Editorial: The Budget (1948)

Editorial from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Budget time there is always a certain amount of excitement among the workers, rather like that about the result of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race—and with about as much justification. Always there is that mixture of hopes and fears—will beer and cigarettes go down? Will overtime be freed from income tax? Will purchase tax be reduced? Sir Stafford Cripps managed to please and displease nearly everyone, a bit on here, a bit off there. Beer and tobacco up a little, income tax down a little, purchase tax up on some things and down on others. The other principal features of the Budget were the capital levy which will raise about £100 millions from 140,000 of the very rich, the reiteration of the policy of freezing wages at their present level except where special factors justify an increase, and a refusal to freeze profits or to tax them more heavily. On this last point Cripps contented himself with a warning that if companies do increase their dividends to shareholders this year he will consider imposing a limit next year.

Speaking for the. Conservative opposition, Sir John Anderson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, criticised certain features of the Budget, particularly the special levy, but otherwise be welcomed Sir Stafford Cripps’ “realistic and honest approach.” The Manchester Guardian (April 7th, 1948) praised it as “a strong, honest, and radical Budget,” and remarked of the capital levy that it is “in fact a stiff individual profits tax winch falls where it should, on the large personal capital.” That newspaper’s City Editor (April 7th, 1948) went further and showed that it is not even very stiff:–

”The levy on capital will not be severe even for those holding very large amounts of capital. Assuming an investment yield of 5 per cent. the tax would amount to 2½ per cent. on a capital of over £100.000.”

We may sum up by saying that if the workers find that the Budget makes little difference to their position so do the capitalists, and this is true of all Budgets no matter whether the Government is Conservative, or Labour. It explains why the Socialist refuses to get excited about Budget prospects.

What the working class get out of the capitalist system is the wage or salary they receive for selling their energies to the employers (including the Government and the administrative Boards which are Ihe employers in nationalised undertakings), and wages follow fairly closely the rises and falls of the cost of living. This is not an automatic process of adjustment, but takes place through the pressure and counter pressure exerted by the employing class and the workers in strikes and lockouts. When prices are falling unemployment is usually heavy enough to enable the employers to force down wages. When unemployment is at a very low point, as at present, it is easier for the workers to struggle for higher wages and thus try to maintain their standard of living in face of recently rising prices. Those who urge the workers not to take advantage of the present low unemployment to press for higher wages may discover at no very distant date that the opportunity will have passed. Unemployment will be the order of the day; or, as the City Editor of the News Chronicle puts it (April 10th, 1948), ”with the country probably over the inflationary hump and perhaps set on the, road to deflation with the help of the recent Budget.” Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist secretary of the Miners’ Union, apparently is among the short-sighted. According to the Daily Worker (April 6th, 1948) he said at Leicester, “The miners had not taken full advantage of the law of supply and demand of labour. If they had wages would have been much higher.”

When Cabinet spokesmen oppose higher wages they do so because their immediate and predominant responsibility, by virtue of being the Government, is to keep the capitalist system functioning in the only way that capitalism can function, that is by enabling the capitalists to make profits. The Labour Party grew up on the mistaken belief that under Labour Government there would be great possibilities to raise wages by cutting into profits. Rather late in the day some of them, certainly Sir Stafford Cripps, have come up against the, harsh truth that those who administer the capitalist system have very limited freedom of action—on all important issues they can depart little from the practice of their Conservative predecessors. Official figures on the proportion of the national income which goes as salaries, wages and rent and profits, etc., bring this out clearly. In 1938 wages accounted for 39 per cent., salaries for 24 per cent., and profits, rent and interest for 37 per cent. In 1947 wages accounted for 44 per cent., salaries 20 per cent., and rent, profits, etc., 36 per cent. (See Economist, April 10th, 1948, p. 596.) In each case the figures are after meeting income tax.) It will be observed that the percentage going to wages and salaries together, i.e., 63 per cent. in 1938 and 64 per cent. in 1947 has hardly changed at all, likewise the percentage to rent, profit, etc.—37 per cent. in 1938 and 36 per cent. in 1947.

This is the dilemma of all Labour Governments, but no such dilemma faces Socialists. Socialism is not a scheme for redistributing wealth and income inside capitalism, but a system of society to replace the capitalist system

Editorial: Two budgets (1952)

Editorial from the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budgets are the concern of the capitalists, not of the working class, though it suits the Labour Party, like the other reformist parties, to pretend otherwise. The workers are not poor because of the Budget, but because the capitalist class own society’s means of production and distribution. It was admitted by the Economist (25th December, 1943) that:—

"1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent. of the adult persons in the country, own 85 per cent. of the private property and draw 28 per cent. of the individual incomes of the country."

The Economist said that their readers would be surprised to team this. Why they should be surprised was not explained; this inequality has been a feature of social life in Britain and the rest of the world throughout the capitalist era, and is equally true now despite all the talk of redistribution.

The capitalist State has to meet the cost of its civil service, armed forces and re-armament programmes and all the rest of the organisation necessary to the capitalist system. It does this through taxation the burden of which falls on the shoulders of those who alone can bear it, the propertied class. The wealth the workers produce belongs to the capitalist class and what the workers receive as wages and salaries is far below the value of what they, the workers, produce. That is how the workers are legally robbed and why they are poor. Rises or falls of prices, rises or falls of taxation and changes from one form to another, do not affect the fundamental position of the working class—at most they have temporary effects. White capitalism continues, the only sound policy for the working class is to struggle at all times to the fullest extent that conditions permit, to raise their wages and resist downward pressure.

During and since the war, under the abnormal conditions then existing, and with unemployment at a very low level, successive governments used the system of food subsidies in order to discourage the trade unions from pressing for higher wages. It was linked with high taxation on drink and tobacco, and, from 1946, the grant of children’s allowances to level the condition of the workers. The whole scheme was a device to lessen the movement for a general rise of wages and to divide the married workers against the unmarried. With it went the incessant demand of the Labour Government that the workers should refrain from "unreasonable” wage claims. Now that the fierce struggle against foreign competitors is hotting up again in the markets of the world, the policy is being modified because it has served its purpose. It was merely a wartime interlude in the running of capitalism, which is now getting back to normal pre-war conditions.

Against this background it will be seen how nonsensical is the Labour Party case against the Butler budget. They call is a “rich man’s budget,” as if any budget could be anything else. Mr. Douglas Jay, Labour M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on 17th March, accused Mr. Butler of "robbing the poor to pay the rich”—as if the details of any particular budget were of any importance by comparison with the ceaseless exploitation of the working class \\hich went on unchanged during six years of Labour government.

They charge the Tories with raising the cost of living, forgetting that while they were in power it went up about 40 per cent. They say that he is against wage increases, as of course he is, but forgetting the years in which they also preached "wage-restraint.” They denounce him for reducing food subsidies, but forget that it was Sir Stafford Cripps who decided not to permit any increase in the subsidies even though that meant a rise of the cost of living; a flat departure from the statement of his predecessor, Mr. Dalton, who in 1945 said:—

“I have decided to hold the present cost of living steady until further notice, even if this means an increase in the necessary Exchequer subsidies." (Hansard, 23rd October, 1945. Col. 1877.)

It was on that occasion that Mr. Dalton admitted the purpose of the subsidies as being "to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates,” and paid tribute to the "steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard.”

In April, 1951, when Mr. Gaitskell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeated the decision not to increase the food subsidies, he admitted that this decision would mean a further rise of food prices and indeed the official food index figure rose from 131 in April, 1951, to 143 in October.

Other Labour Party critics charge the Tories with tenderness towards high profits, and one misguided Labour journal Forward, in its issue for 23rd February, 1952, chides the Tories on the ground that company profits repented during January, 1952, were up by £10,000,000. What it overlooked was that the company reports issued in January, 1952, related to profits made under the Labour Government in 1951!

