Greasy Pole: The Importance of Being Irvine (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

It sounds like the kind of question which might have come in a sticky passage a few weeks ago in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Who was the most senior and the highest paid member of the government? You want to ask the audience: most of them think it had to be the Prime Minister. So you want to phone a friend; they think it’s a trick question and it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he’s responsible for taxes. Bad luck; you’ve just lost a few thousand pounds because the correct answer was the Lord Chancellor, who technically – and traditionally – outranked the Prime Minister and earned a lot more because his pay was linked to what the judges got while common or garden ministers and MPs had to rub along on pay linked to that of senior civil servants. After a rise of £22,691 – a lot more than the basic pay of many people in a year – the Lord Chancellor trousered £202,736, compared to the Prime Minister’s £175,414 and other Cabinet ministers £127,791. For the Lord Chancellor it got even better: his pay was protected by what used to be called a differential – a whopping one, which ensured that he always gets a lot more than that other legal bigwig the Lord Chief Justice.

Of course some of the lucky recipients of that kind of money might be expected to be a bit bashful, especially as they earn some of it by telling the rest of the people to be satisfied with much, much less to get by on. But politicians are not famous for being bashful about their double, or treble, or quadruple, standards. One who went to great lengths to avoid a reputation for bashfulness or restraint in his self-indulgences is the man who was Lord Chancellor until Blair’s recent re-shuffle which not only got rid of him but abolished his job. An event which must have brought back memories for workers who were similarly treated in the steel industry, the coal mines, the shipyards . . . He answers to the title of Lord Irvine of Lairg – or Derry as he is known to any friends he has or to those who are trying to help their careers along by being seen as his friend. Early in the life of the new Blair government Irvine put down his marker when he made it plain that he had no intention of agreeing to forego the £16,000 rise which ministers were awarding themselves but which Chancellor Gordon Brown thought they should not have. Then there was the matter of the £650,000 spent on the refurbishment of his official residence, including the famous hand-blocked wallpaper, which at 300 pounds a roll pounds cannot be bought at the local B&Q, and the gothic beds at £16,000 each and the works of art which were “donated” by museums and the like.

Humble Origins

Clearly, Irvine regarded himself as something special. In fact he came from beginnings which were very much run of the mill of the working class. His father was a tiler and his mother a waitress. Young Derry looked beyond such a life: he won a scholarship to a posh school then took degrees at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities. He became a barrister and set up chambers where he employed a future Prime Minister, who met his future wife among the dusty law books and beribboned briefs in the Irvine chambers. Whatever favours Irvine may be thought to have done for the man he continued to call “young Blair” were amply repaid when the first Labour Prime Minister for almost twenty years signalled the end of the times of privilege and nepotism by appointing his old mate to be the highest judge in the land. Which suited Irvine to the tips of his elegant footwear because he was by then notorious for his arrogance and his bullying, a man who had to have a flunky peel his oranges for him, a man of whom a fellow peer could say “You have to think through carefully what you are going to say to him for fear of getting your balls burned off”.

The job of Lord Chancellor involved being both judge and politician, which was well suited to Irvine. Apart from his passion for the finer things in life he had a reputation for being swollen with his own importance. In October 1997, not long in the job, in a speech to the Reform Club he compared himself to Cardinal Wolsey, who basked in the favours of Henry VIII and who was also fond of a lavish life style, which was why he had Hampton Court built for himself. It was not an entirely happy comparison because Wolsey fell out of Henry’s good books and ended his days ducking and diving to avoid being tried (and almost certainly executed) for treason. Irvine’s pomposity may have been punctured when his son Alistair got 16 months in a Los Angeles prison for stalking and threatening the boyfriend of a woman who had dumped him. In any case young Blair has now decided that the solution to a number of questions is to move Irvine over and make room for another old chum in Lord Falconer, who is said to be as clever as Irvine but by no means as arrogant. There was the usual exchange of letters, which were unusually frosty in tone.

Irvine’s retirement had been copiously leaked; it was whispered that Blair was losing patience with his old boss because he was not living up to his promise to reform the legal systems. Perhaps more to the point, the tabloids were after Irvine – and if there thing which concerns Blair it is to appease the gutter press. In some ways the Lord Chancellorship was an open target for the tabloids, for of all the grand jobs in the government it was about the grandest. Apart from the mediaeval clothes and sitting on something called the Woolsack (which is in fact a sack of wool) he had more than one job. He was head of the judiciary, with the last say in the appointment (and the sacking) of the judges and the magistrates. He was Speaker of the House of Lords (where a previous man in the job, Lord Hailsham, would sit on the Woolsack muttering “bollocks” in response to the speeches of some of the noble lords). And he was a member of the Cabinet, in the chair of several committees. His style of running those committees was not universally popular because he was in the habit of acting like a prosecutor with ministers as the criminals in the dock.

