). The cost of heating, therefore, stretches the limited resources of most pensioners even when their homes are of a reasonable standard. Malnutrition may play a part in causing hypothermia and in Britain it is the elderly who are most likely to be its victims. In 1972 the DHSS stated that 3 per cent of the elderly suffer from malnutrition, and the Consumers' Association pointed out the close relationship between hypothermia and poverty a couple of years later.

The importance of hypothermia in the elderly was first recognised during the excessively cold winter of 1963, when 148 people died from the condition compared with only seven recorded deaths in 1957, although the number of certified deaths from accidental hypothermia does not provide a true total as many deaths are certified as due to bronchopneumonia without the underlying cause being detected. Indeed, accidental hypothermia in the elderly is not mentioned in medical books written before the second world war, or in nursing books written before the 1960s, although accidental hypothermia was a well known hazard for shipwrecked sailors immersed in cold water for long periods, and there must have been a high death toll during the winter of 1947 when power failures added to the difficulties of the severe weather conditions.

The reason for the failure to recognise the widespread dangers of accidental hypothermia for such a long time lies in the social organisation of capitalism. Medical resources are directed towards the "productive" members of the working class, as their continuation at work provides profits for their employers. The elderly, having ceased productive work, are at a disadvantage in competing for a share of the resources available — a disadvantage enhanced still further during a recession, when it is less profitable for capital to spend money maintaining a healthy workforce.

The elderly frequently have to put up with redundant workhouses as hospital accommodation when they fall ill. Geriatricians have to manage far more hospital beds than their consultant colleagues in acute medical and surgical specialties. At a symposium on geriatric medicine Dr Nagley described how, when he was seconded to the Western Road Infirmary, Birmingham in 1936, there were two doctors for 1,350 elderly patients and Dr Parnell stated that the North Birmingham Group had one consultant geriatrician for 548 beds while 144 longer-stay beds had no consultant at all. compared with 20 consultants responsible for 316 "acute'' beds in 1971 (Symposia on Geriatric Medicine, Vol.l. 1972).

The sheer pressure of work made accurate diagnosis extremely difficult and the pioneering geriatricians of the 1930s and 1940s had to battle against government indifference to the plight of the elderly, squalid hospital accommodation, scarce resources and the professional prejudices of their colleagues. Training in nursing care of the elderly was not included in the syllabus for student nurses until 1973, reflecting capitalism's lack of concern for the well being of "non-producers". Medical and nursing textbooks, in common with all goods, are produced for a market and the profit that can be made from them. Knowledge of hypothermia, therefore, no matter how important it may have been to prevent or treat the condition and save large numbers of elderly people from serious illness, was omitted because of lack of demand.

Although accidental hypothermia has now been well researched and documented the death toll continues. The response of governments has varied from exhortations to the public to be charitable —the "Be A Good Neighbour" scheme, while making cuts in public spending — to patronising advice — the Health Education Council's booklet advised the elderly to "Ask visitors if it seems cold to them in your house and take their advice". While it is quite possible for some old people to have defective regulation of body temperature, asking the advice of visitors is a poor substitute for having sufficient means to heat their homes properly. Victim blaming has been a recent government trend, emphasising individual responsibility for maintaining health. This trend disguises the social causes of poverty and disease and hampers the attempts of workers to control environmental and occupational hazards.

Financial help is available to assist pensioners with heating costs but it is confined to the poorest group who are in receipt of Supplementary Benefit. Grants are also available to help with house insulation but are not always claimed as they tend to be poorly publicised and many pensioners are not aware of them or find the spirit of condescending charity with which they are given offensive. In a study of hypothermia it was estimated that 700.000 people were "at risk" as a result of physical disability, low income and poor housing (Wicks. M.. Old and Cold. Hypothermia and Social Policy. Heinemann. 1978). Other studies have confirmed that one in eight pensioners are cold both by day and night in the winter.

Undoubtedly, better education could help to prevent some of the problems associated with cold weather. Lack of knowledge of the dangers of cold means that it is not unusual for bedrooms to be kept cool and windows left open in the mistaken belief that it is healthy, even in winter. Alcohol may be consumed late at night or before going outside in the cold to "keep out the cold". In fact alcohol dilates the blood vessels and. after an initial feeling of warmth, the body loses heat. Comparatively little is done to educate older people to such dangers because their health commands a low priority under a profit-oriented society.

Capitalism, in the pursuit of profit, is an inhumane society in which coal mines are closed while old people die of cold; food is thrown away while a quarter of a million pensioners suffer from malnutrition, media coverage is devoted to the trivial jaunts and extravagant spending of the parasitical royal family while pensioners remain ignorant of the risks of hypothermia.

