Greasy Pole: Pornography and Politics (2002)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kenneth Clarke was a Front Bench star in the Thatcher and Major governments – Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and all that – but he has now decided that he does not like the members of his own party. A lot of them, he complains, are elderly people who never attend meetings and vote after reading the Daily Telegraph – as if that kind of political self-instruction had not always been worth a hat full of Tory votes. One of Clarke’s aides – Nick Kent – has been more explicit in his dislike of the Tory grass roots: “nasty old people” was his description of the party faithful (who) “cannot be reasoned with”. These outbursts are not accidents; they have been provoked by those nasty geriatrics electing Iain Duncan Smith to the Tory leadership in preference to Clarke and to the fact that Clarke now senses the time has come for him to make another bid for the top job – which cannot be unconnected with a dawning awareness in the party that by choosing Duncan Smith they made a mistake of historic stupidity.

The reasons for Duncan Smith’s victory will be a field for endless analysis, which is probably only waiting for the Tories to lose the next election as decisively as they lost the last one. Perhaps it was in reaction against William Hague, who was notable for what Nick Kent called “a teenage cocktail of tabloid populism and raving anti-Europeanism”. Perhaps it was because, although Duncan Smith had upset quite a few people (like John Major) in the party he had done so for what they considered the right reasons, in contrast to Clarke and Portillo. Perhaps they simply took to Duncan Smith’s soldierly stiff upper lip, his smart suits, his background as an officer in the Guards. They must have forgotten that political leaders are not elected to be well-mannered and expensively dressed. What leaders must be good at is telling lies, twisting arms, blackmailing their supporters, convincing the electorate that a calamitous past was not their fault.

Retreat 

Some months after he got the job, Duncan Smith is plainly failing to turn his party round. He is in deep trouble, with political correspondents openly musing on the likelihood that at the next election the Tories will be reduced the third ranking party, behind the Lib Dems. So Duncan Smith should be looking over his shoulder, organising his retreat, setting up his rearguard or whatever it is they do in the Guards at such times. And to make things a little more difficult there is Clarke in pursuit, declaring that he is reconsidering his refusal to accept a shadow post under Duncan Smith: “Never say never in politics” he said, ” It depends what job and depends on what he (Duncan Smith) expects me to say about the policy of the party”. It might be asked, how Clarke reconciles this with his previous assessment of Duncan Smith as a “status quo” politician, one of the “headbangers” on the issue of Europe, who would send the party into a “lurch to the right”. Politicians are of course skilled at forgetting their former declarations of immutable principle if it will help them get into power. Clarke is not offering to support his leader but to line himself up for the leadership if, with a little help from Clarke, Duncan Smith should be ousted.

Clarke will have learned from history that it will not be that simple, that there will be other hopefuls sharpening their knives, a few of them – like the oily, odious Michael Howard – already well known. Other possible candidates will have to work a bit harder to get themselves known but so did Margaret Thatcher when she beat Ted Heath in 1975, when few people expected a woman to come through to lead the Tory Party, especially one who had been jeered at in the media as the minister who snatched away the schoolkids’ free milk. So step forward, as they say in the gutter press, Theresa May, who sits for the lush Thames-side seat of Maidenhead. It is apparent that she is being groomed for stardom, if that is how to describe being leader of this political rabble. Her publicity drive may or may not be assisted by her having a name very close to that of a celebrated queen of porn. Get onto the internet and search for Teresa (no h) May and you will be viewing some lurid, unreal images of a female who does not appear to be taking part in a dreary Commons debate. As a result Theresa (with the h) May has been invited to participate in some raunchy TV programmes and has received some pretty forthright correspondence meant for her near-namesake. A typical letter ” . . . asked (her) to expose herself in public, to do things with men that most of us wouldn’t consider in the privacy of our own homes, and to force herself into weird, unnatural positions for the camera”.

Porn Queen 

This raises a few questions. How justified is the outrage at being confused with a porn queen and at Teresa May’s way of earning her living? One thing which can be said is that she is perfectly open about what she does, which is some way better than politicians who, if they are at all interested in hanging on to their job, cannot be honest about their work. If they were honest they would have to own up to a persistent catalogue of deception and failure and in the end to their own inability to control, or even affect, the social system which they claim to be able to fashion to our benefit. And what, after all, can we name as pornography and who are the pornographers?

Theresa May is the daughter of a clergyman. She went to Oxford (like Thatcher) then worked in a bank. Her ambitions were clear early on; she was a councillor in Merton, had to go through the mill of contesting some hopelessly solid Labour seats, like North West Durham in 1992 and Barking in a 1994 by-election before, against some strong opponents, she won the nomination for the rock-solid Tory seat of Maidenhead. “Very bright, hyperactive and witty” was how Andrew Roth described her in the Guardian. “Sloane with City flash” was another’s less kind assessment. The parallels between her and Thatcher have been noted; a Eurosceptic, she may see her road to power in carrying on where the mad handbagger left off. In the Tory leadership fight in 2001 she was careful not to be too prominent about her support for Portillo. In any case Duncan Smith did not hold this against her and gave her the shadow job of Transport and Local Government, belabouring the hapless, floundering Stephen Byers.

Bearing in mind that one function of the pornographer is the selling of talents for questionable purpose, how do we assess Theresa May? What does this supposedly vibrant and capable woman have to offer about this society and what it does to people? So far her comments have been preoccupied with blaming the Labour government for policies which are simply a continuation of what the Tories did when they were in power. On 7 November she spoke out about the government’s suggestion that people might be encouraged to vote if it was made easier for them, by having polling booths in places like supermarkets. Her comments were less than original. The way to get people to vote was not, she said, by “inventing new electoral systems or new types of politicians . . .The underlying cause of voter apathy is growing cynicism with the political process . . .” This banality does not even approach the question of why voters should be cynical. One obvious reason is that experience of a Labour government has made it clear to thousands of people that there is no difference worth influencing a vote between the big parties. People who voted Labour in 1997 under the impression that they were opting for social change are now realising that they were wrong but they have no idea of any other way. That is the root of their cynicism.

Bombs and Poverty 

There is a kind of pornography in this social system, which has nothing to do with a few women being paid to perform a variety of sexual acts for the entertainment of others. The kind of socially organised, premeditated state violence that has devastated the wretched country of Afghanistan in the interests of the oil industry is a kind of pornography; it excites all manner of morbid responses which are stimulated and exploited by political pornographers like Blair and Bush. It is a kind of pornography that in this country, which our leaders assure us is a model of civilised advancement, a third of the children live below the official poverty line. It is a kind of pornography that voters should be cynical about the political system when they have the power to use it to transform society, to liberate the human race into a society based on human needs.

Meanwhile we are left with the same dreary procession of impotent leaders who tell us, one after the other, that the way forward is to hand over to them our power to change society so that they can keep it as it is. Major for Thatcher; Hague for Major; Duncan Smith for Hague; perhaps one day May for Duncan Smith. And that is just the Tory Party. The other Teresa May, and those who do the same work, do far less damage.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Politicians on probation (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Blair and his government are on probation. They spent the years between 1997 and 2001 in hardened delinquency – telling us that things were changing, getting better, when all the evidence said that they were as bad as ever. It was not surprising that so many Labour voters stayed away from the polling booths in June – not because of what Blair denounced as apathy but to assert their disappointment in Britain under New Labour. So it came about that after the election the government could spend little time congratulating themselves on their historic win but had to consider the fact that they had not delivered what they had promised.

Thousands of sick people still have to wait for admission to hospitals for treatement by under-resourced, overworked staff in conditions which can often be described as appalling. Poverty is as deep and as damaging as ever. Many children go each day to schools in crumbling, overcrowded buildings. University graduates are qualifying with huge debts through having to pay tuition fees.The “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” policy has not proved to be the magic formula for reducing it ; in fact violent crime continues to rise. For these reasons – and for many others – the voters’ assessment of the government was – “Could do better. Must do better. After all, you’ve got to come back asking us to vote for you again in another few years". And like any subdued delinquent on probation, the government has had to promise to do better.