Judges and Politics

Of course ministers often have multiple responsibilities. The unusual thing about the Lord Chancellorship was the apparent clash between being head judge and a member of the Cabinet, which at the least questioned whether the Courts were as insulated from political pressure as they were supposed to be. One of the problems with Irvine was that he used the combined roles to avoid disciplining judges. Hailsham, applying the kind of logic which is beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, argued that the very unity of the roles was an insurance that they would be kept separate. The Council of Europe took a different view, saying that the dual responsibility is a contravention of human rights; in February eleven members of the Council signed a resolution which said the arrangement called the independence of the judges “seriously into question”. This was widely welcomed and not necessarily in the tabloids, which are not expected to concern themselves with such arcane questions. Roger Smith, the Director of Justice, said “the political powers of the Lord Chancellor can no longer be combined with a role as a judge”.

But who says they can’t? Does anyone seriously believe that judges do their job, running a court case, summing up evidence, passing sentences, in ignorance of political influences? Consider the case of Lord Denning, once one of the most eminent judges in the land, who once bemoaned the fact that the Guildford Four had not been executed because it would have prevented all that fuss about their being innocent. Denning gave his opinion in another notorious case, when the Birmingham Six applied to sue the police. In refusing the application, which was based on evidence of brutality and falsification of evidence by the police, Denning said that the mere suggestion of police corruption was “. . . such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’”. And when it had to be admitted, even by the most stubbornly blind, politically motivated, judge that the police had been violent and had lied, Denning made a nauseatingly lame and partial apology: “As I look back I am very sorry, because I always thought that our police were splendid and am very sorry that in this case it appears the contrary.” By then the Six had spent another eleven years in prison.

Retirement

Denning’s doomed defence of the police was based on his assumption that they must be immune from such criticism because of the part they play under capitalism. This system is based on a minority class owning the means of life, which is another way of saying that the majority are denied access to those means and can get it only with the consent of the owning class – by being employed by them. Of course the majority could help themselves but this would be a basic assault on the system so there is a vast and complex structure, called the law and the legal system, which prevents them doing this. At the sharp end of that structure are the police. To challenge this is to take on the very weaponry with which capitalism asserts its essentially coercive nature. Irvine’s lucrative and self-ennobling career demonstrated the grim reality of this. His going and replacement will not change things. In any case he will be getting a pension package worth £2.6 million, he will continue to sit as a judge, and then there is always the chance of the odd directorship or consultancy, writing his memoirs, or joining the after-dinner speaking circuit. He will not want. It will be even better for him than if he had won Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: War, Crime and Punishment (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently two young soldiers were convicted at Berkshire Assizes of robbery with violence. Instead of sentencing them straight away the judge gave them a choice – volunteer “unconditionally” for Korea or go to gaol. After they had a night to think it over their counsel told the judge: “They are eager to take advantage of your lordship’s leniency, and volunteer for overseas service.”

An editorial in the Daily Mirror (9th May) strongly criticised the judge’s action. The Mirror asks how the choice of the convicted men could be unconditional in such circumstances,. But there are other aspects of the matter that should be brought out, and the main theme of the editorial (An Insult to the Army) is of little consequence compared to the deeper questions concerning the cause of crime and war in our present society.

The comments of the judge Mr. Justice Hilbery are indicative of the conventional attitude to crime. “You have been convicted of a very grave crime. When you robbed and attacked as you did each was not showing his true nature. Each of you is a better fellow than that. See active service and turn yourselves into men of courage.”

From this it would appear that when people rob and attack others without the sanction of the law they are not showing their “true nature.” If, on the other hand, they take part in organised attack and robbery against other nations (for what else is war?) then they are turned into “men of courage.”

The Daily Mirror believes that the men risking life in Korea are undertaking a high and honourable duty, and that it is not for courts to confuse military service with crime and punishment. In extenuation of the courts it should be pointed out that in the circumstances the confusion is pardonable. “War crime” is a name given, by the nation in a position to inflict punishment, to certain of the “military services” performed by the forces of other nations.

[From an article by “Stan”, Socialist Standard, June 1953.]

These Foolish Things: Monopoly money (1995)

The Scavenger column from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monopoly money

Most members of the capitalist class avoid drawing attention to themselves. For example, one of the largest owners of property in London is the son of a German banker, Otto Wisskirchen. This discreet young man, educated at Lancing public school, has so far bought shops and offices in London worth nearly £400 million. But he is only one of a number of German capitalists who have, between them, bought £2.5 billions-worth of central London in the past five years.

Salary slaves

Research by the Institute of Personnel and Development reveals that 42 percent of senior management and a third of middle management said work pressures meant they were failing to take all their annual holidays . . .

After a strong start to the year, recruitment of managers and senior specialist staff has fallen to disturbingly low levels . . . the last time the higher-paid job market showed a similar downward pattern was in 1989, when a severe recession followed. Blaine Cavanagh and Michael Dixon, Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 July 1995.

There's a law against it

Recent Home Office figures show that the use of illegal drugs is escalating out of control in Britain, in spite of strenuous efforts by police and customs officers to prevent it. Registered addicts (only a small fraction of the total) have increased by twenty percent to 34,000 and deaths of addicts by 7.5 percent. Last year the number of those applying for medical treatment shot up to 6,000.

Rich for the Law

The Lord Chancellor is trying to save money on the historic lodgings used to accommodate High Court judges on circuit. These arc often listed buildings, costly to maintain, and staffed by butlers, cooks and housekeepers.

