The Labour Party in Perspective by M. Blum. (1950)

From the June 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leon Blum, whose death was announced recently, was a Social Democrat—that is, a reformist of the Labour type who, while using the name “Socialist,” took part in the administration of capitalism whenever allowed to, holding ministerial posts at times. However, he seems to have understood the position of such reformists far more clearly than the British Labour Party; for in a fraternal “Letter to British Socialists” published in Tribune during the election (17/2/50) he made the following observations, which must have perturbed even readers of Tribune (who are accustomed to regard themselves as the lonely conscience of the Labour Party): —

“ My comrades of the British Labour Party . . .

“[In France] the Socialists have maintained all the essential economic and social reforms which have been introduced since the liberation, despite a counterattack by capitalist reaction.” (Our italics.)

He sympathises with the British Labour Party in office:—

“There is perhaps no more difficult task than that of a government working within the framework of a capitalist society and having neither the power nor the mandate to transform it completely at one blow." “ It must defend at the same time both the special interests of the workers and the general interest of the nation —which are not always identical.” This surely is only possible if the interest of the nation is equated to that of a minority, for those same workers are also the overwhelming majority of the nation.

“The Labour Government has . . . achieved a number of economic and social reforms . . . without changing the existing class structure . .. [The Conservatives] will interfere with scarcely any of its striking achievements.”

This certainly makes clear the considerable common ground the Labour Party shares with its opponents, and this worries Tribune quite enough as it is. But before his British comrades have risen from their gloom he goes on:—

“European capitalism . . . no longer maintains free competition, but moves towards monopoly capitalism, which is concerned above all with securing legal protection for its profits. It is incapable of offering a solution which will conform to its principles for to-day’s weighty problems.”

Ah, this is more what we are used to—general attacks on the idea of profit. One simply does not attack the Labour Party, old man. Recognise the difficulties, and all that. But Blum is not yet done with his unwitting wounding of his British friends—he deals a blow at the Labour Party’s belief that State control and/or ownership can be equated to Socialism in the following paragraph.

“The history of Soviet Russia proves another truth which no Marxist could have predicted fifty years ago and which I myself should have rejected outright in my youth. It is evident now that even a complete and revolutionary transformation of all property rights does not automatically lead to the true emancipation of the worker. In Soviet Russia the capitalist system of property has been completely destroyed. Yet a régime of wage labour persists, the material conditions of the workers remain miserable, and elementary liberties are pitilessly crushed.” (In point of fact of course only the private capitalist system of property has been abolished.)

The attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain has from its foundation been quite clear about the feasibility or otherwise of Socialism either “in one country” or in any society in which production and education are not at a high level and which has not developed the habit of democracy. Articles from The Socialist Standard on the Bolshevik regime from its inception are collected in our pamphlet, “Russia Since 1917,” and will be seen to be perfectly consistent about its oppressive and non-Socialist character. There is nothing particularly clever or clairvoyant in this, merely an absence of the self-delusion afflicting the Communist Party. In any case, it is regrettable M. Blum never picked up a Socialist Standard, if not fifty then forty-six years ago, for he would not have had to confess such disappointment.

In his closing remarks M. Blum says: “ [In] Britain under the influence of the Labour Government . . . the capitalist system of property has not yet been abolished,” thus nailing the Labour lie “Five years of Socialism have brought us, etc.” And having completely undermined the morale of the Labour Party, who thought they were after something different, he finally wishes them luck at the hands of the fickle workers, who as events have turned out cannot be relied upon to know when they are well off, and awaits the poll “ with great excitement.”

Before the war Mr. Attlee wrote a pot-boiler called “The Labour Party in Perspective.” Now the Labour Party really has been put in perspective, but by Mr. Attlee’s Gallic counterpart. Whether M. Blum was actually trying to educate his British comrades (he would keep calling them that, and it must have upset them), or whether he took it for granted that any party with pretensions to being Socialist would at least have read “all that Marx stuff, you know,” we can only guess. If an attempt at education, it seems doomed to failure when it is remembered that the Labour Party thinks of Tribune as its black sheep, edited by people who don't go into division as they are told and have nothing better to do than to spill inconvenient beans about Seretse and the (Unilever) East Africa Co. monopoly. In the issue of 31/3/50 Ian Mikardo opines that Harold Laski died heartbroken by the last five years of Labour government. It will be interesting to watch the fate of the Tribune group in the mighty democratic party which (also says Mikardo) expelled Zilliacus unheard. Yes, the Labour Party is indeed coming into perspective at last

OPIFEX.

Editorial: News about millionaires (1954)

Editorial from the October 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The number of very wealthy people in Britain, including millionaires, is well below what it was before the war but it appears to be picking up again now. This, at least, is the conclusion of Mr. Marshall Pugh writing in the Sunday Chronicle (5/9/54). He has provided himself—at a cost of ten guineas—with a published list giving an estimate of the present number of millionaires and he finds it to be 50. A list similarly compiled in 1946 gave only 28. Mr. Pugh concludes that “Britain is slowly recovering from her post-par shortage of millionaires.” He doubts if the list is complete and adds a few likely names. This doubt about the exact number is not surprising because there is no record of millionaires published by the Inland Revenue authorities, though they must certainly have a good idea how many there are.

There is, however, official information in Inland Revenue Reports about the numbers of people in various ranges of income. In 1938-9 there were 99 people, each with an income (before being taxed) of over £100,000 a year. By 1950-51 the number had fallen to 38; and the number of persons who had more than £6,000 left to spend, after paying tax, had fallen from 6,600 in 1938-9 to about 500 in 1950-51. The fall in the number and size of very big incomes is exactly what was to be expected. Contrary to the muddled view held by those who have never understood what capitalism is and how it works capitalism’s wars are paid for by the only class that can pay—the capitalists. The destruction of capitalist property and loss of overseas investments fell on the British capitalists, but now that war-time destruction has been made good accumulation is going ahead once more and we may expect to see a change some way towards the pre-war pattern again.