Now that the Labour Party is in Opposition it will wage the sham fight about the details of running the capitalist system, but there was every justification for the jibe of the Liberal leader, Mr. Clement Davies, that if Mr. Gaitskell had been in Mr. Butler's place his Budget would have been "much of a muchness.” All budgets, no matter who introduces them, are designed to promote capitalism, not to undermine or abolish it.

Mr. Butler’s budget of 11th March had been preceded on 6th March by the budget report of the Russian Finance Minister, Mr. Zverev. They differed by five days, and little more.

The Russian Budget

The Russian Finance Minister’s budget report was reproduced in full in Soviet News (12th March, 1952) published by the Russian Embassy in London. It makes interesting reading particularly as evidence of the similarity of capitalism's problems and their treatment in the two countries.

They both have their re-armament problems; naturally both offered as instruments of “ defence,” not of "aggression.”

In 1952 the Russian Government plans to spend "for the defence of the country” 113,800 million roubles (£10,346,000,000 at the Russian official rate of exchange of 11 roubles to the £).

The amount of money to be raised from State loans in 1952 is set at £3,864 millions, and the estimated expenditure on the lottery prizes and interest to bondholders (“to pay out winnings to the population and interest on loans”) is estimated at £800 million. This latter figure relates, of course, to the interest, etc., on the total amount of loans outstanding, not merely to the additional loans to be raised during the year; at the average rate of 4 per cent. it implies that the total amount of bonds outstanding in 1952 will be about £20,000 million.

Turnover Tax (similar to the British purchase tax) brought into Budget revenues in 1951 the amount of £22,500 millions, an increase of 4.9 per cent. over 1950. It is to be increased this year by another 4.9 per cent. 

Mr Butler stepped up the taxes on profits by means of the Excess Profits Levy. His opposite number in Russia, Mr. Zverev, is going to do the same.

“Total profits in the branches of the national economy will amount to 88,100 million roubles in the current year as against 74,700 million roubles in 1951. The rise in profits makes it possible to leave a substantial part of them at the disposal of enterprises and Ministries for expanding production. At the same time, the profits tax paid into the State Budget will be increased and the share of this tax in the State Budget revenue will rise from 10.2 per cent. in 1951 to 12.2 per cent. in 1952.”

“The profits tax paid by State enterprises will be increased by 14,000 million roubles, or 29.2 per cent. more than last year. . ."

Conservative and Labour Party speakers are always urging the workers to produce more and lower the cost of production. Mr. Zverev’s report contained numerous remarks of the same kind. He reported that in 1951 “the labour productivity of workers in industry rose, by 10 per cent. compared with 1950.” But he was not satisfied with this and asked for more. His report also contained many complaints about industries which had failed to keep down their wages bill and operate sufficiently profitably:—

"It should be said that certain Ministries, enterprises and economic organisations are for from making full use of available potentialities for the further reduction of production costs, cutting trade outlays and making the work of economic organisations more profitable.”

“One of the main requisites for the further reduction of production costs is also the improvement of the organisation of labour at enterprises and the frugal expenditure of wage funds. Not all enterprises, however, live up to those requirements.”

For example, he complained that the Ministry of Paper and Woodworking Industry “permitted the mills to cover the over-expenditure of the wage fund,” and the Leningrad engineering plant of the Central Textile Machinery Administration of the Ministry of Machine and Instrument-making Industry “did not fulfil its production plans last year and overspent 13,500,000 roubles on wages.”

Time and time again he came back to this theme of not spending too much on wages, improving the control of “labour per unit of output,” and watching over “the expenditure of wage funds” and of “the timely and complete receipt of payments into the Budget.” Numerous branches of industry were named as being among those which illegally “overdraw the wage funds.” Others were charged with allowing expensive machinery “to stand idle a great deal,” thus adding to production costs, and many State farms were criticised because they “do not yet have a sufficiently high productivity of labour.”

We are told by Communists that in Russia the trade unions have control over the fixing of wages. What they do have (a very different matter) is the right to discuss the way the “wages fund” is allocated to different grades of workers; but of course the real control resides with those who fix the total amount of the wage fund for each enterprise, that is the Government and its agencies. How true this is can be seen from the Finance Minister’s report. Not once does he even mention as a possibility that the workers or the unions might have pressed for a bigger expenditure on wages. In each of the dozen cases that he refers to he tells the managements firmly that once the Government has fixed the wage fund they have got to stick to it and devote their energies to cutting down production costs and increasing the workers’ output.

British capitalism’s financial wizards and productivity experts would feel very much at home if transplanted to Mr. Zverev’s department.

It is only necessary to add that the Budget Report was unanimously approved. The session ended as follows, according to the Soviet News account:—

“Stormy, prolonged applause. All rise. A prolonged ovation in honour of Comrade J. V. Stalin resounds in the Kremlin Palace.”

It seems to have been like the Tory cheers for Mr. Butler.

The Socialist comment on British and Russian budgets is simplicity itself. The aim of the working class should be to end private and State capitalism and bring the means of production and distribution into ownership by the whole community as the basis of Socialism. While the workers continue to neglect this real issue and devote their attention instead to capitalism’s budgets and taxation they will remain a poverty-stricken exploited class and the exploiters will continue to be safe in the enjoyment of the privileged position that capitalism bestows on them.

Editorial: Manpower and the Crisis (1947)

Editorial from the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remedy the Labour Government Cannot Use

Capitalism breeds war, waste and want as a jungle swamp breeds pestilence. Practically every minister in the Labour Government has acknowledged the truth of this some time or other and has pointed the obvious moral that if you want to remove the pestilential effects you must remove the capitalist cause, and introduce Socialism in the place of Capitalism. They said this, but did any of them understand what they were saying? Probably not. If by chance some of them did then by taking office in the Labour Government they were acting a deliberate lie for they were promising something it was not in their power to do. There can be no Socialism until there are a majority of convinced Socialists in the electorate and even the most deluded of Labour leaders would surely not claim that the 12 million Labour voters were Socialists. A government cannot impose Socialism on an unwilling electorate. This should be obvious, but it took the recent crisis to jolt the “Daily Herald” into even a partial recognition of the facts. The “Herald’s” admission, a veritable masterpiece of understatement, was framed as a warning to Ministers not to entertain the “treacherous delusion” that would “regard the whole electorate as enthusiastic converts to Socialism” (February 8th, 1947). The same Editorial goes on to claim that “a peaceful revolution is being wrought in this land which will bring solid benefits within our lifetime, and will confer blessings untold on posterity.” We can leave posterity to speak for itself and content ourselves with foretelling a time when the electorate will count it an immediate blessing to be rid of the Labour Government.

The reader is of course entitled to ask us why we are sure that Labourism cannot succeed. The answer is to be found in the opening paragraph of this article. Capitalism we know; Socialism the workers can have when they are ready to grasp it; and there is no other choice. The root fallacy of Labourism is the belief that a Labour Government can administer capitalism in a non-capitalist way. With all the good intentions in the world it cannot be done” Labour Ministers may make election promises with perfect sincerity, but in office they learn day by day what it really means to keep this exploiting, profit-making system .going, in competition with the rest of the capitalist Powers. It means resisting wage claims so that the capitalists can go on making profit. It means perpetuating the vast gulf between rich and poor. It means maintaining the armed forces and struggling with rival Powers for trade, raw materials and colonies.

It is hardly necessary to say that it also involves swallowing past declarations of what ought to be done, such, for example, as Sir Stafford Cripps’ complete reversal of his views on trade rivalry. Now he is chief director of the export drive. Five years ago he declared, “If, after the coming of peace, we were to start once again the vicious circle of international trade competition, we should be lost, and in a few years would be confronting another war” (interview with a Brazilian newspaper—”Sunday Express” November 8th, 1942).

