Background to Northern Ireland: "A Protestant Government" (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ulster Unionists weren’t too happy about the 1920 Government of Ireland Act for, although it provided for Partition, it clearly intended that this should be only temporary. Fortunately for them the Republicans in the South didn’t think much of it either and stood by their January 1919 Declaration of Independence under which an all-Ireland Republican government had purportedly been set up. The 1921 Treaty which ended the resulting Anglo-Irish War made Partition likely to be much more permanent than originally intended and the Ulster Unionists settled down to govern their own six-county statelet.

The Belfast parliament was not just a glorified county council. It had some real political power since it had at its disposal armed force: the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), a para-military police force along the lines of the old Royal Irish Constabulary which had been set up in the 19th Century to help hold down the Irish peasantry. This was soon supplemented by a much larger force of part-time auxiliary policemen, also armed and all Protestants (the RUC at least had some Catholic members), called B Specials.

The Belfast parliament also had the power to legislate on law and order in the six counties and one of their first measures was to pass the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act of 1922. This notorious Act, which was renewed annually for some years before being made permanent, allowed the government to detain people and intern them without trial, to ban meetings and newspapers and — the clause one South African Prime Minister said he’d scrap all his own repressive legislation for — arrest a person who does anything “calculated to be prejudicial to the preservation of peace or maintenance of order in Northern Ireland and not specifically provided for in the regulations”. The immediate political problem which faced the new Unionist government was that a third of its subjects — the Nationalist, Catholic minority — were opposed, sometimes violently, to its very existence and would have preferred to be governed by the newly-established Southern Irish ruling class in Dublin. They had to be subdued — by terror and intimidation. Already in 1920 there had been a vicious anti-Catholic pogrom in Belfast, when Catholic workers were driven out of the shipyards, their homes burned and their wives and children sent fleeing South. In other parts too of the about-to-be-established “Northern Ireland” Catholics were driven across what was soon to be the Border. After Partition the B Specials and the Special Powers Act were to be the permanent weapons of anti-Nationalist, anti-Catholic intimidation.

But not even this was a sufficient guarantee to the Belfast capitalists and their politicians in the Unionist party that some day by some means the Northern Nationalists might not succeed in re-uniting Ireland — behind the dreaded tariff walls. The normal rules of political democracy had to be set aside. Before Partition the British government had introduced proportional representation in Ireland, first for local and then for general elections. The Ulster Unionists never liked this for the very reason that it would give the Northern Nationalists representation in proportion to their numbers! They resolved to abolish it at the first opportunity, and did — in 1923 for local elections and in 1929 for general elections. This paved the way for the further gerrymandering of local council boundaries, particularly in areas with Nationalist majorities such as the town of Londonderry and the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Derry was the most notorious example: here a two-thirds Nationalist majority among the electorate was turned into a two-thirds Unionist majority on the council. This was not only because Derry had an important role in Orange mythology, but also — and more importantly — because it was the centre of the Ulster shirt-making industry which, like Belfast heavy industry, was geared to Britain and its export markets. In fact at the time of the 1924 Boundary Commission the Derry shirt manufacturers specifically argued against being transferred to the Free State on the grounds that this would cut them off from markets behind possible Irish tariff walls.

From some points of view Northern Ireland itself was one big gerrymander. The Belfast capitalists were primarily concerned with keeping the link between industrialized East Ulster and Britain, but were prepared to take in other areas so long as they had a Unionist, Protestant majority. The full nine counties of Ulster had a slight Nationalist, Catholic majority which was obviously unacceptable. But once Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan had been conceded to the Free State the Unionists had a two-thirds majority in the remaining six counties, despite the fact that Fermanagh and Tyrone too had Nationalist majorities.

So, right from the start, Northern Ireland was corrupt from a democratic point of view. Not that the Unionist politicians who ruled continuously from 1921 ever bothered to pretend otherwise until a few years ago. Lord Craigavon, its first Prime Minister (who as James Craig had before the war been a leader of the planned Ulster Provisional Government with its armed UVF), openly declared in 1932, “Ours is a Protestant government”, and in July 1934 told the Belfast parliament, “We are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant State” (quoted in Divided Ulster by Liam De Paor).

