"St Moritz and Miners" (1947)

From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Observer of Sunday, Dec. 29th, 1946, describes the absence from work of Miners and Railway men, etc., on Friday and Saturday of Christmas week as “Shockingly anti-social.”

On the front page of the paper, and also in the Sunday Times, there was a photograph of the winter sports at St. Moritz (Switzerland), and many British holidaymakers are thus seen enjoying themselves there.

The Sunday Times (same date) tells us that between 13,000 and 14,000 holidaymakers travelled to the Continent during Christmas week. Considering that the workers in the main get two days’ holiday at Christmas, we are certain that a Continental trip for them is quite out of the question, apart from the expense. If that is so, then the lucky 13,000 must have both the time and the money.

The Observer, as a Capitalist organ, runs true to form in condemning the workers for absenteeism while wealthy idlers enjoy themselves in Swiss luxury hotels with the wealth created for them by their sweating wage-slaves.

J. D.

The profit machine (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

But lo! What is this I have before me? Why, the report of the impending ruin of J. Lyons & Co., Ltd.! It is contained in the following record of their business :

“During the last six years the profits have expanded by 100 per cent., and since the war the aggregate profits have amounted to £3,881,279, while the dividends on the ordinary shares have totalled 370 per cent., allowing for the 100 per cent. share bonus distributed two years ago.”—(Daily News, June 7th, 1923.)

You thriftless worker! If you had only saved a paltry £1,000 out of your enormous wages, and invested it in Lyons’ shares six years ago, you need not have lost a bead of sweat working, and yet you would have drawn £3,700 out of the company and still have your £1,000 invested in Lyons’ shares. Marvellous! isn’t it? And you are the dupe who produces the marvel.

[From “Why Work”, Socialist Standard, July 1923]

So They Say: Faint Headed (1975)

The So They Say Column from the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faint Headed

The hot weather of the past few weeks has been having “subtle psychological and physical effects” on us all claimed the Sunday Times of 10th August. Most particularly they note that heat relaxes the nervous system and warms the blood — causing drowsiness. Perhaps this factor should be taken into account when considering the jaded statements put forward recently by Mrs. Thatcher and masquerading as ‘policy’ for the Conservative Party.

Conservatives detested unemployment as much as anyone else . . . We believe in the creation of wealth, in flourishing business and commerce because that means prosperity for all and good prospects in the years ahead.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

It may have escaped her attention that to become unemployed, a worker loses a job — or, as in the case of school-leavers, fails to find a job at all. It is currently estimated that the latter already number over 55,000 and that this figure will increase considerably after the holiday period.

The “flourishing business and commerce” organisations Mrs. Thatcher speaks of, simply do not have room to entertain what she may or may not say she “detests.”

London Brick has sold much of the huge stock it was left with when building ground to a halt last year, and because it fears the boom will be short-lived, it is reluctant to replace the workers it laid off last year and re-open the works it shut.

(Sunday Times, 10th August ’75)

The Conservative leader appears oblivious to a basic law of the social system which her party wishes to continue — Under Conservatives or Labour; No production without profit.

Ghastly Problem

She continued her weary way by extolling the virtues of the “entrepreneur” who “in creating wealth for himself, creates incomparably more wealth for other people” although we are not clear if “other people” refers to other members of the board — they could hardly be unemployed workers. Concluding she remarked with ambiguity

The greatest conservative Prime Minister of this century, Winston Churchill once had as his slogan ‘Set the people free,’ it is time we revived it.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

One who fits into this category of “entrepreneur” is Sir Jules Thorn, and he is just about to set his people free, although not in the way that Mrs. Thatcher would approve. His company, Thorn Colour Tubes is considering the imminent closure of their Skelmersdale plant. 1,500 workers will become unemployed as a result. The reason behind this is that the bottom has dropped out of the colour television market, coupled with the fact that cheaper Japanese products are mopping up a good deal of what remains. The voice of the virile and generous capitalist who seems to haunt Mrs. Thatcher’s dreams was clearly put by Mr. Harold Mourgue, the Finance Director at Thorns:

Closure was inevitable unless firm action was taken with Government help to end a brutal price cutting war in the British colour tube market . . . with the Japanese there is a ghastly problem.

(Guardian, 13th August 1975)

But isn’t competition for markets and “brutal price- cutting wars” what it’s all about? Well, yes it is — Thorn do not want the government to take the obvious step of introducing tariff restrictions against their Japanese competitors. Their concern on this point is heartfelt: “Thorn is against a tariff war, however.

This might eventually harm its own export markets.” 

They estimate that if their plant remains open it would run at well under half its capacity next year on the demands of the British market, so it would be reasonable to assume that when they enter the export market, no doubt with the gentlemanly policy of fair shares for all, they may be surprised to find that their own conception of what is fair, will inevitably be viewed by others as “brutal” competition.

Doubletalk

An accomplished variation of the three-card trick was performed by Mr. Paul Foot — the International Socialist — in The Times of 14th August. After quoting the words of a dispirited shop steward at Norton Villiers Triumph where the Labour government has failed to provide further financial backing, Foot draws the following conclusion

These are dreadful times for socialists who put their trust in Labour Governments.

This is coy stuff of course, one of the very last places a Socialist would put his trust is in the Labour Party. But there is method in the madness. He attacks the government in its attempts to run capitalism at a time, as he puts it, of “unprecedented capitalist collapse” for the following reasons:

Labours elected representatives become isolated from their power base, impotent to resist the demands of the system which they try to manage. They mouth the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.

All unsparing language of course, but we fail to recollect when this “power base” i.e. the Labour Party supporters, expected or desired other than the continuance of capitalism. In this discrediting the leaders specifically, the illusion could be created that they alone are deliberately perverting the desires of their supporters. He accuses the “helpless puppet” (the Labour Government) of recently being forced by economic conditions to “tear up two manifestos” but fails to note that each one of those manifestos was filled from cover to cover with “the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.”

Having pointed out that such an unlikely vehicle as the Labour Party has failed to introduce Socialism, he uses some loose logic to reject the whole parliamentary method

The parliamentary road to socialism has turned into another blind alley. The revolutionary road is beginning to open up.

The “revolutionary” road to Worker’s Control is what he refers to. However we recall that Foot’s paper, the Socialist Worker had little doubt on 16th February 1974 when advising before the oncoming election that “The working class has to respond with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . .” exactly which “helpless puppet” they favoured.

High Life and Times

The chairman of the Labour Party’s Scottish Council had some savage truths to bring home to Glasgow’s working class recently. Times appeared to be exceptionally high for action.

It is high time we did something to woo the working class mothers away from the bingo halls, clubs and casinos . . . It is high time we were doing something about getting the men away from betting shops . . . I think it is high time the educational processes were directed towards encouraging them into better ways of using their leisure time and to carry on their wider education.

We will not dwell on the degree of reserve which these proposals might reasonably expect to encounter from an average man within a Glasgow betting shop, but draw attention to the useful life which Mrs. Roberta Jacqueline Trieze Kimberly leads. No bingo halls for her!

She makes three parachute jumps a day, five days a week: Takes daily tennis and shooting lessons, and also flying lessons seven days a week. It runs into money of course — somewhere in the region of £17,000 a year, but she still has time and money for others, her dog for instance, which costs about £500 a year to keep in food and toys. The figures have emerged because Mrs. Kimberly is to divorce, and has been obliged to file a claim for expenses ‘in order to continue living in her present style’. She is claiming £96,000 a year for this purpose.