Hypothermia is, on the whole, a disease of poverty: eighty-year-old millionaires are not taken to hospital suffering from the cold. It is the poor whose lives are placed in jeopardy and often, on discharge from hospital, returned to the same deprived circumstances which made them ill in the first place. Accidental hypothermia may be correct medical terminology but there is nothing accidental about a vicious social system which condemns its pensioners to an ice cold death while a minority of capitalists can live in luxury.

Carl Pinel

Running Commentary: Ice-cold death (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ice-cold death

Each winter, in this land of microchips and nuclear power stations, people die a primitive death through the cold. Sometimes this is caused by hypothermia, the reduction of the body's heat below a critical level. Others die of pneumonia or suffer strokes and heart attacks as the blood pressure is forced rapidly upwards by the cold.

According to the Sunday Times of 27 January, during three weeks in this year's cold spell, over a thousand people had to be treated in hospital for hypothermia. A consultant who has made a special study of the problem tells a grim story: about nine thousand deaths a year from straightforward hypothermia and several times that figure for deaths from diseases induced by the cold.

Of course this could all be avoided if only people like pensioners heated their homes properly, except that they, of all people, know how the expense of this would be an added stress in their everyday struggle to make ends meet.

There is, to be sure, an extra state allowance which can be paid to them when there is "exceptionally severe weather". This condition is officially defined according to temperature readings taken in different points and the level required to activate the extra allowance varies from point to point.

For example, when the bureaucrats in control of benefits for East Anglia, Essex and some parts of Bedfordshire were satisfied that the thermometer was reading -2.8°C at Honnington they allowed the payments. The rest of Bedfordshire was not so lucky: although they were just as cold they were covered by a different measuring point.

People who are forced to survive on a pension or some other state allowance are those who once depended on a wage. All their working life they have suffered the indignity of hawking their working abilities to an employer. When they are deemed no longer employable they face the even deeper degradation of scraping by — or not. as the case so often is — on niggardly state handouts. Provided, of course, they are able to navigate their way through the labyrinth of bureaucratic controls and checkpoints.

This is not a problem of age or of climate but of social class. Rich people are never rushed into intensive care through hypothermia. Cold weather need not be a problem; it is capitalism's social relationships which turn it into a killer. It should be abolished. Not the weather: capitalism.

Sailors’ tales

As if they don't already have enough to worry about, the unemployed now have to contend with the pound's falling exchange rate against the dollar and the rise in interest rates.

The dollar exchange rate was one of the earliest crises for British trade after the war. If only, we were told, we could get back to the good old days when the pound was worth about four dollars all would be well. The rate was then fixed by the Treasury; devaluation, when it came, was seen as the failure of the Labour government's wild political theories.

Since then many other alleged causes of he crises have held the stage for a while. We have heard about the Balance of Payments, the Gnomes of Zurich selling sterling short, inflation . . .  Each time, the workers have been told that they could cure the problem by tightening their belts, working harder, keeping wage rises small.

Whoever is Chancellor has assured us that he has been in charge, sensitively manoeuvring the financial controls to bring the situation into balance. Now we have Nigel Lawson, who described the interest rates panic of January as a storm which blew up largely through events outside his control and which would eventually blow itself out. "Meanwhile", he said, "we have battened down the hatches and the ship remains on course."

There is a familiar ring to these confident words. Nautical and meteorological metaphors have always been very popular with devious politicians. Harold Wilson described one of his government's crises as being "blown off course". Jim Callaghan greeted a brief respite with the advice "Steady as she goes". The message is that the troubles are temporary; if we put our trust in the captain and the crew the ship will soon arrive safely in port.

Both Labour and Tory governments have wrestled unsuccessfully with the same problems. Both have used the same empty excuses, the same comforting turns of phrase, to hide their impotence. Clearly, the matter goes beyond which particular capitalist party is in power and the workers have to think about taking over the ship for themselves.

Modern times

"I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent in their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities . . . The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages."

This quotation from the very end of Marx's pamphlet Value, Price and Profit, given initially as an address to the General Council of the International Working Men's Association in 1865, has a very modern ring. The women cleaners who work for Exclusive Cleaning Services on the army base at Deepcut in Surrey had their hourly rate cut from £1.71 to £1.60 in November last year. Then, in December, they found that their wages for the month embodied a further cut of 5 per cent to £1.52 without warning.