This will surprise those who have swallowed the nonsense about poverty having been abolished under the so-called Welfare State. Apart from an unusually long period with unemployment at a very low figure nothing has happened since the war to change materially the structure of capitalism. Neither the Labour Government’s social reforms nor its Nationalisation schemes have touched the permanent capitalist inequalities of income and capital. It is still true, as it was in 1918, when the Labour Party plugged it in its election address that about 90 per cent, of the accumulated wealth of the country is owned by a 10th of the population. Yet we have the fatuous organ of Mr. Bevan, Tribune, in its issue for 2 July, 1954, publishing some figures about "the flagrant contrast between poverty and wealth in Britain,” and calling them “discoveries!” Tribune’s comment is that these “appalling facts” “will shock those who believe that the welfare state has eliminated poverty in Britain—or that there is no case for a drastic redistribution of wealth.”

Of course outstanding among those who deceived the workers into believing that the welfare state would abolish or had abolished poverty are the people who run Tribune.

And now that Tribune—about a century and a half late—has discovered that under capitalism there is flagrant contrast between poverty and wealth in Britain, their remedy is to seek redistribution of wealth. Socialists, of course, are not seeking anything of the kind. Trying to seek redistribution of wealth under capitalism merely perpetuates the notion that capitalism would be all right if there were fewer millionaires and more capitalists with investments of a moderate size. But this, assuming for the sake of argument that it could be achieved, would not at all remove the evils of capitalism. It is a matter of no concern at all to the cow whether she is milked to make profit for a farmer, a co-operative society or a millionaire dairy combine. The worker, if he understood his own interest, would perceive that capitalism is a system that functions by milking him for the benefit of the capitalist class and it is not his worry if some capitals swallow up others and produce millionaires. Their multiplication or their elimination will make no difference to him. It is not the redistribution of the property of the capitalists that will solve the workers' problems but the abolition of capitalism.

Tribune, however, knows of other “solutions” of the poverty problem for in September a contributor, Mr. Ian Mikardo, went to Hungary and made the discovery that "there's very little real poverty in Red Hungary.” But there must be a catch in that word “real" for he also discovered that the Hungarian workers' living standards 

"are about 30 per cent. below ours, even when one allows for a very much higher ‘social wage’ than we have in Great Britain." (Tribune 17th September 1954.)

It is all rather confusing. The poverty in Britain, says the Tribune is appalling in spite of the “welfare state and in Hungary living standards are 30 per cent. lower than in Britain in spite of having an even better welfare state (“social wage”); but nevertheless they are not “really” poor.

In the meantime here is a comforting thought about millionaires and the way they spend their money, from Noel Barber’s column in the Daily Mail (11 Sept., 1954).

“Being—like all millionaires—a true lover of the arts. Onassis, the uncrowned king, Monte Carlo recently commissioned the French artist Verges to do four big murals for the spacious saloon of his big new yacht."

Report on the press (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this second article dealing with the Report of the Royal Commission on the Press, we give details of some of the useful information obtained by the Commission in the course of its enquiries. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey, but consists of various items of evidence submitted to the Commission which we think will be of some interest and value to readers of the Socialist Standard.

Ownership

One of the first tasks of the Commission was to make a survey of the ownership of the Press, with particular reference to the existence of large groups, or “chains” of newspapers. They discovered five groups which could be classified under this heading. Three of these were comparatively unimportant, their newspapers were found to be printed mainly in the provinces, most of them were “weeklies,” and in no case was the total daily circulation more than a million. The other two, however. Associated Newspapers, Ltd., and Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd., were very different and deserve more detailed treatment.

Associated Newspapers, Ltd.

This company owns the Daily Mail, London Evening News, and Sunday Dispatch. Through subsidiary companies it owns various evening and weekly papers and has minority interests in several others. It is itself a subsidiary of another company, the Daily Mail and General Trust, Ltd., of which Viscount Rothermere is chairman. He holds 21 per cent. of its Ordinary shares. There are 9,000 other Ordinary shareholders, but none of them holds more than 1 per cent. As chief shareholder and chairman he therefore has virtual control of the Mail, News, and Dispatch as well as the following provincial “dailies”—Gloucestershire Echo, Derby Evening Telegraph, Citizen (Gloucester), Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent), South Wales Evening Post, Hull Daily Mail, and Grimsby Evening Telegraph, plus various “weeklies.”

Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd.

This is the other important “chain.” It owns directly, or through subsidiary companies, the Daily Graphic, Sunday Times, Sunday Chronicle, and Sunday Graphic, as well as the following provincial “dailies”— Newcastle Journal and North Mail, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Glasgow Daily Record and Mail, Glasgow Evening News, Aberdeen Press and Journal, Aberdeen Evening Express, Northern Daily Telegraph (Blackburn), Middlesbrough Evening Gazette, Sheffield Telegraph, Sheffield Star, Western Mail (Cardiff), South Wales Echo (Cardiff), and Yorkshire Evening Press (York). In addition, it owns numerous “weeklies” and sporting papers. Chairman of all the companies is Viscount Kemsley, and his son, Lionel Berry, is vice- chairman. His wife and two other sons are also directors, and the number of Ordinary shares held by the family amounts to almost 50 per cent., sufficient to give it complete control.

Both these “chains” have wide ramifications, but their importance should not be over-emphasised. Judged on the basis of circulation they are not outstanding—the “non-chain” Beaverbrook Press, for example, has a bigger morning circulation than either of them, and the Daily Mirror had a much bigger circulation than one and must now be running the other fairly closely. Their greatest proportion, in terms of circulation, is to be found in the evening press—here Associated Newspapers accounted for about 21 per cent. of total circulation, and Kemsley Newspapers 13 per cent. (1947 figures). On Sundays neither can touch the “non-chain” News of the World.

Other Companies

There are three other daily newspaper companies which, although they cannot be called “chains,” are similar in one respect, namely that they are controlled by an individual, or a small group of individuals. First of these is London Express Newspaper, Ltd., which owns the Daily Express, and by means of subsidiary companies also controls the Sunday Express, London Evening Standard, and the Glasgow Evening Citizen. The controlling interest in the main company is held by Lord Beaverbrook, and his son. Max Aitken, is a director of all four companies. The actual extent of Beaverbrook’s holding was not divulged to the Commission.

The Daily Telegraph, the second of this type, is controlled by members of the Camrose family, who between them own all the Ordinary shares (£1,199,997), and most of the Preference shares. By the articles of association which control the running of the company Lord Camrose may, if he so wishes, remain chairman and editor-in-chief for life.

Finally, there is the Times, owned by two people, Colonel J. J. Astor and a Mr. John Walter in the proportion of nine shares to one. The articles of association provide for a committee whose function it is to approve of any move to transfer shares to anybody other than the two present shareholders. This device, in effect, makes any change of ownership very unlikely. 