Such sentiments were repeated by subsequent Northern Ireland Prime Ministers including Lord Brookeborough, the man who once boasted that he did not “have a Roman Catholic about my own place” and who remained Prime Minister until 1963.

One of the reforms introduced in Britain after the second world war was “one man, one vote” in local council elections. Previously only ratepayers and their wives had been able to vote while under certain circumstances a businessman could have more than one vote. The Ulster Unionist government in Northern Ireland chose not to implement this reform for the crude reason that it would have enfranchised more Nationalists than Unionists. It was estimated that this left at least a quarter of adult men and women without a vote in local elections.

Local councils also had other opportunities to discriminate against Nationalists and Catholics. Certain jobs and houses were reserved for Protestants and particularly for supporters of the Unionist party.

The Catholic minority gave its political support to the reactionary and clerical-dominated Nationalist party who were often known as “Green Tories” and, in Belfast and one or two other towns, to various Labour parties — “Irish Labour”, “Republican Labour” and even on occasions “Northern Ireland Labour”. The Nationalist party lost much of its support at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election to various Civil Rights and Labour candidates who later formed the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), at the moment the main political party supported by the Catholic minority.

The Unionists retained the support of the Protestant workers and small farmers by continuing to stir up sectarian hatreds and fears. It was a measure of the backwardness of politics there that “REMEMBER 1690”, "NOT AN INCH", "NO SURRENDER” and the like were, and still are, powerful political slogans. The Unionists successfully tricked the Protestant workers into believing that there was some special advantage for them in Northern Ireland being part of Britain rather than of Ireland. The Protestant worker came to believe that he was privileged as compared with his Catholic fellow worker and that any extension of civil rights to the Catholics would be a threat to his supposed privileges. This was a great illusion, but one which has retained mass Protestant working class support for the Unionist party, the Northern Ireland counterpart of the British Tories. The average Protestant worker has never even advanced to the limited-enough trade union and reformist consciousness represented by support for a Labour party. The Northern Ireland Labour Party, despite protestations of loyalty to the Crown and even of support for the Special Powers Act, has always remained a small minority party.

The Protestant worker never has been in any privileged position. He has always suffered from the working-class problems of poverty, slums and unemployment. And indeed it was only because of this that Unionist local councils were able to bribe a few of them with the occasional job or house in preference to a Catholic worker. One of the more pathetic Northern Ireland scenes has always been to see on the twelfth of July the Protestant slums of Belfast adorned with the unintentionally ironic banner, “THIS WE WILL MAINTAIN”.

The trade union movement in Northern Ireland is largely an extension of that of the rest of Britain and is the one mass organisation which unites both Protestants and Catholics, though there are two “transport and general workers’ unions” in the docks, one Protestant, the other Catholic. As in the South trade unions suffered more legal restrictions than in Britain, at least until the recent Industrial Relations Act. This Act does not apply to Northern Ireland (so making here, somewhat ironically, the part of the whole British Isles with the least restrictive trade union laws), but the 1927 Trades Disputes Act passed as a punitive measure after the British General Strike still applies and on one occasion the Special Powers Act was used against trade unionists. The main effect of this Act has been to make trade unionists who want to pay the political levy to finance the pro-capitalist Labour Party “contract in” (but Socialists don’t object to this since it is more democratic than the British system whereby those who don’t want to finance the Labour Party have to “contract out”).

This situation — where a corrupt Unionist clique ruled continuously by lies and threats and, despite having majority support, undemocratic practices — was accepted by successive Westminster governments, Labour as well as Conservative, until the whole system began to break down in 1968 and 1969.

As long as the Southern Ireland government pursued a protectionist policy the demand for a United Ireland, which most Catholics in the North supported, really was a threat to the material interests of the Belfast capitalists. Accordingly, those interests demanded that the Unionists continue to stir up sectarianism as a means of retaining mass support for Union with the British market. But when, from about 1960 onwards, the Southern Ireland government finally abandoned protection and sought, and eventually got, free trade with Britain (including Northern Ireland), the Irish Nationalism of the Catholic minority was not such a threat and the way was open for more friendly relations between Belfast and Dublin. This change was symbolized by the resignation in 1959 of De Valera as Prime Minister and his later election as figure-head President of the Irish Republic and the resignation in 1963 of Lord Brookeborough as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