But of course the Tories – for different reasons – also made a dismal showing at the election. For them, it is even more urgent to do better in their appeal to the voters. First of all there was the matter of their leader but they were spared the embarrassment of pushing William Hague over the cliff by his obligingly jumping before a hand could be laid on him. At this time of his humiliation there were few people cruel enough to recall all the glorious promises that were made about him when he became leader – promises about how this young, vigorous judo hobbyist was destined to lead his party out of the gloom and divisions of the Major years. After Hague’s resignation there was some doubt about whether anyone would be mad enough to want to lead a party which is unlikely to get a sniff of power for the next ten years. But in the end there were five MPs so devoted to their duty to their party and country that they were prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to serve the rest of us – or, to be more accurate, in order to fulfill an ambition which has dominated their political lives.

Portillo

All these candidates agreed that the Tories were also on probation. In 1997 they had failed to convince enough voters that the previous 18 years had been notable for their achievement in building a prosperous, secure, healthy, crime-free country. Now, they had to do better. Portillo thought they had been too hard line in their policies; Davis thought they had not been hard enough. Ancram thought they had been too divided. Duncan-Smith said the leadership election was about “. . . how we renew, how we change, about how we stay Conservative” – which was muddled enough to appeal to just about every Tory in the country. They got plenty of advice from psephologists and media hacks about the need to occupy what they called the Middle Ground – a kind of unstable political swampland – except that Blair and his New Labour people are there before them. Covered in that kind of mud, the two parties look exactly alike.

The most gruesome personification of this approach was Michael Portillo, who has spent the four years since he was rejected by the electors of Enfield Southgate trying to expunge the memory of a number of unwisely hysterical speeches – like the one when he had a Tory conference swooning with his reference to the SAS and their “Who Dares Wins” motto (Ted Heath snarled that the reaction to this speech “hit new heights of offensiveness”). Portillo came into Parliament with the reputation of a fast rising star and as soon as he had changed his hair style from the gawky schoolby fringe to a proudly sweeping quiff he began to make his mark as an unrepentant, straight-down-the-line Thatcherite. The Iron Lady herself knew him as “beyond any questioning a passionate supporter of everything we (stand) for” – which should have been enough to finish him off. In another provocative speech he informed an audience of students that had they been studying in some other countries they would have been able to buy their degrees. He took on the job of pushing through the hated Poll Tax, on the grounds that it was one of the most beneficial pieces of legislation dreamed up by any government. The embodiment of Tory arrogance, he seemed to glory in being one of the most hated politicians in the country.

Rumours

Portillo’s apparent personality change, his efforts to get people to love – and to vote for – him has only made him look more ridiculous and gruesome than ever. He is no longer the arch-privatiser; now he promises that a Tory government would match any money Blair’s government spends on the NHS. He has accepted the minimum wage, although he once said this would lead to mass unemployment (perhaps even more people out of work than there were under the Tories?). In fact he has committed a future Tory government to “full employment” – as if that can be brought about through government policies. He no longer regards the Labour Party as a mortal enemy; now he praises Blair’s lot for how they are running the economy (as if governments have anything to do with how the economy runs). And, most crucially, he revealed that all those rumours over all those years about him being homosexual were true. He could hardly have bared his soul more dramatically – which is a measure of the effect on him of that defeat in 1997.

Portillo’s best-known opponent for the leadership, Kenneth Clarke, is very different. He has been called “blokey”, which means he has no time for soul-searching, he wears rumpled clothes and suede shoes, carries a large beer gut, smokes cigars. “Sod my image” he once said to a journalist who was worried about what he looked like as he sat munching a mammoth sandwich at a boxing match. The late Alan Clark, a rather different Tory MP because he was wealthy and disdainful, sneered at him as a “pudgy puff ball . . . lazy, flawed . . . wanker . . . not worth 25 votes”. Thatcher, Clark wrote, “cannot stand him” “which may have had something to do with the fact that Clarke was not afraid to stand up to her (in fact she thought him a “persuasive bruiser, very useful in a brawl or an election”). Kenneth Clarke showed what he thought of his rich antagonist by suing the manufacturers of Trivial Pursuit when one of their questions got the two men muddled up.

Ambulances

But being the sort of guy who would stand his mates a drink at the club bar does not mean that Clarke is at all relaxed in his attitude towards the working class and the priorities of British capitalism. As Education Secretary he had a running battle with the teachers in his drive to impose teaching standards on them while he squeezed more and more work out of them. When he was Health Secretary he was more concerned to scorn striking ambulance crews as “taxi drivers” than to settle a dispute which put many lives at risk- which made not a few people hope that one day he would himself need the kind of emergency attention which ambulance crews provide every working day. His imposition of budgets on GPs met with opposition from the doctors, who Clarke dismissed as motivated by their wallets before the needs of their patients. These budgets are now suspected of discouraging some GPs from spending money on treating their more elderly patients – perhaps because worn out workers are not economically fruitful to keep alive.

It says a lot about the politics of capitalism that one of these men could be the next leader of the Conservative Party. The other candidates have no more to recommend them. Scary Iain Duncan-Smith is an unrepentant Thatcherite who was once described by Norman Tebbit as “normal”, which should have been enough to finish him off politically but as he sits for Tebbit’s old seat at Chingford may have done him some good. David Davis is a hard man, admired by Alan Clark because he is a very good skier – which may have a limited appeal to anyone who is not to be seen on the ski slopes. He is another who thinks the Tories lost the election because they were ideologically too soft. Davis was in the SAS although whether this has impresed Portillo is not known. And trying to unite them all and the rest of the Tory rag-bag, and to show that the ghost of Macmillan still walks,was the amiable toff Michael Ancram.

No one should be impressed by the attention we are getting from apparently remorseful politicians. We should treat them as delinquents on probation; if they don’t improve they will have to answer for it. There is no need to punish them, as delinquents are punished by the courts. It will be enough, to trust ourselves to run human society without them.

Ivan

Will the nurses strike? (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nurses have been offered a 1 percent play rise in the current round of pay talks with the possibility of an extra half to two percent on top of that to be negotiated locally out of existing budgets. Some trusts may fund the extra pay rise out of existing funds but this would be at the expense of staff redundancies and a reduction in the quality of patient care. The Industrial Relations Services surveyed 180 trusts and found that almost half of them expected staff numbers to fall in the next 12 month (Nursing Times, January 1995).

The government's proposal angered the ruling council of the Royal College of Nursing and, for the first time in the 11-year history of the pay review body, it rejected out of hand, without balloting its 300.000 members, a pay offer.

The Royal College of Nursing has a no-strike policy which has been in force since it was founded in 1916. Five ballots have been held to try to overturn this policy but each time the moves to do so have been defeated by large majorities. But the mood is beginning to change. The RCN is considering balloting its members to end its no-strike rule again and this time it is likely that the policy will be changed.

Nurses seem to be waking up to the fact that withdrawal of labour is the chief weapon in the armoury of trade unionists. Without it, or at least the possibility of strike action if negotiations fail, a union is severely handicapped when fighting employers for better pay and working conditions.

When the previous secretary of the RCN. the late Trevor Clay, wanted to discuss nurses' pay awards with the then Health Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, because of nurses’ anger over the levels of pay. he was not granted an audience. Clarke, of course, was under no obligation to negotiate with an organisation which had abrogated its power to strike and therefore posed no threat.

If the RCN’s campaign to persuade the government to fund the full 3 percent is successful nurses will still be worse off. Inflation is currently running at over 3 percent and could go higher still. Last year's pay rise for public sector workers was only 1.5 percent. Nurses' living standards will continue to fall. But while nurses have received low rises, trust executives have awarded themselves average rises of 6.6 percent and the highest paid of these now receive over £100.000 a year (Nursing Times, January 1995).