The recent crisis, forerunner of others, took on the appearance of a problem of fuel and manpower, brought to an acute phase by an “Act of God,” the British weather. It was, however, not a crisis of coal or of cold, but of capitalism. Let us examine this and see how capitalism, which caused the problem, prevents the Labour Government from solving it. The second World War (itself a product of capitalism) destroyed vast amounts of wealth and left a legacy of shortages of housing, food, fuel, clothing, transport, etc. Not that want was a new experience for the working class, but the war aggravated the problem by the immensity of the destruction it wrought all over-Europe and Asia. What would a sanely organised human society have done about this, assuming that such a form of society had to tackle the problem? It would have stopped all waste of labour and materials, halted the production of armaments, and of luxuries for the rich, and would have concentrated on producing the necessities of life in the quantities urgently needed by the population of the world. How did the Labour Government (and all the governments in all the countries) tackle it? They spoke the right words, but proceeded to apply fiddling half-measures. The British Labour Government said they needed man-power in production, but they found that British capitalism had a still more pressing need to keep 1,500,000 men in the armed forces and other hundreds of thousands supplying the needs of the forces and preparing for future wars. They said they needed more workers producing coal, food, houses, etc., for the millions who lacked bare necessities, but they left intact the class structure of capitalism, with its hundreds of thousands. of wealthy idlers consuming without producing, and its hundreds of thousands of workers engaged in banking, financial and other operations that only arise because of capitalism. There are over 700,000 non-industrial civil servants, about 350,000 of whom are Post Office workers. The great bulk of the remaining 350,000 are doing work rendered necessary only by capitalism, as is also much of the work of the Post Office. We are told that many civil servants are employed on insurance and similar work which the Labour Government regards as socially useful; but it is only the mind habituated to capitalism that cannot see what this work really is. Staffs handling unemployed and health. insurance are not there to see that the needy (needy because of capitalism) receive enough to satisfy their needs, but to protect capitalism against the needy receiving more than the niggardly amount allotted to keep them quiet.

The same contradiction between proclaimed aims and practical activities can be found in every sphere. The luxury needs of the wealthy have not been sacrificed to speed up the provision of necessities. On the contrary, the Government has encouraged the planning of luxury liners, luxury air travel, and luxury goods for export. These schemes are defended with the plea that luxury exports make it possible to import necessities unobtainable in other ways. The curious thing is that the governments of other war-damaged countries (France, for example) are doing the same and on the same plea, so that some luxury goods are being imported by all the countries which declare their inability to supply enough necessities for their populations. What it shows is that, despite Labour Party talk about a “new world,” the British and other Labour Governments are basing their plans for the future on the continuance of the same old capitalism, with its extremes of wealth and poverty. They are all catering for the needs of the wealthy.

Here then is the simple problem and the simple solution. On a conservative estimate the production of useful goods could easily be doubled in short time if the armed forces and propertied idlers and the workers doing work necessitated only by capitalism, were brought into production. Why doesn’t the Labour Government even attempt to do it? They don’t do it because even if they wanted to they dare not. They were put into power by an electorate that does not understand or want Socialism and which therefore gave the Labour Government nothing more than a man¬ date to go on administering capitalism.

The recent crisis arose because the capitalist state needs to have millions of people taken from production for the armed forces and other non-productive activities and therefore cannot take simple straightforward measures to make good the destruction of war. It led to great suffering and to the increase of unemployed to about 2,500,000 at the peak. In due course another and more usual type of capitalist crisis will blow up. Goods will be produced in excess of what can be sold at a profit, then unemployment will soar again. Then the Labour Government will be looking for other excuses than the cold weather to explain the failure of its plans. The “New Statesman,” which shared all of the foolish Labour Party beliefs in the possibility of applying so-called Socialist policies to capitalism, has in anticipation already coined the appropriate face-saving formula for the next crisis: “… the Government is confronted with the certainty, now that the illusions about a liberalisation of America’s trade policy have finally been dispelled, that a Socialist experiment confined only to this country is bound to fail” (February 8th, 1947). So the “New Statesman,” shedding one illusion, grasps at another equally absurd. It proposes that Britain cut adrift from trade and financial ties with U.S.A. and collaborate instead “with other countries which are experimenting with planned economies.” If it is a fallacy, as it certainly is, that a Labour Government can apply Socialist plans to capitalism, common sense should make it clear that you do not escape from the dilemma by linking up with other countries in which similar governments are trying to perform the same impossible feat. Capitalist crises know no frontiers, and Labour Governments here and elsewhere will no more escape the next crisis than they did the “economic blizzard” that blew down the British Labour Government in 1931 and simultaneously toppled over the Labour Government in Australia.

For the world’s workers there is no escape from the problems and crises caused by capitalism except by introducing Socialism.

Delay in publication (1947)

From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like other periodicals, the Socialist Standard was barred from being published on the usual date through the suspension order issued by the Government during the fuel crisis.

The consequent delay was aggravated by continuing difficulties arising out of the stoppage of power. Readers will appreciate that the delay has been unavoidable. 

Nationalisation news (1947)

From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Cheques sent in bundles by the Bank of England to the clearing house are now tied with red tape instead of white.” (Daily Express, 13/1/47)

The Gravesend by-election by Eye Witness (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour victory in this hotly-contested by-election—we were told at almost every meeting that the eyes of the world were on Gravesend— must have been a surprise to the Tories. They believed that the discontent of the masses with their living conditions would assure them of victory; but two things the Tories forgot: first, that the worker’s have a memory which they sometimes use and secondly, that the Labour Party are at least their equal at pulling stunts out of the bag.

The main issue of the election was “Which party can better administer Capitalism, the Labour Party or the Conservatives?” Througout the campaign, the question of Socialism—the abolition of private ownership of the means of life and the consequent ending of wage-labour and capital—was mentioned by neither Party.

It is true, of course, that Sir Richard Acland, the Labour candidate, mentioned the word “Socialism,” and when reaching rhetorical heights claimed that the mines and the Bank of England were “ours,” but he never once referred to the fact that the previous private owners were given State-bonds in exchange for their company shares, and that, in consequence, they are still drawing their profits in the form of interest.

For Acland, as for other Lahour Party members, Socialism means the nationalisation of the key industries. Thus he was able to argue that “Socialism” would enable the village shop-keeper and the small, businesses to operate as they do now. He did not point out to his audiences that Socialism is a system of society fundamentally different from Capitalism; that, whereas under Capitalism goods are produced to be exchanged (sold) at a profit, they will, under Socialism, be produced solely for use. He did NOT point out that Socialism means the end of all exchange, including the exchange of the workers’ labour-power for wages.

It is not surprising, therefore, that there was in this election nothing fundamentally different between the policy of the Labour Party and the Tories. Even Anthony Eden did not speak in opposition to nationalisation—what he did say was that “before further nationalisation is tried, we should first see how the nationalised industries work.”

The bulk of the Tory attack was concentrated on the administrative blunders of the Labour Party, the lack of “leadership and foresight” by the government. Acland’s reply was that the Labour Parly had done a better job of administration after this war than the Tories did after the last.

On the question of controls the difference between the Parties was more apparent than real. The Labour Party stood for the retention of controls ; the Tories for ending those which are “irritable without being really useful,” but for retaining those judged necessary.

As stated in the first paragraph, the Tories perhaps underestimated the importance of the workers’ memories. At every Labour Party meeting the unemployment figures between the wars were hammered home and blame for them rivetted on the Conservatives. It was amusing to hear how the Labour Party speakers blamed world conditions for the present shortages of foodstuffs reaching the workers’ tables, but ignored these same world conditions as the main cause of unemployment between the wars. They even proudly claimed to he responsible for the present-day relatively low unemployment figures. They boosted the export drive, but they did not tell their audiences what is going to happen when the export drives, so madly indulged in now by Britain, America, Canada, etc., etc., have glutted the world’s markets and when, in consequence, goods produced cannot he sold. That time is fast approaching.