De Valera’s successor, Lemass, began to speak of the North as “Northern Ireland” instead of the previously obligatory “Six Counties”, thus conceding it a certain amount of legitimacy. In the North the Nationalist MPs agreed to become “her majesty’s” official opposition and Brookeborough’s successor, O’Neill, authorised flags on official buildings to fly at half-mast on the death of Pope John in June 1963, a startling sight in a city like Belfast where the slum walls were daubed with the slogan “NO POPE HERE”. In January 1965 Lemass travelled secretly to meet O’Neill in Belfast; the following month O’Neill slipped off to Dublin. In December the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement was signed. It appeared that the future held out the gradual disappearance of the sectarian bitterness which had been a feature of Northern Ireland political life since the 1880’s, a hope seemingly confirmed by the failure of the 1956-62 IRA campaign against the North because of lack of support from the Catholic minority.

But this was not to be. The Unionist government could now without danger have abandoned its corrupt and undemocratic practices and O’Neill — the first Northern Ireland Prime Minister not to claim to be governing a Protestant State for a Protestant People — did urge this. But it was no easy task for the Unionist political machine to suddenly turn off the hatreds it had assiduously cultivated for the previous eighty years. In fact nearly every prominent figure in Northern Ireland life — judges and Church leaders as well as politicians — is on record as saying, not so very long ago, what the Rev. Ian Paisley now says.

When a Civil Rights movement arose to demand the end of the various corrupt and undemocratic practices — the gerrymandering, the restricted franchise, discrimination over housing and jobs, the B Specials and the Special Powers Act — the Unionist government, with present Ulster Vanguard leader William Craig as Home Affairs Minister, reacted as it had done towards all previous opposition movements supported by Catholics: it saw it as a threat to the existence of the Unionist statelet, as a Republican plot to be ruthlessly crushed. It was a fatal mistake which within four years led to the overthrow, by a British Tory government, of fifty years of Unionist rule in Northern Ireland. In any event, almost the whole Civil Rights programme — with the exception of the repeal of the Special Powers Act, but even this would probably have been replaced by something less comprehensive but just as effective had not war broken out between the Provisional IRA and the British Army in February 1971 — had already been conceded. In fact the franchise in Northern Ireland is now wider than in the Republic: it gives votes at 18 while the South still sticks to 21.

So Northern Ireland too is now back where it was before the first world war: ruled directly from Britain. The fifty-year stretch of Ulster Unionist rule over the six counties of North-East Ireland stands out as an episode in the development of capitalism in Ireland, as a means of preventing the Belfast capitalists from having been cut off from the rest of industrial Britain behind the tariff walls of an agricultural Ireland. The fear of the effect this would have had on profits has been the material basis of Belfast’s steadfast Unionism and "Loyalty”. The Unionists, as the saying puts it, were basically more loyal to the half-crown than the Crown.

Adam Buick

For an exposure of the Southern Irish Capitalist Republic see last month’s issue.

Make-Believe Revolutionaries: Two Case-Histories of Direct Action (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A commonplace response to the Socialist case, by people who find it unanswerable, is that it is “all right in theory”. The implication is that there is something separate from and superior to theories, called Practice. This is, to start with, a misunderstanding of the nature of theory. Theory does not precede or stand apart from practice: on the contrary, it is the conclusion from practice — from what has happened and what is observed.

The sort of Practice implied, therefore, is action which does not give a hang for the known facts. The practitioners never state it like that, of course; they are Getting Things Done, and Striking a Blow for this or that. In recent years its special manifestation has been Direct Action, the doctrine of people taking things into their own hands and launching themselves against the system. Looking at some well-known instances, it is possible to see Practice in practice. Does direct action work?

Squatting

The squatter movement began in 1968, as a venture by the East London Libertarian Group. “Venture” is an accurate enough term: it was preceded by agitations over housing conditions at Coventry Cross, conditions in an unmarried mothers’ home in Walthamstow, and claimants’ grievances at the local Social Security office. For several weeks the squatter campaign consisted of Sunday afternoon visits to examples of inequality in housing. Invited groups of libertarians met without knowing where they would be taken — mystery tours, as a delighted anarchist described them without qualms over the leadership principle.