The Other" Dailies”

As far as the other well-known “ dailies ” are concerned, ownership and control cannot be linked with an individual or group. This applies to the Daily Mirror, and its companion, the Sunday Pictorial. There are more than 9,000 shareholders in the Mirror company, and 4,000 in the Pictorial. No individual in the Daily Mirror holds more than 4 per cent. of the Ordinary shares, and no one in the Sunday Pictorial has more than 1 per cent., but the Mirror holds 25 per cent. of the Ordinary shares in the Pictorial, and the Pictorial holds 22 per cent. of those in the Mirror. Each, therefore, has the controlling interest in the other. What this means in practice is that the directors of both companies can exercise absolute control.

The Daily Herald has a position all its own in that the majority of its shares are owned by Odhams Press, Ltd., which also controls the People and the “weeklies ” John Bull, News Review, and Illustrated. This peculiar state of affairs dates back to 1929 when the Herald found itself hard pushed to compete with the other big “dailies” through lack of finance, and joined forces with Odhams to get it. Thus we have the position where Odhams Press holds 51 per cent. of the shares, and nominees of the Trades Union Congress hold the rest.

The company has nine directors, five nominated by Odhams, and four by the T.U.C. The present T.U.C. nominees, by the way, are A. Conley (Tailors’ and Garment Workers’ Union), A. B. Deakin (Transport and General Workers’ Union), H. V. Tewson (Gen. Sec., T.U.C.), and F. Wolstencroft (Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers). A further interesting point is that the articles of association provide that the political policy of the paper shall be laid down by the Conferences of the Labour Party, and its industrial policy by the Conferences of the T.U.C.

The case of the Daily Worker is also rather confused and complicated. . Until 1946 it was owned, through nominees, by the Communist Party itself, but on 1st January, 1947, ownership war transferred to the People’s Press Printing Society, in order to raise more money. This society is stated to have about 29,000 shareholders, of which 756 consist of organisations (395 of them trade union branches). Shareholdings are limited to £200, and each holder is entitled to one vote, irrespective of the size of his holding. The society first elects a Committee of Management which in turn elects the Editor and a supervisory body called the Editorial Board. The Management Committee, in effect, has control of the paper. The control, however, is not absolute, as die Worker has to go every now and then to the People’s Press Fighting Fund for loans and grants, but as the trustees of the Fund (in the true Communist Party tradition) in 1947 were all, with one exception, also members of either the Management Committee or Editorial Board, or both, we think it can be considered as a purely technical point.

One national newspaper, Reynolds News, is owned by a group of co-operative societies through the Cooperative Press, Ltd. Of the 845 shareholders, all are co-operative societies except for two Trade Unions, the National Union of Railwaymen and the Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers. Management is in the hands of a Board of Directors elected by the Shareholders. None has sufficient votes to control the Board. 

Trust Ownership

Lastly, there are three well-known newspapers which are owned by Trusts. The objects of Trusts, in the words of the Commission, are one or all of the following: —

“To prevent the control of the undertaking from falling into unsuitable hands, to perpetuate the character and policy of a paper, to avoid the crippling effect of death duties, and to ensure, through the limitation or the ploughing back of profits, the preservation or the expansion of the undertaking.”

The first is the News Chronicle which, with its London evening companion, the Star, is owned by the Daily News, Ltd. The majority of this company's shares are held in turn by the Daily News Trust. Two- thirds of the trustees are members of the Cadbury family.

The other two Trusts own the Manchester Guardian and Observer respectively. The Guardian is completely in the hands of the Scott Trust, who now number eight persons, mostly members of the Scott family. The Observer Trust consists of six trustees, one of whom is Lord Astor, holder of most of the company’s shares. Each Trust is hedged in with detailed and complicated provisions, of which little need be said except that they comply with one or more of the objects mentioned by the Commission and quoted above.

The Political Weeklies

A few words should be said about the political “weeklies,” The New Statesman and Nation, Tribune, Time and Tide, and Truth.

The New Statesman is controlled by the Statesman Publishing Co., Ltd., which has a capital of about £17,500 in Ordinary shares and 436 special Management shares. Only Management shareholders are allowed to vote; they number 19, and among them are Low, Malcolm MacDonald, Kingsley Martin, and Bernard Shaw. There are six directors, G. D. H. Cole, Low, Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley, a Mr. J. H. Roberts, and a Mr. R. G. E. Willson; all except the last-named are also on the Board of the company that actually owns the paper. Shares in the company may. not be transferred to anyone outside if a member is willing to purchase them at a fair value.

Tribune has an issued capital of only £183, in £1 shares. No holder has more than 10; the best-known shareholders are Sir Stafford Cripps, Michael Foot, Victor Gollancz, J. F. Horrabin, Harold Laski, Jennie Lee, Ian Mikardo, and J. Platts-Mills, each with 10 shares. It was disclosed to the Commission that subsidies totalling £3,597 were received during the period between 1937 and 1946 (mainly in the early years). Most of this money was contributed by Stafford Cripps and G. R. Strauss (the present Minister of Supply).

Time and Tide is leased to Viscountess Rhondda, who holds over 90 per cent. of the shares, and is chairman and editor of the paper.

Truth has a capital of £29,000 in 2,900 £10 shares. There are three directors, one of whom is Collin Brooks. He holds 1,500 of the shares, of which 500 are as nominee for Lord Perry (of the Ford Motor Co.) and 500 for a Mr. Garfield Watson. It was disclosed that the paper received contributions of £17,000 towards expenses between 1939 and 1946, mainly from the late Lord Luke, Lord Perry, Mr. Garfield Watson, and Lord Queenborough.

Finally there is the Economist. Lord Layton (also of the News Chronicle) is its chairman, and there are four other directors, one of whom is Geoffrey Crowther, the editor; and another, Brendan Bracken. The Financial News, Ltd. (which also has interests in the Banker, Investors’ Chronicle, and Financial Times) holds 50 per cent. of the Ordinary shares, and the other 13 shareholders appoint a majority of the Board and nominate the chairman. Transfer of shares and the appointment of the chairman require the consent of four trustees, of whom Sir Charles Hambro, the banker, and Lord Beveridge are the most well known.

Stan Hampson

(To be continued.)

Notes by the Way: So they couldn’t kid Mikardo! (1956)

The Notes by the Way column from the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

So they couldn’t kid Mikardo!