The Labour Party flattered the electors by telling them that they were intelligent people and able to use their reason in deciding which party to support. And yet they did not shrink from making the biggest emotional appeal either party attempted. With about 3,000 present at a meeting, lights were put out and a miners’ choir, complete with helmets and little lights shining, entered the hall from the rear, walking in single file and singing as they came. The applause was tremendous, as it was after each hymn and song rendered by the choir in the darkened hall. Sympathy of other workers for the miners had been won and, in the speeches which followed, the audience was told that every Tory vote would be a smack in the face for those miners. As an emotional appeal this was terrific and worth many votes to the Labour Party. The Tory stunt of carrying around a potato, dressed in Conservative colours, was puny in comparison.

Lastly it need hardly he said that the Communist Party had its finger in the pie. They said, in a leaflet, that if the Tories got back the queues at the labour exchange would be 1,000 times worse than before the war. And we have only 45,000,000 population in Britain ! They’ve been so busy changing policies and organising stunts of one kind and another that they cannot be expected to remember that unemployment reached anything from one to two millions before the war. In brief, the Communists came out strongly in favour of the Labour candidate.

Readers will see, therefore, that the main issues of the much discussed Gravesend By-Election were concerned with the administration of Capitalism. Time will show that Capitalism, notwithstanding the Party in power, means endless poverty for the masses.

C.A.

Paradise what? (1986)

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

". . . having lunch with Bryan Cogwill at Thames Television . . .  he suggested that 1 might write a story covering the period in England since the war . . ." In these resplendency comfortable words John Mortimer describes the genesis of his novel Paradise Postponed. He is — who doesn't know — a barrister, author, playwright and wit. in fact a personality, which is why he can have lunch with important people in television. His fame as the TV adaptor of Brideshead Revisited and as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey foretold a wide interest in Paradise Postponed. The critics, it seemed certain, would have to take the book very seriously if all the money spent on it were not to be wasted. But need so many of them, perhaps searching for an elusive deeper meaning, have acclaimed it as a perceptive lament for the fine hopes nurtured by successive Labour governments since the war? Fiction, after all. must not lose all touch with reality.

Like any sensible novelist writing for television. Mortimer divides his characters starkly into goodies and baddies. Prominent among the goodies is Simeon Simcox. a stupid, cliche-dependent clergyman who punctiliously chases every possible left wing reformist issue, driving his bishop mad with letters about nuclear disarmament, lower rents for rural proletariats and the like. Prime among the baddies is Leslie Titmuss. who claws a determined way from village odd-job boy down to Thatcherite cabinet minister. These caricatures are surrounded by predictable cardboard characters — the village doctor who kids himself he is all forthright human feeling but who is really a prejudiced and irritating buffoon; the local squire who wearily longs for life to be like one long chivalrous game of pre-1914 cricket with everyone accepting their place in the batting order. There is a supporting cast of drudges who minister to the needs of the local bigwigs.

Of course this isn't Paradise and is not meant to be. Mortimer's village is moving, as the cynics take over from the simpletons and the property developers desecrate the High Street, in the opposite direction. But did Paradise ever exist? Was it ever likely to. or planned to? Was it really postponed to some time in the future? Will we ever get there, with the vicar and the squire and the village drudges?

To be sure, a vision not far short of a sort of Paradise was being offered as the future when the post-war Labour government came to power under Clement Attlee ("and a little mouse shall lead them" disloyally noted Attlee's first Chancellor Hugh Dalton, which was one of his many misjudgements. There were misjudgements on the other side too: "I feel that my entrails have been pulled right out of me" was the effect of the election on Tory Chief Whip James Stuart). What actually happened was far from paradisical. The British working class were told, again and again, that they were in an economic and financial crisis of unusual severity. In truth it was the British capitalist class who were in

that crisis — which had not been accounted for in the Labour government's assumptions about how they would run things:

We all thought that this post-war period was going to be easier than it has. in fact, turned out to be. in the economic sphere: and we have been trying to deal with it ever since by a series of temporary expedients which have led to a series of crises as each expedient became exhausted.

wailed Chancellor Stafford Cripps on the day he imposed another temporary expedient — the devaluation of the pound. "We work", the government informed the working class, "or want", meaning work much harder for less real wages. In any case people whose entire lives were shaped by their awareness that if they couldn't find an employer to buy their labour power they would suffer the harshest poverty hardly needed reminding of their reliance on working for their living. What the Labour government intended was to abate the crisis by imposing more intense exploitation of the workers but the little mouse and his ministers knew better than to put it that way. After all some of them, while this was going on, continued to describe themselves as socialists.

Paradise was also supposed to have a corner reserved for more amicable relations with the Stalinist rulers in Moscow, whose massive atrocities had been temporarily blanketed during the war by official propaganda. "Left can speak to left in comradeship and confidence" was how it was put by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, whose comradeship was not something to be lightly accepted by the nervous. Perhaps that government might have decided, as others have done, on an alliance with the robbers and murderers in Stalin's Kremlin. But there were solid reasons, all to do with protecting and promoting the interests of the British ruling class in world capitalism, for choosing an alliance with the bandits and killers in Washington instead. So they went, wholeheartedly, into the Korean war and into many campaigns against nationalist guerrillas in what were still then British colonies. Or rather we — the working class went in. Labour ministers played their part in those conflicts by signing alliances, lengthening the term of conscription and delivering speeches telling us that the austerity and repression would have to continue — that Paradise had indeed been postponed.

There were many other aspects to that government which Simeon Simcox did not seem to be aware of. He saw nothing inconsistent in marching with CND while supporting the Labour Party, whose consistent policy on nuclear weapons has been far from disarmament. From the beginning the Attlee government gave their blessing to the atomising of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, let it be remembered, are the only occasions so far when the bomb has been used on living human beings. Anxious that the British capitalist class should hold some sway on the ruthless international scene, they launched the programme to make a hydrogen bomb in this country and to set up a chain of nuclear power stations.

When they were eventually removed from office, having convinced many workers that socialism was a crackpot theory which really meant even more austerity in their lives than usual, society in Britain was still split into two classes who were continually at war with each other. One — the capitalist, ruling, class had kept their position of riches and privilege and power, their sumptuous homes, their secure and parasitical life style. The other — the working, exploited, class — still lived in degradation, still struggled in the mire of disadvantage, in their slum homes, the stresses of their poverty.

It was easy for disgruntled Labourites like Simcox (and Mortimer?) to write all this off as a betrayal of the faith. If only Attlee had not been Prime Minister, or Dalton had been Foreign Secretary, if only Cripps had lived or Morrison had died. . . . None of this, they consoled themselves in cheerless, abandoned committee rooms after their defeat, need have happened. Never mind, it was only a postponement of Paradise; there was that young Harold Wilson who showed such promise and who was a true left-winger. Of course in his time Wilson provoked the same anguish, the same doubts, the same excuses, the same stubborn defence of the party, right or wrong. It was the same with Wilson's successor Callaghan, whose government went down in bitter memories of breaking the firemen's strike, of fighting the workers in hospitals and local authorities. Unemployment had doubled and Denis Healey at the Exchequer had done much of the groundwork for Thatcher's policy of reacting to the gathering slump with cuts in expenditure.

By 1979 the argument that there was something accidental and avoidable about Labour's record in government had been worn out by reality. Labour supporters were suffering a discomfort which they could have eliminated by simply recognising the obvious fact that the crises which all governments face have nothing to do with the personnel of those governments. They are rooted in the very nature of capitalism, in the fact that the system is founded on the class ownership of everything that is used to produce and distribute wealth. From this the rest follows — class conflict, poverty amid plenty, exploitation. war. . . .