The RCN has co-operated with the health service union UNISON (an amalgamation of COHSE, NUPE and NALGO) in recent months and a combined strike by both unions could paralyse British hospitals. But the unions have already backed down from a claim of 8 percent at the end of last year when inflation was running at less than 3 percent. It seems that the RCN. in calling for the government to fund the full 3 percent nationally, is giving the government a chance to retreat from its original position and yet still keep nurses' pay below the level of inflation. The government could feel satisfied with this result and the RCN could claim a victory without having to resort to strike action: only the nurses would be the losers.

Deteriorating conditions

In the meantime, nurses may decide to stop working the average 4.8 hours unpaid overtime that they work each week saving the NHS £180 million a year (Observer, 19 February). Nurses have seen their working conditions deteriorate in other ways: patient turnover has increased while the number of trained nurses to look after them has fallen. Newly qualified nurses, if they can obtain employment at all, are offered part-time, temporary posts. Ward sisters’ posts are being phased out in many hospitals, limiting the career prospects of staff nurses.

Some Health Service trusts have been training support workers to carry out tasks presently performed by trained nurses. A few trusts have tried to downgrade trained nurses to support workers, but the legal protection of nurses' registration may prevent this from happening.

There is no doubt that the exploitation of nurses has worsened: fewer nurses work harder for. in real terms, less pay whilst patient turnover continues to rise. But, due to fraudulent manipulation of statistics, it is difficult to assess just how much working conditions have deteriorated or how badly the trusts are performing. Much higher numbers of part-time nurses are employed, making the total number of staff seem greater whilst the number of hours worked continues to fall. In the drive to increase turnover there is pressure to discharge patients prematurely. If these patients have to return to hospital as a result of being sent home too soon they are counted as new admissions. Poor care masquerades as efficiency in the statistics.

If a patient changes consultants this is recorded as a new patient. Rosie Williams, the RCN's policy adviser, claims that nurses in Casualty Departments are having pressure put on them to record misleading information to help trusts improve their position in hospital league tables. But lengthening waiting lists highlight the continuing shortcomings of the NHS: the waiting list for treatment in London has risen by five percent in the last year (Observer, 19 February).

The increasing number of people needing treatment indicates a problem which capitalist politicians are careful to ignore. Poverty is the main cause of ill-health. Unemployment; lower wages for workers whose labour is in plentiful supply if they are unskilled or in occupations in which the demand for traditional skills is in decline; poorer housing have all affected the working class. Politicians, whether enthusiastic supporters of capitalism or apologists for the system, are unable to remedy the human misery that capitalism causes. It will take more than a strike to permanently improve nurses' conditions and people’s health. It will take a completely new way of organising our lives.

Carl Pinel

Sting in the Tail: Attila’s fan club (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attila’s fan club

"I’m depraved because I’m deprived" runs one line in a song from the musical West Side Story, but the Police Federation doesn’t agree.

At their annual conference in Brighton delegates rejected by three-to-one a motion stating that "crime is inevitably linked to deprivation".

Speakers in the debate queued up to rubbish this and echo the Tory view that crime is down to the "wickedness and greed" of criminals who deliberately choose to break the law.

But they were accused by one of the motion’s supporters of sounding like the "Attila the Hun fan club".

It was a delegate from the Metropolitan Police who made the most profound contribution when he insisted:

"We‘re not playing politics. We’d be no good at politics — we’re much too honest" (Guardian, 20 May).

Since this came from a member of what is widely regarded at the most corrupt police force in Britain then it is surely the unkindest thing yet said about politicians.

It gets everywhere

That inevitable struggle between employees and employers crops up in the strangest places.

Buddhist monks in a Japanese temple have formed the Heartful Labour Union because one of them was abused, assaulted and then sacked by the head monk (Guardian, 11 June).

This head monk refuses to negotiate, thinks Buddhism is going to the dogs because the monks are "only in it for the money", and claims there is no employment relation between the monks and the temple, only one of mutual "trust".

Now a court case will decide if the monks are paid workers or owe allegiance to a "Higher Authority".

Meanwhile, the sacked monk worries about his mortgage and his children’s future and says "money is a key problem. I have to keep my family".

Dressed in his saffron robe, this monk may not have the appearance of your average worker, but he obviously has just the same problems.

Master race again

"Think of it as master race studies. Some Florida schools have introduced a new curriculum which teaches that Americans are ’unquestionably superior ’ to any other nation now, or at any time in history" (Guardian, 16 May).

This policy has been imposed by Christian fundamentalists who control the local school board. Teachers have been told by the board’s chairwoman that they can only discuss other countries if they first tell their pupils that America is "the best of the best". She has never been outside America but said "I don’t need to visit other countries to know that America is the best."

Is this policy crazy? That depends on your standpoint. For instance, another board member explained that they think an American-first policy is necessary for the children because "if they felt our land was inferior or equal to others, they would have no motive to go to war and defend our country"

For anyone who looks at it from that angle, that policy isn’t so crazy, is it?

Hogan’s heroes

Professor Robert Hogan, a psychologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, claims that most bosses are incompetents who command little respect from their subordinates and only got their jobs because they are good at interviews which he derides as "beauty contests":

"There is a type who is particularly good in these contests . . . These people are arrogant, conceited, believe they are God's gift and won't take blame for mistakes, only the credit for everyone else’s successes. Once they get on the job they drive everyone nuts" (The Herald, 25 April).

Hogan’s claims "are supported by research which shows that among the top 500 US companies 60 percent of chief executives are fired every three years".

And these are the people who call themselves "the wealth creators", demand a monopoly of decision-making, and award themselves huge salaries and pensions. They are also the people whom most workers insist "we cannot do without".

Nothing sacred

Yet another old British institution is under threat. No, not the Royals or even the Tory Party, but the building societies. There were over 700 societies in 1960 but now there are only 84 with more casualties to come.

The fact is that there are too many societies competing for mortgage business. They have been losing market share to the banks while current low interest rates have caused savers to withdraw funds from the societies to invest in National Savings and shares.

All this explains why the Cheltenham and Gloucester society wanted to merge with Lloyd’s Bank. If this eventually happens then their combined strength will give them the edge over their competitors, so the other societies and banks will be under pressure to follow their example.

In socialist society homes will be built without the need for building societies, banks or mortgages. All that will be required is labour, materials and land, and these exist in abundance.

Painful truth

"Days of boom and bust are over, Clarke promises" read the front page headline in the Independent reporting the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s 15 June Mansion House speech.

This was just another politicians’ promise of course. Pure hot air, since years of experience have shown that governments just can’t control the way the capitalist economy works.

But Clarke is a Tory "wet". Which means he shares the Labour Party (and LibDem, for that matter) illusion that, with a bit of good will and determination, the rough edges can be smoothed off capitalism, as in this case by getting rid of the boom-slump cycle.

Two of his recent predecessors as Chancellor, however, both realise the true situation.

Nigel Lawson told a meeting the following week of the Social Market Foundation (by the sound of it, an institution which believes that circles can be squared) at the London School of Economics that governments have no power to abolish the boom-slump cycle. "The plain fact is that the economic cycle is endemic", he said (Independent, 21 June).

Norman Lamont has said the same thing in his 1991 budget speech when he declared "recessions are always painful, but they are an inescapable feature of market economies" (Independent, 20 March 1991).

Maybe after a little more experience like them of trying unsuccessfully to control the way the capitalist economy works Kenneth Clarke, too, will come to realise that regularly-occurring slumps are an inescapable, endemic painful feature of capitalism.

Youth crime- what’s to blame? (1993)

From the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We’re talking about the possible abduction and murder of a two-year old boy. And even in the shock and bewilderment we can’t be left alone. We must endure the media ghouls, the politicians and the self-styled experts on human misbehaviour telling us why it happened and how seriously social order is in peril and that we should trust them to put things to rights.

   We must put up with John Major, forgetting that he promised to be the architect of a “nation at ease with itself’, advising us to understand criminals less and condemn them more. We must swallow hard Rees Mogg’s censure that juvenile crime has its roots in a failure to say our prayers. When we knew what had happened to James Bulger there was an orgy of self-questioning, of doubt and condemnation. But the ghouls and the MPs and the experts were absolutely certain that none of these could refer to them. They were blameless.

