Do it yourself ! (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The working class are enthusiastic when they do things for fun. Pottering about in the garden, tinkering with a car, decorating or repairing the home, or knocking up something from the do-it-yourself kit, these jobs they do with much care and joy.

But spare time occupations, although they provide fun, are more usually sternly necessary because they save the worker from having to pay to have the job done elsewhere. As anyone knows with bills to pay, it is a strain on the household purse otherwise.

In fun or in earnest, the desire when hungry is to eat, when tired to sleep, when cold to seek warmth. These satisfactions are brought about by men producing the things which satisfy these wants.

Under Capitalism, needs and wages are for the working class economic twins. The food, clothing and shelter they buy are dependent upon the price they can get for their labour power. Their lives are fashioned by wages. Wage-labour, prices, and profits, are the economic features of private property ownership. The The bread we eat is produced in order that a profit can be got out of the baking, and this like everything else that, is bought and sold has a direct bearing on the question of unemployment. No profit, no jobs.

The means of production throughout the entire world are today owned by the Capitalist class who employ the working class in order to exploit them. So that the working class may be maintained and reproduced they receive back from the wealth they have produced enough roughly to keep them fit for further work. All the surplus the working class have produced then goes to the Capitalist class.

This surplus value is the source of the disparity between rich and poor, reflected throughout the world in the fact that a relative few languish in luxury whilst millions struggle in misery and poverty.

To those not conscious of the whys and wherefores, this is a problem which may appear insoluble or which will at least take years to solve. To be sure, men will not allow a problem to prevail once they realise the solution. We could have a world where all would contribute what they could to society and take what they needed out of all that was available. This would be a much more simple and sane way of producing and distributing. In order to do this, society must own in common all the means of wealth production and distribution.

This is Socialism. Instead of leaving it to others to bring about, do it yourself!

Joe McGuinness

Entertainment and Profit (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Theatres, cinemas and football clubs have all recently felt the draught as their support and so their receipts fell. Pubs, Restaurants and Dance Halls have gone through the same agony. Where, they must have wondered, have all our supporters, patrons, clients, gone? Surely not all of them are televiewing?

One football club got so worked up about this recently that they took a census to find out the reason for their falling gates. They discovered some of their missing supporters in the strangest of places; in the local shopping centres, fetching and carrying for the wife. The wife, apparently, is at work all week and so she has to buy as much of the week’s food as she can in one go on Saturday afternoon. Who can blame her for cutting up rough if the old man wants to enjoy himself watching football while she has to push and shove her heavy laden way through the crowds? So no football, no dozing, no telly even for him.

Of course, there are any number of reasons offered for this. Some say that football, or the theatre, or what-have-you, are not what they used to be. Others say that they are not up to the standard of other countries (how unpatriotic!). And there are those who simply shrug and blame it all onto the telly.

These are at best the superficial reasons for changes in public tastes. To find the basic reason we must look at the motive for the birth and presentation of various types of entertainment. Today, we live in a Capitalist world in which all social endeavour in terms of research, invention, culture, service and work is carried on with the object of returning to the Capitalist more from his business than he puts into it. This is assured by the simple method of allowing the working class, who produce all the wealth, to receive only a part of it in their wages. But, sometimes, as we know, there is no profit in certain lines of business. One industry may be undermined by the development of a cheap substitute for its product. Another will fail because it cannot stand the pace of competition. So they decline, sometimes washed down with crocodile tears in the City columns.

The entertainment industry is no exception to this rule. It, too, must have, its profits—and it is often not too particular how it gets them. Jazz clubs, dance halls and coffee bars are not worried whether the working class teenagers who keep them going are missing their homework, or skipping evening classes, to do so. Publicans would rather see us drinking in their bars than attending a Political or Trade Union meeting, or a lecture on archaeology if it comes to that. And entertainment, with its various branches vying with each other for our custom, must keep producing the novel and alleged improvements to keep us interested.

Yet however interested we become, we can never avoid the fact that the biggest and best part of our day is spent in being exploited in the factory or the office to make huge fortunes for the lucky shareholders. This does not leave much time to enjoy our entertainment, however good or bad it may be.

Joe McGuinness

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will be noted from the appeal for funds in this issue that the Party is making an all-out drive to double the circulation of the Socialist Standard—a well worthwhile aim and one that can be achieved by concentrated efforts on the part of Comrades and readers of the Standard. With this in view—if every reader of this month’s issue completed the subscription form for 12 issues and sent the form with 8s. to Head Office —a very big step on the road will be taken. The Literature Committee will be more than happy to report in February that they are overwhelmed with subscription forms.

* * *

Glasgow Branch report well on their November propaganda meetings. The members of the Branch are an enthusiastic group and work well together and achieve first rate results. Apart from the Branch series of lectures, Comrade Donnelly addressed a Trade Union Branch and the Comrades are sending circulars to other Trade Union Branches offering to send a speaker to put the Party case.

* * *

Due to the energy of the W.S.P. of Ireland a visiting speaker, J. D’Arcy, was able to hold a very successful meeting in Belfast on Thursday, December 7th. Despite bad weather conditions sixty people attended the meeting, some Party members travelling many miles to be there. A collection of £5 was taken and 30s. of literature was sold. Approximately one hour before the meeting, the W.S.P. of Ireland had managed to arrange for the speaker to appear on Ulster Television programme and in addition the details of the meeting being broadcast over the T.V. network. It was most useful as it gave us an opportunity to give a definition of Socialism in contrast to the policies of the Labour parties. It was also made clear that Socialism was a wage-less society. A very successful piece of organisation and propaganda carried out by the W.S.P. of Ireland who have in fact made history by getting our case broadcast, however briefly, we hope this will establish a precedent. In addition we were paid £4 4s. 0d. for the privilege. America, Canada television and Radio, now Ulster Television—speed the day when the case for Socialism can be broadcast on National channels at home and abroad.

* * *

Wembley Branch Annual Social was held on December 16th at South Ealing. A goodly collection of members and friends enjoyed an evening of eating, drinking and dancing. “Joe’s Band” provided the music.

The success of their first indoor public meeting has encouraged the branch to plan another for January 22nd, when Comrade Hardy will be the speaker. Full details elsewhere in this issue.

Like other branches, Wembley has a full programme of winter discussions and lectures. All members now regularly get a Newsletter giving all the information. So let’s see you along there to take part. At the time of writing also, a discussion has been arranged with the North Wembley Young Liberals for December 29th. Subject “Immigration”. Should be very interesting.

Wembley has maintained regular S.S. canvasses throughout the year and sales have been climbing gradually. They have now topped twenty dozen per month. Lack of manpower restricts efforts of course. This is where absent comrades can give a hand. Please contact the branch secretary for dates, times, etc, of future canvasses.