The costs include . . . £20,000 a year for entertainment; £850 a month for clothing: and £290 a month for flowers . . . A claim of medical and dental fees covers over £1,000 a month.

(Daily Mail, 25th July ’75)

Her husband, Mr. James Kimberly, is heir to the Kleenex empire, and should any reader feel overcome by the sad news of their break-up, reach for the tissues — both of them will be delighted.

Alan D'Arcy

A Look Round. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Army of To-Day.

When we point out to so-called Communists and others that as a prelude to emancipation a Socialist working class must control the political machine in order to give them control of the armed forces of the State, we anticipate certain stereotyped objections. These we have met again and again in these columns. So far, no evidence has been produced to show that our policy understood by a majority of workers would not enable them to deal with any eventuality that might arise in the future. One of the stock objections raised is that the Army and Navy is officered by members of the capitalist class, and will therefore refuse to take instructions and orders from a Socialist-controlled Parliament. Apart from the fact that those who get control also get control of the finances upon which the whole Army must depend, the bulk of the Army and Navy officers are today not members of the capitalist class. By the time also that a considerable Socialist opinion has developed among the working class, it is reasonable to assume that soldiers drawn as they are from working-class homes will be more or less permeated with Socialist opinions.

The Capitalists of today are a numerically small class, and are compelled to have their Army, Navy and Air Force officers trained in the same way that they have to train their managers, organisers and specialists. Just as the latter have grown more numerous than their masters’ requirements, so is the Army officer landed in a similar plight. When, for various reasons the master class no longer require the services of their “gentleman” officers, they become the most helpless section of the numbers who go to swell the growing army of the unemployed. Let the Communists note well the following :—

“At Clements Inn alone over 2,000 ex-Officers are registered as unemployed, and these are only a part of those who, apart from work, need food and clothing. Ex-Officers there are with University honours, who are compelled to perform menial tasks in lodging houses in order to earn money for food. In a similar plight are men from all the leading Universities, men from Eton, men from Sandhurst, members of the Institute of Civil Engineers. (Letter to the “Daily Telegraph,” 9/7/29, from W. E. Southgate”, Capt., ex-Officer Unemployment Committee.)

Our Rich Friends.

“Socialism does not mean confiscation. Labour protests against the misleading suggestions of its opponents that it attacks private property and preaches class war.” (Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Blackburn, “Daily Chronicle,” 27/5/29.)

We have always claimed, and proved, that Socialism necessarily involves the conversion of capitalist private property into the commonly owned property or means of life of the whole of society. Such a revolution we also claim would remove the antagonism in society which arises out of the capitalist ownership of the workers’ means of living and their consequent enslavement. That antagonism of interest is the class struggle, eventually manifesting itself as a struggle for emancipation. Mr. Bernard Baron, a wealthy capitalist, apparently understands this, and sees that only Socialists will ever struggle for emancipation.

He knows that the Labour Party cannot be a Socialist Party without Socialist supporters, and that in their own words they are a “bulwark against revolution.” Other capitalists who support or join the Labour Party know likewise, and that the political ignorance which such a party reflects will also preserve the system which enables them to filch nine-tenths of Labour’s product. Need we be surprised, then, when we read that “Mr. Bernard Baron forwarded to Mr. Arthur Henderson a cheque for £5,000 for the Socialist (!) Party funds? Mr. Baron contributed a similar amount at the General Election of 1924” (“Daily Herald,” 10.5.29.). We also are entitled to protest against the “misleading suggestion” that the Labour Party is, or ever was, a Socialist Party.

Either or Either.

Sir Herbert Samuel is one of those brainy Liberal gentlemen who, like the rest of his lawyer-like tribe, can prove black is white as occasion arises. People who don’t handle the truth carefully, should, as the maxim reminds us, cultivate retentive memories, otherwise “bright young people” may discover that these gentlemen are nothing but political charlatans. After the following we need not wonder either, how it is that Liberal lawyers like Sir W. Jowitt can go to bed Liberal and wake up “Labour.” No wonder Ramsay wrote “I have often wondered what there was of any substance which really divided us.” (“Times,” June 8, ’29.) Says Sir Herbert number one: “In the Labour Party’s manifesto Socialism was relegated to the background. For the most part it was a Liberal programme which Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues advocated” (“Times,” May 2, ’29). Says Sir Herbert number two : “The Labour Party declares itself to be definitely Socialist. The speeches of its leading members, the resolutions passed by its conferences, have made this clear beyond the possibility of doubt.” (Article in “Answers,” May 25, ’29.) Without doubt Sir Herbert Samuel would also find no more difficulty in turning a political somersault than Sir W. Jowitt.

The Right to be Lazy.

According to the “Daily Chronicle,” (10.7.29), there are 1,142.400 out of work, an increase of 24,593 on the previous week. The total on July 1 comprised 889,000 men, 28,300 boys, 199,500 women and 25,500 girls. In the same paper, same date, same column, we also read under the sub-heading of “Society Acrobats” that:

“The diverse activities of well-known people have been keeping the photographers exceptionally busy, according to this week’s issue of that bright review ‘The Sketch.’ Half the social world appears to have skipped over to Le Touquet for the golf tournament of Buck’s Club, while the other half was either at the Peterborough Foxhound Show or the extraordinary circus held in a West-End mansion. Polo and a water party at Roehampton claimed many notable people, some of whom are seen doing complicated ‘physical jerks’ on Major Paget’s lawn to time set by gramophone ” (Ibid).

We are not kill-joys, nor are we much concerned with these antics about which the tripe journalists write so much trash. What we do object to is the humdrum existence we, like the rest of the workers, have to submit to because they do not understand the ease and comfort possible for all if the present means of wealth production were commonly owned and utilized for that purpose. If the pleasures of these idlers appear somewhat inane and trumpery, it is mainly because they are only the pleasures of a pampered few which in the present system is based upon the slavish and joyless existence of the many. An intelligent race of men and women would require more elevating enjoyment than baby parties, freak dinners or society circuses. When the working class begin to realise that the ushering in of a system free from stupid social absurdities and contradictions depends entirely on their own efforts, the end of this capitalist pandemonium will be well in sight.

Catholic Truth.

In these days when everything in the political world is dubbed Socialism, those desirous of obtaining knowledge should ever be critical even of those claiming to be Socialists. One would hardly expect the late Prime Minister to air Socialist views, yet in a leading article in the "Daily Mail” (June 10, ’29) we are seriously informed that:—

“Mr. Baldwin has contributed as much to the growth of Socialism as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for he is a Semi-Socialist. His speeches and his pronouncements have frequently been indistinguishable from those of avowed Socialists.”

Of course, this is only eye-wash for the working class. Our masters and their agents know that the Socialism that they dread is that which is in line with the teaching of Karl Marx, a Socialism founded on Science. It is because of our masters’ need to know the real enemy, and not the bogey used to frighten the workers, that we sometimes get the truth in strange places as follows :—

“It is of little purpose to point out that the Socialist condemned (by the Pope) is Marxism, and not Fabianism or its analogues in various countries.” (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 14, p. 67.)

Something Now.