There are 33 lodgings costing £4 million a year. The dearest has been Lincoln, occupied by only one judge for six weeks of the law’s 36-week year. This works out at £24,098 per judge-week.

Lord Mackay has no plan to change this system which bolsters the majesty of capitalist law, but he would like to reduce the average cost to a modest £2,500 per week’s use.

The (un)Free Market

When economists sing the praises of The Market and its ability to regulated capitalism’s running of society, they conveniently forget the universal scope the market provides for dishonesty, and the huge superstructure of law and enforcement needed to deal with it.

In 1986, the Financial Services Act provided for the setting up of the Investors’ Compensation Scheme for those who became casualties of the investments market. But the investment companies involved had to be authorised firms already controlled (avowedly) by one or more of the following: Financial Intermediaries’, Managers’ and Brokers’ Regulatory Association; Investment Management Regulatory Organisation; Life Assurance and Unit Trust Regulatory Organisation; Personal Investment Authority; Securities and Futures Authority.

ICS paid out £25.4 million in 1994 to 2,276 such investors from money provided by the investment industry, but the recent life assurance scandal threatened to disrupt the compensation scheme; and the Treasury had to back ICS with a guaranteed £17 million. 

The Scavenger

'Their honours' (1975)

From the August 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many unpleasant aspects of a society divided into owners and non-owners (i.e. class society) is the consequent existence of governors and governed and rulers and ruled. The majority of people accept private property and therefore agree to the systems of governments, rulers, bosses etc., and this means having some people elevated to the position of “judges”.

The concept of a group of people sitting in judgment on their fellows is anathema to the Socialist who wants a free society. Socialism as a voluntary society with no private wealth to protect will not need to disguise old men with wigs, gowns and legal mystique in order to frighten elements of the population into submission to the interests of a small minority.

One of the strangest points about the idea of judges is that instead of their jobs being regarded as odious, they are looked upon with respect not only by the capitalist class (who need them to preserve their monopoly of wealth and to sort out disputes between various competing sections of their class) but by workers too. Everyone under capitalism is “judged” from birth to death by their “price tag” i.e. the size of their wage or salary, or their ownership of wealth. Partly because judges have such a high price-tag, their lengthy boring) speeches in and out of courts of law are listened to with awe and reverence.

The tragedy is that they have nothing to say of any interest to the working class. They can’t even help administer capitalism very well. Witness the controversy the House of Lords (the highest court in the land) recently caused over the law of rape. However, "I thought she consented” is the capitalist’s apology for exploiting everybody. When a judge freed a double rapist on the grounds that he had strong sexual urges, he gave voice to the “human nature” justification in which capitalism is only expressing the strong acquisitive urges which we’ve all (likewise) got.

When tin gods come out of their natural environment (law courts) and comment on all sorts of things, the fun really starts. For example, what child would suggest a solution to the traffic problem on these lines:

Lord Salmon Lord of appeal in ordinary has hit on a way to fight the menace of juggernaut lorries in his home town of Sandwich, Kent without breaking the law. He says citizens should sail boats constantly on the river Stour, which would force authorities to keep the town’s swing bridge open and effectively jam all road traffic. (Sunday Times, 20th October 1974)

What a way to analyze a social problem springing from profit-motive society.

The real function of judges is to help in the dirty job of keeping the workers in subjection. This is made clear when they attempt to analyze society. For example, Lord Devlin was reported in The Times (26th June 1975) giving an address whose theme was a rejection of criticism “that the English judiciary was torpid, inactive and unwilling to develop the law to fit changing times”. But the same article reported Devlin as saying:

Those who took up the law . . . tended to be of the same type who did not seriously question the status quo and who wanted to serve the law and not be its master. Lawyers were not naturally interested in social reform.

Those people who “serve the law” know full well whom the law serves—the owners of wealth. It is the instrument by which their monopoly is preserved. Devlin is merely saying the law and those who practise it are going to do their best to maintain that system. And he makes it perfectly clear that he wants the boundary between the haves and have nots to remain just where it is:

The first mark of a free and orderly society was that the boundaries between the rulers and the ruled should be guarded and that trespasses from one side to the other should be independently and impartially determined.

Devlin argues that it is not the judge’s job to change the rules of capitalism. Another judge, Lord Lawton recently argued the opposite case. Describing what the judges learnt from seeing poor wretches brought before them he said:

This experience enabled judges to give a lead to public opinion in many matters affecting the lives of ordinary men and women . . . (Law Society Gazette, 18th June 1975)

One wonders how any one who has ever been in the frightening, artificial atmosphere of a law court can seriously suggest as Lawton does:

Judges learned from the cases they tried how people lived and the attitudes they held in every part of England and Wales.

The judge’s message soon became clear. Judges are not there to change society but to preserve it. In some thing of an understatement he says of judges:

They tend to doubt the wisdom of tearing institutions up by their roots and starting afresh.

Clearly proud of a system of society that has produced nothing but wars, poverty, unemployment, shortages, pollution, mass starvation etc. on a scale no previous society could match, he comes out with the oldest of fallacies:

Crime would continue to increase until it was recognised that its prime cause was wickedness . . .