Phyllis Howard

Blogger's Note:

I believe "Joe's Band" was a band fronted by the SPGB member, Joe McGuinness. 

SPGB Meetings (1961)

Party News from the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1963)

Party News from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doping horses (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Monday, August 8th, five men were accused at Newbury of conspiring to administer drugs to racehorses so as to affect their performance and thereby cheat, defraud and give the run-around to owners, bookmakers and punters. Caffeine, it was alleged, was the drug used. Given between thirty and sixty minutes before a race, it was said to have jacked up the horses’ nerves, muscles and heart, made it more alert and stimulated it to a win. The timing was vital; given six or more hours before the race the drug slowed down the horse, because by then its depressing reaction had had time to work. The chemist who was said to have supplied the caffeine stated that doping of racehorses had been going on for years; he supplied the stuff in return for racing tips.

Of course, this carve up caused quite a fuss and many remedies were suggested. Some people thought that a Tote monopoly of betting would bring a clean up. Others wanted a list of drugs, as distinct from tonics, which it would be prohibited to administer to horses, the trainers to be held responsible for their animals’ conditions. One newspaper showed how deep its love of our dumb friends goes by hoping that, after the clean up has put racing and betting on a sound financial basis, the horses will no more be silent and helpless tools manipulated for sordid and undesirable ends.

Now all this is very touching, as anyone who has lost his lot on the horses will agree. But doping and racketeering are only two of the illegal wavs of making money, if the law can be successfully evaded. There are also legal ways. One is to work for it—not very fruitful. Another is to persuade other people to work for you and to exploit them during the course of production. This is respectable. It also produces some very large fortunes.

The set up here is that we workers work for the capitalists. The capitalists pay us our wages and sell what we produce; they also have to buy materials and machinery. When they have done all this, they have a surplus left over. They have profit. This process continually repeated makes for a fine accumulated sum and it is all fair and square. Not racketeering. Just good, plain exploitation.

When the goods arc produced we do not always find ourselves able to obtain them. They are whisked off to warehouses, stores, shops, and so on, and we can only get them out of these places if we have enough money to meet the price which is asked for them. There they lie in plenty, but alas! for sale only. When people try, by hook or by crook, by fiddle or diddle, to amass a lot of money, what they are really doing is trying to get the power to purchase a lot of these articles which make for a happier and more comfortable life.

Where does dope come into this? Why. for generations, the working class have been doped by capitalism's propaganda. Schools, churches, radio, television, newspapers, political parties—they are all in the act. The Labour Party dished out a large dose of nationalisation, which left the workers' situation unchanged. The Communist Party peddle the dope about the so-called Socialist class emancipation in Russia, which is in fact a ruthless capitalist dictatorship. The Tories tell us that we have never had dope so good.

Amongst gamblers, doping is known as ”fixing ”; if you want to fix a racehorse, give it caffeine. In this sense, capitalists are not fixing workers under the wages system—the whole transaction is fair and above board. Nevertheless, the workers find themselves in a fix by their acceptance of the system. They are perpetually chasing the dream that, if only they can lay hands on a large enough amount of money, they will be able to get all that they need to make life pleasant. It is this bodily occupation and mental illusion that keeps the working class in political ignorance and. consequently, in economic enslavement.

But horses can run without dope and people can live without the artificial incentives of capitalist society. We only need the understanding that all social wealth would be better produced solely for use—made and used how we like. That is the key to the better world which we call Socialism.

However much horse-racing depends upon betting, capitalism is more dependent on the support of the world’s working class. When they have stopped allowing themselves to be exploited, stopped chasing after ephemeral remedies for the many, many unnecessary social problems of capitalism, they will have exposed capitalism's dopers. Socialism will be the surest walk over that ever was.

Joe McGuinness

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Branch News (1961)

Party News from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

St. Pancras, April 19th

Most members will already know of the demonstration for Socialism meeting held at St. Pancras Town Hall on Wednesday, April 19th. This is a very special occasion and calls for the enthusiasm and practical assistance of all London comrades. From Monday, April 10th, until the meeting date, a programme has been arranged for advertising the event by distributing handbills. The urgency and necessity for the work cannot be too strongly stressed. So please take up the challenge and rally to the distribution centres at 7.45 p.m. on the following dates: —

Monday, April 10th—Camden Town Underground Station.

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 11th and 12th—Mornington Crescent Underground Station.

Thursday and Friday, April 13th and 14th—Century Cinema, Kings Cross.

Monday, April 17th—Angel Underground Station, Islington.

Tuesday, April 18th—Russell Square Underground Station.

Wednesday, April 19th, at 7.30 p.m. — DEMONSTRATION FOR SOCIALISM, St. Pancras Town Hall, Euston Road, N. W. 1.

Ealing

The attention of members is drawn to two film shows being held this month. The first, on Friday, April 7th, deals with post-war Germany, and the second, on Friday, April 28th, subject—the eventful year of 1848.

Events last month were a film show, the first of the monthly canvasses in the Acton area, and on the social side a visit to the Toulouse Lautrec Exhibition at the Tate Gallery, followed by the usual get-together at a member’s home in the evening.

The next canvass in the Acton area will be held on April 9th—time and meeting place to be announced. Attendance of members at Branch meetings has been remarkably high of late. Please do your utmost to keep this up.

Islington

Islington Branch continues to hold successful lunch hour meetings every Thursday at Tower Hill. Attentive audiences of two to three hundred are becoming a regular feature. Literature sales could be improved if comrades would attend regularly to assist Comrade McGuinness. This is useful and enjoyable work for the Party. Please join Comrades Ambridge and McGuinness on Thursdays, 12.30 p.m. at Tower Hill.

Wembley

Wembley Branch members were agreeably surprised when over a dozen Jehovah’s Witnesses turned up to Comrade Law’s talk on the J.W. Movement, held on February 13th. There was lively discussion which lasted until the end of the meeting. A report was published later in the local press. The branch view seems to have been justified that members need to brush up their knowledge of contemporary religious theories. So further lectures will be arranged later, covering Modern Non-conformism, Spiritualism. The Mormons, etc.

At the end of February, Comrade Bryant (S.P. of A.) talked to the branch about Automation. Other discussions have been fixed for April, and there will be a film show early in May. All welcome, and for those interested, full details from the branch secretary.

The branch is slowly but surely increasing its sales of the Socialist Standard—mainly by canvassing—and current figures arc reaching the twenty dozen mark. They may well have passed this by the time these notes appear. Parts of Wood Green Area were successfully canvassed on February 26th, and a member living locally will follow up. This part of London is due for another visit shortly. At the beginning of the outdoor season in May, we shall try a canvass in Portsmouth and follow this with a meeting on the sea front in the afternoon. All branches will be informed of precise arrangements.