The general history of the squatter battles at Ilford and derivative episodes elsewhere, when the occupation of empty property began, is well enough known. Demonstration about homelessness became an infection in the Left; the north-west anarchist federation’s bulletin described it as “the highest form of revolutionary activity possible in Britain today”. But in fact the campaign’s first casualty was the proclaimed revolutionary content, the deadest mortality the anarchist slogan “Do it yourself”. For the avowed purpose was to promote direct action among the working class, and it never happened. The families which squatted in empty houses were taken to, installed and defended in them by the libertarian groups. No one did it himself.

Scalps & Souls

The Ilford episode ended in a treaty with the Council, which undertook — on certain conditions — to make condemned houses available for homeless families. The terms re-invoked the original presumption of the mystery tours: they were made not by the house-seekers or by collective decision of the agitators, but by the East London Libertarians’ leader Ron Bailey. Among the conditions was one that the houses where the siege had raged were to be given up, including a house in which a group of libertarians had made their own commune. On their eviction Freedom had a bitter, passionate article headed “The Soul of a Movement”. It was, they felt, as if the Redskin chief had started trading his own braves’ scalps to the white man.

Freedom Press was enthusiastic for squatting, and for the London hippies who occupied buildings in the Drury Lane-Piccadilly area: the “commune of the streets”. In 1969, after successive evictions, some of the hippies went to Freedom, cited the paper’s persistent encouragement of them and pointed out that the Freedom/Express Printers building in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, had empty rooms galore. The building had been acquired and renovated in the previous two years. The Freedom group felt a moral compulsion — they had supported, vindicated, egged-on; so they let the army of hippy squatters in. In the next two weeks, the building was turned to a shambles. Hell’s Angels stood guard, demanding subscriptions from anarchists who went there. The culminating incident was lead-stripping — from the roof above, from the printing works below. Describing it all in an article, the Freedom group asked unhappily: “What were we to do?” The movement’s soul was certainly a soul in torment.

Uncritical Support

At its height, squatting had a great deal of public sympathy. It had the Left and libertarian groups working together; and it illustrated succinctly all their misdirections and failings. “Direct action” failed, in circumstances most favourable to it. Indeed, the term “squatting” was a misnomer, implying people spontaneously taking possession. As has been said, that never happened: “installation” would have been more accurate. Nor is this mere carping. What has to be seen is that the do-it-yourself revolution was a myth, and the reality was a series of simple charitable acts. And today the energy and good intentions of the squatter movement appear to have made useful auxiliaries for local councils in their housing administration and welfare services.

As for the hippy squatters, it may sound ungracious but is true to say they were not homeless people at all. In general, they had homes but chose to be away from them; perhaps with reasons, but that is a different question. Their being on the streets was due chiefly to the demise of the Drury Lane Arts Laboratory, where anyone and everyone kipped. But the Freedom Press dilemma — “What were we to do?” — originated in uncritical support for any semblance of direct action. Otherwise, it would be hard to account for the presence on Freedom’s doorstep of Hell’s Angels, who are the nearest thing to pre-war Fascist youth in Britain today.

Bombs & Bullets

The most recent demonstration of direct action has been the “Angry Brigade” bombings. There is, no doubt, a division between those who would actually have done this kind of thing and those who would not; but there is no doubt either that it had the sympathy of practically all direct-actionists. A pamphlet published shortly before the Old Bailey trial, by the “Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group”, tries hard to suggest that bombs and firearms are now the method of radical activists at large:

The state is also alleging that bombings and shootings claimed by the First of May Group, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Wild Bunch and Lotta Continua are also part of this conspiracy. In fact just about every single guerrilla action undertaken by groups from very different political areas within the movement over the past four years has been put down to them. The prosecution is attempting to create falsely the image that the political offensive carried out by the movement in the past four years is the work of a very small isolated gang of madmen.

Grand Delusion

What is a “political offensive” in these terms supposed to achieve? The authors of the pamphlet, which is called A Political Statement, assert that the Angry Brigade’s terrorism was an integral part of a working-class uprising:

Being part of their revolution they are sensitive to the needs and desires of that revolution. On January 12th we had a one day strike, we went on huge marches all over the country, we planned strategies for the future and we bombed Robert Carr.

The implication intended is of a massive number of workers united in all those activities. But one has only to ask who are the “we” of the dramatically italicized sentence, and its meaningless ranting is immediately exposed. On January 12, 1971, some trade unionists demonstrated against the Industrial Relations Bill; Left-wing groups distributed leaflets and had euphoric syndicalist dreams; and, in complete dissociation from all of that, a secret handful planted bombs which caused outrage but little harm.