Nothing like a well-fed judge to blame the workers for all the problems around and call them wicked. We can only suggest to this one that he analyze the class basis of society. This would show him that people are the products of the society in which they live and a society based on the common interest of all could not produce the sort of “wickedness” (e.g. thefts of private property) that he talks about.

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado, Conrade when confronted with an officer of the law, says “Away. You are an ass, you are an ass”. We would add, that people should retort “Away!” with the outdated social ideas the spokesmen of the capitalist class foist on them. And next time that puny objection to Socialism is brought up, “Who will do the dirty work in a Socialist society?” you might remember that a good deal of it such as the work of police forces, armies and judges, won’t need doing at all.

Ronnie Warrington

Passing Comments: Mutual Admiration Society (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mutual Admiration Society

There was a warming scene in the House of Commons the other day when two capitalists, one on each side of the house, gave their views on one of the chief problems confronting both parties nowadays —how to get the arms drive going satisfactorily. Mr. Strauss, Minister of Supply, whose family fortunes are derived from metal-trading, said that "his department is working vigorously. It has recruited a number of industrialists, it has placed 51,000 contracts with industry, and he is confident that this year’s programme will be achieved.” (Daily Express, 24.7.1951.) And he graciously gave what William Barkley calls “an unusual tribute across the table for his services” to Col. Sir Ralph Glyn, the Tory member for Abingdon, who was the chairman of a select committee which has made a number of recommendations to the Government on the question of the switch of industries to rearmament. Sir Ralph holds down four jobs altogether—he is an M.P., he is a director of J. Samuel White & Co., Ltd., and of the British Match Corporation, and he is chairman of the Skefko Ball Bearing Co., Ltd. And he gallantly replied by praising “trade union leaders for their efforts at harmony in industry.” He also said that "this heavy rearmament programme must inevitably depress British standards of living for some years. This gave opportunities to mischief-makers who were what used to be called traitors.” So they are all comrades together, Tory capitalists, "labour” capitalists, trade union leaders; the only cads are the mischief- makers who object to having their standards of living depressed.

* * *

Enterprise and Vitality

Mr. Strauss had found time to sing the praises of some more of his fellow-capitalists four days before. Opening a new Austin plant, he said (Daily Herald, 20.7.1951): "This plant will make a great contribution to Britain's industrial resources. It is typical of the enterprise, imagination and vitality of the Austin company. Those responsible deserve our gratitude.” In return, Mr. Lord, Chairman of the Austin Company, drew attention to the difficulties the Government had to face, and said: “Some people seem to think that a change of government will put everything right, but it won't make bad workmen work any more, or get us more coal and steel, or deal with Communism as we know it in this country.” And it is certainly true that whether the Labour Party or the Conservative Party is administering Capitalism the problems they have to face will be much the same; one of the chief flies in the ointment will always be those workers who are too idle to bring a really sizeable profit in to their employers.

* * *

More and More

Mr. Lord is reported as having gone on to say: “We must all work together and realise that the days of more and more for less and less are over.” Come, come, Mr. Lord. Haven't you seen the latest figures for dividend increases? We admit that it would not be strictly true to say that now a shareholder is doing less and less to earn his dividends since one cannot do less than nothing, and the shareholder was already doing that. But the other part—”more and more”— certainly applies, since higher dividends have been reported all the year, culminating in an 18 per cent. increase in June. Now, of course, a schema of partial restriction—on dividends, not on profits—has been introduced to keep the trade unions quiet, and some of the extra dividends the shareholders hoped for will have to be salted away in companies' reserves for the three years during which the scheme will be in operation. But whereas the workers, persuaded of the benevolent intentions of the Government by this latest plan, will be expected to forego wage increases altogether, the dividend increases will not be foregone, merely postponed till the end of the scheme.

A confidence trick, in fact, of the highest order.

* * *

Vicious Circle

One of the main excuses brought forward by the heads of each state for rearming is that some other country has rearmed, and "we nave to do it as well to defend ourselves.” Thus Russia keeps large armies in being in order to defend herself against the threat presented by the fact that America has stocks of atomic bombs and numerous overseas bases. And America and Britain have to rearm to defend themselves against the large Russian armies (a Daly Herald headline on July 28th was “Why we must arm—Stalin has. five and a half million armed men”). The Daily Graphic, however, goes one better. Not only do we have to rearm because our future enemies are arming; we also have to rearm because our allies are arming. Commenting on President Truman's report to Congress that in twelve months twenty per cent. of America’s total industrial production will be devoted to “defence,” the Graphic says (24.7.1951): “America is bearing—and bearing willingly—the main burden. It is shameful for anyone in Britain to suggest that we should not do our share.”

Stripped of verbiage, the argument runs like this: The Russian workers have let themselves be deluded into accepting a lower standard of living so that the Russian state can have bigger armed forces; the American workers have let themselves be deluded into accepting a lower standard of living in order that the American state can have bigger armed forces; therefore we in Britain must also “do our share”!