During the winter, we have had the benefit of writers classes held in Wembley on alternate Friday evenings. Emphasis has been laid here on improving our style of writing by applying the general principles of journalism—forceful presentation and economy of words. We hope that the results will show themselves shortly in better articles for the Socialist Standard.

Canada

Two former members of Ealing Branch went abroad to Toronto at the beginning of 1957. They were Comrades G. and S. Catt. For some time, fairly regular letters have passed between them and London. Now comes the splendid news that they have both joined the Socialist Party of Canada and have managed to start a local discussion group, with nine or ten persons regularly attending. There have been some very lively meetings to all accounts, and these comrades are hopeful that a Toronto branch of the S.P. of C. can be formed in the not too distant future. Address for those interested is 184, Beach Avenue, Toronto.

But it is an uphill struggle against tremendous odds, particularly since the Socialist movement over there is small and scattered. At the same time, it is a challenge which the Comrades Catt have gladly accepted, and we send them our very best wishes.

A Donation

The Party acknowledges with sincere thanks a donation of £500 received on March 14th from Ethel Lee Haing, an Australian Party member. She had saved to buy a car, but felt that the sacrifice was worth making to help in our work for Socialism.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In London, for the first time in the Party’s history, a Rally is being arranged in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, 15th September at 3.30 pm. Permission from the authorities has been granted and therefore all that remains to ensure success is the greatest support from every comrade who can possibly get to the Square on that day. The Propaganda Committee is holding a meeting of Committees and Branch Organisers and special arrangements for literature sales are being made. This occasion can be made really worthwhile, and one hundred per cent support from every member will help it to be so.

The Delegate Meeting is being held at Head Office on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, October 5th and 6th—a weekend to note in diaries. Paddington Branch have booked Hampstead Town Hall for a propaganda meeting on October 21st. Full details in the October Standard.

Our comrade Joe McGuinness is working hard for Socialism whilst at the same time working for his living. He is hoping to start a group in East Essex. Details under Groups on page 134.

West London Branch (ex-Ealing) have settled down well in their new meeting place and are looking forward to a very busy winter season of lectures, discussions, and film shows. We hope to publish details of the first meetings in next month’s Standard.

Glasgow Branch are enjoying their most successful outdoor season for may years. They are holding four meetings a week in Glasgow and two in Edinburgh. A feature of this summer's outdoor activity has been the success of the Sunday afternoon meetings at the new stance at Kent Street. This stance is in the middle of Glasgow's Sunday Market Place—the Barrowlands. The audience is usually between 100 and 200 and literature sales have been especially encouraging. The branch are also preparing for the forthcoming General Election in the Woodside Constituency and preparing a series of posters dealing with various aspects of the Party’s case to be displayed in Woodside prior to the election.

The event which has engendered the most enthusiasm from Glasgow members, however, is the recent acquisition of rented premises in Berkeley Street. This was made possible by the donation of £50 from a Canadian comrade who recently visited Glasgow. The premises are a three apartment basement flat which the Glasgow comrades are transforming from a slum into very attractive headquarters for Socialist activity. The Monday evening branch meetings are now held in the new branch rooms and education classes are due to start there at the beginning of October. It is also hoped to run a weekly discussion group very shortly. It is felt in Glasgow that branch rooms are essential for organisational and propaganda work and their lack until recently has held back our drive for better propagation of the Party’s case. News of Glasgow branch activity in regard to indoor meetings, classes, etc., will appear in next month’s Standard.

Phyllis Howard

Luncheon Vouchers (1960)

From the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

L.V.—this is the symbol which can be seen in the windows of many cafes, tea shops, snack bars and restaurants. It indicates that luncheon vouchers are accepted. The symbol has also cropped up in a recent advertisement, which shows a man sitting at a meal with, on his back, the words, “To work well he must eat well . . . regularly at lunch-time with L.V.” The advertisement also tells us that thousands of employers have arranged this nation-wide welfare service for the benefit of their workers. But is this all there is to say on the matter?

Many employers, when advertising vacancies, include the vouchers in the list of advantages extended to the lucky applicant. And workers fall for it: many of them, when bragging about having “an easy job,” remark that, along with the five day week, holidays with pay and sickness on full pay, they also receive luncheon vouchers. How nice, to think that employers are taking such an interest in the health and strength of their workers and are not leaving this vital matter to look after itself! Just fancy, instead of having to last the day on a ham sandwich or a bun and cuppa, our worker has his luncheon voucher and a whole hour in which he can eat to his heart's content. Every day, from Monday to Friday, our lucky working lads and lasses can wine and dine at the . . . at the . . . well, wherever they can get something for a two or three shilling voucher. We can be certain that, however they may “eat well,” the nurtured workers will not return to the job so full of lunch-time fare that they are too burdened to “work well.” Neverthelesss, these “better-off” workers are always grateful for small mercies, free meal tickets and all, and so skipping back to work, merrily they go.

Of course, Socialists will spoil it all by pointing out that the employer, instead of including the value of a week’s luncheon vouchers in his worker’s pay packets, merely gives out the same amount in the form of food tokens. And often uses this as an argument when resisting wage increases. The worker thinks he is being treated to lunch, instead of looking upon it as part of “the treatment.”

The question is why does the lunch on voucher amount to about three shillings instead of say, twenty-three? Simply because a worker's lunch can be bought for just about three shillings. In the same way, the total sum of all the purchases and expenses which a worker must make in order to live determines the total amount of his wages. He does not receive an unregulated sum which the employer hands out as a reward for being honest or hardworking or responsible. He gets roughly what it costs to maintain himself and his dependents.

But to return to our advertisement. We notice that its appeal is only to the employer and that it does not say “you (employer) must” but that “he (worker) must.” Is, then, both the eating and the working of the working class at the mercy of their masters? For example, if the workers cannot find an employer to buy their energies, there can be no work and very little eating. Our advertisement would not apply. Even to be allowed to work means that, to hold down their jobs, the workers must work well, try as some of them might to dodge it when the manager is out of sight. In fact, how well they work can be realised by a glance at any City Editor’s column. See there the facts and figures of the company reports, of the amazing profits which are made by the workers. Read, at the end of each chairman's chronicle, the compliments to the staff for working so well throughout the year.

And why only eat and work well? If, besides that, we were all to house and clothe well and to have everything else which we need, then all would be well, except for profits which would be so ill that they would die. It is inherent in the system of commodity production that the worker’s wages never tally with what he produces. The capitalist class, who own the factories, machinery and their produce, employ workers at the price of their wage. Workers are taken on to produce both enough to cover their wage and a surplus, which the capitalist commandeers. If the worker received as much as he produced, then his employer would not be able to dictate whether he should eat well or not; that would be his own responsibility.