The killing of James Bulger was a grisly climax to a developing campaign about youth crime. What with the “joy riders" on the bleak estates of Oxford, Liverpool and Newcastle and the persistent burglars who are too young to be legally locked away there was a popular fear that we were about to submerge beneath a tidal wave of teenage thieves and thugs. So the media bellowed out indignation. on behalf of Mr and Mrs Average Briton. The behaviour experts earned a few pounds by writing articles explaining it all as the effect of lax parents and provocative TV programmes and video games. And the politicians all acted like parliamentary thugs in the hope that thereby they could thieve a bagful of votes.

Competitive

At a time of understandably high emotion it may be difficult to cling to reality but it won’t go away. The popular conception about high levels of crime is often a matter of fashion. At one time Teddy Boys were in fashion; soon they were succeeded by the Mods and Rockers. More recently it was the football hooligans; then the “joy riders". But fashions can be decided by all manner of subjective—and delusional—influences. It can develop its own momentum— which is why the popular press falls over itself to colour and glamourise crime.

Meanwhile, throughout the spasms of modish hysteria, there have been quiet, persistent voices pointing out that the teens are the peak years for getting into trouble with the law and that this may be saying something important about what we really think of this social system. If capitalism can’t assure young people, with their vigour and optimism and lack of inhibition, of a stable future there must be something seriously wrong with it.

Rather than admit the unpleasant realities of the society they try to run, the politicians have been engaged in a sordid competition to bid up the stakes in the Law and Order game. Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke had some unpleasant things to say about young offenders while he promised to set up a series of secure establishments to lock them away. John Major declared a crusade against crime—as if it can be fought—with himself, presumably, on a white charger at its head. Desperate at the prospect of the Tories picking up all the votes on the issue, Labour's Tony Blair showed that he is no slouch at the business, calling on the government to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”.

Harsher

None of the ministers drew attention to the inconvenient fact that the youngsters now coming before the courts—including the two boys charged with murdering James Bulger—have spent most, if not all, of their lives under Conservative government.The Tory party have allowed it to be thought that they alone can be trusted to deal with—in other words, to be tough on— crime.

In their sillier moments they have come close to claiming to be able to wipe it out altogether. But what does it say for them and for their policies that after 14 years of power they are in a panic because the problem is worse than ever and are saying that harsher responses are necessary? After all, if their policies had succeeded we might now be expecting courts to feel able to be more lenient about the few minor offences before them.

And what is to be said about those harsher measures? None of them are new. They have all been tried before and they have all failed before; in fact their only perceptible effect has been to stimulate crime. The provision of secure accommodation for young offenders does not have an encouraging history; the most recent version—the Approved Schools—were often colleges of criminal education, where children quickly learned that to survive they had to be devious or obsequious or violent. They learned to burgle houses, pick pockets, steal cars more efficiently.

And in several infamous examples those children were subject, not to the training in citizenship which Clarke huffs and puffs about but to deliberate abuse, physical and sexual. It was often summed up by the professional criminal, once ruthless but new more reflective, who would say that, for him, Approved School was where it all began.

Conscription

The same can be said about the Borstals, sentences to which were officially called “training". And the same, but even more so, can be said about the Detention Centres, whose “short, sharp shock" regime was so rapturously greeted by the punitive neurotics of the Tory Party.

The policy of the Detention Centres was based on the assumption that by bullying and repressing youngsters who had often been subjected to that kind of treatment all their lives anyway, it was possible to persuade them not to bully and repress others. They were doomed to failure although after being abandoned in the 1970s they were briefly revived by an embattled Willie Whitelaw before being quietly allowed to expire.

So what else is on offer, to repress, discipline or "treat" the young criminal? Well, there has been the predictable demand to bring back conscription, often from men who are stupid enough to be able to filter out the truth of their own memories of National Service. Conscription, they declare over their beer in the local British Legion, would instil respect for authority, discipline, order, cleanliness, short hair and sharply pressed trousers . . .

Leaving aside the fact that the armed forces are not famous for decorous, considerate and law-abiding behaviour, we should bear in mind that when peace-time conscription operated in this country it was often said to be responsible for crime. The post-war crime wave was widely explained as the response of school leavers, knowing that in a few years they would be forced into a mindless existence of square bashing and spit and polish, lacking any ambition other than to be the best burglar in the street.

If there is any evidence about cause and effect of crime it clearly contradicts the theory that harsh punishment persuades people to be law-abiding. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that capitalist society has a selective policy on what is lawful and what is not. Some theft and violence is not only allowed but actually esteemed and rewarded—as any investor should know, as any soldier should know. In such a social system it has to be expected that people will be confused about what is legal and what is outlawed—what is “right" and what is “wrong”.

In the sacred name of profit capitalism murders millions of people every year, in its wars, its famines, through its unnecessary disease. None of this is illegal. Meanwhile, the leaders of this historical horror concentrate on trying the impossible—making the system work without its inevitable problems.

Crime cannot be abolished, any more than the problems which capitalism must produce can be abolished—unless something is done about changing the basis of society. Through the hysteria generated by the death of poor little James Bulger, that is a central fact which must not be lost sight of.

Ivan

Observations: Santa on the spot (1986)

The Observations Column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Santa on the spot

Playing Santa Claus can be an extremely disagreeable way of contributing to a Christmas party. It's not just that all those robes and false whiskers make you feel like the pudding in the steamer, nor the physical assaults which must be uncomplainingly absorbed from impatient, disappointed or inquisitive children. There's also the fact that you're being set up to work a deception on people who, by their age, are assumed to be nicely vulnerable to it.

Whatever the hazards faced by the amateur Santa Claus they are as nothing compared to those of the professionals, those derelict actors who seem ready to take almost any risk for the sake of a bit of work in the Christmas spending spree. This year it promises to be even worse; if there are any Santas getting job satisfaction by resisting the idea that Christmas is a vast festival of commerce, 1986 should make them change their minds.

The pressure is on, in all the big stores, for the jolly Santas to turn in higher sales figures and some decidedly unromantic methods are being used in the process. Harrods, where Santa has always wandered freely about the toy department chatting with the kids, are now confining him to his enchanted castle because, the store say, the old method was too random to ensnare all the possible children. Hamleys, where they have never had a Santa before, now have three of them working shifts in a magic forest where the time and motion people roam among the clockwork animals. Each child is allocated 25 seconds to state their dearest Christmas wishes and the Christmas sport of mishearing the child's name, traditional but time-consuming, has been eliminated through a system of name cards.

It is worse outside London. In Glasgow and Manchester Santa had to bid perilously for publicity by shinning up a 100-foot ladder, amid exploding fireworks, onto the roof of the store. In Chester he was winched up to a high window by the fire brigade. For all this, of course, youth and fitness are needed; Santa, like so many other jobs, is no longer for the older man.

None of this is calculated to bring a magic sparkle to a child's eyes, but to enliven the sales figures. Selfridges are planning to process a quarter of a million children through Santa's grotto this year — a quarter of a million spenders, that is. Maximising customers, to use the stores' jargon, means maximising profits, which is a nice seasonal present for the shareholders.

It gives a new meaning to the old saying about Christmas being for the children.


Bus de-regulation

The recent de-regulation of buses is absurd even by the warped standards of capitalism It is the latest outcome of the Tory Party's central economic tenet: "If it's profitable then privatise it”. The result: total chaos in many towns and cities outside London as hundreds of private bus operators compete for a limited number of profitable routes; inner city streets in towns like Glasgow congested with hundreds of almost empty buses looking for passengers, while on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas people stand at bus stops waiting for buses that no longer run. paying the price for living on "uneconomic" routes.

For such people some form of public transport will still have to be provided: employers will still expect their work force to get to work on time. So the local council will be obliged to lay on public transport on these "uneconomic" routes. In other words the state will still be involved in public transport provision, albeit on a more limited scale.