The futility of the policy of waiting for “Somebody to do something” is illustrated in the following. In the House of Commons it appears there is a catering department the staff of which receives the following enormous wages : Waiters, 31/6 (with food), barmaids (after 10 years’ service), 29/-; cash desk attendants, 24/-; kitchen hands, 20/- per week. Remembering that we have in office a Labour Party for whom eight million people voted, it is instructive to note that, in answer to a question in Parliament, a Mr. Compton, Labour member and Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, stated that : “An immediate revision of wages could not be entertained” (“Daily Chronicle,” 18.7.29.). After all it might set a bad example to cotton operatives, railwaymen, and others to concede wages to these people on a level with the cost of the keep of paupers and convicts (sic). Perhaps we shall be told that the Labour Party is not yet in power.

Pills for Earthquakes.

“The workman who owns his own house and has saved enough to assure himself at least of bread and butter for his family is one of the rocks against which the doctrines of revolution will always foam in vain.” (“Evening News,” 13/7/29.)

Although apparently this thrifty individual becomes a householder, he still remains a workman. Only a very small percentage of the millions of the workers own their own houses. If house ownership could form rocks against revolution, we wonder why our masters don’t rush to pay wages that might enable the majority to buy a shelter. Let us suppose, only suppose, mind you, that they did. Would not the wicked revolutionary creep in with his insidious economics and point out that, with an all-round removal of the cursed rent item, a lowered cost of living would mean lowered wages? He would ! True, numbers have to save, scrape, and mortgage in order to buy a house; they could not get one in any other way to-day, but it requires more than a house or a Post Office Savings account to secure the worker against the insecurity of modern times. None but a fortunate few manage to save even sufficient to provide for an emergency or old age, and irony of ironies, millions who have toiled their lives through piling up wealth for others pay a few coppers insurance per week to save them from the stigma of a pauper’s grave.

W. E. MacHaffie

50 Years Ago: The Right to be Lazy (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard 

According to the Daily Chronicle (2 July 1929) there are 1,142,400 out of work, an increase of 24,593 on the previous month. The total on 1 July comprised 889,000 men, 28,300 boys, 199,500 women and 25,500 girls.

In the same paper, same date, same column, we also read under the subheading “Society Acrobats”:

The diverse activities of well-known people have been keeping the photographers exceptionally busy, according to this week’s issue of that bright review, the Sketch. Half the social world appears to have shipped over to Le Touquet for the golf tournament of Buck’s Club, while the other half were either at the Peterborough Foxhound Show or the extraordinary circus held in a West End mansion. Polo and a water party at Roehampton claimed many notable people, some of who are seen doing complicated ‘physical jerks’ on Major Paget’s lawn to time set by gramophone.

We are not killjoys, nor arc we much concerned with these antics about which the tripe journalists write so much trash. What we do object to is the humdrum existence we, like the rest of the workers, have to submit to because they do not understand the case and comfort possible for all if the present means of wealth production were commonly owned and utilised for that purpose. 

(From an article by MacHaffie, Socialist Standard August 1929.)

Sting in the Tail: The bubble bursts (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The bubble bursts

Bradley Stoke, near Bristol, is Europe’s largest private housing development where in 1988 people queued overnight to buy houses before they were even built.

After all, house prices were rocketing and this, along with mortgage tax relief, made buying a house seem like a sound investment, so buyers took out mortgages in the belief that they could always sell at a profit.

Then came the recession. People lost their jobs and tax relief was cut. Many homes were re-possessed and house prices tumbled. Bradley Stoke became the negative equity capital of Britain and residents renamed it “Sadly Broke”. On top of this, professor Doug Woods of the Manchester Business School predicts that house prices will stay depressed for another 20 years!

Of course, no one can be certain what any market will be like one year from now let alone 20, but what does look certain is that the agony will continue for many workers who, like those in Bradley Stoke, fell for the guff about "a property-owning democracy”.

Panel in a muddle

Remember the panel of “seven wise men” appointed by the Government in 1993 to advise it on the economy? And remember how one of them announced after their very first meeting that the other six hadn’t a clue about how the economy worked?

At their latest meeting the panel, now only six, deliberated over what the government should do about interest rates:

“Three of the Chancellor's six independent advisers believe he made a 'tactical error' in not raising rates this month. The three ‘wise men’ say the current 6.75 percent will have to rise. . . but two others oppose further rises and the sixth expect the cost of borrowing to fall. ” (Ceefax 23 May.)

Setting-up the panel was just a political stunt to reassure the public following the ERM debacle of 1993, so the government never had the slightest intention of paying any heed to what the panel would say, and it isn’t hard to see why.

Unhappy minority

A Mr Allen Hancock in the USA has been publishing a quarterly More Than Money since 1993. He is a compassionate man who produces this publication to comfort a forgotten minority of US society—the filthy rich.

Inheriting $500,000 in 1988 from his oil-rich grandfather, Mr Hancock found himself "feeling isolated, embarrassed and encumbered”. According to a recent Cornell University study, over the next 20 years $4,800 billion will be inherited in the USA and Mr Hancock is worried about the recipients.

“One third of that wealth will go to just one percent of the population, amongst whom the average will be some $1.6 million. That is going to create a lot of stress and even unhappiness, Mr Hancock argues. " (Times, 12 April.)

As the unhappy inheritors don’t seem liable to give away this money burden, don't you think a compassionate working class should abolish the stuff for them?

Elementary, My Dear Whitehouse

We are all familiar with the deductive methods of the fictitious Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately modern detectives are not quite so logical.

In the Observer (21 May) there appeared a report of the career of a real live detective Paul Whitehouse, Chief Constable of Sussex. Mr Whitehouse is an unusual policeman. He and a contemporary were the first Cambridge graduates to enter the police for 20 years. He is also unusual in that he can make deductions based on facts, even if these are rather obvious to socialists without the benefits of a Cambridge education:

“I started in Hartlepool. I couldn't help but notice that crimes were mostly being committed by the poorer people, who lived in the poorest areas. That is an interesting starling point. "

His deductive powers are somewhat less than Holmesian though, for he obviously understands less about policing in capitalism than Alan Clark:

“Alan Clark (the former Defence Minister) would say that we are here as servants of the ruling class. I would say we are here as servants of the people. ”

A look in the future

Those wearing red rosettes were happily chanting “easy, easy” while those with the blue rosettes looked on in dismay. Rival fans at a football match? No, only Labour and Tory activists on TV after the recent local elections.

“A great night for Labour” chorused the pundits, but party leader Tony Blair warned his followers that the night could well be Labour's high point. It probably was. If Labour wins the next (general) election and takes on the task of administering British capitalism then what can we expect to see?

First, the initial euphoria will evaporate as the new government struggles in vain to provide the jobs, security, improved social services, benefits, etc. which the voters were led to expect.

Next, public anger and media hostility, now aimed at the Tories, will be turned on Labour. Its popularity will slump in the opinion polls, seats will be lost at by-elections, Labour councillors will be ousted in droves from town halls, and finally there will be exultant Tories and dismayed Labourites on TV after a future election.

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

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

Cat out of the bag

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

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

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

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

Hobson’s Choice

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

Prophets of Doom

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

Mr. MacMillan joins the chorus:

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

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

Honesty takes a back seat

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

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

The right attitude to the job

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

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

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

Life is grim, and life is earnest

From the Sunday Express, 154-56:

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

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

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

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

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

Alwyn Edgar.

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.

Astonishing attack by Judge: Protest Action Planned (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jayne Christine Harris, aged 21, an heiress and a former debutante, was fined £350 at the Central Criminal Court yesterday for unlawfully possessing cannabis. She was allowed seven days to pay the fine, with three months' imprisonment in default.