To get rid of this exploitation, we must have a world in which food and all other wealth is produced simply to be used. A world in which all mankind has complete freedom of access to the world’s wealth, to satisfy its needs. It is the system of working for wages— whether or not they come partly as luncheon vouchers—which prevents the mass of people enjoying the full freedom and happiness which modern productive techniques can command. We need a world which works well for itself, to eat well—to live well

Joe McGuinness

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Annual Conference of the Party takes place in London, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 12th. 13th and 14th. Fuller details are shown elsewhere in this issue Following Conference, in London on April 18th (Thursday), Paddington Branch are holding a meeting at Hampstead Town Hall. Haverstock Hill, N.W.3 at 7.30 p.m. The title “After Aldermaston. What?" It is many years since the Party has held a meeting in Hampstead and much work is being done to ensure the success of this meeting.

Lewisham Branch is holding a public meeting at Bromley High Street Public Library, East Street, Bromley on Friday. April 26th at 8 p.m. Title, "The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the H-Bomb”. Speaker: P Lawrence. This meeting is being organised by the Branch and the Bromley Group members.

On no account miss getting a copy of the May Socialist Standard. A larger Standard for the occasion, featuring the Housing Problem. The price will not be increased, therefore, it behoves all members to sell as many copies as possible, not only to meet the additional cost, but most important, to give a good boost to propaganda at the commencement of the outdoor propaganda season. If every regular reader at least doubled their order, it will be a help. If branches, at their meetings prominently show and advertise the May issue and urge more members to rally round with sales, it could be that a record number of copies are sold. Let’s go to it and break all records!

The three-branch (Bloomsbury, Ealing and Paddington) joint propaganda venture has proved most successful, and as previously mentioned other branches might well try out this idea. The January meeting held at Paddington was a lecture on the Common Market, at Ealing, on March 1st a “Brains Trust" meeting was held at the Branch meeting room. Questions were written before the meeting and a panel of three members answered the questions. There was good discussion the one regret was that time was so short. The occasion was very successful. Bloomsbury are holding their meeting in May. Owing to Conference it was considered better to leave the meeting for a month. On May 13th (Monday) the small Conway Hall has been reserved and a meeting similar to the one held at Ealing is proposed. As the hall holds many more people than the two previous halls, it is hoped that Comrades will bring along as many friends as possible. Light refreshments will be available.

Soon we hope to give full details of the adventures of our comrade Joe McGuinness who has been working on a boat, travelling around the world, and Joe, being the man he is, has "cashed in” at many ports of call where Party members were. Canada. U S.A.. Australia and New Zealand. He has done a recording for a non commercial broadcasting station in Canada. This being only one of his many activities in spreading the case for Socialism.

Ealing Branch’s season of lectures, films, and discussions continued during March with an inter-branch "Brains Trust” and a film “World Without End ”. The brains trust was particularly successful. Three members, one from each branch (Bloomsbury, Paddington and Ealing) answered questions put to them at random, and after each question the meeting was thrown open to further questions to the speakers and to contributions from the audience itself. Altogether, it was agreed that the experiment had resulted in a most useful and enjoyable evening, and is the kind of thing that could be profitably extended to other areas where Party branches are grouped reasonably closely together. We understand, in fact, that other branches have it already in mind to arrange similar events in their own areas.

Phyllis Howard

From The Branches (1960)

Party News from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington

Islington Branch continue to run successful lunch hour meetings at Tower Hill every Thursday, and those comrades able to attend would be doing a useful job in supporting the meetings.

All work and no Social? Did you enjoy dancing to Joe's (McGuinness) Group at the last Social? Islington Branch have again engaged them to play for you at their forthcoming Social and Dance to be held at the Co-op Hall, 129. Seven Sisters Road, N.7 (Finsbury Park Tube station) on Saturday, January 16th. Admission is 2s. 6d. and tickets are obtainable from Comrade Carr, Islington Branch Secretary, and from Comrade Blomeley who at Head Office every Tuesday evening.

The Branch also invites Comrades and Friends to their Branch meeting—same address as the Social—and in particular on Thursday, January 21st. when Comrade Hardy will be speaking on “ Inflation." Time, 8 p.m.

Film Lectures 

The first of a new series commences on Sunday, January 10th, and will be held every Sunday following until March. Time, 7.30 p.m., at Head Office, 52, Clapham High Street. S.W.4.

Sunday Lectures

The Propaganda Committee have arranged a series of eight Sunday meetings commencing January 24th, to be held at the Central Club Society, 127, Clerkenwell Road, E.C.1 (Near Holborn Hall), 7.30 p.m. This is a new venue and it is hoped that the meetings will have the support necessary to make them successful. Please make a note of the new address and pass it on to friends who would be interested.

Socialist Standard

A reminder that a subscription form is in this issue-—a moment or two to fill it in, and a remittance of 7s. 6d., will ensure the delivery of a copy early every month for a vear.

the Branches

Special March Issue

The March issue of the Socialist Standard will be a special one on Africa. Writers are asked to let the S.S. Production Committee know as soon as possible whether they will have anything to submit on the subject.

Phyllis Howard

January 1960

There is no avail in the wish “Happy New Year." Only a hope that the next twelve months will be better than the last. We said it to each other last January and what has happened since then? We have had over 600,000 unemployed. In May there was the scare over Berlin: in the Summer the reports from Hola and Nyasaland. The Autumn brought another Tory government. However much we wish for a new start, Capitalism does not change. It is time to stop wishing and to begin working for a better world, where peace and plenty are perpetual reality instead of an annual aspiration.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN IS DESPERATELY SHORT OF MONEY. HELP US WITH A DONATION TO THE TREASURER AT OUR HEAD OFFICE!

Islington Branch cordially
 invites you to their

Social & Dance

DANCING TO JOE'S GROUP 

Saturday, 16th January at 7.30 p.m. 

Co-op Hall, 129 Seven Sisters Road, N.7 

2s. 6d. Refreshments

Party News Briefs (1959)

Party News from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conference. March 27th, 28th and 29th are the dates for Annual Conference this year, earlier than is usual, but as Conference is an interesting and pleasant occasion for Comrades, it is hardly likely that the dates will be overlooked. Conference should be particularly interesting, there are many items on the agenda which call for constructive discussion. An election in the offing, with Hackney Branch and the Parliamentary Committee well prepared, with the aid of Comrades, to see that the campaign goes well. A resume of the past year’s work which has shown wider activity on the part of Branches, who in London and the Provinces have held many propaganda meetings throughout the year. In addition to the work done at Conference, there is the get-together of Comrades, an always happy occasion, the Social and Dance on the Saturday, which if last year is a guide, should be a really jolly occasion. A Rally is being organised by the Propaganda Committee, and details of these two latter items are given fully elsewhere in this issue.