It is incorrect to argue that it all went wrong for the Labour governments; in truth it all went right. They administered capitalism just as it demands to be — in the interests of the minority class of social parasites and against the interests of the majority class of workers and producers. If they get power once more it will happen again for them — the exposure, the disillusionment, the despair. This may give someone the idea of writing another blockbusting, silly book which will enrich them but is very bad for the rest of us. And it is all because workers persist in voting for Paradise rather than taking over the Earth.

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

Steve Coleman's also wrote about John Mortimer's Paradise Postponed in the Between the Lines column in the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard.

So, this is Social Security (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

"During the last 50 years a comprehensive scheme of national insurance has been gradually developed to become the central feature of our system of social security.” These were the words of the then Minister of Pensions and National Insurance Richard Wood, in a forward to a government booklet: Everybody’s Guide To National Insurance, May, 1964. If this statement does anything at all, it underlines capitalism’s continuing, indeed developing, need for all sorts of compulsory insurance provisions for its working population.

We have come a long way since the days of Lloyd George and his five shilling pension proposals, and the very limited dole and "panel” medicine of the inter-war years. To even these comparatively modest measures, there were always the objectors who thought “the country could not afford it,” but it was Lloyd George himself who shoved his opponents contemptuously aside with the observation that paying a pension was cheaper than maintaining old people in work-houses. And this has been the sort of criterion which has guided the reformers ever since; despite the professed humanitarianism of the Labour Party, their spokesman Jim Griffiths was under no illusion about the aims of national insurance when he commended his sweeping post-war proposals to the Commons on February 6, 1946:

The loss to the Nation caused by preventive illness alone is appalling, for it has been estimated at £300 millions a year, equal to 3/5ths of the cost of the scheme in its initial year. To those who fear we cannot afford this scheme, I would advise them to ask themselves if we can afford to go on without it. 

Under this National Insurance Bill, a wide range of “benefits” was enacted based to a large extent on the old Beveridge proposals, and estimated to cost some £452 millions in 1949 and £496 millions in 1955. Contributions were to range from 2/2d. to 4/7d. a week from workers, and their employers were to make weekly contributions ranging from l/9d. to 3/10d. per employee. There was also to be a grant from the Exchequer, and all of this money was to be pooled in the National Insurance Fund, to which would be charged the costs of benefits and administration.

This arrangement has remained largely unaltered over the years, but it is nonsense to suggest, as some Labourites and others were doing then, that the scheme would abolish poverty. Prime Minister Attlee claimed in a Commons speech (February 7, 1946) that “the Bill would help to maintain the high standard of purchasing power among the masses of the people.” But just take a look at some of the benefit rates then, and see if you agree with him: — 

Unemployment or sickness               26/-per week (£2 married couple)

Pension  . . .   . . .                             26/-per week (£2 married couple)

100 per cent Disability Pay                45/-per week 

Nat. Assistance (ordinary) . . .            50/-per week

    for man and wife (begun 1948)      65/- per week

Incidentally, an interesting and pertinent comment is made on the scheme by M. Penelope Hall in her book The Social Services of Modern England. She says:

One drastic modification in the Beveridge Plan was made at the start. Benefits have never been paid at subsistence level. Beveridge regarded this modification to his scheme as disastrous. 

In the 20 years since 1946, government cost estimates have been sadly put out by continuously rising prices and increases in the cost of living, so that various amending Acts have had to be passed, stepping up the benefits and the contribution rates. By 1959, for example, unemployment, sickness and pension rates all stood at 50/- per week single, while National Assistance was at 76/- (normal) and 96/- (special) for a man and wife. This was the year, you may recall, that the Tories were pointing with pride to their achievements in this field, ignoring such uncomfortable facts as 1¾ million people having to apply for National Assistance—about 1.4 millions of them old age pensioners.

But even the Conservatives, jubilant at their 1959 election victory, could not pretend that provisions were adequate, even by the miserable standards that capitalist politicians set, and not long after that their graduated pensions scheme was introduced, which meant larger contributions from those earning over £9 a week, to secure proportional payment in addition to a flat-rate pension. Under such an arrangement, you would get an extra sixpence a week added to your flat-rate pension for every £7 10s. paid in, and when you consider the piffling extent of these changes, you might wonder what all the song and dance was about. Certainly there was nothing from the workers’ point of view, although from the Government’s angle the new scheme gave the pension system some flexibility, and so no doubt was intended to keep down the extra cost.

The whole question of National Insurance was tossed about by the main parties at the 1964 election, and it was becoming apparent anyway that an overhaul was due in the system of payments and contributions. For example, while there was not the heavy and persistent unemployment of the twenties and thirties, there was the question of “labour mobility” and the tiding over of unemployed workers when retraining for new jobs, following the decline of some of the older industries. So the Labour Government’s measures now include compulsory compensation payments to any worker made redundant after a minimum of two years at the same job.

In the government’s social security arrangements, it is interesting that they have retained essentially unchanged the graduated pension scheme of which they had been so scornful when the Tories introduced it. In addition, there is the “Earnings-Related Short-Term Benefits Scheme” which just means that there will be a flat-rate sickness and unemployment benefit of £4 a week minimum, plus further payments, depending on your average weekly earnings between £9 and £30 a week. Here again we see the pressure of present-day conditions in the government’s attempts to offload at least some of the burden of the rising cost of benefits from the central Exchequer. Quite clearly also, the 1946 scales and payment methods no longer suffice to keep workers ticking over in sickness or between jobs, and once more the modern emphasis is on “flexibility”. It could be that this is something we shall see more of in the future, what with the growth of new industries and the decline of the old, to say nothing of plain old-fashioned unemployment because of trade crises.

And what other changes have there been recently? Oh yes, the old Ministry of Pensions and Njational Insurance has been replaced by the brand new “Ministry of Social Security” (surely a contradiction in terms) with responsibility for all the schemes which were formerly administered separately, such as National Assistance. These particular payments will be known as “supplementary benefits” and are a fitting reminder of the way in which reformers' plans can misfire. In 1953, Lord Beveridge admitted that he and the experts had originally expected National Assistance payments to be on a small scale only and to gradually diminish. But, in fact, the very opposite has' happened, and the government has resigned itself to the fact by allowing for increased rates of benefit when the new arrangements start in the autumn.

What all these measures add up to is merely the organisation of 1966 poverty by 1966 methods, and the usual attempts to maintain the workforce at the appropriate standards of health and efficiency to keep capitalism’s production and profits going. It has been the irritating habit of Labourites to claim that these Acts bring dignity to workers’ lives, but their very existence is an indication of the essential indignity of working class life. And despite the increasing intricacy of state insurance and widening of its scope, there are many who stay stubbornly poor even by “Supplementary Benefits” standards. Like the 15,000 families admitted by Assistance Board Chairman Lord Runcorn to be “living on assistance at the moment, at an income well below their needs, because allowances are based on the best estimate that can be made of a man’s future earnings.” Or like “those whose take-home pay is less than they need by assistance standards, although in full employment.”

Eddie Critchfield

Tories in search of a policy (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conferences of the major political parties are convenient and useful affairs. Delegates make speechlets on the ”Platform’s” proposals without really affecting them in any way. Other delegates politely listen. On occasions they even clap or cheer these speechlets. Such a social gathering helps to generate a feeling of amity and good-fellowship suggestive of the atmosphere of the Annual Outing or “Beano.” For the party leaders it is an admirable sounding-board by which to magnify their personal influence over their followers. It also enables them to indulge in those spell-binding speeches which do so much to rekindle the fires of their supporters’ political enthusiasm. Fires, which often tend between one Conference and another to burn dangerously low.

This, of course, really covers the water front of the Brighton Conservative Conference. Nevertheless, incidentals arising from it might paint a moral or adorn a tale.