. . . Judge Gwyn Morris, QC, told her: “You appear to be a useless member of the community enjoying a large income which you do not earn. The only contribution you have made to working life since you completed an expensive schooling was to act for a very short time as some sort of clothes peg, euphemistically known as a fashion model."

(The Times, 9th May)

An emergency meeting is to be held of the General Council of ANUS (Amalgamated Non-workers and Useless Succubae), to consider a call for a one-day general strike in protest against the judge’s remarks. The call is made by the Country Landowners’ Association, and has the support of the Institute of Directors and other major unions.

The strike is planned for the first day of the grouse-shooting season. Militants plan to stay in bed all day (those who do not already do so). Many will paint slogans on their hot-water bottles and wine carafes. Writes our Non-industrial Correspondent: Such a strike would paralyze Belgravia and Mayfair and affect nursing homes and expensive resorts all over the world. Besides grouse moors, casinos and the turf would be hit.

Sir Graball D’Encloseland, the chairman of ANUS, told our reporter of the unions’ angry mood. “We shall have every Tom, Dick and Harry criticizing the capitalist system if a stand is not taken now,” he said. “Anyway, what does a judge do except bugger about in a wig ? There are plenty of people with small incomes which they have to earn, and if the opposite is not allowed as well Britain is finished. I don’t understand his remarks about clothes pegs. I have hundreds of clothes pegs, and every one is usefully employed holding expensive suits and shirts. This is a matter of principle. Our lie-in is going to be a blow for freedom and honour and justice and all-those-other-bits- in-the-school-song, you know. We shall fight for—”

At this point Sir Graball was seized with a violent fit of coughing, and our reporter left discreetly as the brandy was fetched. Sir Graball D’Encloseland is 109.

A word in season. (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The London society season is in full swing. It is an event of importance to the ladies and gentlemen of the class we work for—when permitted. It is an event by which we can measure their prosperity and our poverty. In that respect it is of importance to you : as working men and women you have been taught to believe from childhood that they are so very clever, and brainy, working with their brains sort of thing (sic). There is, therefore, reason to believe that in your simplicity the following will appear to you evidence of their ability. The event, it says :—

“Is one which promises to be the most brilliant, and crowded, and interesting of any since prewar days. . . 300,000 people are coming to London. . . . They will be doing Henley, which is so very gay, and Ascot, which is so very smart, The Derby, the Horse Show, the Royal Tournament, all the fetes and functions, until they run off to Goodwood in tailor-mades and leave those green woods and scented Downs for Cowes and the “white wings” on the Solent” (“Sunday News,” May 8, 1927).

And very nice, too ! And what of you fellow workers? You will be doing the same old round of toil which makes such luxury possible. When, with the passing of the summer months, your masters and their ladies depart for the moors, the country house, or the Riviera, you will remain the occupants of the murky, mud-plastered cities of industry. Still, you will argue, who are we, anyway? They’ve got the brains. What is the real contrast? Indolence and parasitism—revelling in splendour. Usefulness and skill exercised in every department of wealth production rewarded with penury, insecurity, and often premature death. Chasing the seasons around the earth in a mad whirl of never-satisfying pleasure may exercise these people in many directions ; it is obvious that, miles from the seat of operations, they can play no part in wealth-producing processes. That part is the workers’ part, including the real directing, the organising, and even the collecting of the profits which flow on during their absence. Still, some sort of excuses have to be made as these contrasts become more pronounced. The contempt that the master class have for your political intelligence is shown from the following clap trap which appeared in a leading article (Westminster Gazette, June 13th, 1927) in the very midst of this welter of wealth. They say :—

“The fact is that no policy other than strict economy is possible for a country such as ours.”

One wouldn’t have thought it, would they ? Some may think that we overdraw the picture: that though there may be a greater flaunting of wealth, the worst forms of squalor have been removed from the workers’ life. Have they? Not a stone’s throw from London’s fashionable and wealthy centre are conditions that would disgrace savages. Seven Westminster citizens, headed by a gentleman who preaches the blessedness of poverty, visited 490 houses in the Victoria Ward (Rev. Francis Boyd, report Evening News, June 6th, 1927). Here are a few of the things that they saw in this rich residential area :—

“In Aylesford Street a woman, her son, his wife, and their boy of 14 were found all living in one room. In another house where four families shared eight rooms there were 14 adults and 10 children. In a court in Wilton Road a husband, wife, five daughters aged 20, 16, 15, 13 and 5 and a son aged 18, had only two rooms in which to live and sleep. Yet another instance in Gray’s Inn Court is given where, in two rooms were a grandmother, man and wife, girls aged 14, 13 and 7 and boys aged 10, 3 and 1.”

“The list could be extended indefinitely,” says the report. “Particularly numerous are the families of six, seven, and more members living in two rooms in tenement houses.”

Of an address in Alderney Street it says :—

“There are sewer rats so numerous that within 24 hours of the laying of a new board it was eaten through. The children are terrified of the rats and refuse to go to bed. One boy was sent to Westminster Hospital suffering from nervous exhaustion.”

And this after one hundred years of reform, within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament. Every London district and every large town could show similar plague spots. The workers being content with the scraps and the offal, the gloomy hovels, and excluded from life’s real pleasures, have allowed their masters to take full advantage of their contentment. Blame or sympathy in either case is waste of time : nothing but the recognition that the removal of all social evils is their mission, and theirs alone, can rid society of such glaring contrasts in wealth and squalor. Experience is a hard and often a slow teacher, but there are signs that it has slowly but surely been doing its work. Awaken, workers, to the possibilities of Socialism, so that you may join with us for the Social Revolution.

W. E. MacHaffie

Notes by the Way: Heroes and Geniuses (1947)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Heroes and Geniuses

Back in 1918 Mr. Lloyd George told the soldiers that he aimed to build a country “fit for heroes to live in.” The disgusted sufferers in Lloyd George’s post-war Britain were soon telling him bitterly that only heroes could stand it. Mr. Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, has now been telling the National Institute of Houseworkers that housekeeping to-day (that means under Labour Government), has to be an art, “ and even sometimes a work of genius ” (Sunday Express, 13/4/17). Of course we are all heroes now, or so we were told during the ‘‘blitzes” by "We can take it ” Mr. Morrison, but how do we stand as geniuses? According to Dr. J. R. Rees, formerly chief psychiatrist adviser, to the army., we don’t shape very well—“nearly 30 per cent. of people in Britain are mentally backward, chronically neurotic or emotionally handicapped” (Sunday Express, 13/4/47).

The truth is that this capitalist bedlam is becoming unendurable even to heroes and geniuses and unless we break out of it soon the human race not only won’t live (as distinct from partly living), it won’t even survive.

America Seeks Democracy (and Oil) in the Middle East

”Mr. Chester Morrow (Republican) told the House of Representatives to-day that any failure to approve President Truman’s programme 'will imperil American oil interests in the Middle East.’

"Mr. Morrow, who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said : ‘In the event of future trouble the almost illimitable supply of oil in Arabia will be of paramount importance to our national defence. To protect our national interests, and help to guarantee our security, we must not allow the Middle East to he overrun by the Power whose actions clearly indicate an unfaltering determination to dominate all the world.’ ” —(Manchester Guardian, 27/3/47.)

Flowers for the Funeral of Full Employment

Under the heading "Luxury Labour Exchange has flowers, settees,” the Evening Standard (January 29th. 1947). published a picture of a new exchange at Westminster. "There are no long counters, no queues, no benches at the new Labour Exchange for women . . . Instead, women wait on soft chairs and cushioned settees, are interviewed individually in small cubicles . . . and there are even flowers on occasional tables.” 