The reason why utilities and services like transport, gas. electricity and water were nationalised in the first place was because it was recognised that it was more efficient and cost-effective for the state to run certain essential services than private capitalists. But it looks as if the Tory obsession with privatisation now means that that lesson must be learned all over again. In the meantime it's workers who will suffer as a result of the chaos — capitalists may run bus companies, but they certainly don't have to travel by bus.


Undeserving poor

In the nineteenth century the Poor Law made a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. The "deserving" poor, people like widows and the long term sick or disabled, were granted Poor Law relief: the "undeserving", especially the able-bodied unemployed, were subjected to the workhouse test to see if they were really desperate or just shiftless scroungers. The idea was that only the really desperate who had no other alternative would put up with the brutally punitive regime of the workhouse.

That same mentality has always been present in the modern system of welfare benefits (hence the different benefit rates for unemployed and other claimants). So the government's latest "available for work" test is just the last in a long line of methods for sorting the "deserving" from the "scroungers" (with the added bonus of bringing down the embarrassingly high unemployment figures before the next election).

The unemployed are to be required to fill in a new questionnaire when they claim benefit to enable (according to Lord Young) "a proper assessment to be made of a person's entitlement to benefit". The claimant will be asked a series of trick questions: if they give the wrong answer then they are likely to have their benefit suspended. Questions like:

• Are you immediately available for work? (Correct answer: "Yes")
• What wages will you accept? (Correct answer: "I'll take anything, no matter how low, that is offered me").
• Do you have children or a disabled relative to care for? If so can alternative arrangements for their care be made immediately? (Correct answer: "A neighbour or relative has promised, that in the event of my being offered a job. then they would be prepared to step in to look after baby/granny/disabled relative").
• Are you prepared to accept work in another town? (Correct answer: "I'll get on my bike and go anywhere just so long as you 'll give me a job").

Although the government has dismissed claims that they are merely trying to fiddle the unemployment figures Kenneth Clarke. Paymaster General, said that if the new scheme reduced the number of claims allowed by less than two per cent then it would pay for itself, including the £14 million cost of employing 1,400 extra benefit staff. A senior civil servant wrote a letter to all regional benefit managers saying: "We may be able to deter two to four per cent of fresh claimants who are not serious about looking for work and disallow another two to three per cent who are not available".

Sting in the Tail: Competition Humbug (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Competition Humbug

Every Chairman and Director of every company will insist that competition is essential, indeed, is a sacred principle of capitalism.

But look at this: several top companies in the concrete business, Tarmac, Redland and RMC among them, have just been convicted of having 65 secret deals to keep concrete prices high.

The same situation exists in every industry. During the last few years 60 glass companies, including the largest, Pilkington, operated a price-fixing racket; 66 private bus operators colluded to avoid competing with one another, while ICI, BP and Shell did likewise in plastics. The list is endless.

Yes, they will all agree that competition is essential — for everyone else, but not for them.


Spare a Tear

Yet another left-wing firebrand has mellowed somewhat. Eric Heffer MP, recalls that when he first entered parliament he thought it was like "a great church which practised ancestor worship". (The Guardian, 20 February).

Now that he may be forced to retire through ill-health, he will "miss the place", especially "the friends . . . from all sides of the House". Tories too? Certainly, indeed he even admired Enoch Powell who could whip-up a bit of racial hatred.

Above all, he will miss "the great debates", or, put another way, those bawling sessions which often degenerate into near-riots, and is

  ". . . glad that Churchill insisted that the Chamber be restored exactly as it was . . . with the seats facing each other, like choir stalls. It gives an intimacy . . ."

Isn't that touching?

So remember, the next time some Labour MPs follow Heffer’s example by singing "The Red Flag" in parliament or mucking around with the mace, it doesn’t follow that they don't fondly embrace the hoary Institutions of what has been called "the best private club in the world".


Opportunism Knocks

Gorby's attempt to boost his waning status through his Gulf "peace" initiative had Labour leader Neil Kinnock worried.

Delaying the ground attack, he fretted, might encourage Saddam to regroup his forces and

  he feared a hold-up in military action could give Iraq a wrong signal, possibly prolong the war and causing more loss of life.

ITV's Oracle (22 February)

Once he was Kinnock the left-wing firebrand, then he became a "Statesman", now he's a military strategist.

The opportunist tradition set by all previous Labour leaders is obviously safe in Kinnock's hands.


War for Freedom?

After the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf many newspapers went well over the top with claims such as "Kuwait City is freed". Anything approaching freedom in that city has a long way to go, whether ruled by an Iraqi or Kuwaiti dictator.

The Anti-Slavery International recently reported a case of how the Kuwaiti ruling clique treated their workers in London, never mind Kuwait City.

  Alice, a Filipino domestic who said she worked for Kuwait's ruling al-Sabah family, said: "I was forced to sleep on the floor between the bedroom and the bathroom. I had to wear a bell so they could call for me at any time.
  I worked from 6am to 2am each day. They fed me their left-overs and used to kick me at night, on their way to the bathroom.
  They kept my passport".
  The 29-year-old woman, who was too frightened to give her full name, said she ran away after an attempt to rape her. At the time she was so thin from lack of food she escaped by crawling through a cat flap.

The Independent (7 March)

Super Sports Event?

One of the less publicised aspects of the Gulf War was the way hundreds of US companies poured their products free of charge into the area for the US troops. Behind this apparent generosity there is a sordid economic reality.

  The ferocious soft-drink war is the sub-text of the larger better known conflict. "Anyone who helps someone out there is making a friend for life" according to Coke, and no doubt the same logic is driving the other US companies sponsoring the war effort — 1,127 had signed up before a shot was fired.

The Independent (17 February)

The view of the marketing people on war is worth noting:

  "One tries to associate a product with an experience", says David Stewart, a US marketing expert. "War is a particularly intensive experience. War alone is not attractive, but there are aspects which are. There are heroes. There’s style, magnanimity . . . It's like a super sport event".

This view of war contrasts sharply with what actually happens in these hellish conflicts as reported in the same newspaper on 28 February 1991:

  "Don't be surprised", the man said, "I had two neighbours who the Iraqis thought were in the resistance. So they pushed them into drains, closed the grill, poured petrol on them and set them on fire. Their families buried them later — you can't leave bodies in drains."

War as a super sports event is typical of the sick morality of the capitalist system.


Praise me Blame them

It is an old political ploy for politicians to claim the praise if anything ever works out well in capitalism (a rare event); and it is equally part of the strategy that if anything goes wrong ( a not unknown occurrence) to blame someone else. But Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Science, has probably overplayed that much used ruse.

On the same day he was pointing the finger of blame in two different directions as reported in The Independent on 7 March.

  Politicians often have louder voices than scientists, Sir David Phillips, chairman of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) told the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Science, has insisted that scientists cannot blame him for the current financial crisis. He says he is acting on the advice of the ABRC.
   Leaks suggest that the ABRC this year recommended spending at least £50m more on science than was allocated.

Brought to task on declining reading standards at primary schools he was equally blameless according to him:

  He startled members of the Commons Select Committee on Education who are investigating claims of a decline in reading in English primary schools by telling them: "I won’t take responsibility for things that are utterly beyond my control." Mr Clarke Insisted:"Today's schools are the best resourced we have ever had", and went on to criticise some local education authorities for "extravagance and incompetence".

It will be interesting to see if at the next General Election Clarke is talking about "things that are utterly beyond my control" or has resorted to the usual arrogant electioneering pose of all his kind.

An accountant's charter (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January the government published its White Paper Working for Patients which put forward its plan for reforming the National Health Service. The leaks and rumours of the previous year were shown to be substantially correct and the government spent £1m on presenting its controversial proposals in an attempt to allay public fears, gain acceptance for the changes, and lessen the hostility which the majority of doctors and nurses had expressed.