Bernard Shaw’s “A Black Girl in search of God” has nothing on a Tory Party in search of a Policy. In the past such mundane things as detailed policies have rarely troubled them. Maintenance of Law and Order ; Preservation, of Our Glorious Empire; and an occasional red-herring like Tariff Reform have been considered ample for securing votes. With these and other nebulous promises they successfully moved the Electorate. Neither can they claim that the Electorate have been unduly fickle or faithless. Apart from two short and not highly significant breaks of the 1924 and 1929 Labour Governments the Tories enjoyed political power for eighteen years. Forty-odd years of Labour Party “Nationalisation” propaganda, among other things, provided some useful spade-work for digging a hole round the Conservative castle. It was through this hole that the Tory majority finally disappeared. The working class at length decided to give “Labour” a chance at running things.

The need of finding a rival policy to attract votes from the Labour Party has caused consternation in the Conservative ranks. Last year, at Blackpool, they began their search for one. This year’s Conference has shown it is not to be found in Brighton. To be restored as the “rightful claimants” of political power by the Tories time-honoured expedient of holding a successful General Election Inquest on the Labour Government's failures, appears the only hope.

Unfortunately for the Tories their failure to find some concrete alternative to the Labour Party programme lies deeper than any apparent inability to formulate one. The need of British Monopoly Capitalism compels the State to become more and more an active partner in its affairs, and so unify the diverse elements in accordance with the requirements of capitalism as an economic unit. This leads to that rigorous uniformity of political measures which is so marked a feature of modern capitalist administration. The main task of alternative Government is in essentials to supplement and extend what the last Government began.

Thus it can be said of any real alternative policies for running Capitalism what a geological text book once said of “Snakes in Iceland”—”there are none.” That is why, to use an Irishism, the more the Tories are different from the Labour Party the more do they seem the same thing—only even more so.

The Tories claimed that their Charter was “a bold advance in political and social affairs.” The merest cursory glance shows it to be a retreat into the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of vapid platitudes and cloudy generalisations. Mr. Eden once again took on the role of drummer-boy for the Tory, Brave New World. Although sounding the tocsin valiantly he could produce nothing more than The Need of Real Leadership : a Properly Balanced Budget; More Production, and Streamlined Controls. All of which led the Manchester Guardian (3/10/47) to say: “The seven points of the Charter would have been subscribed with equal fervour by most members of the Labour Party.”

Even the Tory Daily Telegraph could only lamely underscore Mr. Eden’s speech by saying that “in the first essentials of Government the Conservatives could provide better men.” It also significantly commented : “an alternative Government can be found which will either do other and better things—or the same things better.” This suggests that the Conservative Campaign will boil down in essentials to the exhortation: “Play the game you Labour cads. It’s our turn to bat.”

Because political parties exist for the requirements of Capitalism as a whole the Tories could not afford to indulge in sterile controversy about the alleged principles of Nationalisation. The Telegraph simply stated :—”Nationalisation had gone far. enough.” The mines will not, then, be denationalised in the event of a Tory Government. Likewise no indication was given that Railways, Electricity or Gas would be returned to Private Enterprise or, more correctly, Private Monopoly. Neither have they suggested that shareholders in the Bank of England or stockholders in Cables and Wireless should yield up good Government scrip signed by a Treasury official for something signed by a company director. As for the suggestion of denationalising the Steel Industry time will come for that when the Labour Government has finally made up its own mind on the matter of nationalising it.

Such a decision to preserve the already accomplished projects of the’ Labour Party implies, no reversal of the economic traditions of the British Capitalist Class. Whether it bo the Post Office, the B.B.C., Municipal Gas or Electricity, Governments in the past have never hesitated to take them from private control where it has been thought necessary for the interests of the Capitalist Class as a whole. If further evidence was needed there is Mr. MacMillan’s book, “The Next Five Years,” suggesting that Armaments, Transport, some forms of Insurance, and Electricity, were suitable for State Control. Mr. Churchill in the 1918 Election also urged a measure of State Control over all monopolies, especially Transport and Power, a fact which the adroit Mr. Morrison reminded them of in the House of Commons Debate on The Address. (Times, 21/11/46.)

Even the Tory cry of “Give Private Enterprise a chance” merely echoes the Labour Party’s oft repeated claim of leaving, after Nationalisation schemes had been carried through, eighty per cent. of Industry in Private Control. Mr. Morrison informed his own electors at Lewisham that Nationalisation must be carried through where necessary in the interests of efficiency, but most of Industry should remain private and prosperously enterprising. (The Economist, 10/5/47.)

The Tories also propose to retain Controls even, to the point of “streamlining them.” Mr. Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, has also announced : “Controls will be streamlined.” (Evening News, 7/10/47.)

Even that last stronghold of Toryism—Imperial Preferences—has fallen. It has been taken in the rear by that doughty “Empire Free Trade” Crusader, Mr. Bevin. Perhaps the bitterest quarrel that may yet ensue between “Labour” and Tory may be over who are “the true breed” of our great Imperial Traditions. Mr. Eden taunted the Labour Party with the fact that they are mere recruits who have only recently begun to think imperially. (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47.) The Daily Herald (3/10/17) stung to the quick of its Imperial pride, retorted that “unlike the Tories who have only thought Imperially, the Labour Party acted Imperially.”

The leading article of the same issue told its readers that the Tories had put forward no practical measures beyond those already put in force by the Labour Government. Indeed its general tenor was to the effect that the Conservative proposal really supported what the Labour Government were doing. It is surely a strange logic by which to justify its own policy. How often in the past have Labour Party spokesmen condemned the Tory Party as the Party of Wealth and Privilege?

It now finds that acceptance by the “wealthy” and “privileged” of their main planks is a source of comfort and even congratulation. For the honest and humble “Labour” stalwart the fact that his party shares so much common political ground with ”The Traditional Enemies” of the working-class should be a source of embarrassment and shame.

There is, of course, the vexed problem of rival bidding for working class votes. While the Tories may not want to offer more inducements than their Labour Party rivals they cannot make it seem that they are offering less. In a class system of exploitation based on private property ownership of the means of living they propound the tragic jest of a nation-wide community of property owners. Mr. Eden in his opening speech (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47) could offer no more than some future vague ownership of largely mythical houses for the working class, and the dangerous expedient of Co-partnership and Profit Sharing.

Ownership by workers of their habitation does not mean ownership of the means of living. It is only ownership of mills, factories, railways, raw materials, etc., which constitute that. These things are the monopoly of a privileged class and provide the sole means which enable them to live on the unpaid labour of the workers. This class privilege will remain as long as Capitalism endures.

Co-partnership is equally a tasteless joke. There can be no partnership between owners of the instruments of wealth production and non-owners. Evidently the Conservatives view it as a means to stimulate greater productive activity from the workers. But, as The Economist (12/10/46) in dealing with the Tory pamphlet on the subject said, “There is nothing to show that such schemes would be more successful in the future or as a means to incentive for greater production.” The Economist even agreed that Co-partnership as it stands “is an empty mockery.” It will, of course, remain an empty mockery under whatever form it appears. They commented that the Tories had much to learn about Industrial Psychology. They even suggested “Sir Stafford Cripps knew a lot more about how to get increased output from the workers.” Recent events might -suggest how right they were.

As befits a great leader, Mr. Churchill repeated his Blackpool performance by absenting himself from the three days’ Conference proceedings. The old gentleman nevertheless turned up as usual on the Saturday afternoon. The delegates then enjoyed a rare display of oratorical fireworks. So a good time was had by all.

Mr. Churchill, as an accomplished political quack of long standing, had no difficulty in showing to the satisfaction of those present, that the famous “Tory blue powders” were superior in every way to the Labour Party’s “pink pills.”

According to an American authority on the subject the rate of output of suckers is one per minute. Undoubtedly if increased production could be applied here it would greatly assist the Tory “Confidence men” to pull off their political “Three Card Trick” once again.