The absurd delusion of a grand “political offensive” is further emphasized in a photograph of Carr’s front door, under the heading “The Minister’s Palace Destroyed”: which is quite untrue. Indeed, if the object of the “bombing and shooting” has been to kill representatives of the State, its incompetence is almost comical. The pamphlet claims at least 107 bombing episodes: not one person was hurt by them, it seems. If, on the other hand, the aim was not to kill but to alarm, that is even more ludicrous. It is reminiscent of the old yarn about the man who, finding his wife in bed with the milkman, went outside and kicked the milkman’s horse. What sort of “offensive” is that?

Serious Questions

Nevertheless, behind the puerile fantasy lie serious political considerations. At a simple everyday level, those most likely to be killed and injured by bombing are not establishment-figures but working men and women; Northern Ireland, to which the pamphlet refers repeatedly, demonstrates this only too well. For all the cant about “we” and “the movement”, bomb-planting is the negation of class-consciousness and democratic practice. Anarchists and direct-actionists may approve of the faits-accomplis, but that does not alter the fact that at the time they had no knowledge or control of what was being done in their name. Early in 1971 when publicity for the Angry Brigade explosions was at its height, the libertarian gossip and speculation were that the bombs were the work of agents-provocateurs with the object of raising public opinion against the Left. So much for “we”!

The knowledge that opinion — and repressive measures — are thus raised is another reason why terrorist tactics should not be supported. The State and the newspapers do not distinguish between “pretend” revolutionaries and real ones: direct action has done great harm to the growth of the Socialist movement. The “political statement” pamphlet complains of these consequences of the actions it is acclaiming:

This is a long hard struggle . . . It will be even more difficult in face of attacks from the political police which have grown enormously in organisation and number in the past year. The fact that there have been so many raids, the fact that they now habitually seize all political documents that they come across in their raids. The fact that innocent brothers and sisters arc locked up, some of them for many years.

Up to recent times anarchists were wont to respond to the traditional accusation of bomb-throwing by saying they had given it up because they had learned that governments did it better. That was at least a realistic view. The “urban guerrilla” and the saboteur may be problems to the state, but there is no question of their being able to match or weaken its armed power. Engels was able to point this out in military detail to would-be insurrectionists in 1895, in his preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. Speaking of the German bourgeoisie’s readiness to let rebels engage in physical battle with them, he said: “We are not so stupid.”

The State

The most important question of all, however, is: who are the enemy? Against whom is the “offensive”? The Angry Brigade’s targets were representatives of the State. The “political statement” of their supporters has not a single reference to capitalism, but insists on the state as adversary:

It began when it became clear that the state can and will smash the movement if it feels it can win. The bombings started.

And when he [Heath] talks of civil war, he is talking of a military/political offensive against all who oppose the corporate state.

The Stoke Newington Eight are . . . militants who have been active in the resistance to the corporate state and in the revolutionary movement.

Six years ago anarchists were wearing badges and carrying banners which said: “The state is your enemy”. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong. The deprivations, conflicts and miseries of the world we live in are caused not just by governments but by capitalism. The State’s rôle is to enforce them with the coercive machinery against which direct-actionists stub their toes and knock their heads. What the working class has to do is organize to abolish capitalism — by gaining control of the state machine with conscious intent to that end.

Consciousness

Socialists have no sympathy with those who believe bombs contribute to a social revolution. Of course rage and the desire for reprisal are emotions we have all experienced — who has not felt something like the poet’s “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”, or wished to kick-in the huge grinning teeth of some inflated politician? But the futility and self-destructiveness are clear. Indignation becomes constructive only when it is translated to consciousness. The direct-actionist asserts that consciousness can be a result of the act, that to cajole or push people into being hammered by capitalism’s force is to spread comprehension of what it is all about. There is not a shred of evidence that this has ever happened. On the other hand, the evidence provided by case-histories of direct action and terrorism is that they are at least fatuous and at worst horrifyingly pernicious, and always anti-working-class.