Head Office Film Lectures. The last two "fixtures” for this season are being held on March 1st and 8th. No plans have been made for the 15th March as Paddington Branch are holding their well-planned meeting at Denison House that evening.

Ireland. Our Comrades in Dublin are very active these days; they have rented the Boiler Makers’ Hall for one evening a week, meeting every Wednesday. One of the items to which they are giving urgency, is their policy and approach to propaganda. They have six or seven “contacts” wishing to join the Party and with these proposed new members, they look forward to extending their work generally. It is hoped that within the next month or so, a much fuller report of their progress will be forthcoming.

Hackney Branch and the Election. Details of a public meeting on April 13th and a list of canvassing dates and meeting spots are given in this issue. Hackney Branch stress that in order to achieve a successful campaign, the participation of members of other branches is absolutely essential. This reminder should not be necessary, of course, as the decision to contest the election is one taken by the Party as a whole and therefore must be a Party effort. Comrades who are not near at hand to give direct assistance can help by spreading the news of our programme and seeking contributions to the necessary additional funds needed.

“No Useful Purpose Would Be Served.” Islington Branch report that Comrade J. McGuinness, the Branch Organiser, is temporarily working in Newcastle, and although there is no Party Branch in the vicinity to which he could direct his lively energy, he continues to be as active as ever on behalf of the Party. In correspondence with his Branch, he tells of two letters published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle which he wrote attacking the policy of the Social Credit Political League which is active in Newcastle. Com. McGuinness was successful in getting the S.P.G.B.’s case clearly stated.

More recently, he wrote to the N.E. District Branch of the Communist Party in Newcastle, inviting them to a debate with the S.P.G.B. True to form, the offer was rejected by their Secretary whose reply contained the phrase which appears to be reserved for the Socialist Party . . .  “ My Committee have decided that no useful purpose would be served by having any debate with your organisation”

Paddington Branch Meeting at Denison House on Sunday. March 15th. Much preliminary work has gone into the arrangements for this meeting, and by now members will have seen full details elsewhere in this issue, also the earlier notices in the January and February issues. The Branch made these earlier announcements in order to stimulate interest and enable members to advertise the meeting date and ensure that as many members and sympathisers (and others) were aware of the meeting and, we hope, prepared to support it.

The Socialist Party. From time to time our Publicity organiser and the Editorial Committee have endeavoured to obtain recognition in the Press that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is THE Socialist Party. Despite this, the Beaverbrook Press in its Evening Standard Style Book for “ guidance of Editorial, Reading and Composing Departments” quotes: —

  “The Labour Party will be described as Socialist, but where occasion makes the use of the word Labour necessary, the abbreviation will be Lab.”

The above information is sent to us from an American Comrade.

Phyllis Howard

Big stamp wrangle (1964)

From the March 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The biggest battle for a long time is now being fought in the retail trade in this country—and all, on the surface, over a little piece of green, or pink, or gold, sticky paper called a Trading Stamp. Yes, on the surface. The real cause of the battle is to be found much deeper than any newspaper cares to dig.

Trading Stamps have been going in this country for a long time with Green Shield, a British company, having the big hold. But the stamps were mainly confined to small shops; they had no really big retail organisation to issue them. What started the present fuss was the decision of millionaire Garfield Weston (ABC, Fine Fare Supermarkets) to issue the American Sperry and Hutchinson pink stamps in his supermarkets.

This started a flood of stamps, among them another American concern — King Korn — and another British Super Yellow, owned by the same John Bloom who has made a lot of money out of direct selling washing machines. One gimmick followed another — Mr. Weston, for example, had glamorous pink-coated hostesses outside his supermarkets dishing out the S.H. gift catalogue.

Sperry and Hutchinson have been going for a long time—since 1896, to be exact, and have been in England, looking for an outlet, for over a year. They claim forty per cent. of the £300 million trade done in 275,000 retail shops in the States and have 280 redemption shops where their stamps can be exchanged for what are called gifts. The man behind them is Mr. William Sperry Beinecke, who says that trading stamps are no panacea for the retailer but only a promotional tool to help his sales.

Ranged against the stamp firms are some of Britain's retail giants Boots, W. H. Smith, Sainsburys, and so on. Labour peer Sainsbury, who has hundreds of shops, is spending some £50,000 in a campaign to thwart the trading stamp firms. Sainsbury opposes the stamps because, he says, they are wasteful and in the end lead to higher prices. And, of course, because they are "unfair competition.” He is doing his best to persuade the Labour Party to make the matter one for legislation.

On the side of the big retailers in the battle is the shopworkers’ union— USDAW, whose executive committee, in the name of their 350,000 members, say that trading stamps are against the interests of shops and stores, employees and consumers and that in the end the nation (by which they mean you and me) will bear the added burden of the cost of the stamps and gifts and the labour involved in producing and checking them.

Mr. Garfield Weston, for his part, protests that he would not do anything which was against the public interest and so is determined to carry on his sales drive with what he hopes will be the help of the stamps.

The printing and distribution of hundreds of thousands of gift catalogues alone costs at least £2 million; it is this sort of cost which Lord Sainsbury says will be passed on to the customer. The Progressive Grocer Magazine figures that trading stamp amount to fourteen per cent, of a retailer's operating costs and that he has to take this into account when setting his prices.

Frank L Chavia in his book Supermarkets, published in 1961, writes:

  “Selling Operations". Stamps are generally at the rate of one stamp for each 10 cent purchase. For a supermarket to use this promotional tool successfully certain prerequisites must be met.

1. The (user) shop should be part of a group of different stores reasonably close to each other geographically. All should handle the same stamp with the super or a departmental store as the centre of influence.
2. Stamps are promotional: customers must be encouraged to save them and associate the stamps with that particular store.
3. Stamps must obtain and hold additional volume, while the volume increase varies; at least 10% increase in sales is needed to break even on the stamp cost.
4. The super must be able to handle added volume without materially increasing the overheads.
5. Stamps are not a panacea for supers whose quality and type of service are inferior to those offered by competitors.
6. Stamps do not permit much if any, independence in pricing.

Now it is obvious that the retailers who have taken up the stamps have not done so, so that they can give the housewife a brand new set of saucepans or any of the other “gifts.” They hope and expect to increase their profits through the stamps and this need not come about by a simple rise in their prices. What they say they are aiming at is to increase their turnover and by this means to increase their profit. One of the stamp companies’ press adverts claims that, in retaliation, some anti-stamp retailers have had to cut prices and that therefore the ultimate winner in the struggle is the consumer. In this sort of advert it is always the consumer—and never the shareholder—who wins.