It has been suggested in what may be well informed quarters that an early Conservative election victory might in the long run prove disastrous for them. The return of either a Tory or Labour Government will certainly prove disastrous for the real interests of the working-class; both in the long run—or short run.

Ted Wilmott

Postal censorship—An Old and Respected English Custom (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The opinion of most people on the practice of opening letters in the post would probably be that it is a nasty foreign habit, suitable to Totalitarian Russia, but out of place in a democratic State. Perhaps some such attitude of mind influenced the Financial Editor of the Manchester Guardian to write the following.

“The decision to search letters, leaving this country for currency notes, securities, and other valuables, will come as a profound shock to the public …. It is a necessary evil in the present situation of the country, but nothing can make postal censorship in peace-time anything else than an abomination.” (Manchester Guardian, 24/9/47.)

In truth all governments, ever since the Post Office was first formed, have interfered to some extent with the “secrecy of the post” ; in war always and in peace sometimes, and not always within the powers granted by law.

The Labour Daily Herald, reporting the new policy, seems to have felt somewhat ill-at cease about it, and sought re-assurance in the thought that only a small number would be affected.

“In any case only letters selected at random will be opened or X-rayed—there is no question of censorship or opening all overseas mail.” (Daily Herald, 24/9/47.)

Even this comfort was removed a few days later when a Post Office official told the Evening Standard (24/9/47) :

“We shall gradually increase the percentage of mail to be examined.”

How extensive the practice can become was shown in connection with the opening of letters believed to relate to lotteries. In 1932 100,000 letters relating to Irish Sweepstakes were seized, and another 250,000 relating to other lotteries.

Labour M.P.’s who in the past have protested against the opening of letters can see what their policy of trying to subject capitalism to controls leads to. Labour M.P.’s were prominent among those who protested against the seizure, in 1929, of the manuscript of poems by the late D. H. Lawrence. On that occasion it came out that the poems (regarded by the Home Scretary as indecent) were discovered accidentally in a routine examination of book packets to find out if letters had been enclosed, this making the packets liable to letter rates.

The excuse that the number of letters opened under an order of the Home Secretary (apart from Sweepstake letters) is very small has often been used. It was put forward in the secret report of a Committee appointed by the House of Lords in 1844 arising out of the protest made by the Italian refugee, Joseph Mazzini, that his correspondence was opened and the contents conveyed to foreign governments.. As their Lordship’s report had it:

“the issue of six or seven warrants upon a circulation of 220 million of letters cannot be regarded as materially interfering with the sanctity of private correspondence, which, with these exceptions, there is not the slightest ground to believe has been ever invaded.”

The Report also mentioned the Committee’s interesting discovery that “for a long period of time, and under many successive administrators,” it had been the established practice of the Foreign Office to open and read all the correspondence of foreign ambassadors in this country before forwarding it on. This had been done without even legal authority, so the Postmaster General discontinued it in 1844.

Earlier still, when Sir Robert Walpole was Prime Minister (1721-1742), the government kept its own private organisation at the Post Office, ostensibly to keep an eye on foreign correspondence but additionally to open the letters of its political opponents, including M.P.’s. The M.P. ‘s were incensed about this. The opening of other people’s letters they could tolerate but it was not playing the game to open their own. Horace Walpole, remembering what his father did, always assumed that his letters would be opened by the Postmaster-General in a later government, and took elaborate precautions to circumvent it.

That is the kind of thing that still goes on wholesale in the modern dictatorships, where the secret police are a main instrument of government. It is true this is not what the Labour government is doing, but we note that Labour M.P.’s who used to protest so vigorously when Conservative governments opened letters in the post are silent now.

P. S.

Press Cuttings (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Son of Matteotti

“The municipal elections due to take place next Sunday have been marked by violence towards those left-wing candidates who are insisting on a Socialist line independent of Communist policy. Signer Matteotti, son of the man who died in anti-Fascist resistance during the Mussolini regime and who still vehemently insists on a policy opposing Communism, has had two meetings this week broken up by violence, his car burned and stones thrown at platform speakers.” (Rome Correspondent of the Times, 10/10/47.)

* * *

The Labour Party and Taxation

“We hold that indirect taxation on commodities, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited to luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially desirable that the consumption should be actually discouraged.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.19.)

“Mr. J. W. Belcher, £l,500-a-year Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, said last: night: ‘When the price of cigarettes is doubled it makes far more difference to the £5-a-week man than it does, to me. The tobacco tax falls hardest on those who can least afford to pay it.'”—(Daily Express, 10/10/47.)

* * *

The United Nations Can Agree

“Lest it be thought, however, that the United Nations is incapable of making quick and lasting decisions, it should be reported that the Legal Committee yesterday settled something in five minutes that the League of Nations abandoned after ten years’ fruitless argument. It adopted a flag for the United Nations and left it to the Secretary General, Mr. Lie, to decide its dimensions and its code of courtesy. It is to be a white globe on a field of blue. And there is no truth at all in the report that the Yugoslavs have suggested it should bear the motto ‘Manners Makyth Man.”—(Manchester Guardian, 9/10/47.)

* * *

The Labour Party and the Factory Acts

“The amendment and consolidation of the Factories and Workshops Acts, with their extension to all employed persons and the restriction of the working week to not more than 48 hours, is long overdue . . .” (“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.6.)

“Night work in the factories for girls of 18 and youths of 16 will be legal after September 22.

“And anyone over 16 may work more than 48 hours a week—but not for two weeks running.

“These amendments to general conditions were announced last night as part of the staggered hours plan which will spread the electricity load.

“After September 22 a district inspector of factories can. permit an earlier start or later finish for day work.

“The starting and finishing hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. can be extended to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. for those under 16.”—(Daily Mail, 2/9/47.)

* * *

“More of Everything for Everybody”

”We have greatly increased our capacity to produce more things during this war. We must use the skill of our people and our great productive resources to make more of everything for everybody in times of peace.”—(From “Your Future—After Victory—What Then?” Published by Labour Party, June, 1944.)

”What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound onward in its aggregate production. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more strenuous toil . . . What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganisation of the nation’s industry . . . on the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production; the equitable shaving of the proceeds among all who participate in any capacity and only among these . . .”—(”Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12-13.)

* * *

Sir John Boyd Orr on Food and Capitalism

“Warning the United Nations Economic Committee, at Lake Success yesterday, that more people will die through the food shortage in Europe and Asia in the next 12 months than were killed in any year of the war, Sir John Boyd Orr declared :

” ‘This presents an opportunity to the nations, assembled here to concentrate less on the political problems which engender misunderstanding and conflict, and concentrate more on the concrete problems on which there can be no misunderstanding.’

“He pointed out that the General Assembly agenda contained no reference to food and economic difficulties, and stressed that the food situation in Asia was just as bad as in Europe.

“Food production would need to be increased by 110 per cent, in the next 25 years to provide sufficient for the world’s population.”—(Daily Herald, 7/10/47.)

* * *

“Meanwhile, in the producer countries, the paradox of the years between the wars shows signs of being repeated. While people elsewhere face starvation, farmers tremble at the prospects of ruin—not because they cannot produce the food the hungry peoples need, but because they can produce more than the peoples can buy . . .

“At one and the same time we have these problems : How to get maximum production to salvage the world from present hunger and how to deal with unmarketable surpluses which will again bring ruin and misery to millions of land-workers and endanger the stability of the whole economic system.

“For failure will mean that the existing economic system cannot carry the burden of the material wealth which modern science can produce.”—(Sir John Boyd-Orr, News Chronicle, 1/8/47)

* * *

Labour Party and Conscription

“The Labour Party declares emphatically against any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.11.)