* * *

Pax Vobiscum

At the opening of General Eisenhower's new headquarters near Versailles, the General is reported to have said that “it was the first time in history an allied headquarters had been set up in peacetime to preserve peace and not to encourage war” (Continental Daily Mail, 24.7.1951). “We strive to lift from the hearts of men the fear of the cell block of the slave-camp. We strive to establish Pax Atlantica under which all men may push forward to new heights to new levels of achievement”

If the General really wants to preserve peace, he chose an unfortunate comparison. For “Pax Romana,” although its literal translation is “the Roman peace,” had nothing to do with the preservation of peace. Pax Romana is the name given to a time when there were still wars. Why then was it called "pax”? Because whatever wars there were—against foreigners outside the Empire, against rebels within it—were won by the Roman rulers. It was the same with that other period of history to which the name “pax” is sometimes applied—the period 1815—1914, which some historians have called “Pax Britannica.” This didn’t mean that there were no wars in this period—it simply meant that whatever wars there were, within or without the British Empire, were won by the British rulers.

But perhaps that is the kind of thing the General had in mind.

* * *

Food and Famine

Here are some quotations from a missionary magazine (“The Kingdom Overseas,” July, 1951) taken from reports on the Mysore and Trichmopoly areas of India.

“We have seen little children crying for food, seen them snatch the food from each other’s hands, watched them eat with relish the husks of oil-cake from the oil mills, and search the fields for herbs and roots to eat.” 

“The shadows of death and the pale ghost of hunger have been present in countless homes. But many have had no homes—in which to live or die. These of our people were wandering from the west, eastward or to the hills; but in that search for work and food only some were successful.” 

“All of us in this Trichinopoly Diocese, and especially those on the western side, will remember 1950, above all, as a year when famine, the worst in living memory, stalked our countryside.”

1950? The News Chronicle (24.11.1950) had something to tell us about 1950. "A year’s supply of potatoes for twelve million people—26,700,000 bushels— has been destroyed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture this year, because it could not sell them abroad.” Let us not, however, put down our Western and democratic way of life as a complete failure. Some of us have enough food—enough of it for all purposes. If you are wealthy enough there is a shop in the Champs Elysees, in Paris, which will bathe your dog for you—in milk (Sunday Express, 15.7.1951). And from the same paper (1.7.1951) we learn that the beauty experts in New York have thought up a new facial to take the wrinkles out of rich women’s faces. Its ingredients? Eggs, milk and strawberries.

* * *

Sleight of Tongue

When we see an expert at work in any field it is difficult to withhold our admiration. Let us therefore give his due mead of praise to Mr. Churchill, who surely can have few peers in the work of improving on the facts for purposes of propaganda.

On July 14th, Mr. Horner, the national secretary of the Mineworkers’ Union, said in a speech at Morpeth that "if a Tory government is returned, it is certain that there will be a national strike of the miners, following the measures which such a Tory government propose to take to deal with the mining situation.” If the experience of the inter-war years counts for anything at all, this statement is so self-obvious as to border on being a truism. If a Tory government is returned, it is likely that ultimately the miners will be driven to resist mining measures by going on strike. Up to the present, indeed, one of the most valuable services performed by the Labour Government for the capitalist class has been to keep the strikes and disruption in this most important of industries down to a far lower level than after the first world war.

* * *

Masterstroke

Now Horner’s statement is a clear warning about the certainty of industrial disturbances in the coalmines under a Tory government Mr. Churchill, however, calls this warning "threats” and "shameful menaces.” More: he multiplies the scope of the warning by more than ten. He says (Sunday Express, 22.7.1951): “But now the Communist Horner has stepped outside the sphere of industrial disputes, and threatens the whole british democracy with a national strike to bring the country down if they dare express their opinion and wishes at the polls.” This is a masterstroke. By leaving three words out of the original phrase, “a national strike of the miners,” he extends the "threat” which he alleges has been uttered from one concerning fewer than 700,000 miners to one concerning more than ten times that number of organised workers.

A man of such abilities should be capable of retaining his place indefinitely at the head of the Conservative Party.

* * *

Free from Financial Worries

The Daily Express (20.7.1951) is calling for some wage increases. The subjects of its concern are the High Court judges, who only get £5,000 a year. When their salary was fixed, it says, it was “considered big enough to keep them free from financial worries which might impede their judgment.” Now, it seems, it no longer is.

No doubt it’s a good thing for judges to be free from financial worries. If this is the only criterion, however, what about, say, railway signalmen? An error in a judge’s judgment might mean a man being convicted wrongly; an error in a signalman’s judgment might mean dozens of people killed in a train smash. No doubt a judge can work better when free of financial worries; but isn't that true of all workers? The trouble is that there is only one way in which we can free all workers from financial worry; the establishment of Socialism. But that wouldn’t interest the Daily Express.

* * *

Help for the Democrats

From the Continental Daily Mail (24.7.1951): “Mr. Richard Casey, Australian External Affairs Minister, said to-day that 'solidarity among the democratic nations is necessary to cope with Communism’s onslaught.’” Mr. Casey was speaking in Indonesia, and he said that "Australia had offered any possible neighbourly assistance in technical, educational and other fields." Some more neighbourly assistance now reaching this particularly democratic nation from Hitler’s old finance minister, Dr. Schacht, who has been specially invited out by the Indonesian Government. It is not so long since our reformists were rejoicing over the replacement in Indonesia of a Dutch ruling class by a native one. But it seems that the Indonesian capitalists are also running up against problems, and they show no mote fastidiousness about the quarters from which they receive help than do their brother-capitalists elsewhere.