Dalton Promised an Age of Plenty

Speaking at Deptford on December 11th, Mr. Hugh Dalton. Chancellor of the Exchequer, said

“ It is true we had to put up with great shortages, but gradually we shall work our wav through the age of scarcity into the age of plenty and abundance is within our reach provided we organise our economic life in the interests of the collective effort, and in the national interest ” (Daily Mail. December 12th. 1946).

Mr. Dalton follows an ancient tradition. It is an old-English custom for Chancellors to promise "plenty.” In the meantime one industry seems to he doing well under Labour Government, the "Millionaire” industry. Since Labour came into power there have been some ten people who have died worth a million or more. The same issue of the Mail reported that Mr. W. J. Yapp, director of Carreras, the tobacco company, "has left a fortune estimated at about £4,000,000.” of which there will still be upwards of £1,500,000 left after payment of death duties.

Workers' Control?

"Lord Dukes—formerly Mr. Charles Dukes, the trade union pioneer—has been appointed a director of the Bank of England for four years.”

"The Hon. Hugh Kenyon Molesworth Kindersley, who has also been appointed a director for four years, is managing director of Lazard Brothers and Company Limited.”—(Daily Mail, 1/3/47.)

The Labour Government and the Idle Rich

Everybody knows that under Labour Government there are many people living in idleness at the expense of the wealth producers, though Government spokesmen profess not to know how many there are.

Back in 1937 when the Labour Party was in the political wilderness and its present leader had time to write books explaining what they would do when they got power, Mr. Attlee wrote:—"It is true that in the Socialist State people will be deprived of the right of living in idleness at the expense of the community . . .”  "The Labour Party in Perspective,” Mr. Attlee, page 143.)

Only a non-Socialist would refer to Socialism as the "Socialist State,” and all Socialists knew that the Labour Party had no intention of depriving the capitalists of the right to live on the proceeds of the exploitation of the working class. There were, however, Labour supporters who believed that a Labour Government would take that step: Had they not heard Labour speakers declaim against the war-time injustice of workers being conscripted while capitalists were left in possession of their property? Remembering this and remembering too how often the Labour Party pledged itself against conscription in peace-time it must be a bitter experience for many Labour supporters to reflect on the fact that it is their party that legislates for conscription in peace-time, and gets it passed with the votes of Churchill and the Tories..

The Usefulness of Henry Ford

The death of Henry Ford, the American motor magnate, whose fortune has been variously estimated nf from £150 million to £200 million. induced Mr. G. L. Schwartz in the Sunday Times (13/4/47) to discuss the usefulness or otherwise of millionares to the community. This is his case for the millionaires: —

"Here is a simple test. Suppose the price of a 20 per cent, all-round rise in the standard of living in this country over the next decade was the emergence of 50 new millionaires, bloated millionaires. if you like . . . Would you advocate foregoing the improvement for the sake of greater equalitarianism? We can quarrel about this, but let us quarrel intelligently.”

At first glance this may look to be a reasonable presentation of the conflict between Socialism and Capitalism, as Mr. Schwartz intends it to be: but only at first glance. It is actually a statement of the division of opinion between those who advocate unrestricted Capitalism and those, like the Labour Party, who advocate legislation to impose high taxation on large incomes, and high duties on fortunes passing at death. Socialists are not in either camp. Our proposition is that Socialism is quite different from and vastly superior to either wav of trying to run Capitalism, the American way or the British Labour Government’s way. In both countries the mass of the population live in constant poverty, in fear of losing their employment, and in fear of losing their lives in capitalism's wars—for wars and crises are just as much part of Capitalism as are millionaires.

So also is unemployment. In the much-quoted article "The Carrot and the Stick” the “Economist” (29/6/46) showed how necessary unemployment is to Capitalism in order to goad the workers into the degree of effort required by the employers. “Provided that no one is unemployed for more than a short time, an unemployment ratio of 5 per cent, is not only supportable but absolutely necessary to provide mobility and elasticity in the economy. Full employment, in fact, will not work without a million unemployed.” Now look at Mr. Schwartz’s assumption in the light of the facts. Note that he places his assumption in the future, why not in the past? If it is a sound assumption it should be true of the past decades as well as the coming ones.

So it now can be restated as ”Suppose there was an all-round 20 per cent. rise in the standard of living in the past decade . . .” Need we say any more than to challenge our economist to prove that British workers are 20 per cent. better off than in 1937, 40 per cent. better off than in 1927, and 60 per cent. better off than they were 30 years ago! We have had lots of millionaires: we have also had two world wars, two major crises, hundreds of strikes and lock-outs, bad housing, under-feeding and all the miseries of unemployment and insecurity.

We think these things are a high price to pay for Capitalism, and we are willing to quarrel intelligently with Mr. Schwartz about it.

Why Daddy Goes Down the Mine 

For a while the Labour Government feared that too many workers were listening to the old refrain: “Don’t go down in the mine daddy.” Then a campaign to popularise the miner’s life was launched, and now recruits are coming in: ”2,000 men join the pits every week ” (Daily Express, 21/3/47). But it isn’t all due to propaganda; that never failing Capitalist persuader, unemployment, is playing its part. “In January, fewer than 800 men a week were volunteering. Now all men under 35 who are out of work for four weeks are being advised to go to the pits ” (Daily Express, 21/3/47).

No More Sneers at Capitalism

Captain Raymond Blackburn, Labour M.P. for King’s Norton, Birmingham, has been in hot water with some of his constituents for a speech he made recently Declaring that an entirely new approach is needed he went on :—

“We in the Labour movement must realise that the export trade is in the hands of private enterprise. We must proudly acclaim its achievements instead of sneering at those who are successful. It is an odd paradox that the success of Socialism in Britain depends in large degree upon the efficiency of private enterprise

“I believe that despite the clear statement of our position in the White Paper and by the Prime Minister in his broadcast we are still heading for disaster. This is not pessimism, but realism.

“It seems impossible that we can survive as a great exporting nation in the years of competition that lie ahead, if there is any substantial reduction in the hours of work in our main industries.—(Daily Telegraph, 24/3/47).

What Captain Blackburn calls an odd paradox is more than that, it is utter nonsense. The success of Socialism has nothing to do with the Labour Party’s ability to run Capitalism. The truth is that the Labour Government is in a jam, as everyone who looked squarely at the facts knew it would be. They promised to give the workers the benefits of Socialism without abolishing Capitalism; to make the wage-earners comfortable, prosperous and contented without getting rid of wage-slavery. Two particular promises were higher wages (without higher prices.), and shorter hours. Now they are damping down on claims for higher wages and shorter hours because they have to make it possible for the Capitalists to get their profits. The Labour supporters who are surprised and horrified at Captain Blackburn’s statement have no real ground for complaint. If they had studied Labour Party literature with care they would have known what was bound to be the outcome of keeping the Capitalist leopard alive and in good health while trying to change its spots.

The Royal Trip to South Africa

Some Labour M.P.s criticised the Royal trip to S. Africa on ground of its cost—altering H.M. “Vanguard” cost £170,000 (News Chronicle, 19/3/47), and others on the ground of its obvious object, that of helping to prop up Smut’s government against his Nationalist rivals.