Mr. Mikardo is Labour M.P. for Reading. Two years ago he visited Hungary and wrote about it in Tribune (17/9/54) under the title: “There’s very little poverty in Red Hungary,” though he thought their standard of living was 30 per cent below that of British workers. The declared intention of the article was to expose as fairy tales and “imaginative fiction” all the stories he had heard about poverty and discontent, surveillance by secret police, subjection to the Russian army settled in the country, etc. On the contrary, wrote Mr. Mikardo, he was allowed to see what he wanted, was able to talk freely and found people who “didn't hesitate to criticise the regime.” He saw only few Russian soldiers and only one person wearing a Communist Party badge. He ended with the cocky avowal: “Old Mikardo isn't an easy guy to kid at any time anyway.”

It looks as if Mr. Mikardo owes some explanation to the readers of Tribune.

#    #    #    #

Pause for Humbug

  “It was one of those incredible situations that could only happen in London—Sir Anthony Eden and Russian Ambassador Jacob Malik sipping from the same loving cup. It happened last night amid the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s banquet in cathedral-like Guildhall.”—(Daily Sketch. 10/11/56.) 

#    #    #    #

Pollitt and the Red Army

Three years ago Mr. Harry Pollitt sent “greetings to the Soviet Army.” (Daily Worker, 23/2/1953). Along with the usual thanks for the debt “we” owe to the Russian branch of capitalism’s greatest industry, that for destruction, Mr. Pollitt said:

  “We know the Soviet Armed Forces will never be used for aggression, but are on guard for peace.”

The Communist Party should send him to Budapest to tell this to the Hungarian workers—but make sure that he does so under the protection of some Russian tanks and the secret police.

#    #    #    #

The War that saved the Peace

On Saturday, November 17th, a week after the day set aside in remembrance of two world wars “ for peace,” two men were justifying two recent wars. One was Sir Anthony Eden, about the invasion of Egypt:

  “The truth is that we have checked a drift which would have ended in the loss of countless lives and more other evils than we can ever estimate.”—(Evening Standard, 17/11/56.)

The same day Mr. J. R. Campbell, in the Daily Worker, was justifying the Russian onslaught in Hungary under the tide: “The choice that saved Peace.” He claimed that it prevented “a possible prolonged civil war. This would have been pregnant with the terrible danger of a third world war.”

Eden and Campbell did not get together to concoct their joint story beforehand. It just happens that they are in the same line of business, that of justifying the brutality of their respective capitalist groups.

#    #    #    #

Mr. Zilliacus and arms for Israel

Writing to the Manchester Guardian (6/8/56), Mr. Zilliacus, Labour M.P. for Gorton, explained his policy for preserving peace in the Middle East. One point was, as an immediate emergency measure, the provision of arms for Israel. We wonder what he thinks of his policy now. Perhaps he can get comfort from the fact that Israel got its arms—by capturing Russian and British tanks from the Egyptian army. We await, with all due reverence, Mr. Zilliacus's new pontifical pronouncement on how to prevent capitalism causing wars.

#    #    #    #

The Emotions of the “New Statesman”

The New Statesman, which tirelessly zig-zags about in its search for new ways of improving capitalism, has sadly admitted, in an editorial (3rd November, 1956) that it was wrong about Israel.

  “Most British Socialists felt emotionally involved in the well-being of Israel, and ever since 1945 this journal has supported the Israelis through good times and bad. But we cannot support Israel in her present action, or rejoice when we try to estimate its long-term consequences.”

Of course, the New Statesman does not speak for Socialists, and Socialists do not decide their attitude by emotional preferences for one capitalist government against another. The New Statesman sees Israel as a group of homeless, persecuted Jewish refugees, refusing to recognise that the State of Israel is something quite different. It is a new, expanding capitalist state, backed by finance and arms from overseas, trying to establish itself in opposition to the existing Middle East states, each with its own interests and aims.

#    #    #    #

Now Nasser’s the Pin-up Boy

Disillusionment with the failure of its fatuous policy which favoured Israeli capitalism, the New Statesman will probably spend a few years admiring another capitalist figure-head, Colonel Nasser, until he, too, “lets them down.” Mr. Shinwell, formerly War Minister and Minister of Defence, in the Labour Government, has been unable to make the New Statesman's quick somersault, and is very critical of the Labour Party’s attitude to Eden’s action. He says that “Now it seems there are many people in the Labour Party who regard Nasser as a hero.” (Daily Sketch, 3/11/56).

But Mr. Shinwell is like the New Statesman in letting his emotions decide his attitude—only his emotions are still stirred by Israel, not Egypt:

  “I glory—I repeat glory— in the fact that the Israelis have had the courage to defend themselves.”

What a pity all these emotions cannot be lavished on the working class in their struggle against capitalism.

#    #    #    #

Abadan and Egypt

The dress rehearsal for the Eden invasion of Egypt was Abadan in 1951, staged not by Tories, but by the Labour Government. When Persia nationalised the Abadan oil refinery, the Labour Government was outraged, and though they had not even the fig-leaf pretence that this was an issue affecting all countries (the Eden argument about the Suez Canal), the Government immediately started using force to intimidate the Persian Government, which duly protested to the world at large and to the American President in particular. Mr. Shinwell discloses his part in the business:

   “When the Abadan situation emerged, as Minister of Defence, I alerted a brigade and sent them out by air to the Middle East—with the full consent of the Labour Cabinet.” -(Daily Sketch, 3/11/56.)

The Sketch adds this comment:

  “The 16th Independent Parachute Brigade Group was sent to Cyprus, and British warships to the Abadan area. But Mr. Attlee ordered the evacuation of the refinery.” 

War was avoided, and the dispute was “settled” on a basis which enabled American oil companies to get a big foothold in Persian oil, a setback for British oil interests and the British Government that has rankled with them ever since.

#    #    #    #

Movement for the Improvement of the Secret Police

The Secret Police and You is a pamphlet issued by the “Campaign for the Limitation of Secret Police Powers.” It is signed by the usual mixed bag of “ progressives,” including Labour and Liberal M.P.s, Aneurin Bevan, the Rev. Donald Soper, Kingsley Martin, etc., etc. Alarmed by such cases as that in which Mr. John Lang lost his job with I.C.I., apparently because his wife had been a Communist and he was, therefore, regarded as a “security risk,” the Campaign Council wants the procedure for vetting potential unreliables regularised and provided with safeguards for the innocent, while ferreting out the “guilty.” It has drafted a five-point code which “would impose a legal restraint on the arbitrary power of the executive and set standards both of fairness and of efficiency for the security services by obliging them to bring forward really convincing evidence.”