Although the Health Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has claimed that the White Paper puts patients' interests first it reads more like an accountants charter, with its emphasis on management restructuring and financial arrangements. The White Paper aims to provide a greater collaboration between the NHS and private medicine, with tax relief on private medical insurance for the over-60s and extensions of competitive tendering which would put more services in addition to laundering, portering and catering in the hands of private firms. There would also be leasing of hospital facilities for commercial ventures such as shops and advertising.

Cheltenham Health Authority has anticipated this trend and spent £15,000 persuading firms to support hospitals in the area in return for publicity such as wards being named after them. The district general manager, Jim Hammond, has not ruled out the possibility of nurses advertising companies on their uniforms, although existing rules may prevent this from happening (Nursing Times 10 May. 1989).

Opting Out

The Health Secretary will have wide powers of appointment on the new NHS policy board and this will extend right down to the general managers of large hospitals, ensuring that pressure can be applied, if necessary, to carry out the government's policies. The government hopes to see the majority of Britain's acute hospitals opting for self-government, with the establishment of NHS hospital trusts which would allow these hospitals to set their own rates of pay and conditions of service for staff and. within limits, to borrow money.

The government knows that if rates of pay are negotiated separately in each hospital it will be difficult for the trade unions to operate effectively. At the independent hospital of St. John of God, Richmond, for example, nursing staff are faced with pay cuts of up to £3,000 a year. A skill shortage has been forecast for the 1990s, and with hospitals competing against one another this strategy could rebound if pay rates are increased in some areas to attract skilled staff, causing pay rates to spiral upwards instead of being reduced.

It is significant that the larger acute hospitals should be encouraged to opt for self-governing status as these have the greatest potential for making a profit in private medical schemes. Long-stay hospitals for the elderly, which have a relatively poor profit potential, have not been included at this stage.

Hospital trusts, formed by the hospitals opting for self-government, will remain within the NHS but will be easier to privatise in the future, in much the same way as shares were introduced into the Trustees Savings Bank. Fifty such hospitals have been chosen to receive computers to monitor patient care systems, making it easier to calculate the costs of individual patient care.

Although Kenneth Clarke has stated that the self-governing hospitals will need consultants' co-operation to be involved in management, and that the applications seeking self-governing status are voluntary, he has pledged tough action against consultants who oppose his “reforms". It would seem that the only freedom of choice on offer is the freedom to accept the government's changes.

Two-tier System

Some of the changes in Working for Patients are unobjectionable. It is proposed that appointment times be reliable and that out-patient clinics have quiet and pleasant waiting areas. But these improvements are due to the fact that the present chaotic conditions in most out-patient clinics cause 3.5 million working days to be lost by people waiting for appointments in NHS hospitals and, therefore, it makes good economic sense to improve the system. Patients are to be given rapid notification of the results of diagnostic tests, clear information and sensitive explanations of what is happening to them. These changes are long overdue improvements in current practice, but there is nothing in the White Paper to solve the staffing shortage in pathology laboratories which causes delays, or the long hours and stressful conditions endured by junior doctors which can sometimes lead to a lack of sensitivity in dealing with patients. These reforms may be no more than platitudes to make the White Paper more acceptable to the general public.

The development of a range of optional extras such as single rooms, television and a choice of meals for those who wish to pay for them will create a two-tier system with basic amenities being provided for the poor and better services being provided for the wealthy. In addition, the improvements to hospital facilities will make future privatisation a more attractive proposition for investors.

All of this is in keeping with capitalism's aim of keeping state provision to a minimum because a centrally-funded health service represents a cost against production. The wealthy are able to avoid the hardship caused by the lack of an adequate health service by purchasing private care. The burden of ill-health and caring for dependent relatives falls upon the working class, who are unable to accumulate enough from their wages to afford expensive hospital treatment.

The provision of 100 new consultants' posts in acute specialities will help to reduce waiting lists for hospital treatment but has been added to the White Paper as an afterthought and is clearly designed to "buy off” the junior doctors, who will have a slightly better chance of gaining promotion. Doctors have become increasingly militant over the hours that they work. The average weekly hours worked by junior doctors in the UK is 83 compared with 72 hours in Austria and West Germany and 48 hours in Portugal and Italy, according to the British Medical Association. It is estimated that 140 deaths a year are related to doctor fatigue in surgery alone (Which? Way to Health, April, 1988.)

The exploitation of junior doctors has been increased as a result of the 1987 circular issued by the Department of Health which required health authorities to cut the amount of money spent on locum cover to replace doctors who were sick or on holiday. It is claimed that the new posts will reduce the hours worked by junior doctors but consultants tend to create work for their staff not lessen it.

But it is not just junior doctors who are threatened: some managers have been told that their future is at stake if they do not express an interest in self-government, claims Jimmy Johnson, a consultant surgeon at Halton hospital, Cheshire [The Independent, 16 June, 1989).

Internal Market

The White Paper will raise the proportion of pay which general practitioners earn from the number of patients that they have on their lists from 46 per cent to at least 60 per cent. This will force doctors to have larger practices if they do not wish to see their incomes decline. It will also make them less willing to take elderly patients who require a lot of attention, preferring larger numbers of younger patients who are less likely to be ill. There will also be reserve powers to allow the Department of Health to control the number of doctors in contract with the NHS, which could force some doctors to take up private practice or become unemployed.

From April 1991 large general practices of at least 11,000 patients will be able to hold their own budgets with which they can acquire hospital treatment for their patients. They will be able to improve their practices with the money they save on treatments, a temptation to avoid referring patients for more expensive forms of medical or surgical intervention.

Prescription costs will be reduced by the imposition of financial penalties for doctors who over-prescribe. While it may be beneficial to reduce the amount of drugs used, there is a risk that this heavy-handed approach will encourage doctors to prescribe cheaper alternatives rather than the best medicines available.

The most controversial change is the setting up of an internal market which will allow health authorities to buy care from each other. It will permit hospitals with expertise in particular fields, such as hip replacements or heart transplants, to sell their services to both NHS and private hospitals to earn revenue. Despite the government’s protestations to the contrary, this is a backdoor method of introducing privatisation. There is also the risk that hospitals will concentrate on the services that can earn them money to the detriment of less profitable branches of medicine like the care of the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped and the elderly. High-cost treatments, except for private patients able to pay large fees, will become unviable and this will accelerate the creation of a two-tier system of care.

As expected, the White Paper contributes nothing towards preventative medicine, but this is only to be expected as the state functions to protect and facilitate capitalism, which makes profits by selling goods and services to those who can afford them; there is no profit if they are not needed in the first place. The deprivation of the wage and salary working class which is inherent in capitalism is the main cause of ill-health. While capitalism lasts health care, whether state-funded or private, reformed or otherwise, cannot cure society’s ills.

Carl Pinel

Greasy Pole: Beware of Leaders (2017)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It can be a time for their widespread regret, if not mourning, when any of our political leaders reaches the end of their time of dominance and the exposure of their futile dishonesty, leaving them with little more than a badge signifying their removal from the scene. Like Neville Chamberlain in 1938 waving his little piece of paper from Hitler to the crowd at Heston Airport. Like Ted Heath and his Three-Day Week which would replace slump with prosperity. Like Theresa May and her snap general election which was going to sweep away the muddle of Nick Clegg and that Coalition along with hapless Ed Miliband. But also, less enduring, there was John Moore who ended his time as Baron Moore of Lower Marsh. Moore was once favoured by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with a rocket-like rise up the Greasy Pole to the heights of Secretary Of State for Health and Social Security, where he enforced such changes as to nominate him Mr Privatisation with all the implicit rewards.