Mr. Hannen Swaffer, Labour Party supporter, admitted the purpose and that Smuts is “anti-native and an enemy of the trade unions,” but defended the trip.

“The King’s visit to a Dominion where there is a very strong anti-British republicanism may do infinite good to our relations.

“General Smuts is admittedly anti-native and an enemy of the trade unions. But he is a Prime Minister whose friendship for Britain was one of the deciding factors in the war. His loyalty to the Commonwealth will be greatly helped by a tour which, extravagant though may be its circumstance, is a normal part of constitutional procedure.—(People, 9/2/47).

Indian Nationalists and the Trade Unions

Indian workers who supported the Nationalist movement in the belief that the Indian propertied class would behave differently from British rulers in India are soon learning their mistake. The following statement, taken from the journal of the All-India Trade Union Congress relates to a Trade Union Bill introduced by the Interim Government:—

“ Mr. Jagjivan Ram, Labour Member of the Interim Government of India introduced in the Legislative Assembly (Central) on November 1st, 1946, a Bill which claims 'to make provision for the investigation and settlement of industrial disputes ’ but which, in reality attacks the worker’s right to direct action and strike. The Bill not only embodies all the objectionable features of the Trade Disputes Act, 1929, but seeks to incorporate the hated provisions of Rule 81A of the D. I. R banning strikes and thus perpetuate the wartime restrictions on the right of workers to strike so as to practically annul it. He seemed to be in such a great hurry to put this measure on the Statute Book that he moved that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee with instructions to report within a week.—(Trade Union Record,” Bombay, November, 1946).

What Is Prosperity?

Future historians who look back and read to-day’s descriptions of our own age will be puzzled by the restricted meaning applied to the word prosperity. It is usual in the Capitalist Press to apply the term to the propertied class only, and to ignore vast masses of the population. We are told that U.S.A. is prosperous, “the only nation to-day in which a glut of goods threatens disaster"—(Sunday Times, 13/4/47). Farmers and business men are jittery lest overproduction should lead to drastic price cuts and loss of profits, hut this doesn't mean that there aren't millions of poverty-stricken workers who need the products but cannot afford them. The "Economist" (5/4/47) thinks that the situation may be relieved by Government grants “to help local groups provide well-balanced midday meals at cost to all children in school, and free to those whose parents cannot afford payment"

Britain, on the other hand, is said to be a very poor country and Sir Stafford Cripps says: "We can't win through by chiselling and scrounging, by black marketeering or evading our fair share, or by trying to live on the industry of others"—(Daily Herald, 20/3/47.)

Yet the propertied class are living on the industry of others as usual, and doing quite well. The News Chronicle (12/3/47) reported a visit to a small grocery shop in South Audley Street where he saw caviare at £10 10s. a lb., and Truffles at 26s. 6d. a pint as well as other expensive delicacies. The owner of the shop told the reporter “that most of his customers are wealthy and spend lavishly to get what they want." This shopkeeper, by the way "considers the price of his caviare very reasonable. Another West End shop charges £12 12s. a lb."

Spain is another prosperous country, according to Sir. Mont Follick, Labour M.P. for Loughborough. He went to Spain and wrote about it in the Sunday Express (6/4/47). Here are some statements taken from Mr. Follick’s article:—

“Franco has introduced a large variety of reforms that benefit the working classes, though he has quashed their liberty to strike.

"There is no doubt that at this present moment there is extraordinary prosperity in Spain.

“But the working classes are very badly off.

"Everybody feels that something should be done for the working classes, but not a single subsidised house has been built for them, because it it not a business proposition to do so."

If we are to take Mr. Follick literally Spain is indeed a remarkable place. It is very prosperous but the workers are very badly off—this in spite of the variety of reforms Franco has kindly introduced for them—and everybody feels that something should be done for them but nobody does anything.

One at least of Mr. Follick's observations has a familiar ring, it is so true of all countries—"A man who has money in Spain has a life of luxury."

The Churches and the Dogs

The Churches are worrying about the spread of gambling and religion appears to be fading out. On March 11th the Manchester Guardian published a report of a Churches Committee on gambling which estimates that out of a working population of 20,000,000 16,000,000 bet regularly on football pools, horses or dog-racing. In the same issue of the Guardian the Lord Mayor was quoted as saying that "as few as 5 per cent. of the population of London attended places of worship."

If the figures are placed side by side it appears somewhat odd that the Churches (5 per cent. of the population) should be telling the Government to curtail the waste of man-power on betting, which interests 80 per cent. Mere weight of numbers suggests that the 80 per cent. should call for inquiry into the waste of man-power on religion, in which relatively few are interested. Point is given to this by the recent inquiry about religious knowledge made by the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth. He examined young recruits in the Navy and found that only one in five could repeat the Lord's Prayer word perfect and only 45 per cent knew what Easter commemorates.—(Daily Mail, 12/4/47.)

Some Labour Party Pronouncements on Wages and Prices

"Maintenance of a high and constant purchasing power through good wages."—(From " Let Us Face the Future," Labour Election Programme, 1945.)

"A Labour Government will co-operate with the Trade Unions to improve wage standards ..." (“Labour's Immediate Programme," 1937.)

Now the unions are being asked to co-operate with the Government in avoiding claims for higher wages.

Edgar Hardcastle

The highways of slaughter. (1925)

From the October 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The daily slaughter of the workers on the railways, in the mine, in fact, throughout industry, has almost become a commonplace. Being a commonplace, it excites little more than passing sympathy, and the usual flood of nauseating Capitalist cant. But a new peril has arisen : “The Slaughter of the Highway.”

“There were 25,342 street accidents in the metropolitan area of London alone, during the quarter ending June 25th. Fatal injuries were inflicted on 226 people, 191 of them by motor vehicles (quoted, The Ratepayer, August). 73 casualties occurred in England and Wales from motor accidents for the week-end September 13-15th, 1925, of which number 26 were killed” (Daily Express, September 15th 1925).

The above figures only allow a very small estimate of the toll of human life throughout the country, but it might cause the workers to ask a few pertinent questions. Whose is the commercial motor? Is it not the property of the speeding-up-profit-grinder?—whether it be the heavily laden motor-lorry or the traffic grabbing ‘bus combine. Whose is the Rolls Royce and the Daimler? Is it not the expensive toy of the class for whose pleasure and profit our class are murdered on the sea, the battlefield, in the mine, and now upon the very streets we walk? Dare their apologists deny it? They cannot without lying. They can only whine lest you realise at long last that the pleasures and the profits of the few are the fruits of your sacrifice in every department of life. Hear them :—

“It would be a grievous thing to the life of the road and of the community if hatred of motorists follows in the wake of the daily toll of accidents that are collected by the Press” (Westminster Gazette, September 21st, 1925.)

Would it? What a grievous thing if the workers realised that the toll of the road, bad as it is, is as nothing to the toll of human misery the Capitalist system engenders for them. The community, indeed (sic). In their sense it is merely the cant word for Capitalist Class. Did that class consult the “community” over that stupendous event, the war? Do you think they will bother about a mere handful of you in comparison with the loss of life that the war was bound to involve? No. Just as in a mining disaster they rush their black coated clerics to the scene lest the tragedy arouse your hatred of them and their hellish system, so their prostitute journalists rush into print in an effort to lull you into the belief that the ever growing motor peril is incidental and passing. But even in their efforts to bluff you they belie themselves as they invariably do in other matters concerning Working Class life. The same writer admits that even after precautions and penalties have been scientifically enforced :—

“We shall still have to accept a residuum of yearly accidents as an average. That price must be paid for the boon which motoring has brought, just as a similar price has to be paid for transport by sea, railroad, or air” (Ibid).