It thinks M.I.5 is not very efficient, and wants the job of identifying potential spies to be done by "experts.” since it is “a highly skilled business.” (Page 12).

They warn us that present procedure makes a mockery of “ all the legal safeguards of which England has boasted since the 17th century.”

On the face of it there seems to be no reason why the Campaign should not achieve some success with its proposals, especially if they can convince the Government that its M.I.5 could and should be made more efficient.

The one thing for which the Socialist searches in vain is any explanation why the working class should need a secret police. Judging from Hungary, where, at the first opportunity, the workers lynched all they could get hold of, there is at least some reason to suppose that workers don’t want a secret police at all. But here they are up against the Campaign Council.

#    #    #    #

Professor Gilbert Murray’s support for war

Believers in the United Nations who have for years regarded Professor Gilbert Murray as a stalwart for that cause have been dismayed to learn that he defends Eden. His reasons were given in a letter to Time and Tide (10th November) in the course of which he wrote:

  “The real danger was that, if the Nasser movement bad been allowed to progress unchecked, we should have been faced by a coalition of all Arab, Muslim, Asiatic and Anti-Western States, led nominally by Egypt, but really by Russia; that is, a division of the world in which the enemies of civilization are stronger than its supporters. Such a danger, the Prime Minister saw, must be stopped instantly and since the UN has no instrument, it must be stopped, however irregularly, by those Nations who can act at once.” 

His new hope is that the U.N. will create its own permanent “Police Force.”

Edgar Hardcastle

A Battle Between Labour Leaders (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the official workers' leaders there is developing a serious difference of opinion about a serious issue. The Margate Conference decided that the Government should take a hand in “the guiding process of fixing wages in different industries instead of leaving them, as in the past, to be fought out between the employers and the Unions,” so says Mr. Ian Mikardo, M.P., writing in support in Picture Post (21/6/47). In the same paper Mr. George Brown, M.P., trade union leader, puts forward the opposing point of view.

Despite the Prime Minister's proclamations, the present way in which society is organised is not undergoing any revolutionary change. It is still class-divided. Some millionaires are dying, others are being born. Profits are as lively as ever, those of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company having risen by a cool four million during the past year. Wages too are still here, buying for wage-earners the usual amount of food, clothing and shelter, mostly crude, mostly nasty. The Government is to fix all this; to fix profits; to fix wages; to fix everything good and proper. In the workers' world of insecurity and fear it is not surprising that the idea of somebody fixing something catches on.

Mr. Mikardo's economics are very simple. The problem, he maintains, is that the less essential trades are bleeding our basic industries of their man-power. The solution is a wages-policy which "remains the most effective way of getting the men where they are needed.” "Nobody,” he continues, ”envisages wage-cuts in the less essential industries; what a national wages policy means is that wages (barring a few anomalous cases) are kept steady, whilst wages in the under-manned industries are pushed up.” In countering, Mr. Brown states that he took the trouble to investigate the wages of the so-called less essential trades and discovered that nearly 200 out of 216 such wages were below £5 per week. These lucky people are going to enjoy the charm of the guiding hand which is to keep their pay-packets sweet and low. Not being in their ranks, Mr. Mikardo looks like missing all the fun.

One hazards the question as to what happens to the increased profits resulting from more efficient machinery and more production per man per hour? One thing is certain; it won’t go to the wage earners sheltering under the shadow of the Government’s guiding hand which keeps their low wages low. When the purchasing power of wages falls, when £4 will only buy what say £3 had bought previously, does the guiding, steadying hand toll on? The more Mr. Mikardo's idea is examined the more it reveals itself as the answer to the Capitalists’ prayer.

Mr. Brown makes the obvious query as to what is to decide which trade is essential and which is not, and comes to the conclusion that it is a question impossible to answer. We agree. What, for example, are miners? They’re very essential, comes the ready answer. Well as far as the working-class is concerned even thousands of miners are not very essential, because thousands of miners are to-day toiling and sweating to produce the coal to produce the steel to produce the luxury liners,’ Rolls-Royces, and other such novelties definitely not for the enjoyment of a working-class which does not include, to complete the cycle, compensated ex-mine-owners.

The fixed-wage idea is easy meat for Mr. Brown, but after the fireworks he follows with a pathetic justification for leaving workers to bargain through the Unions with employers for their wage, their slave-price. “How patriotic,” he says. "have been the negotiating machinery and the Trade Unions in avoiding a real inflationary spiral.” In other words the Trade Union leaders are doing O.K.. keeping wages steady, so why not leave well alone. Since it is Mr. Brown who points out the pittance earned by the workers in so-called luxury trades, it can only be assumed that he includes these low wages in his tragic boast. The Socialist approach to the economic problems confronting society is scientific. Unfortunately for Mr. Brown it disposes of his “inflationary spiral." An increase in wages does not, of itself, result in an increase in prices. Several factors influence the price of a commodity There is the supply of it and the demand for it. There is the productivity of labour continually increasing due to the introduction of quicker machinery. There is competition between manufacturers. In the case of food there is the climatic element, good weather producing a bumper harvest and bringing down the price, or bad weather and low crops sometimes increasing the price. As a matter of fact a study of the history of wages and prices shows that on many occasions wages have risen and prices, far from rising, have fallen considerably. After a recent flying trip to America, the editor of the News Chronicle (25/6/47) reported that prices were being trimmed whilst at the same time wages were rising.

Both the Picture Post contestants have no quarrel with the existence of such social animals as Capitalists and wage-slaves. They have no quarrel with the bitter struggle which is bound to go on so long as the two classes exist. They have no quarrel with profits. They are both concerned with what to do with these things. Opposing the party both represent, the S.P.G.B. is concerned about getting rid of the stupid things they would plan. The wages-system must end. The division of man into class compartments must end. There is to-day no relation between the people's needs and what the people are capable of producing; markets and profits stand like mountains, in the way. Markets and profits must end. In other words, Capitalism must end if humanity is to survive.

Prolly.