Collapse

One response to this was from Ken Clarke, who during his time has occupied so many ministerial prominences – among them Health and Social Security – along with his preference for cigars, alcohol and jazz music. He assessed Moore as ‘bright and likeable…very popular with the press’ but someone who ‘…knew nothing about either health or social security and, as far as I could see, had no views on the subject. He was soon both overwhelmed and unnerved by the sheer scale of the problems he faced and the expectations he had to live up to’. Another Tory colleague compared him to ‘…a frightened rabbit mesmerised by oncoming headlights’. Except that Moore’s difficulties went rather deeper than that, for in November 1987 in the midst of the chaos of his life as a Cabinet Minister he was struck down by bacterial pneumonia. His desperation was such that his struggle to conceal his condition was undermined when he collapsed at a Cabinet meeting. He chose to be treated at a private hospital which at that time was charging thousands of pounds a day, but soon there was no alternative for Thatcher but to cut his Ministry in two and pass the portfolio for Health to Ken Clarke before, in 1989, sacking Moore from the Cabinet. In 1992 Moore gave it all up, standing down from Parliament to work his talents as Baron Moore of Lower Marsh in the House of Lords – which he attended only rarely – and to return to his former fields of profit gathering in banking and industry. 

Currie

Among the persistent critics of Moore in the Commons was Edwina Currie who at one time seemed to go out of her way to be one of Thatcher’s more unwise appointments. For example there was the occasion when, as a junior Minister for Health, she informed the nation that ‘…in the Winter it was the Northerners who, neglecting to keep warm, die of ignorance and chips’. In her younger days in Liverpool she had spent a lot of time adoring the Beatles in the Cavern Club before she became a rampant Tory through her time absorbing Economic History at the London School of Economics. She was elected to Parliament in 1983 for South Derbyshire, by which time she had amassed a reputation as a ‘virtually permanent fixture on the nation’s TV screen saying something outrageous about just anything… the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation’ – an assessment suitable to her affair with the future Prime Minister John Major, which lasted some four years when he was a Party Whip hoping to be promoted through the ranks. But then it was Major who, after reaching the heights of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, felt it necessary to end the affair, leaving her distressed but not so much that she could resist accusing him of ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ and describing him as ‘one of the less competent Prime Ministers’ and later as ‘…too small minded in character, too small in intellect in the end’. And she did not consider it was the end of all affairs, asking herself, as she picked over the memories: ‘I daydream about another affair. Now, who might be interested?’

Broadmoor

One of Currie’s responsibilities in the Ministry of Health was a Task Force involved in running the Broadmoor Hospital, that nervously guarded and controlled institution where the most dangerous and unpredictable of offenders are confined after being medically certified as in need of restraint as well as treatment. Currie appointed Jimmy Saville to the Task Force, allowing him keys which made him free to roam the hospital with access to every part of it and mingle with the patients including those who were severely disturbed and heavily medicated. That was before the full facts emerged of Saville being himself a highly unstable character, but there was still good reason to act with caution in so threatening an environment. Among the other disturbing events which Currie was active in was as Health Minister in 1988 when she provoked the fury of the dairy farmers and milk sellers by announcing that most British eggs were contaminated with salmonella. As a result some four million hens were slaughtered with a huge financial loss to the producers which brought about Currie’s resignation as a Minister. The panic and anger did not die down for some years; in 2001 it was revealed that at the crucial time there was a severe epidemic of salmonella in the hens but by then Currie was well into her alternative professions as a TV performer, writer of romantic fiction and the like.

In the ideal (for the politicians) world there is often an assumption that when a leader drops out they leave a swathe of affectionately wistful memories. But all our experience of examples of this – Moore, Major, Currie –  emphasises it is not so because their period in power followed the established interests of the higher, owning, exploiting class. It is our part to rebuild world society so that it is freer, safer and humane.

Ivan

Sting in the Tail: Let's Get Swamped (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let's Get Swamped

Peter Kellner in The Independent (1 November) wrote about what a wonderful man John Major is.

  John Major is leading the Conservative Party towards a social revolution . . . neither his friends nor his critics have acknowledged the magnitude of his project.

What excited Mr Kellner was Major's appearance at the Windsor Fellowship (now there is a revolutionary name). This is an organisation that "helps black undergraduates who want professional or management careers in industry."

Along with Mr Major’s meeting with Sir Ian McKellen, where he discussed "the demands of Stonewall, the homosexual pressure group that Sir Ian helped to form", this has led Kellner into the silly notion that Mr Major is somehow different from Mrs Thatcher.

Mrs Thatcher, he reminds us, had said in 1978 on TV that there was fear that Britain could be "swamped"by "immigrants".

In the Queen’s speech written by Mr Major and his advisers there is very little to suggest that Major and Thatcher are so different.

Did Mr Major propose that Clause 28 which he supported be withdrawn? No. Did he make some momentous move to change Britain's official racialist policies on immigration? No. He had the Queen, the highest paid ventriloquist's doll in the world, mouthing about how the government intended to stop the £50 legal aid for immigrants protesting against deportation.

Hypocrisy and cant we are used to: but let's make it known that we are socialists — we want to be swamped. Welcome fellow workers, irrespective of your sexual proclivities, the colour of your skin, or anything so bloody stupid. We are workers, let us unite against the Thatchers, Majors and Kinnocks of this world!

Loyal and True

There is an oft-repeated piece of conventional wisdom that has it that the Tory Party's great strength lies in its loyalty to the leader.

Mr Kenneth Clarke on TV-am’s Frost on Sunday (3 November) when asked about his attitude towards former leader Margaret Thatcher said he held her "In fairly reverential respect . . . She was the boss."

However when pressed to answer the point that after the first ballot he had told her to her face that he would resign from the cabinet if she stood for the second ballot he replied "Well I didn't quite do that."

Ah, touching loyalty? Well, not quite. The oily Mr Clarke later revealed "I told others, whom I'm sure told her, I would resign."

Poverty of Thought

The sterility of bourgeois thinking was well illustrated by Geoffrey Wheatcroft when writing in the Sunday Telegraph (27 October).

  It is easy to make fun of the way the poverty lobby continually redefines its terms, so that the poor . . .  are those without colour television, washing machines or regular holidays.

For Wheatcroft everything is fixed in time and is not to be redefined despite social change. Being "poor" today is what it was 100 years ago — living in a hovel, being half starved and clothed in rags.

But poverty, like everything else, is relative. For example, during World War Two the immensely rich Aga Khan was trapped in Switzerland and had to live on "only" £40,000 a year. This was an enormous sum in those days and 200 times the income of most British workers, but the Aga Khan considered he was living in poverty.

Today society can produce much more wealth than it could 100 years ago and people's perception of what are luxuries has changed. Not to have colour TV, a washing machine, etc., when these can be provided in abundance is indeed to be "poor".

Wheatcroft may laugh at the poverty lobby but they can at least understand what is obviously beyond him.

It's a Jungle

"How the lion roared with pride" was a headline in The Guardian (4 November). Of course this swell-headed feline was the English Lion, but why should the lion represent England? It isn't native to these shores so wouldn't a Yorkshire Terrier or a Dover Sole be more appropriate?

The fact is that powerful nations which grabbed Empires through conquest often adopted ferocious animals as the symbol of their power. For example, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Tsarist Russia all chose the Eagle. It would have been less awe-inspiring if they or Imperial England had chosen the Duck or Badger although both are native to all these countries.

But what was that headline all about anyway? Only that a Lion had been duffed-up by a Wallaby, or, put another way, that England's Rugby team had lost the World Cup Final against Australia. Doubtless, every English patriot is as sick as a parrot.

Classroom Struggle

Settle down, class. In this current affairs period we will discuss why some European left-wing parties are gaining support while others are losing it.

Can anyone name any countries where the left-wing are doing well? Obviously Britain, Germany, Denmark. Good, but where are they doing badly? France, Spain, Austria, fine, that's enough.

Right, but how do we explain these contrasting fortunes? You at the back, yes, you with your nose buried in that paper. Let's hear from you. Hmm, so you say that the left-wing are unpopular in France, Spain and Austria because they are in government there and any party which administers capitalism must inevitably lose support. I've heard that before, somewhere.

Well, that's a debatable viewpoint, but now tell the class why the left-wing are so popular in Britain, Germany and Denmark where they are seeking government The political experts put it down to "the swing of the pendulum", what's your view? You put it down to voters having short memories . . . what IS that paper you were reading? The Socialist Standard? I should have known!