We ! To whom has motoring brought the boon? And who are the “we” that must ”pay the price” ? As Socialists we welcome all means to shorten toil and extend pleasure. But just as the vast improvements in machinery, transport, and scientific methods of producing wealth bring their harvest of disasters and poverty under Capitalist private ownership, so the motor, both commercial and pleasure, in the hands of the Capitalist highwaymen extends the inconveniences and the dangers of your already here-to-day and gone-to-morrow poverty existence.

W. E. MacHaffie

Anti-dotes for doped notes. (1923)

From the March 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “I am perfectly certain that there is a good deal of unnecessary unemployment. People won’t work at a wage that makes it remunerative for anyone to employ them.”—(Judge Crawford, Edmonton County Court), “Evening News,” January 22nd, 1923.)

Yea ! learned judge, but you are so vague and ambiguous, and in your brevity you omit any evidence for the above statements, a shortcoming with all enemies of the working class. They invariably make assertions as if they were undisputed facts which required no proof to support them. What, in your wisdom, fixes the limits of necessary and unnecessary unemployment? And in what category might we include those who “employ them,” and for whom you whine? Undoubtedly in the former, in order to provide “them,” the workers, with plenty of wor-r-rk, when profitable of course. How nice ! How kind ! And yet ! despite such philanthropic sacrifice there are ungrateful wretches whose exorbitant demands make it unremunerative to employ them. At least, that is what you would have us believe. But console yourself. An enormous surplus of wealth awaits a market without the “increased production” of the unemployed. There is another section of workless, however, the master class, whose wealth increases despite their idleness and their riotous dissipation in every luxurious form possible. Hearken !

  “We are supposed to be crushed with taxation, and to be labouring in the trough of a great trade depression, yet all accounts agree that there has never been such a winter holiday season as during the last six weeks. The Riviera has been thronged with English visitors, there has been a positive rush to the Alpine resorts ; at one moment the Continental trains were running in five parts, and it needed nearly a fortnight’s notice to get a sleeping berth on any of the through trains to Switzerland or to the south of France . . . money is spent lavishly, and whether at Cannes, Monte Carlo, or St. Moritz, the cheerful crowd of winter holiday-seekers seems to stint itself for nothing.”—(“World’s Work,” p. 213, February.)

Only an isolated illustration, but everywhere it is the same story, an ever-increasing abundance of wealth and a panorama of pleasure made passible by the workers, who, through ignorance, fail to see that the cause of their want, insecurity, and monotony of life, is the capitalist ownership of society’s means of living. The capitalists only allow these means of living to be operated when profitable to themselves, at best only returning on the average sufficient for a bare existence to the wealth producers. Nevertheless, whilst through lack of understanding the workers sanction their own enslavement, the knowledge they exhibit in carrying on the work of society, extended to their material interests as a class, will win them through to freedom.

* * * *

  “It is our duty to make people fit to live in the world, and not to try to make the world fit for people to live in.”—(Mr. H. Pike Pease, “Reynolds,” February 4th, 1923.)

But the world is fit to live in, and a place of splendour and gaiety, for those who can “live” in it, for the small privileged few whose ownership of it renders the “existence” of the large majority such a joyless and precarious one. “Our” duty forsooth ! duty between the conflicting interests of the robber and the robbed ! Rubbish ! While the workers look to their exploiters, with their agents, to alter the conditions under which they exist, they remain mentally in a condition to be deluded at every turn. But when a majority of them understand that society is not merely a jumble of unrelated incidents wherein a set of benevolent God ordained rulers permit them to exist, but an historically evolved stage in human enslavement that will pass like other stages have done, then, and then only can society be organised upon a co-operative basis that will allow the full and free opportunity for all to live. To talk of making people fit to live whilst retaining conditions that render life a hideous “struggle for millions from the cradle to the cemetery, is to put the cart before the horse, in other words, to talk rot.

* * * *

   “The more you try to get down to the idea of a Socialist State, the sooner you will get down to the idea of a first-class lunatic asylum.”—(Dr. Macnamara, “Reynolds,” February 4th, 1923.)

There now! the mighty hath spoken, just a bald meaningless string of words, the outcome of woeful ignorance or slimy hypocrisy. The State, like other social institutions, has not existed from all eternity, the long era of primitive man’s existence knew it not, only the advent of property with consequent class subjections makes the State a necessity.

  “The modern State is but an executive committee for administering the affairs of the whole bourgeois class.”—(Communist Manifesto.)

With the establishment of Socialism and the consequent abolition of classes and class oppression, the function of the State ceases, its need is ended. Socialism and the State are therefore incompatible. Dr. Macnamara is a supporter of capitalism, so he assumes the role of Nelson, failing to see the obvious, the chaos of the system he defends, and by a sinister inference, imputes to Socialism “the first-class lunatic asylum” he pretends not to see around him. Let us quote one capitalist statistician.

  “The great fact emerges that the enormous annual income of the United Kingdom is so badly distributed amongst us that, out of a population of 43,000,000, as many as 38,000,000 are poor.”— (C. Money, ”Riches and Poverty,” p. 43.)

But the Socialist offers evidence that wherever the present system prevails, it is productive of increasing poverty, perpetual war, prostitution, and liars who serve the ruling class by the dissemination of written and verbal matter calculated to stifle working class discontent. The toilers, not understanding the ease with which they could live under Socialism, and inclined to believe that which comes from “great” men, too often swallow such trash. Potential comrades, ”The great only appear great because you are kneeling. Arise!”

* * * *

    “As things are, nobody knows what is the real cost of unemployment, and in what proportions that cost is borne by different classes of the community. . . . Not only are the workers taxed for the maintenance of their unemployed fellows, but also the incomes out of which they must meet the charge are themselves heavily reduced by the very fact of unemployment.”—(“The Cost of Unemployment,” by Barbara Wooton, “Labour Magazine,” February.)

Well, if “nobody” knows, there appears to be a spontaneous generation of knowledge on the writer’s part within the confines of the same article, for the latter quotation contains a positive assertion as to whom she considers does pay. If by “different classes” is meant other than the working class and the non-working class, the capitalists, the only classes that can be discovered to-day, then her confusion is easily understood. Repeatedly in these columns we have pointed out, and demonstrated the fact, that the working class, being without property in the means of life, must sell their physical and mental energies for a subsistence wage, to those that own those means (the master class). They cannot pay for anything beyond what they have received their wages for, the food, clothing, shelter, and small pleasures necessary for the re-production of their labour powers. Even in regular employment, December 31st finds them as wealthy as January 1st, wages presuppose a bare living. If this were not so, wage adjustments, cost-of-living charts, sliding scales, would all be inexplicable. It is only in form that the slavery of the wage worker differs from the chattel slave, and that is the money or wage form; both receive their “keep,” and as with the slave owner, so with the capitalist, the wealth the workers produce is his. Despite the enormous proportionate increase of that wealth, the worker still continues his slave existence, and the expense of war, unemployment, pauperism and crime must be met by the owners of wealth, which is itself the proceeds of the robbery of the working class. Nobody who understands his or her position as a worker cares a damn about the cost of unemployment, it is the master’s cost, and only concerns him and the labour frauds who bleat for their paymasters in company with simpletons lacking understanding. Both assist in fogging the issue—the conflict between masters and slaves, the class war, only the full recognition of which can herald the coming of the day of working class triumph and the Social Revolution.