It's the Poor What Gets the Blame — Official (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

One way of assessing Sir Keith Joseph’s comments on “whole groups and classes of people” is to imagine a speech he would have made if Britain were at war. Would he then have said a large section of the working class was moronic, lecherous and irresponsible, and should be stopped from breeding the criminals and lowlifes who are its heirs? Ah, no. “Social classes 4 and 5” would be the bulwark of civilization, and their babies — however many — deserve orange-juice and vitamin pills. These kinds of bombast are exchangeable as an organ-grinder’s tunes, though the underlying contempt remains the same.

Joseph’s speech was made to Conservatives on 19th October. He suggested they put aside economic affairs —“never really the main thing”—and instead aim to “remoralize our national life”. His case was that present- day society is a decadent morass. It has been made so by “socialist intellectuals” and “permissiveness” and, in particular, letting the working class into universities. As an example of the ruin these tendencies have led to, “our human stock is threatened” by the persistent breeding now from parents unsuitable to have children:

   Many of these girls are unmarried, many are deserted or divorced or soon will be. Some are of low intelligence, most are of low educational attainment . . . They are producing problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of our borstals, subnormal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters. Yet these mothers, the under-twenties in many cases, single parents, from classes 4 and 5, are now producing a third of all births.

It may be useful, before going further, to say what is meant by “classes 4 and 5”. The groupings are made by the Government on the basis of the job of the family breadwinner, and these two divisions comprise semi-skilled and unskilled workers If they are assumed to be about two-fifths of the population, Joseph’s protest because they have one-third of the births is absurd. Summaries from the 1971 Census, given in the Sunday Times on 27th October, show that family size is practically the same in all five groups—about three-and-a- quarter persons.

Capitalist Hacks Unanimous
The central point of Joseph’s attack might have been, had it come from a more thinking person, a demonstration of the uselessness of social — including “moral” — reform as tried equally by the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties.

  Real incomes per head have risen beyond what anyone dreamed of a generation back; so have education budgets and welfare budgets; so also have delinquency, truancy, vandalism, hooliganism, illiteracy, decline in educational standards.

But he was only reviving his political forefathers’ dictum that if you give the undeserving poor money they only get into trouble, and if you teach them to read they write rude words on walls. The working class is used to this sort of thing, and being told it is to blame when capitalism has problems. Indeed, Joseph was being unfair to his Labour opponents: they share that standpoint. Following the Budget on 12th November the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced on TV that if he failed to stop a slump or inflation it would be the fault of “the British people”:

  The choice is yours. If you really prefer mass unemployment and rising prices you can always have it.

To add more, practically no-one in the chorus of critics of Joseph denied his thesis. Other Conservatives thought it “a sad mistake . . . which would inevitably cause serious doubts about his political judgement”. Frank Field of the Child Poverty Action Group acknowledged Joseph’s “problem” of breeding by sub-standard people, and “blamed this on the failure of the family planning system and suggested that the solution was to give women more incentive to limit their family size”. (Both quotations from The Guardian, 21st October.) The Bishop of Southwark put it down to “Conservative policies of 50 years ago” (Observer, 20th October) and “human nature” (News of the World, 27th October).

Official Labour replies were on the same lines. Ian Mikardo, the party chairman

  appeared to accept the gist of what Sir Keith Joseph said in his controversial weekend speech on the nation’s morals, but he neatly turned it to Labour’s advantage . . . he blamed individualist, self-centred Conservative doctrine.

(Guardian, 25th October)

Mrs. Castle, the Secretary for Social Services, accused Joseph of wrong statistics and expressed herself as equally anxious over the problems named. And Renee Short, another Labour MP, spoke of the need for a minister to deal with population problems and said:

  It is absolutely right for Sir Keith to say we need considerable extensions of education about family planning, but it is not only needed in the fourth and fifth social groups.

All agreed that the working class must be kept decent, and sneered at one another for legislation having failed to do so.

Class and Intelligence

None of the critics appears to have noticed one extraordinary implication of Joseph’s speech. Like the Victorian moralists, over human behaviour he wants to have things both ways—people are born bad but also influenced to be bad: the teaching of Eric, or Little by Little. But, in addition, Joseph was propounding what looks like Lysenko’s theory that acquired characteristics can be transmitted. Given mothers of “low educational attainment” who have learned immoral attitudes, there will be babies destined to be illiterates and criminals. Since reform cannot change heredity, the prevention of birth is the only answer — “the lesser evil”, he said.

This kind of rubbish was exploded long ago. However, there is a more cogent answer to Joseph’s contentions. Being in classes 4 and 5 — or any of the others — has nothing to do with intelligence or probity. People are in these “classes” because of their relationship to the means of production: specifically, because they own nothing and have to work as capitalism allows them. In fact the groupings are not social classes at all, but lists made for administrative purposes. The only two classes are of owners and non-owners of the means of living. People are born not into “free choice” but into one or the other class and all the implications of its position.

If intelligence were a factor, we should like to be told the intelligence quotients of, say, shareholders in big companies; the royal family; or politicians who have their speeches written for them. Would Joseph say that breeding by any number of these who were of “low intelligence” was a threat to human stock? Of course not. There are, in any case, different answers for them. The slow-learning or recalcitrant offspring of the well-to-do are put out to private tutors in country vicarages to get them in shape for Oxbridge. The idea of intelligence is irrelevant to that sort of life. It is a yardstick-concept by which the ruling class picks over the working class for its own purposes; the working class insults itself by accepting it.

Different Meanings

Joseph spoke about “responsibility”. The fact is that the capitalist system which he represents and upholds depends on irresponsibility. To hand over control of one’s life, have its activity appropriated and accept the say-so of leaders and rulers, is irresponsible. Yet that is precisely what Joseph requires, the “choice” he wants exercised. It is not a question of Doublethink, but of class terminology. For his class, following its interests, the working class acts “responsibly” by not following its own!

If you look at the occupations which make up groups 3, 4 and 5, the matter becomes clearer still. They are nearly all useful occupations — manufacture, building, mining, transport, the essentials for social existence. Not so most of the occupations in groups 1 and 2. A few are; the majority are about as useful as a tapeworm. What do “intelligence” and “educational attainment” mean when they are put to the non-uses generated by capitalist society? A former drama student has remarked to the writer that when he sees acquaintances on TV it is always in commercials: singing the praises of canned soup, zooming through space with packets of Tasty Morsels. For this, they studied Shakespeare and toiled at voice and movement—now, humans behaving like idiots.