It is presumably on the grounds of this contractual issue of warning that they have sought the help of a solicitor. This is probably what has also caused the resignation of the firm's director for that region and the restoration of the hourly rate to £1.60. Only four of the fifty cleaners are reported to be in a trade union; but even if they all were, as long as Exclusive act within the letter of capitalist law, they cannot offer much resistance to wage cuts in the present economic climate.

Questions from a reader (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I have read the literature you sent me, after my response to your advert in the New Musical Express, and have a few questions to ask. It would be helpful if your answers were numbered as I have listed them.

        Thank you.

Nicky Wiy

Slough, Berks

If world socialism is to come about democratically, must you wait until every country allows the vote?

If you mean literally "every country", then the answer is "no". We certainly don't envisage waiting about for the very last person to catch up. Since the impetus towards socialism would already be having a tremendous impact on the world political stage and, in particular, in countries still without the necessary democratic processes (if any), we don't think there will be anything causing us to wait around. The rapid and widespread adoption of socialist ideas would alter fundamentally the nature and quality of world politics and impart the necessary impetus towards the transformation. The wheel of history would then rotate to the critical point-of-no-return. A socialist majority of the world's population would have sufficient confidence and political power to be able to announce the count down of the lift-off for socialist revolution.

The needs and inner dynamics of modem capitalism, whether the free enterprise or state capitalist kind, make unavoidable the eventual global extension of the limited forms of political democracy sufficient for our purpose. The real problem is here and now — how best to reach the point at which we who have access to the seats of power start exercising this enormous influence around the world. And that requires all of us to work unstintingly to achieve socialist majorities whenever we can — right now!

If there is no police force after socialism is established, who will enforce any laws that remain after those relating to property are repealed — e.g. those relating to assault, GBH, murder, etc?

There will be no laws remaining to deal with socially unacceptable acts of violence such as those to which you refer. All law and jurisprudence now arise from, and are geared to. the needs of the present acquisitive, aggressive, anxiety-ridden system; they are primarily protective of property. "Good public order" serves to keep the dispossessed in their place, their hands off the property of the owning class and their understandable outbursts of anger, violence and frustration under control by the state.

There may be anti-social acts of violence after the establishment of socialism; neither we nor future communities would want to shirk the issue. But each will have to be considered on its merits (or demerits) by each community — no longer motivated by concepts of retribution, revenge or fear of a break down of "law and order". There may well be cases where society's expressed revulsion may not be enough or appropriate — in which case the democratically arrived at decision to apply the ultimate sanction of the minimum necessary restraint, or enforced isolation from those thought to be at risk, may have to be made by that community.

Although the fundamental changes in relationships and attitudes and the quite different social milieu of free access and equality will remove the cause of most violent acts, the members of a community could not be expected to stand idly by on the rare occasions when a member of that community behaves irresponsibly. Socialist mores, common sense and self-discipline would determine what was acceptable and what was unacceptable, rather than invoking the concept of laws, crimes and punishments or commanding obedience by coercion.

When socialism is established, will those people who are in prison as a result of breaking property laws during capitalism be released?

Yes.

On the back page of the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard, the article gives me the impression that examinations have no value. If doctors, medical students, etc. were not tested theoretically and practically, how would we know if they were competent enough to do operations or to carry out experiments which would yield meaningful results?

This article. "Making the grade", was not intended to give the impression that all examinations are valueless and would be dispensed with in socialism. But certainly the experience of most people would suggest that, though the possession of an educational or professional certificate may serve as an entree to some jobs, it alone is not necessarily an indicator of real ability or comprehension. Indeed the concentration of tunnel-visioned parents, pupils and teachers on "achievement" —memorising fragmented, unrelated facts to meet the challenge of the exam paper — can lead to bizarre, not to say horrifying results.

The author was also emphasising the nature of the examination rat-race (Japan provides a good example) and the need for schooling to be tailored to meet employers' demands for efficient, standardised workers, graded appropriately to ensure value for money.

Within socialism aptitudes, mental and physical dexterity, skills, courage, ingenuity and inventiveness will be encouraged and developed in all. Of course, if someone is called on to perform a complicated operation on a patient or on a computer. there will be experienced persons in attendance who will have been delegated to ensure that all goes well. Those individuals will be the contemporary beneficiaries of socially transmitted knowledge and experience — none of whom would think of themself as exalted, as some consultants do today. In socialism no one could be motivated by the prospect of status or material advantage.