The means to change society exist and wait to be used, as Engels went on to say:

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the 'revolutionaries’, the 'rebels’—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt . . . we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

Robert Barltrop

The I.L.P. as the 'Open' Party (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

It would be impossible to describe within a single article of reasonable length the policies of the Independent Labour Party. They stand for just about everything. No cause is too small to merit their attention: Black Militancy; Irish Nationalism; Military Strategy; Liberation of Vietnam; and now, Workers’ Control. These are in addition to their almost unlimited stock of reforms in Housing, Education, Health. You name it, they’ve got it — that is, with the notable exception of a Socialist policy.

With such a universal platform the ILP continues to decay and is, in fact, a political joke. The reasons are that the big battalions of social reform, the Labour and Tory parties, have monopolised the field leaving the ILP and its associates in the position of the small shopkeepers opposing the supermarkets. Another reason is that the policies of the ILP have become so discredited over the years that it appears to them nothing less than a new approach based on new policies will stop the rot. 

At its 81st annual conference held at Scarborough earlier this year the new face-lift (third in its history) was performed. The conference made the discovery that they had been wrong all the time, and had a sectarian approach to politics. Sweeping changes in the constitution were made. By a large majority the delegates agreed that there was no value in participating in parliamentary or local elections at the present stage of the class struggle, and voted that no branch or division of the Party should put up candidates in the future, unless in exceptional circumstances. Coupled with this decision was support for “workers’ control” to subvert the organisation of the capitalist class (Socialist Leader, 8 April 1972), and also that members of the ILP would be free to join other political parties and work within them. (This ancient policy was advocated by the Communist Party forty-five years ago, and described as “boring from within”. It proved to be useless as well as dishonest, but this is lost on the ILP).

Confusion

Their position on Parliament, despite the conference decision, is confused. On page 3 of their pamphlet Towards Socialism they state:

There is little to be gained by relying on the procedures of Parliamentary Democracy. The ILP must therefore recruit members in local communities, in colleges and universities, and at the point of production, for organised subversion.

But on page 4:

Meanwhile the ILP advocates policies and initiates activity, including direct action and Parliamentary activity, designed to strengthen the institutions of the working class and subvert the organisations of the capitalist class.

This contradictory position is all things to all men, and is nothing more than political opportunism. The curious logic which impels the ILP to partly repudiate Parliament arises purely from the fact that they cannot get in there. Political power, which they have courted dearly and cannot have, now they regard as useless. The Parliamentary system is blamed for the failure of their policies. Forgotten is the fact that the first Labour government in 1924 largely consisted of ILP members, including 45 MPs. The second Labour government contained 111 members.

So we return to direct action and workers’ control — theories which are at least 150 years old. This is the “modern” ILP! These emotive policies, borrowed from other antiquated organisations (anarchists, Trotskyists, etc.) are dear to politically immature workers and students. They have that romantic ring, and are removed from a clear and objective appreciation of what makes capitalism work. Incidentally, they have never satisfactorily explained, and none of the organisations which support workers’ control has explained, how you get the capitalists to relinquish their control. 

Cartoon by Jack Gold.

Whose Power ?

The claim by the ILP “that real power exists outside Parliament and the Courts” (page 3, The Way to Workers' Control) is rubbish. This is based on the assumption that the workers have economic power and can use the strike weapon to enforce political reforms as well as wage demands. They are wrong on both counts. It is the capitalists who have economic power, it is they who can and do dictate the conditions under which they will produce, hire or fire. The economic power of the workers is restricted to fighting a series of rearguard actions through trade unions against the unending encroachments of capital. In the field of political reform, no strike action by unions over the past 150 years has produced any reform even in trade-union legislation. Political power and economic power is the prerogative of the capitalists. They dominate society, and the workers support them. Direct action could only be carried on by isolated minorities, and is doomed to failure as long as the majority of workers give their political support to capitalism.

The most recent example of the workers’ “economic power’’ and “control” was at the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. This was inspired and led by Communists, supported by the ILP, Trotskyists, SLL, and IS. Viewed as the revolution they thought would be, it proved to be an utter fiasco. Based on the absurd principle that the workers work for nothing, being paid by other workers’ donations, they produced things for the capitalists to sell. No wonder the capitalists did not bring in the forces of law and order, having reaped the benefits of unpaid labour! It eventually deteriorated into a position where the militants led by Jimmy Reid, a prominent CP member, agreed to sit down with the new owners Marathon, a group of American capitalists, to discuss redundancies. Home-grown capitalists were evidently not good enough.