Let us tell Sir Keith Joseph and the co-diagnosers of his “problem” the truth. The working class is the intelligent, educated class which makes the wonders, and competently carries out the humdrum tasks, of the world we live in. Without that being so, there would be no electronic marvels or university buildings. Nor would there be the sumptuous dinners from which capitalist politicians rise to make their self-important speeches. Or dividends for the shareholders of Bovis Ltd., of which Joseph is vice-chairman.

Moral Humbug

The so-called moral questions can be put in perspective by referring to the 1949 Report of the Royal Commission on Population. This was concerned with finding ways to induce people of all groups and grades to have more children: to maintain the work force, for "military strength and security”, and for “the maintenance and extension of Western values and culture”. There was no talk then of threatening the human stock, or the immorality of girls under twenty having babies.

Of course the family as a socio-economic unit has largely broken down, but Joseph’s conception of why this happens is extremely naive. Apparently he believes a currency of “immoral” ideas is the cause of such a breakdown, whereas the opposite is true. The family’s life and functions were disrupted by the extension and intensification of the division of labour; following that, fresh ideas of morality were generated — without, however, affecting the existence of capitalism.

But what kind of society are we living in? Sex and reproduction are the strongest of human instincts and pleasures. The tragedy for the poor is being swindled out of enjoyment and fulfilment by poverty, inadequate housing, worry, and living on the edge of a high-priced culture. Many girls in that situation, said Joseph, are unmarried or deserted or divorced: how nice of him to point it out, from the comfort of Class 1. How nice of Mrs. Castle too, to deny that “socialism is synonymous with permissiveness”. Indeed, she is right. “Permission” means condescending to allow, and that has nothing to do with the free, responsible world Socialists envisage: Mrs. Castle’s “socialism” is not synonymous with Socialism.

It will not be too long before the working class demonstrates its intelligence, and its contempt for the Josephs and Castles, by getting rid of the system they stand for.

Robert Barltrop

The Morecambe Labour Party Conference (1952)

From the November 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Morecambe was for the Labour Party less a ground for common political activity than a battleground of warring factions and rival political ambitions. There were a number of casualties.

Among the “casualties” were Mr. Morrison and Mr. Dalton. Both failed to get re-elected to the Labour Party executive. In the executive voting, that doughty working class warrior Mr. Bevan headed the “lists” to a fanfare of cheers and clapping. Others elected to executive posts were those horny handed sons of toil, Messrs. Driberg, Wilson, Mikardo and Crossman, who rode on the Bevan band-wagon.

The two great rival standard bearers were Bevan and Morrison. Bevan’s contribution was never more than a piece of conference tub thumping; Morrison's never less than the slick performance of the accomplished party hack.

Of Mr. Attlee it could hardly be said that the conference was his finest hour. He preferred the somewhat enigmatic role of a political Nero, content to doodle while Morecambe was alight In contrast to Bevan’s frothy utterances his contribution was as flat as last night’s beer.

A spectacle, now a commonplace at Labour Party conferences, was that of ex-ministers reverently touching their political rosaries and dedicating themselves to “socialist ideals.” Then followed the usual attempt to squeeze the quart of socialist ideals into the pint bottle of capitalism.

There was a demand from delegates for more nationalisation and “socialist” measures. Doubtless Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders are ruefully realising that it is easier for people to learn political nostrums than to unlearn them. These leaders having misinformed workers in the past that nationalisation was the panacea for their problems, now blandly inform them that these problems cannot be automatically solved by the mere transference of industries from private to public ownership. What, according to Mr. Morrison is most important, is not so much that industries should be nationalised but that “they should be efficient.”

For generations Labourites have been reared on the mother’s milk of old time Fabian planning. Now the milk has turned sour. “Planning for planning’s sake” it seems is merely a pipe dream for political opium smokers.

Mr. Morrison and others have now discovered more “prior and urgent” problems than nationalisation. Problems such as trade balances, exports and the need for increased output in order to meet foreign competition successfully especially the German and Japanese variety. These “urgent and prior problems” were just as urgent and prior for Capitalism when Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders were merely up and coming politicians.

Nevertheless the fact that Labour politicians have discovered some simple economic facts about Capitalism, has, according to sections of the press, elevated them to the status of statesmen.

From the tone of the speeches of ex-ministers in explaining to delegates these simple facts, one might imagine they were addressing children. Listening to the criticism levelled at them on occasions by delegates, they may have thought that there are times when children should be seen and not heard.

Although conference instructed the executive to compile a further list of industries to be nationalised, Mr. Robertson for the United Textile Factory Workers' Association opposed an amendment asking for the nationalisation of the cotton industry. He urged conference "not to embarrass a Labour Government in that way.”

Although Mr. Bevan himself was in favour of more nationalisation, etc., Bevanite Mr. Mikardo in submitting a resolution asking for the building trade to be nationalised, said, “They might find the industry better suited to competitive public enterprise than nationalisation outright." Mrs. Braddock, M.P., reminded conference that "the person who opposed most strongly the nationalisation of the building industry with his usual bad faith was Mr. Bevan, when he was Minister of Health.”

Mr. Morrison touched a new political low when he attempted to make working class political ignorance the whipping boy of the Labour Government’s failure to fulfil its promises. He said “We have got to change the minds and hearts and souls of men and women so that they think in terms of socialist ethics and the old capitalist outlook that millions have, has passed away.”

This is certainly the devil citing scripture for his own purposes with a vengeance. Mr. Morrison’s own contribution to working class understanding is gravely on the debit side of his political balance sheet. Mr. Morrison’s role in the ranks of the working class has been that of a fifth columnist. By plausibly presenting to workers a planned capitalist—as good as socialism —model, he and others like him have obscured and distorted basic working class issues. The work of teaching Socialism has thus been made infinitely harder.

The shadow-play of political rivalry thrown on the Morecambe screen is not a reflection of any basic differences within the Labour Party. Dr. Bevan with his finger on the pulse of working class discontent prescribes bigger doses of nationalisation, Mr. Morrison not to be outdone retorted that “the Labour Party would never rest until it had nationalised all the means of production, distribution and exchange.”

Mr. Bevan wants a smaller armament programme than that laid down by the last Labour Government, yet it was Mr. Bevan himself who piloted Labour's defence programme through the House of Commons. Then he begged people not to "jeer about the armament programme we are putting under way.” He added, “we shall carry it out; we shall fulfil our obligations to our friends and allies.”