Mac.

By The Way. (1919)

The By The Way column from the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

That the war has indeed been a good thing to the capitalist is overwhelmingly shown by even a most cursory perusal of the daily Press. A glance at any company meeting notice, or a study of the Excess Profits Tax, will tell the same tale—swollen profits. Another instance recently afforded I append here. The Secretary of the Grocers' Federation, addressing a special meeting of the Grocery and Provision Trade Section of the Balham, Tooting and District Traders Assn. Said :

  The Food Controller had been the grocers' real friend for the last four or five years, in enabling them to dispose of all their surplus stock, much of which the public would not look at prior to the war, but which during the last year or two they gladly bought.
That was one of the good things that the war had accomplished. It had been a veritable spring cleaning for them, and in other ways, such as the extra halfpenny profit on cheese, lard, and margarine, the Food Controller had done the grocers good service, as it meant that nearly nine millions sterling had been given to the trade during the year.—"Daily News," Feb. 24, 1919.

The good work done by the Food Controller (from Lord Devonport to the latest Labour occupant of the office) for the benefit of the capitalist is here testified to by one who is an interested party. Truly they who pay the piper cali the tune.

--0--

In spite of the nonsense frequently indulged in by "labour leaders" and others during the past few years, that there is no such thing as a CLASS war, strange to say, signs are not wanting to show that this ever-pressing fact becomes clearer to those who have eyes to see. Recently Lord Claud Hamilton presided at the annual meeting of the G.E.Ry. Judging by the remarks he then made and the applause with which they were received, it is abundantly clear that he and those who listened to him are in no way mistaken about the matter. Enter Lord Claud—

  What had happened during the last nine months? One concession following upon another on the part of the Government: concessions not to reasoned argument, not in reply to private grievances, not in the interests of justice and fair play, but to brute force. (Hear, hear.) Brute force in any shape was contrary to the instincts of the British nation. (Applause.)
We have disposed of it on the Continent. We are surely not going to allow it—fostered by those who have not risked their lives nor suffered the unspeakable miseries of trench life—to raise its obnoxious head at home (Hear, hear.)
The time is arriving when the Government must take off the velvet gloves which they have worn too long. (Hear, hear)"—"Evening Standard." Feb., 1919.

So there you are, fellow wage-slave, it's up to you. He (Lord Claud) realises the bitter fight between the haves and the have-nots. Think it over. Then join the ranks of the workers who are organised for the war against capitalist oppression.

--0--

A few days before the House of Commons adjourned for the Easter recess a motion was introduced by the Labour Party having for its object the provision of

  Pensions adequate for a healthy and useful life to be paid to all widows with children or mothers whose breadwinner has become incapacitated, such pension to be provided by the State.

Some discussion ensued, and then Mr. Shortt pointed out what this involved, namely: It means that any widow with children, however rich she may be, or any wife of a husband who cannot work, even though she is extremely well off, would have the pension.

Now this may pass for serious criticism in the House, but to me the point has no substance whatever. In the first place the pension proposed to be paid to widows with children "adequate for a healthy and useful life" would and should preclude those "rich" widows whom Mr. Shortt had in mind. If they are "rich" then they have the wherewithal to obtain those social amenities which go to make up a healthy life. And regarding the other part of the qualification, i.e., "useful," then up to the present I am unaware of any evidence existing that the rich are useful.

--0--

Concerning the remainder, referred to as "any wife of a husband who cannot work, even though she is extremely well off," then in this case also the resolution is sufficiently clear, for no pension is necessary to that section of the community Mr. Shortt describes as "extremely well off," to ensure them the means of obtaining the essentials of life.

--0--

The financial aspect of the case was also mentioned, and it is distinctly good, coming from a member of a government that has been spending very close upon eight million pounds a day in the butchery of the world's working class. It was as follows : "One has to take into consideration the amount of money which the State possesses." Now all this chatter in the House is mere camouflage. The Government had no intention of favourably considering the resolution, notwithstanding all the flowery talk of making England "a land fit for heroes," and other meaningless phrases. In conclusion, let me quote from a paper which is an avowed supporter of the Government, and from which source the previous extracts are taken—

  . . . the House has done what it has often done before when dealing with a subject which requires big thinking and real courage. It has talked it out. Fearful to vote for such a big reform, and yet not willing to be charged with voting against it, the issue has been dodged."—"Reynolds's," April 13th, 1919.

--0--

A little more than a month ago an important event took place—that is, for the leisured class. While the "sporting" members of the working class were studying the noon papers and endeavouring to find some winners, those who toil not neither do they spin were assembling to witness the Victory Grand National. I read that the attendance was a record one, and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Navy, together with the Earl of Derby, Lord Sefton, Lord Lonsdale, and a host of other titled people, were there to celebrate the event. But a short time ago we were being told by the Leverhulmes that in the new world after the war all would have to take part in the process of wealth production, and thereby make good the deficiency caused by the war. Pardon my inquisitiveness, but when are these people going to commence? 

--0--

"The 'New York Times' correspondent in Washington states that Major-General Graves, who is in command of the United States forces in Siberia, has sent a report to the War Department, in which he states that the reason for not assisting the Japanese at Habarovik was that the Japanese shot woman and children and also that he did not recognise the Russians in this fight as the real enemy.

"When General March was questioned on the subject he said the Chief of Staff had nothing to say at present."—Central News. — "Daily News," April 17th, 1919.

--0--

When Lloyd George addressed the National Industrial Conference at the Central Hall, Westminster on the 27th of February last on the subject of Labour Unrest, he stated that one of the factors contributing to unrest was the high cost of living. He then went on to say—

  We will get back gradually. I do not say that you will get back soon or for some years to the condition of living that you had before the war; but within the next few week there will be a reduction in the cost of some of the essential necessities of life. By the summer I hope that the cost of living in a working man's household will have gone down by about 4s. a week in the cost of certain necessities. By the end of March you will have achieved about half of that"—"Daily News," February 28th, 1919.

We have now reached the period when, according to Lloyd George, we should be about two shillings a week to the good. From enquiries which I have made it would appear that this is another to be added to the long list of unredeemed pledges.

--0--

Five months after the signing of the armistice find the newspaper folk waxing eloquent on "Shall the Ex-Kaiser Hang ?" To-day he is reprieved ; to-morrow he is to be tried. Personally I do not think he will suffer the death penalty. It would be establishing a horrible precedent. And one never knows what might follow. The conflicting statements made concerning this august person will be illustrated by the following items of news :—

  "Paris. Wednesday.—It is understood that the "Big Four" have decided to eliminate the idea of the capital punishment of the Kaiser, but they will provide some means of bringing him under the control of the Allies.
In addition there will be a strong indictment pointing out the responsibility of his leaders."—"Globe," 10.4.1919. 

  "Paris. Tuesday.—The Paris edition of the "Chicago Tribune," under a page-wide heading "Kaiser to be Tried for War Crimes," declares it is in a position to state that the Kaiser and other Germans will be tried before a tribunal formed by the League of Nations for violating treaties and for crimes committed during the war.
It states that the report of the Responsibilities Commission specifically indicts the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Tirpitz, and others, and that it is believed the death penalty will be inflicted upon the German leaders responsible for cruelties and crimes committed during the war."—"Daily News," 16.4.1919.

The Scout.