There are numerous instances which show that sporadic gestures of workers’ control are worse than useless. The ILP, SLL, CP, Trotskyists, etc. — the “militants” — are really the running dogs of capitalism. At election times they will come to heel and urge the workers to vote for the pro-capitalist Labour Party. The strange philosophy which impels these people is one which regards trade-union militancy and reform movements as permanent conditions of the workers’ existence. They see no way out.

None of these organisations understands Socialism, and they do their damnedest to make sure that the working class will not understand it either. They are fighting a losing battle, however. The policy and principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are easily understood, and we offer them to workers who are prepared to learn something new. Without the understanding of the Socialist Party’s policy and principles the workers cannot achieve Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain will not repudiate Parliament — on the contrary, we aim at political power for the sole purpose of establishing Socialism.

Jim D'Arcy

'I don't understand those socialists . . . ' (1975)

From the February 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack finds out about capitalism (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Massacre of fruit (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Next time you pay 3p. (at least) for a peach, remember that the sight of a tractor crushing huge mounds of these plump, juicy fruits prior to their mass burial is boringly familiar to those who live in the "California of Europe", Italy's main fruit-growing area in the Romagna. 

We all know, of course, from those regular newspaper reports and prompt television documentaries that the practice is not confined to this area of Italy, or even of Europe. But this year's slaughter of unmarketable fruit threaten to assume vaster, even more unimaginable proportions than in the past. Last year's figures of several hundred thousand tons of peaches, pears and apples destroyed may well look small when this season's wastage is revealed. 

Even more dramatically, figures of "slaughtered" fruit only represent a small proportion of all the fruit actually "withdrawn from sale". The rest of it is used mainly for fruit juices, wine-making and animal feed (although the animals obstinately refuse to understand that peach stones are for spitting out not swallowing and that they are not supposed to turn their noses up at regular feed when the seasonal supply of succulent pears runs out). 

EEC Policy 

When membership of the Common Market guaranteed Italian farmers markets and high fixed prices for all the fruit they could produce, fruit growing underwent an Eldoradan boom from one end of the peninsula to the other. As was to be expected however, the mad scramble for sales and profits quickly subordinated quality to quantity with the result that Italian fruit soon developed a reputation for being second best to more tasty varieties produced in other parts of the world. So when unpalatability plus inefficient and over-bureaucratic distribution methods caused sales to drop, the EEC authority was forced to step in and in accordance with their price-fixing agreement to buy up the 'surplus' and put it to the 'uses' described above. 

They could not (and cannot) allow it to be released for sale at rock-bottom prices, as the immediate effect, of this would be to competitively force down the price of other fruit on the market and hit the farming profits they are in business to support. 

Don't Give it Away 

But why, instead of destroying the surplus fruit, don't they distribute it free to the wide areas of the world which have food shortages and malnutrition as a permanent problem? Low quality food, after all, is better than no food at all and such a practice could scarcely have a direct effect on market prices in the countries where the fruit is actually sold. They don't, quite simply because the expense involved in such a procedure would exceed the cost of allowing the unsaleable fruit to be grown and then destroying it. Besides a solution like this would be entirely unacceptable to the governments of "shortage" countries, as free goods would constitute the most dangerous kind of competition to goods being sold on the market there. And who knows, apart from the damage to these countries' economies (i.e. the profit prospects of those owning and controlling the means by which commodities are produced), a taste of free access, even on such a limited scale, might cause highly inconvenient social unrest? 

So with production and distribution tied to the need to maximise profit, such a method of disposing of "surplus" goods is right out. In our present worldwide system of buying and selling human need is a poor match for market demand, that is, need backed up by ready cash. 

Italian fruit, French vegetables, Common Market milk and butter, British eggs and potatoes, Canadian wheat and Japanese rice. It's the same depressing and wasteful story the earth over (including no doubt, if information were released, Russia with its so-called "planned" economy). And nothing on earth can be more anarchical and anti-social than a system which dumps and destroys all it cannot sell at a profit. What but working-class ignorance and inertia stand in the way of a society which would plan its resources rationally for the satisfaction of worldwide human needs? 

Howard Moss