* * *

Simply and Informally

“Princess Elizabeth wants to travel ‘as simply and informally as possible’ when she sails for Canada with the Duke of Edinburgh on September 25th in the C.P.R. liner ‘Empress of France.’ Shipping officials have been told that this is her wish." (Sunday Express, 29.7.1951.) So there is going to be no fuss at all. Well, hardly any.

The royal apartments on board are to be four inter-communicating state-rooms “on the sun-trap port side of ‘A’ deck.” “Upper Pullman berths in the cabins are to be stripped out. New fitted carpets will be laid. Special bulkheads will be erected across a companion way to ensure greater privacy. One of the cabins will be converted into a private lounge-dining room.”

It looks as if the royal couple are going to have almost as ascetic a time on board as they do at home.

Alwyn Edgar

Political Notes: A guerrilla calls (1982)

The Political Notes Column from the July 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

A guerrilla calls

What with the Falklands, the Pope’s visit and all, it was hardly noticed, but recently Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Robert Mugabe was in London.

At another time—say three years ago—, the visit of this ex-guerrilla leader would certainly have been noticed. Such was his reputation as a bloodthirsty terrorist that his presence on these shores would have roused the most somnolent armchairs of Clubland.

And Mugabe, who still calls himself a “socialist”, would probably have occupied himself in discussions with other left wing leaders. At the end there might well have been a statement on the international fraternity of freedom fighters. And so on.

What actually happened was that Mugabe spent his time with bankers and industrialists, at one time at a banquet arranged by the overweight, overthrown Tory Lord Soames who did so much to help Mugabe to power.

Mugabe’s problem is not to do with international brotherhood: it is a lack of investment in Zimbabwe. His Cabinet planned for 45 per cent to come from private funds and the rest to include pledges of credit from other states, given in 1981. But British capitalists are wary; they are pressing for a “code” which will safeguard invested capital and guarantee that profits will be allowed out of Zimbabwe. If this crisis sounds familiar, that is because it is typical of many a state attempting its first footholds on the greasy slopes of international capitalism. Mugabe, like many other nationalist leaders, vowed to build socialism in one country. His is the latest experience to prove this is impossible and that nationalist struggles merely overthrow one ruling class to substitute another.


Arms spending

Leading politicians from 157 governments recently convened in New York for the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament (UNGASSD). There, many solemn words were spoken on the urgent, nay imperative, need to disarm the world.

While cant was echoing around the conference chamber many politicians like Reagan, Brehznev and Thatcher were authorising bloodshed and destruction by armies, navies and air forces from their respective nations. The Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Jan Martenson, announced that the annual global arms bill for all types of weapons and military equipment totals £353 BILLION—the highest it has ever been. Resolutions were carried with zeal at the UNGASSD, calling for all sorts of utopian disarmament measures, while the resolutions of the first Special Session on Disarmament, four years ago, are grotesquely mocked by the terrifying escalation in war apparatus since they were passed.

Ronald Reagan, fresh from arranging military finance for El Salvador and Guatemala, shaking hands with generals from military juntas like the one in Turkey and angling for the strategic positioning of American nuclear weapons half-way across the earth, strolled across Europe talking glibly about his “global campaign for peace and democracy”.

The totalitarian regimes of the Russian Empire prefer to remain more secretive about the magnitude of their military expenses, while in Britain on June 10 the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a report which indicated that between 1980 and 1981 the Ministry of Defence exceeded its defence expenditure limit by £64,000,000 and had Spent a total of £10,556,000,000 on military forces. That works out at about one and a half million pounds a minute.

At the enormous CND march in London on June 6 Major Koss van de Wetering of the Dutch army announced that 50 per cent of Dutch soldiers are opposed to nuclear weapons. Perhaps because they would have no one to kill if such weapons were used in a war. The indefatigably moderate Young Liberals called for “Action against US Missiles”, although you wouldn’t get good odds on the chances of the Young Liberals in the event of such a conflict.

Ken Livingstone declared London a Nuclear Free Zone and car stickers to this effect were distributed. If London is attacked with nuclear weapons, let’s hope that the bombs (i) are able to read and understand the stickers (ii) are prepared to abide by the decision of Ken Livingstone and his supporters in County Hall. Shocked astonishment greeted the discovery that the Argentine army was preparing to use the horrific non-nuclear weapon, napalm (a burning agent) and then it is reported that the reason for so many “light casualties” (gruesome maimings) after one British ship is attacked in the South Atlantic is that it may have been carrying . . . napalm ((Guardian, 12 June).

On the first day of the Disarmament Conference Cardinal Terence Cooke cast his eyes up to the conference chamber neon lights and prayed to God for “peace in the islands of the South Atlantic, in the land of Lebanon and other nations of the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Poland and in Afghanistan”. While he was hoping, there were probably padres attached to soldiers in all of these places telling the soldiers that their violence had been divinely condoned as god was on their side. It is idealistic to believe that capitalism could be operated without armies to protect the interests of the ruling class organised in nations.