* * *

Labour Government and Wages

” ‘As a trade union official, if I were, faced with the choice of keeping the Labour Government in office or a reduction in wages, I would advocate a reduction of wages,’ said Mr. Sam Watson, general secretary of the Durham area of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“He was speaking at a week-end school of the National Council of Labour Colleges at Morecambe.

”‘Unless we can lift production, increased wages are simply a means of increasing the dangers of inflation and rising prices,’ he said.”—(Daily Herald, 6/10/47.)

* * *

Housing under the Swedish Labour Government

”Many tourists, observed Mr. Osborn, have come back believing that the Swedes have everything to tell us about standards of housing and architecture. They are misled by the cleanliness and furnishing taste everywhere displayed. Housing standards in Stockholm are, as in most other European cities, appallingly low. Of the 670,000 people within the city boundaries, 90 per cent. live in flats, and only 7 per cent, in one-family dwellings. More than half the dwellings (51.6 per cent.) have only one room and kitchen or two rooms without kitchen. Another 26.7 per cent. have two rooms and kitchen.”—(Mr. F. J. Osborn, Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association Municipal Journal, 26/9/47.)

Editorial: Labourism Proposes – Capitalism Disposes (1946)

Editorial from the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not among those short-sighted electors who, having helped to elect a Labour Government to power, are now turning in astonished resentment to rend their idol of a year ago. We never had any illusions about Labour government.

Socialism cannot be achieved until there is a majority of socialists and they gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing capitalism. Until then, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers to improve the existing system and administer it differently, the evils of class society, based on the exploitation of the workers, will remain to throttle the progress of the human race. The Labour Party rejected this conception and holds that a Labour government, backed by non-Socialist voters, can administer capitalism on non-capitalist principles and mould it gradually so that in the ultimate a different system will emerge. Outlining his Party’s point of view, Mr. Attlee wrote in "The Labour Party in Perspective" (Gollancz, 1937, p. 138) : “Some future historian will not be able to point to a particular date as that on which the Socialist State was established . . .” That is the Labour Party’s view, but it is wrong. Socialist society is not being gradually introduced by Labour government; it will start when, and only when, a socialist working class comes to power. That will be the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one and later historians will not be in any doubt when it happened.

Sharing Mr. Attlee’s belief, millions of workers, who last year gloried in the Labour electoral triumph, thought that at last they would have a government able to control, improve and gradually to eliminate the capitalist system of society. Never did anyone cherish a more baseless illusion. Having no mandate to introduce Socialism, Mr. Attlee and his Cabinet colleagues have no alternative, even if they desired one, but to administer capitalism. They are riding the tiger and have to go where it takes them.

In the book quoted above Mr. Attlee said “The Labour Party is, of course, opposed to imperialism  . . .” (p.230); but opposed or not, the Labour Government is committed to the maintenance of the British Colonial Empire, to the policy of protecting British “spheres of influence,” to the policy of using military force to keep control over strategic bases, trade routes and foreign territories where vital raw materials are found. British Forces prop up the Greek Monarchy, stand in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere, and British capitalist interests clash in all quarters of the world with the like-minded imperialisms of Russia, U.S.A. and other powers. The Labour Party in opposition dreamed dreams of world brotherhood, but the Labour Government in power must willy-nilly pursue a policy suited to the needs of British capitalism. Thrusting a vastly increased flood of British exports into the markets of the world may look like a friendly act to the British exporter, but it has a more sinister aspect to the rival powers trying to keep or to conquer the same markets for their own exports.

Linked up with the export drive is the Labour Government’s pledge to provide “full employment.” Those who have eyes to see can already glimpse the shape of things to come. More and more workers are being employed on producing goods for export, and we are told there is an unlimited demand for these goods. But what will happen when capitalism lurches into its next inevitable crisis of “over-production ‘? Already we have seen the writing on the wall in the shape of the stock exchange depression in U.S.A. in September. The City editors of the London and New York papers were all at sixes and sevens about the immediate cause and likely duration of the depression but on one thing they nearly all agreed – that the crisis of “over-production ” is bound to come. A typical comment was that of the New York Correspondent of the Observer (8/9/46) —

“Americans generally . . . take it for granted that there will eventually be a crash of some kind to offset the present boom. Their hope is that the crash will be brief …”

Another appeared in the Daily Express (23/9/46) : 

“The Wall Street slump marks the end of the first post-war boom just as the similar break of November, 1919, signalled the world trade depression of 1920-21. That is the view of some of the best brains in the City.”

A world trade crisis is bound to come, and the more the Labour Government succeeds in increasing the dependence of British industry on selling goods abroad, the more certain it will be that the full effect of the crisis will be felt here immediately.

Another example of the way Labour Party policy has swerved away from its early preachings is in the forms taken by nationalisation. A book that was once very popular in Labour circles was "The Case for Socialism", by Mr. Fred Henderson. In it he frankly, faced up to the fact that Socialism involves dispossessing the capitalist class and that it is mere self-deception to suppose that you can both make over their property in the means of production to the community and at the same time give them full compensation for it. “If the nation gave them compensation, in the sense of giving them an equivalent for what it is proposed to take from them, we should fail in our purpose” (p. 20-21). A later, modified view, Mr. Attlee’s, for example, in his "Labour Party in Perspective", was that it would be unfair to expropriate the capitalists gradually, industry by industry, because the first to fall would have a legitimate grievance; also it would be better tactics to give them all “reasonable and just compensation” and then rely on taxation to eliminate the gulf between the capitalist class and the working class.

In practice the capitalists in the nationalised industries are being given what even Cabinet Ministers call “generous” compensation and at the same time Mr. Dalton’s first budget did not increase, but decreased taxation on companies in the form of the Excess Profits Tax. Taxing the rich out of existence may look all right in an election programme, but capitalism will only function if the capitalist has confidence in his ability to make a profit, so the Labour Government has had to safeguard profits and warn the workers against pressing too much for higher wages The rich are still with us in full force and nothing the Labour Government will do will alter it. Mr. Attlee may say “The abolition of classes is fundamental to the Socialist conception of society ” (p. 145) just as the Conservative Party can now give lip service to the same idea – “Mr. Churchill was telling them that England was moving towards a classless society and that the Conservative Party should not just accept the fact but actively promote this historic change” (Mr. D. Eccles, Conservative M.P., Times, 14/10/46) – but capitalism and classes are here to stay until Socialism ends them.

Also on nationalisation of industries, it used to be a Labour Party demand that the workers should be in control. Mr. Attlee ("Socialism for Trade Unionists", 1922) declared that “the general direction . . . will be in the hands of representatives of the workers in the industry in consultation with representatives of the users of the service.” Another Labour writer, Mr. E. E. Hunter, particularly warned against “the danger of national ownership being given over to committees of business experts.” “Democratic control,” he said, was an “essential part of any ideal scheme of nationalisation” ("Socialism at Work", I.L.P., 1921)

Nowhere in the nationalisation schemes now being put into operation will any vestige of these allegedly essential principles be found — they are incompatible with the functioning of capitalism and have had to go.

So one by one the Labour Party’s well-intentioned but ill-conceived schemes for bettering the capitalist system are sacrificed by the Labour Government in office. It could not be otherwise. The idea was that on taking office a Labour Government goes forward with the work of undermining capitalism and encroaching on the powers and wealth of the capitalists. The reality is that on the day a Labour Government takes office to administer capitalism it is forced to turn about arid begin the retreat from its beliefs so that capitalism may be kept running. The Labour voters believe that the Labour Government is in command of the situation. In truth — and doubtless by now even the most obtuse Labour minister begins to realise it — capitalism has the Labour Government in an iron grip. The Labour Government hoped to serve two masters, what they call the policy of serving the interests of all sections of the community. As time goes on and the working class become restive about the non-appearing fruits of labourism the Government will find itself more and more divorced from the workers and from its own pre-election promises.