In fact, trading stamps, like the checks, coupons, premiums, samples, contests which have all been well tried in the past are part of the jungle of capitalism's competition. And competition will only bring prices down when there is an overall excess of the supply of a commodity over the demand for it. The fierce competition between the grocery retailers did not, for example, prevent the increase in the price of sugar last year.

The process of profit making is basically quite simple. The capitalist class, who own the places and the materials which go to produce and distribute wealth employ the working class. The labour of the working class produces the wealth; it builds the shops, produces the groceries, transports them. The workers serve in the shops, they take the cash at the counters. In this process they are exploited simply because, in terms of a commodity’s value, they contribute more than they get back in wages. When their labour is done the commodity they have made or handled has a higher value than it had before. It is from this higher value that the employer—the industrialist, the retailer perhaps—gets his profit.

This profit often has to be shared with other capitalist concerns—with advertising agencies, insurance companies, banks, landlords. And sometimes with a “gimmick” concern like the trading stamp companies. In the competitive rat race the capitalists get headaches, and worse, in trying to outwit and outsell each other. Some retailers may try simple low prices—like Salisburys and Boots. Others may fall for the wiles of the stamp trading companies. In this they are creaming off some of their profit, sometimes in the hope of making a larger overall profit—and sometimes merely to survive.

The working class are as passionately divided in this struggle as are the competing retailers. Some of them like the stamps—they like sticking them in, they get a kick out of their “free gift.” Other workers think that the stamps are a dishonest gimmick. Yet if they will all take a deep breath and have a good think about it, what would they find? Why. that whether they collect stamps or not, and whether prices go up or down, they still only just manage to get by on their wage. When they have paid the landlord and the grocer and the H.P. man, when they have put a bit by for their holiday, and when they have paid for all the other necessities of life, there is precious little left.

As long as the working class are deluded by the gimmicks of capitalism—in all their many shapes and sorts—there will be no end to them. Perhaps some enterprising firm will try white balloons next. For saving so many white balloons you can get so many black stamps which you can exchange for so many pink discs which you can swop for . . . and so on, and so on, until they get wise to it, and it dawns on them that a better, saner way of making and distributing humanity's wealth is so that it is strictly for use instead of for sale and letting all human beings have free access to it.

Joe McGuinness

A place of your own (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the prime necessities of life is shelter. A lot of people make a living by letting rooms whilst others augment their weekly wage by doing the same thing. Here in Britain at the moment quite a number of people because of their poverty are living in furnished rooms. This can be dear enough but they have got to pay up and like it. The same also goes for the people who are “lucky" enough to find unfurnished accommodation.

There are also the Council houses and flats built specially for workers. Surely the nice newness and smarter surroundings of a modern self-contained flat with all amenities should have been the means of bringing about a happy carefree attitude among those tenants? But the struggle over the St. Pancras council flats, the Kenistoun House barricading shemozzle, along with the other unhappy incidents up and down the country speak for themselves.

Another side to this housing tragedy is revealed by those who find themselves in the position of having a bit of surplus space in their houses and who, instead of utilizing the roominess for their own comfort, are stricken with a kindness of thought and let their rooms to the more unfortunates at two, three or four pounds a go. The kind of room in which you can clearly walk around the table is classified as a “double room", compared with the one in which, when you open the door, you trip over the bed. This obviously becomes a “single bedsitter", and it’s amazing the number of people who cook, eat, sleep, wash, read and attempt to entertain in such quarters. Yes! 1961 and all that.

The Guardian recently told of a Londoner walking through Berkeley Square with one of the African delegates from the Rhodesian Conference, listening to him talk about the problem of low wages in so many parts of Africa. Wages are so low the Guardian  reported the African as saying, that in his own territory the African worker had to have subsidised housing, as in so many cases the bread-winner earned only £6 per .month.

After they had parted the Londoner made his way across the Square. Something in the window of an estate agent's office caught his eye. It was a modest sign advertising a mews cottage in Knightsbridge at150 guineas. He found on enquiry that it contained two maids' bedrooms and a dressing room as well as two ordinary bedrooms and was furnished in antiques of impeccable pedigree. The rent—£150—per week. The figure, the girl agreed, was high but it broke no record.

But remember this. Even if the worker were to live rent free in one of the Stately Homes with its own approach and the forecourt framed with iron wrought gates, and surrounded by North, South, East and West lawns—if he still had to work for a living he would be no better off. As Engels said so long ago,

    Let us assume that in a given industrial area it has become the rule that each worker owns his own little house. In that case the working class of that area lives rent free, housing expenses no longer enter into the value of its labour-power. Every reduction in the cost of production of labour-power, that is to say, every permanent price reduction in the worker’s necessities of life is equivalent “on the basis of the iron laws of the doctrine of national economy" to a depression of the value of labour-power and will therefore finally result in a corresponding drop in wages. Wages would thus fall on an average as much as the average sum saved on rent, that is, the worker would pay rent for his own house, but not, as formerly, in money to the house-owner, but in unpaid labour to the factory owner for whom he works. In this way the savings of the worker invested in his little house would in a certain sense become capital, however not capital for him but for the capitalist employing him.

Joe McGuinness

Human Rights (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A couple of months ago, twenty-four prisoners in the maximum security wing at Durham Prison barricaded themselves in their cells in protest against a new work system. They were, they said, only sticking up for their rights. On March 5 last, forty-one young soldiers protested against Army bull and red tape by marching in good order out of barracks — and back in again later. Sticking up, again, for their rights.

The same week, Emil Savundra and Peter de Quincy Walker appealed against the heavy sentences imposed on them after the collapse of Fire, Auto and Marine. They were only demanding their rights. The February issue of The Seaman, journal of the National Union of Seamen, invites all NUS members to exercise their right to apply for a place in the union’s national one-week educational course.

Get the point? The word "rights” means almost anything that anyone wants it to mean.

Governments talk about "rights”. The French constitution of 1946 proclaims that all men have the right to work, to strike, to take leisure, to enjoy culture, to take part in joint management and to have society’s help when they are unfit to work. These "rights” sound desirable enough— but dig a little deeper, and ask in whose interests some of them are proclaimed.

Nineteen sixty eight, for anyone who has been too busy campaigning against political prisoners, racial persecution and dictatorship, is Human Rights Year. This is a United Nations idea; it goes back to May 1946, when the first meeting took place of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the late President of the United States, was in the chair.