Bench rule

The Common Sergeant is not necessarily an NCO who spits and wipes his nose on his sleeve. A Recorder is not always a musical instrument. Both are titles given to senior judges, who may find pleasure in such obscure anachronisms. One such who is about to retire is Lord Denning, who has been Master of the Rolls (not a man in charge of the bakery) for some twenty years and who, at 83, is in danger of becoming himself an obscure anachronism.

According to some legal journalists we shall be sorry to lose Denning because he is a judge who believes in justice rather than in what he calls “certainty”. This belief has persuaded him at times to interpret the law as he thought it ought to be rather than it is, to the embarrassment of his fellow judges and to the ire of the politicians.

Nobody has yet explained why this should make Denning a friend of the working class. Indeed, in his time he has been associated with some notably repressive judgements. He once launched a campaign to curb trade union power and was recently forced to withdraw a book in which he clearly indicated that he mistrusted black jurors to convict defendants of the same skin colour.

But Denning is not the first eccentric judge, nor will he be the last. The judiciary exists to administer “justice”, which means the private property morality of capitalist society. They deal out harsh punishments to anyone who offends against that morality by helping themselves to wealth outside the law: they order the eviction of homeless people from empty houses which they can’t afford to live in. Such power is positively an encouragement to eccentricity. Denning’s successor may show some superficial differences, but he will be doing the same dirty job and his hands will not be clean.

The Capital Sentence. (1923)

From the January 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the period of the late European carnage, when the world’s youth was engaged in making the world safe for hypocrisy, the manufacture of death-dealing instruments proceeded apace at the Government Arsenal at Woolwich. Mechanics were drafted from all parts of the country to this arsenal in order to provide the “Tommies” the means wherewith to disembowel the “Fritzes.” Sufficient accommodation not being available in the district, the Government perforce had to erect shelters—one could not truthfully term them houses—in which the munition workers and their families could live.

When the capitalists deemed it advisable to call a halt to the slaughter, the demand for armaments became less urgent, and the Arsenal workers, like Othello, found their occupation gone. For various reasons, chief among these perhaps was the shortage of working class dwellings, the munition makers were unable to return to the districts in which they formerly resided. In many cases these workers were unable to pay the rent demanded (for it must not be supposed that a munificent Government had allowed them to live in these houses rent free), and arrears accrued in amounts ranging from £15 to £70. Then did the Government, through H.M. Office of Works, apply to the Woolwich County Court for possession of the “houses." Before the Court, the tenants were represented by a solicitor. The Star (4/10/22) states:—

  Mr. I. H. Macdonald, defending, said that many of these men had been induced to come to Woolwich to work for the Government, and now, being out of work, were unable to leave owing to the housing difficulty. Lewisham Guardians. . . . unlike other boards, had not given relief in cash to pay the rent.

However, these facts did not influence the Court, and so, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not, ejectment orders were granted to the landlords, suspended as long as the current rent was paid, and a certain amount of the arrears paid off. But the action did not end before the worthy Judge, Sir T. Grainger, had unburdened himself of a masterly example of capitalist jurisprudence. Listen to the band :—

  When one defendant said he was not responsible for being out of work. Judge Sir Thomas Grainger said, “I cannot hear you on that. Until Labour can regard Capital as its greatest benefactor there will always be unemployment.—Star, 4/10/22.

“Until Labour can regard"—kind regards, Sir Thomas!

The halo of “impartiality” with which the capitalist scribes so dearly love to adorn the court judges, has many times been the subject of comment in these columns, and although this incident serves to show just how much, or how little, favour the worker may expect in the Courts, we may leave this point aside, and, for the sake of the credulous, once more focus the searchlight of Socialist analysis on the cause of unemployment, and see just how long unemployment need last.

The principle cause of unemployment is the fact that, by virtue of their monopoly of the instruments for producing the necessities of life, the capitalists are able to rob the workers of the wealth they (the workers) produce—the capitalists returning, on the average, just sufficient of that wealth to enable the workers to keep physically fit to go on producing, and to reproduce their species. The difference between the total amount produced by the workers and that portion returned to them still leaves a vast surplus of commodities unconsumed. It should be borne in mind that this difference increases as machinery develops and the productivity of labour increases. Now, in spite of all the riots of luxury indulged in by the capitalists, the Royal weddings, and what not, a surfeit of goods still remains. The workers obviously cannot buy back these goods, however much they may be in need of them. Thus the markets of the world become overstocked. As, under the present system, goods are only produced for profit, when the capitalist is not sure of a market for the goods, production is slackened, and the unemployed army increases. And this unemployed army will last just as long as the present system of producing for profit lasts. All talk therefore of capital being a “benefactor” is so much moonshine, intended to mislead the unthinking. “Malefactor” is the right word, and while we find judges ready to mouth such platitudes as quoted above, we can realise how earnest was Bumble’s dictum : “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass—an idiot.”

Bestir yourselves then workers! Study Socialism, and make yourselves proof against the dope issued by the masters daily from pulpit, Press, and platform. Having done that, make yourselves judges of the motives of the master class, and organise in the Socialist Party in order to pronounce the capital sentence on the present system, with its unemployment and the attendant evils — poverty, misery, and disease.