In your yellow leaflet Questions and Answers about Socialism, you say that thousands of people in this country die each winter of hypothermia. I would like to know from what source you obtained these vague statistics. In the book Consuming Secrets (page 224) there is listed official Government figures on deaths from hypothermia. They are: for 1970 - 16 deaths; 1971 - 15; 1972 - 21; 1973 - 22; and for 1974 - 17. I admit these are old figures and give no indication of those who suffer from hypothermia but do not die. The number who so suffer is about 5 per 1.000 OAPs. However, I do not see how the number of deaths has risen by approximately 8,000 per cent in eleven years.

Government figures on the number of people dying of cold each year in Britain are not dependable. But even if their very low figures are accepted. that still leaves large numbers of people (hundreds) dying of cold every winter. That would be bad enough, but there are reasons for believing that the real figure is in thousands rather than hundreds.

Each year tens of thousands more people die in the winter than in the summer; 80 per cent of these are over 65. In the ten years before 1980 the death rate was 17 per cent higher in winter than in summer for those aged 60-69; 20 per cent higher for those aged in their 70s and 25 per cent higher for those over 80. On average, approximately 45,000 more old people died each winter than each summer. In 1982, when government figures put the number of deaths from the cold in the 600s. 42,500 more people aged over 65 died in the winter months than the summer ones. We accept that not all of them died of hypothermia (some died of other conditions made worse by the cold) but it is highly unlikely that of 40,000 plus extra deaths, less than 1.000 can be attributable to lack of protection against the cold. In Sweden, where the sharp contrasts between summer and winter temperatures do not affect some areas, there is no equivalent rise in winter deaths among the old.

Many old people are not found until some time after they die. As a result, doctors do not know their body temperatures near to the time of death and hypothermia can neither be proved nor disproved. Geriatric specialists do not give a figure, but suggest that large numbers of deaths caused by the cold are undiagnosed because of this delay in examining the body.

Many doctors are reluctant to write on a death certificate that a person has died of the cold because of the stigma attached to this way of dying. Pressure is put on doctors by families, anxious to hide the fact that they have neglected an elderly relative and by local authorities, whose Social Service Departments fear that a large number of deaths in their area caused by the cold will reflect on them. Doctors involved in the study of death resulting from the cold acknowledge the existence of these strong pressures.

A very important reason for the false picture given by the government figures is that the BMA has quite arbitrarily fixed a body temperature above which a person is said not to be suffering from hypothermia - 95°F. The official measurement of normal body temperature is 98.4°F. So, according to the BMA. a person in their 70s, 80s or 90s can be found dead with an internal body temperature which is 3.8°F lower than that considered healthy for an active, young person and a doctor is not permitted to state that they have died of the cold.

In a survey carried out by the Medical Research Council in 1972 (findings published in the British Medical Journal, January 1973) it was discovered that one in ten old people examined were suffering discomfort or illness as a result of their body temperatures being under 98.4°F. If that figure is applied to the 65+ population in 1986 we can say that 900,000 old people are now living in what the MRC defined as hypothermic conditions. Of course, not all of these will die of the cold, but it is probable that tens of thousands will and likely that hundreds of thousands will die earlier than they might due to the cold. Clearly, the energy exists to provide warmth for all of these people.

Malcolm Wicks, one of the researchers involved in the above-mentioned MRC survey and report, has stated that "We know that there are tens of thousands of deaths each winter caused by the cold". Most medical and geriatric specialists accept Wicks as the leading authority on this subject (see his book. Old and Cold). The question is,  do we believe Wicks and the medical profession or the government?

Please also see the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard for the article "Hypothermia in the old".

How seriously does the SPGB take conservation?

The Socialist Party has frequently expressed its anger at the waste and the despoliation which capitalism generates. We are fully aware that the profit system poses a serious threat to the environment and have been sounding the alarm about the state and future of the world's ecology for decades. We contend that it demonstrates the urgent need to establish world-wide socialism. Then, attention to need would take its proper place alongside unjaundiced consideration of the health of the world's population, biosphere and resources. The conservation lobby, though deserving credit for exposing the details of this threat, would do well to bear in mind that what enrages them are symptoms of a sick world economic system; a cure can only be obtained by removing the cause of the sickness.

I have only been eligible to vote since last March, but I have never seen any candidates for the SPGB. If socialism is to be brought about democratically, candidates should be in every constituency in the country. This does not seem to be happening and I wonder how high this issue is on the Party's list of priorities?

The Socialist Party gives electoral activity a high priority and seeks to put up candidates in every constituency, national and local, whenever it can. That we at present only manage to contest a few constituencies is simply a reflection of lack of financial and political support. Meanwhile, we work energetically in all avenues open to us to inform and persuade workers as to what is in their best interests.

Editors.