The Commission was expected to draw up two documents: a Declaration of Human Rights and an International Covenant (how these words roll off the tongue!) defining the principles of human rights and making them legally binding on all signatories. At the second session, at Geneva in November 1947, the Commission decided that three stages would be necessary — Declaration, Covenant, Implementation. The third session added a Preamble and eventually, in December 1948 in Paris the Declaration, and only the Declaration was accepted. The Covenant had to wait until 1966 for its adoption. And the Implementation?

Before anything can happen on that there must be some thirty-five ratifications and the UN admits there is little chance of that even though, it says, the Declaration embraces all the rights and freedoms essential for the dignity and development of the human personality. 

These are some of the rights covered by the Declaration: freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of peaceful association, opinion and information; freedom to leave or enter a country.

Now any well-intentioned humanitarian like, say, the Duke of Edinburgh—who is a patron of the U.K. Committee for Human Rights—would readily pay lip service to these rights for the working class. So would a lot of Labour lefties, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Soper and the Communist Party, who are all in it as well.

The U.K. Committee, supported by 140 organisations, will be campaigning all this year and a very impressive programme they have. One of the high spots is the International Seminar on Freedom of Association, in London this month. The campaign has four main objectives: to publicise the Declaration; to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination; to end all discrimination against women; to help the peoples of Britain’s dependent territories to realise their human rights. Not bad. It’s only taken them twenty years to think up four objectives. And what chance have they of being achieved?

Lena Jeger, Labour M.P. for Holborn and St. Pancras, in the New Statesman (31/12/67) gave a run down on some of the fine-sounding articles, for example: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. The right to leave and return to any country.” And what did the Labour government do, a couple of months after she wrote that article, to the Kenyan Asians’ right to leave and enter any country?

The world situation was summarised in the UNESCO journal Courier of January 1968, in an article by Rene Cassin, former president of the UN Commission on Human Rights:

   Repeated violations of the rights to life, killings and massacres left unpunished, the exploitation of woman, mass hunger and starvation, the perpetuation of slavery, lack of proper education, disregard for freedom of conscience, opinion and expression, widespread racial discrimination and segregation, arbitrary government—all these and many other abuses are far too frequent to be denied.

In this sorry situation it would be better if the UN, instead of bewailing the fate of human rights, were to ask why they are so often violated. Sometimes it is simply a case of capitalism being unable to satisfy those rights. Thus although Article 25 of the Declaration states that everyone has the right “. .. . to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family including food, clothing and housing”, the November 1965 White Paper on housing stated that in Britain some three million families still live in slums, near slums or in grossly overcrowded conditions and the 1966 Annual Report of the Ministry of Health told us that "Of the 12,411 people in hostels for the homeless on one night last year 8,160—just under two thirds — were children.”

But what about the other violations of human nights—of human liberty? The plain fact here is that a ruling class which suppresses opposition does so because it sees that opposition as a threat to its own position. In Russia, for example, the state imprisoned the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky because it is afraid to allow too free a criticism of Russian state capitalism. This sort of event is not unknown in the so-called democracies of the western world. In wartime, for example, the British government assumes all sorts of dictatorial powers—and so it does in peacetime, when it considers the stability of British capitalism to be seriously threatened by, say, a strike.

If the history of Human Rights proves anything, it is that they cannot be achieved within a property society. The private property system is itself a matter of privilege and therefore a denial of the right of equal standing to the vast majority of the world’s people. Even more, a privileged class will always struggle to keep its privileges—often by force and suppression.

We have had World Refugee Year, which ended up with more refugees than it started with. We have had World Hunger Year — and we still have devastating famines. If Human Rights Year does as much for us. there will be a lot less freedom at the end of 1968 than there was at the beginning.

Joe McGuinness

Around the World (1963)

Party News from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Notes of a visit to our Companion Parties for Socialism 

MELBOURNE. I met Jack Butler (Secretary) and Peter Furey. Regular monthly meetings are held in Melbourne and over twelve branch members attend each meeting. The Socialist Standard is regularly on sale at the city's Trades Hall. Although no regular public meetings are held, each member makes special efforts to put over the Socialist case, whenever and wherever possible. Comrade Charlie Saunders was contacted by ’phone. Although not meeting up with Peter O'Brien and his wife, I gather that their fourteen month old son already understands the Party case!

SYDNEY. A few members here, including Jimmie Thorburn (Secretary), Peter Bryant, Jack Taylor and Bill Clarke. The latter had previously been in Melbourne. He is a speaker and is anxious to stimulate the Sydney Comrades into organised propaganda. There are two dozen members in Sydney and up to now, when Socialist meeting have not been possible, they make a point of attending meetings of other parties and wherever possible put over our propaganda.

AUCKLAND—New Zealand. The Secretary, Trevor Gribble and his wife said that there are a dozen members who meet periodically and sell the Standard at their places of work. Ron Everson, Secretary of Wellington came to Auckland to meet me. There are over a dozen members in the Auckland Branch and they are bright and hopeful about their activities. They greatly appreciate the tape recording lectures sent over by the S.P.G.B. which they find most helpful.

VANCOUVER. Johnny and Margaret Ahrens admit that things are rather quiet there, although two shops regularly display Socialist Party literature. There are eight members in the Branch who meet periodically.

Not far away is VICTORIA where Comrade George Jenkins and branch members are able to be much more active, producing and distributing propaganda leaflets by the thousand. In general, the Socialist Party of Canada is doing quite well and is keeping an eye on all the branches including Vancouver.

LOS ANGELES. I met our comrades Smith, Miller, Jansen and their wives. Don Poirier was there in his role of general organiser of the S.P.C. and W.S.P. He broadcasts, speaks at outdoor and indoor meetings, sells literature, travels and organises. This comrade is a Socialist machine. He is having a great impact everywhere he goes. The Companion parties cannot help but do well with members such as he.

In general, much can be done to keep contact with our comrades in the West by regular correspondence and exchange of views. They have to wait a month for the Socialist Standard, but correspondence can be sent to them more frequently and much quicker by air mail.

Joe McGuinness

Winds of Change (1960)

News From Africa from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

All over the continent of Africa, Nationalism is on the march and the battle cry is “Independence.” Africans are demanding that political power be turned over to them. This, they say, would allow them to set about the problems of illiteracy, poverty and disease which the Colonialists have ignored or deliberately preserved. Offering this as the main reason for their Nationalism, they attract a lot of support and sympathy. What many people forget is that this newly won political power will be used to administer capitalism—with all the problems which white workers are already faced with.

When political independence is procured, the new powers must try to develop the economy. They need all types of heavy and light machinery, electrical equipment, scientific instruments, chemicals, and all those materials which go into the making of the manufacturing industries. They look to this capital as a means of increasing the output of the workers and thereby causing more wealth to be produced by fewer workers in a period of time. As well as foreign investment they require foreign manpower in such fields as education, science, law and technology In colleges and universities all over the world there are African students learning such subjects as will befit them for their respective tasks under capitalism. This and a lot more has got to be done until such times as their workers produce enough wealth to enable the country to find most of its own finance for development. An African government having the welfare of the economy in its hands will often have to warn their workers against striking or asking for higher wages. They will also have to make the normal government appeal to work hard and save and so help the African capitalists to sell their goods as cheaply as possible to compete on the world markets against other national capitalists.