They Never Learn

After decades of boring-from-within the Labour Party, Militant has been forced to abandon "entryism" and openly come out as a separate organisation.

Dishonest to the end, they say: We are not setting up as a fully-fledged party because that would be counter-posed to Labour. (The Guardian 2 November). This despite the fact that they intend to put up parliamentary and local government candidates against Labour!

This move must be a bitter pill for Militant to swallow. They really believed that they could take over the Labour Party. And remember all those years spent lecturing other equally futile left-wing groups for being outside Labour's ranks? Now they join them and all their wordy justifications (47 pages long) for what they present as a tactical withdrawal are only camouflage for what is a headlong retreat.

Has Militant learned the folly of "entryism"? Not one bit and they have broadcast their intention of sneaking back into the Labour Party when they think the coast is clear. What a hope and what a policy!

Labour of Sisyphus

Recently we read another politician telling us that "politics is the art of the possible".

But all politicians are committed to running the affairs of capitalism, a system which by its very nature generates military and trade wars between nations, produces such massive poverty and insecurity that racial, national and religious hatreds inevitably occur, causes pollution of the earth through the drive for profit, etc., etc.

And yet the politicians are the ones who are endlessly engaged in the hopeless task of trying to reform away the problems which capitalism itself creates!

The art of the possible? A more accurate definition of their activities would be that "politics is the pursuit of the impossible".

The Old Bill and the new Tony (1993)

Ilustration by George Meddemmen.

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the traditions of British politics is that the Tories are in favour with the police, the prison officers and all aspiring hangers and dispensers of corporal punishment because they believe they take a strong line on Law and Order. Another tradition is that the Labour Party are not popular in those same quarters because they are soft on crime and criminals, in accordance with some theory that we live in a class-divided society and the penal system is there to protect the interest of the ruling class and keep the working class in their place.

So how do we explain the fact that Kenneth Clarke, in one of his last public appearances as a Conservative Home Secretary, was so frostily received by the Police Federation conference in May while on the following day his Labour shadow, Tony Blair, was rapturously applauded? Blairs speech was described by the Federation chairman as “superb"; one of the Federation officers thought he had come close to the ultimate achievement of a standing ovation. In contrast, Clarke was described by one policeman as “an arrogant, rude Tory snob”. Since arrogant and rude is how many people experience police behaviour we can infer that Clarke had dared to disagree with the delegates.

It was not through any penetrating analysis of the causes of crime and the role of the police in capitalism that Blair won his applause. What he did was to reassure the nation’s finest that a Labour government would be tough on crime and would give the police, who are feeling a trifle beleaguered at the present time, a lot of what they have been asking for but did not look like getting from Clarke. On one issue. Clarke seemed to be bent on making it easier to support allegations of misconduct by the police. Now this is a matter of—how shall we put it?—some delicacy, as hardly a week goes by without some fresh revelation about innocent people being stitched up by the police and clapped behind bars as a result—sometimes for very long periods.

As a barrister Blair might have been expected to recognize that, even by the corrupt and decadent standards of capitalism, something is seriously wrong with the police. After all, it is not beyond imagining that a shadow minister might one day find himself on the receiving end of planted incriminating evidence or apparently signing a confession to some heinous crime they haven’t committed. But no: he assured the massed ranks of the Federation that he is not in favour of tampering with the present set-up. Before they began clapping, the police heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The Old Bill

Then there was the matter of crime—or rather that bit of it which finds its way into police records. Year by year it goes up and up, no matter how many more police there are or how many new laws or how much harsher the penalties. Blair had to tread a wary path here—after all it is a Labour Home Secretary that he hopes to be and he has to think about his reception at the next party conference where some of the delegates may have felt police truncheons on their heads on the picket line or on a demonstration. So while he makes a passing acknowledgement that the extremes of poverty, unemployment and poor housing have their effect on crime—which even the police have recently come to accept—he modified this:

no one but a fool would excuse the commission of a crime on the grounds of the individuals upbringing.

And then, criticizing the current disarray in what is known as the criminal justice system he gave an implied promise which would not have come amiss from Thatcher herself:

It cannot be the right way to start by imposing a freeze on (police) recruitment.

No wonder they cheered him. And in case there were any lingering doubts about whether the Old Bill really do love the New Tony, Blair said he supported testing the side-handled batons as seen on TV when the Los Angeles police were shown beating up Rodney King—tests which Clarke had refused.

There is a simple answer to the question why the police should be so much keener on this prospective Labour Home Secretary than they were on the Tory who held that office. Blair has made no secret of his view that the Labour Party must be ready to make whatever changes or abandonments to its policies which are necessary to win power. He knows—he would be insensitive to his audiences in a way for which barristers are not famous—how strong are the prejudices which arise from that tradition about Tory strength and Labour weakness on Law and Order. So he makes adjustments. This twisting may infuriate some members of the Labour Party. If so, it is time they faced the fact that they support a party which stands for capitalism and that winning power to run this society does not come from holding to principles.

Home office

They might also learn that there is no evidence to support that prejudice about Labour being soft on crime. For example, the "short, sharp shock” (which really meant mindless brutality and repression) was to be applied in the detention centres that were the brainchild of the 1945 Attlee government. Labour was in power when the Metropolitan Police—for which the police authority is the Home Office—introduced the notorious, rampaging Special Patrol groups. A similar development in the prison service, again under a Labour government, was the MUFTI squads, which quickly established a reputation for fearsomely dealing with recalcitrant prisoners. One of the achievements of the ever- so-cultured-and-liberal Roy Jenkins as a Labour Home Secretary was the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which did not prevent terrorism but which did restrict many of the safeguards of the rights of people under arrest by the police. What it amounts to is that no Labour Home Secretary has ever shirked doing whatever capitalism has demanded of them.

That, after all. is the function of all the organs of government among which the Home Office is of first importance. The name, so comforting, is misleading because the Home Office is responsible for a massive coercive machine—the Law, police, prisons, control of “aliens” and the like. In its wilder moments it might see itself as the guardian of public morality and safety even if it is difficult to see people like Kenneth Clarke in that role. Anyone—like Clarke who gets the job of Home Secretary is supposed to be very close to becoming Prime Minster, except that there are plenty of examples of ambitious politicians—Rab Butler. Roy Jenkins. Leon Brittan are just a few—for whom the job was close to their political grave.

Youthful

But, no doubt, Blair takes a more optimistic view of his chances. There is no lack of media encouragement to him to do so. Christened Anthony Charles Lynton Blair he decided—like Anthony Wedgwood Benn—that plain Tony was a name much more voter-friendly. He rose through choir school, Fettes College and Oxford to became a barrister in 1976. He got into Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983, when Michael Foot was laying waste to Labour’s dreams of ousting the Thatcher government. His clubs—a nice thoughtful touch this—are not Brooks or Whites or the Athenaeum but Trimdon Colliery and Deaf Hill Working Men’s and Fishburn Working Men's.

Blair burst onto the political scene as a bright-eyed, irrepressible young debunk specialist on TV. Perhaps his boyish looks were considered too youthful to reassure the voters because recently Blairs manner has been more subdued and weighty, as would be expected from someone who wants to be minister in charge of arresting workers who break the law, locking up tens of thousands of them and keeping the numbers of immigrants at a level acceptable to the prejudices of the voters. That is why Blair has come up with that statement which although suffering from an in-built inconsistency is crafted to appease both sides of the argument about crime—he wants to be tough on crime and tough on its causes.

Blair would not be the first politician to evade his party’s policies while appearing to implement them. That is how he won the approval of the police and how he hopes to win the approval of the Labour Party, who will doubtless give it to him if they see that he attracts the votes. And then all he has to worry about is winning the approval of the voters, who remain vulnerable to so many kinds of trickery and deceit. Then this one-time choirboy can sing in the bath at Number Ten.

Ivan