H. W. M

War, Crime and Punishment (1953)

From the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently two young soldiers were convicted at Berkshire Assizes of robbery with violence. Instead of sentencing them straight away the judge gave them a choice—volunteer "unconditionally” for Korea or go to gaol. After they had a night to think it over their counsel told the judge: “They are eager to take advantage of your lordship’s leniency, and volunteer for overseas service.”

An editorial in the Daily Mirror (9th May) strongly criticised the judge’s action. The Mirror asks how the choice of the convicted men could be unconditional in such circumstances. But there are other aspects of the matter that should be brought out, and the main theme of the editorial (An Insult to the Army) is of little consequence compared to the deeper questions concerning the cause of crime and war in our present society.

The comments of the judge (Mr. Justice Hilbery) are indicative of the conventional attitude to crime. “You have been convicted of a very grave crime. When you robbed and attacked as you did each was not showing his true nature. Each of you is a better fellow than that. See active service and turn yourselves into "men of courage.”

From this it would appear that when people rob and attack others without the sanction of the law they are not showing their “true nature.” If, on the other hand, they take part in organised attack and robbery against other nations (for what else is war ?) then they are turned into “men of courage.”

The Daily Mirror believes that the men risking life in Korea are undertaking a high and honourable duty, and that it is not for courts to confuse military service with crime and punishment. In extenuation of the courts it should be pointed out that in the circumstances the confusion is pardonable. “War crime” is a name given, by the nation in a position to inflict punishment, to certain of the “military services” performed by the forces of other nations. And the military authorities themselves make it harder to see the dividing line when they treat as a criminal the conscript who is unwilling to fight by putting him in gaol.

Under the heading, “ R.A.F. is Training Burglars,” the Daily Mirror previously printed (18th March) a report of a case of two airmen who broke into a house after drinking. Their officer told the magistrates: “If you train a man 5½ days a week to break into houses and to create disturbances on airfields, it is fair to expect that he might be inclined to put his training to the test when he is in drink.” Further comment is perhaps unnecessary, except that such cases do little to dispel the confusion of organised burglary “in the national interest” with ordinary private enterprise burglary.

As a sidelight on the majesty of the law, however, it should be noted that the officer successfully pleaded that the airmen should not be gaoled, as they had good service records and the R.A.F. was short of such men. They were conditionally discharged. Possibly the magistrates considered that it would be a pity to send men who were doing such sterling work to the already overcrowded gaols when there are much more dangerous citizens at large. For example, two girls who signed “Mrs.” instead of “Miss” in a hotel register were recently sentenced to a month’s imprisonment. True, the sentences were later remitted, but that they should have been imposed in the first place shows that the law is administered in accordance with a standard of values that is more concerned with the sanctity of a property institution (legalised marriage) than with the protection of human life.

The Socialist views the problems of crime and war as inseparable from Capitalism itself. A vicious and competitive economic system breeds vicious and anti-social behaviour. A system based on a community of interests instead of on an antagonism will be conducive to co-operative behaviour and not, as at present, place obstacles in its way. Only with the establishment of such a system will wars and crime lose their purpose and hence their existence.

Stan.

Bias on the Bench (1979)

Book Review from the February 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Politics of the Judiciary by J. A. G. Griffith (Fontana 1977) £1.25

"In the traditional view" John Griffith writes, "the function of the judiciary is to decide disputes in accordance with the law and with impartiality. The law is thought of as an established body of principles which describes rights and duties . . . " Essentially, this view rests on an assumption of judicial "neutrality". Griffith's book is an attempt to explode this erroneous view.

It is not difficult to show that the judiciary are a collection of reactionary, narrow minded servants of the existing elite. Indeed some have wondered why Griffith has bothered to write a book just to demonstrate this obvious fact. However, it is worth demonstrating and although proof is not hard to find the book is useful in that it pulls together in a readable lucid style several areas of judicial action which supports Griffith's contention of the bias of the judiciary.

One of the most illuminating and instructive examples is a well known speech by one of England's best known judges, Lord Denning. In a case dealing with the London Borough of Southwark's claim for possession of slum houses against some squatters, Denning made the following remarkable statement:

If homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe. Necessity would open a door which no man could shut . . . So the courts, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless; and trust that their distress will be relieved by the charitable and the good" (our emphasis).

In showing the judiciary's bias in favour of property in general and against such groups as trade unions, students and squatters, Griffith has demonstrated the purpose of his book, which he claimed was to look at the ways in which judges have, in recent years, dealt with political cases which have come before them. What is unfortunate (although inevitable) about the book is that Griffith gets no further than pointing out the lack of judicial neutrality. He writes:"to expect a judge to advocate radical change, albeit legally, is as absurd as it would be to expect an anarchist to speak up in favour of an authoritarian society".

This of course is the wrong question. It is not a matter of whether the judges are concerned to preserve and protect the existing order of society, but what the working class are prepared to do about capitalism. Griffith shows little understanding that what is at stake is not the obvious bias of the judiciary, but the bias of the working class in favour of the society that the judiciary defend.

Ronnie Warrington