Nigeria, Somalia, Congo, are all receiving independence this year, and Kenya and Tanganyika are not far behind. In all these countries there are the grovelling bands of prospective parliamentarians waiting restlessly to take over their appointed places as the “New Gov’ners” of the African working class. One thing Africa is not short of is leaders—they are ten a penny. Nigeria, which expects independence in October this year, has at least three political notabilities, one of whom has already been knighted for past service. This country should have no bother in attracting capital as it is considered to be “credit-worthy,” for these leaders have re-assured investors about the favourable political conditions in which their investments may flourish. Somalia and British Somaliland have gained their independence. Somalia has been under the jurisdiction of Italian trusteeship, granted by the United Nations. Now Italy is passing over the responsibility to one Abdullahi Issa, hoping quite naturally that he is the right man to protect any Italian interests which are left behind.

As to Kenya, is it to be Jomo Kenyatta or Tom Mboya? What will happen to the European settlers of the White Highlands and the Asian merchants who are in a minority? Can they fit into the African scheme of things? If not, and they have to leave, should the workers of Asia and Europe shed any tears? Or better still, will the replacement of these Colonists by African farmers and merchants be a source of joy for Kenya workers? No, no and no.

Shorn of the Nationalist pomp and false desires, the plain economic truth of this rapidly developing continent means power, position and privilege for those Africans who own the tools, instruments, machinery, transport and communications and all that is produced through them. These are the people who intend to employ other Africans in order that as much profit as possible will be made out of production, just like anywhere else in the world where there is production for sale. Capitalism, wherever it exists, is primarily concerned with the amount of rent, profit or interest it can generate.

Africans, who under Colonial rule were always lamenting their oppression and exploitation, might have been expected, when they became independent, to seek a way of life in which no exploitation could take place. But, as Nkrumah has put it, the Africans must not do anything which might have an adverse effect on foreign investment and lead to a lack of confidence. So then, the supposed freedom of Africa is dependent upon the need for foreign capital. Thus countries which in recent times have thrown off the burden of foreign domination—India and Egypt— have found themselves as free as the horse is from the cart when tied up in the stable. And what has the independence of a country to do with the independence of the workers of that country?

As the social and productive powers of the African workers increase so the surplus which they create will be the source whereby the under-developed will graduate to the developed, with banks, insurance offices, factories, stock exchanges, labour exchanges, and all the other features of a modern "civilisation.” Throughout all this development the workers must constantly seek to better their living conditions and like their counterparts throughout the world, organise themselves in trade unions. There is every reason to believe that these ambitious backward countries will break through the vicious circle of low output, primitive production and semi-starvation and become countries of full- blooded capitalism and nationhood.

When this time comes they will have attained abundant production through modern scientific and technological methods. The African workers—the cause of all this greatness—will have a “wonderful” standard of existence just like you and I. This standard includes finding a job, being at the mercy of the boss, spending the best and major part of each day in an office, factory or some other workplace. All the wealth that he comes into contact with will not have been produced primarily to satisfy needs, but in the interest of buying and selling for profit. All this—and the scheming, working, waiting and wondering, which the working class of the world do throughout their lives, always with a hope of bettering their material conditions.

It will be this that the African, Indian, Egyptian and Chinese workers will be letting themselves in for when they seek to develop capitalism in their countries.

Joe McGuinness

NHS On The Rocks (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Labour government nationalized private medical service in Britain the state took over. From then on all hospitalization, treatment, dentures, spectacles and prescriptions could now be got “free” on the health scheme. We could even receive specialist and consultant advice without the question of private fee. After-care in convalescent homes by the seaside or in the country was available if specified. It stopped short at such things as recuperation on the Riviera or Swiss Alps.

Thirty years later we now take a look at the state of Hire-Purchase Medicare. Consultants threatening to work to rule. Dentists and General Practitioners threatening to withdraw from the NHS. Technicians, Radiographers, nurses, ambulance drivers, cleaners, kitchen staff, porters, launderers (all but the kind ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service), having withdrawn or threatening to withdraw their labour. Operations deferred because of the pressure of work or the lack of surgical beds. The government cannot buy enough kidney machines because they are too expensive. Kidney cases just have to suffer. It is reckoned that as many as half-a-million patients are queuing up for beds. Why does an ill person have to wait?

In 1946 Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Government’s Minister of Health, was so concerned about the health of the working class that he forgot momentarily about the health and welfare of those workers who would be running the show. Ever since the loyal servants of the state health institutions had to fight to keep their real wages from being whittled away by the increased cost of living. Now they have started kicking. In order to make it worth while for the consultants Bevan agreed that they should be able to carry on private business. It was arranged that a percentage of private patients be accommodated privately in special wards and wings of the NHS hospitals.

Now apart from the individual worker who insures himself, or the company or Trade Union who insures their employees or members with such bodies as the British United Provident Association or the Hospital Savings Group, who could possibly afford this treatment? When these patients go into hospital one special benefit might be a bed straight away. The general situation will be NHS standard, that is ordinary NHS bed and food. But there are two quite different standards of medical attention and what is the priority? Money of course— what can you afford?

So the great Nye and the Labour Government decreed that the best, or better, treatment during illness will be bought. And here to prove it are some facts. Salmon, steak, strawberries are a few of the tasty dishes you can actually order if you are resident in what’s comically known as the “Fulham Hilton” better known as the new Charing Cross hospital. In addition a bedside telephone and colour TV. That is if you are stingy enough and only wish to pay £174 per week. A better deal may be the London Clinic at £252 per week. This is exclusive of the consultant’s fees. You are expected to employ him if you wish his personal attention. The consultants wish to retain this, not surprisingly.

After thirty years so many people are suddenly piqued about it as if it only started happening yesterday. The present Labour Minister of Health thinks it is unjust and wants a year or so to phase it out. The CP's Morning Star refers to it as “a galling class question”. Yet they support privilege and inequality in Russia.

So no matter what they do they still finish up with two distinct standards of treatment. One of privilege and prerogative and privacy. The other utility, austerity and cheapness.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no illusions about this capitalist makeshift health plan for the working class. A patch-’em-up-and-get-’em-back-to-work-as-cheaply-as-possible service. And to think that this cheapskate make-and-mend of capitalism was delivered by the Labour Government in the name of “Socialism”!

Joe McGuinness