Ironically enough, owing to the difficulties which have arisen over balance of payments since the Tories came in, they have been compelled to cut considerably the yearly expenditure on armaments. The “socialist” Bevan is not opposed to war preparation. He only wants to reduce the cost entailed. Incidentally his proposed peace-time expenditure on armaments involves greater sums of money than those spent in peace time by Tory or Liberal Governments.

Mr. Bevan’s militancy is not, as imagined by his supporters, a realistic step forward for the Labour Party but a retreat to its romantic pioneering past. Then, the Labour Party could indulge in pseudo socialist phraseology, with its promise of “changing things nearer to the heart's desire.” It is this vague working class sentiment that Mr. Bevan seeks to tap.

In the good old days of the Labour Party the “Labour Commonwealth” was a distant goal wrapped in mist and obscurity. Nevertheless Labour was on the march! There may have been differences, even dissidents, within the ranks, but the road was accommodatingly broad. Swings to the “left” or "right” made little difference. They were all bound for the same place.

Now they have arrived and the New Jerusalem is but old Babylon writ large. The Welfare State turns out to be the merest Utility Utopia.

“The New Social Era” has all the old working class problems—poverty, insecurity, low wages, high prices and the threat of war. The outward pressure of capitalism produces within the Labour Party its fissions and rifts.

In order to ease off working class political pressure the Labour Party would like to go further. But they have nowhere to go. Because one basic reason for their existence is their claim that they can go one better than the Tories, they have to simulate the semblance if not the reality of being in the vanguard of social progress. The Tories in turn pose as the great stabilising force of British political life. Their appeal to the working class is consequently pitched in a slightly lower key. Their political strategy merely consists of waiting for the inevitable disappointments that result from a term of Labour Government and then adroitly manipulating them for the purpose of winning the next election.

Bevan is merely a symptom of the failure of Labour Party reformism to make a world fit for ordinary men and women to live in. He is the price Labour leaders pay for their political sins. His role in the Labour Party is the old familiar one of today’s rebel being tomorrow’s leader.

The resentment and frustration felt by the Labour rank and file has placed high cards in his hand. Yet even if he succeeds in winning the game against the old leadership he in turn will become vulnerable.

Little wonder that many Labour Party members are acquiring a nostalgia for the past. Truly, for those who pin their hopes on reformism it is always the case —“That it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”

Ted Wilmott

Running Commentary: Poverty today (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty today

When members of the Thatcher government are questioned about their policies their programmed response is to trot out some esoteric statistics which are supposed to prove that success is imminent and that it would, therefore, be foolish for them to change course now. They have been arguing like this almost since they came to power in 1979, ignoring the other, strikingly non-esoteric, statistics which undermine their case.

In September a report produced for the government's Office of Population Censuses and Surveys showed death rates among unemployed men to be at least 21 per cent higher than might be expected and of women in their families to be 20 per cent higher. A few days later two doctors at the Ruchill Hospital in Glasgow stated that children in the more deprived parts of the city are up to 100 times more likely to suffer illnesses severe enough to need hospital treatment than those in the less deprived areas. And a few days after that a campaign launched to improve conditions for people whose only home is a bedsitter claimed that about half a million people are living in squalid and dangerous accommodation and that some 600 of them have been killed in fires in bedsitter houses between 1978 and 1982.

Poverty is a matter of stress and stigma; it is a degrading, repressive, distorting pressure on the lives of millions of people, making them emotionally crippled for life. But it is also a direct, physical threat; it makes us bodily sick, it kills us through what coroners call accidents and through avoidable diseases.

No capitalist party has the answer to poverty; it is the badge of capitalism and its cure is a matter beyond any debate about the trivial differences between Labour and Tory.

Nationalisation failure

Roy Hattersley is the half of Labour’s dream ticket to Westminster who has recently been falling down on his job of trying to please all of the people all of the time. In fact he has cast doubt, as others have been doing for some time now, on the once-sacred policy of nationalisation. This upset the lefties in the party and it made others ask why. if Hattersley thinks like this, he should be in a party which was once responsible for so much state control.

One response to Hattersley’s unoriginal and panicky musings came, as might be expected, from Ian Mikardo, who is one of those eternal guardians of the Labour Party’s conscience, which means that he still believes state-run coal mines, railways and steel works don’t shut down "uneconomic" units and do not sack "redundant” workers.

Scornfully rejecting Hattersley’s advocacy of private industry, Mikardo said: “Eighty per cent of productive capital is privately owned . . . Most of the productive capacity has its organisation decided by 200 or 300 people whose principal incentive is to the dividend they pay themselves or their shareholders and not the dividend they pay the community”. (The Times, 1 October 1984.)

This situation, which Mikardo complains about, exists after 17 years of Labour government during the past 40 years — a period long enough for them to have redeemed their original promise to abolish capitalism and to so transform social relationships that production would be carried on in the interests of the community.

The Labour Party did not carry this through because it was not their policy; instead they stood for tinkering with the capitalist system. Their failure to establish socialism has nothing to do with the betrayal of original principles. They kept faith with their nature as a party of capitalism and they left power with the system as firmly entrenched as ever.

Hands down

By the standards which count — meaning by the number of votes they attract or repel - the 1984 conference contest was a hands-down win for the Tories. The Labour Party were in their customary disarray and did nothing to dispel the popular image of them as subverting the gallant police effort to stand against savage pickets and to protect the freedom of the British workers to be exploited only when it pays the employers. The Liberals' votes on the issue of nuclear weapons gave them the appearance of a bunch of disorderly, if innocent. dupes of the Kremlin.

In contrast the Tories were on the offensive as the party who will defend to the last drop of our blood the freedom of the British ruling class to impose the capitalist rationale — no profit, no production. The bomb attack on Thatcher’s hotel served only to heighten the Tories’ heroic image. As the representatives flexed their knees and their wrists in the endless standing ovations, an important fact was ecstatically obscured. With 3½ million unemployed and an intensifying burden of misery for the workers, the Thatcher government is proving to be no more successful at running British capitalism than were their discredited opponents.

But of course the conferences are not meant to be much more than propaganda exercises. No one in their senses really expects a government to take any notice of what party activists get up to in their annual seaside beano. Capitalist political parties cannot operate in a properly democratic way: the demands of the system cannot allow open, full and informed participation in decisions. The conferences are all part of an elaborate, sordid game, in which the one effective rule is that the majority of the people are losers.