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.

Have pity on them (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

At times the many-sided interplay of World Affairs presents a confused and complex character that does not permit of ready and facile interpretation. To admit that often we are only wise after the event is not necessarily a confession of a lack of one’s powers of perception or a deficiency in native intelligence.

It may also be that in this process of becoming wise after the event there are some who take longer than most. It may even be that there are others who never become wise about events at all.

Which brings us to Mr. Clynes’ article, “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” (News of the World, l4/9//47.) Mr. Clynes also sketches there what, for him, were apparently the essential features of the 1931 economic crisis. That crisis happened sixteen years ago, a fair period you will agree for cogitation and reflection on what it was all about. After reading Mr. Clynes’ article we can only conclude that sixteen years has not been long enough for him to have become really wise after the event.

Mr. Clynes, who was Home Secretary in the 1929-31 Labour Government, says that during crises he has been behind “closed doors.” He means 10, Downing Street, of course. With such qualifications he offers the newspaper’s readers “a picture of what happens.”

Perhaps the ”negative” of the picture has remained in “the dark-room” of Mr. Clynes’ memory too long. For, to use a slightly technical term, the picture is sadly lacking in definition and detail. Instead of a clear-cut impression of the real political significance of the events produced by and associated with, the 1931 crisis there is merely a confused blur of disconnected incidents and trivial political minutiae. Thus we get a presentation of “day by day Cabinet meetings, of men with white strained faces, going painfully over one scheme after another to meet a frightening situation.” Of strained nerves and tempers. The sudden bitter enmity of life-long friends. A broken-hearted and bewildered Cabinet deserted by their leader, Ramsey MacDonald, and so on. Touching, no doubt, but scarcely enlightening as a piece of political history.

Neither does any word issue from the lips of the chief characters in the picture to indicate in the slightest what the real nature of the Cabinet Crisis was. Indeed, so far as the understanding of events being gathered from what at the time was said, its significance apparently is to be found in what was not said. For Mr. Clynes’ tells us that not only was MacDonald reticent to the Cabinet concerning a visit to him in the early crisis days by the private secretary of King-George V, but, moreover, he refused to disclose to them what had passed between the King and himself at a Buckingham Palace interview. One could comment that MacDonald’s preference for a silent part in “the picture ” was indeed a rare choice for perhaps the most garrulous politician of the age.

In spite of the apparently crucial importance which Mr. Clynes rather obscurely attaches to MacDonald’s silence in the matter of the crisis, we could assure him—if that were needed—that whatever passed between King and Premier in the crisis talk would not have materially affected the nature of the 1931 economic crisis or the main trend of events which resulted from it.

The fact that MacDonald refused to spill the beans on what was said is open to the more charitable suggestion that so far as any concrete proposals about the handling of the crisis was concerned he had no beans to spill. It may even be that he didn’t discuss the crisis with the King at all. After all it is Secret History and our guess might be as good as anybody’s in the matter.

Mr. Clynes does, however, inform us that MacDonald and the Cabinet had agreed on matters which it seemed were regarded as unalterable; although about the question of what these matters were, Mr. Clynes himself is highly reticent. Albeit MacDonald altered the unalterable by the simple device of continuing his Premiership with the aid of the Tories instead of that of the Labour Party.

Mr. Clynes, anxious perhaps to cushion any criticism of his party’s failure to effectively deal with the problems of Capitalism in so far as they affect the workers’ interests, assures us that Ministers are fallible human beings. We, of course, have never said anything to the contrary. To which he further adds a somewhat tearful, spare a kind thought for the poor politician plea, by exhorting us “in our own worry and uncertainty to have Pity on them.”

It would seem that only at Election Times does the cloak of Papal infallibility fall upon the shoulders of political spokesmen. Only then, with much fingering of their political rosaries, do they proclaim with almost divine assurance to the electorate that “They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.” Only then does isome leader take on the role of a political Moses whose mission it is to lead the workers into “The Promised Land.”

It is only when political parties have become the Government of the country that they discover they are liable to be the prey of the mysterious and malignant economic visitations popularly known as “Blizzards,” “Catastrophes” and “Disasters” and for whose coming they assume no responsibility or claim any real control. It is these things which it seems set to nought their good intentions and bring to dust their political programmes and promises. In this manner do “our statesmen” translate the economic contradictions of Capitalism into librettos for the eternal political theme of the struggle between the Forces of Good and The Powers of Darkness.

Mr. Clynes tells us that Ministers “are, perhaps, family men each with domestic worries and as deeply involved as the rest of us in the common disaster which threatens our common citizenship.” No doubt this touching spectacle of the domestic worries of Ministers, such as paying the rent, meeting the milk bill or the uncertainty of the next meal, getting all mixed up with the affairs of State, is a sombre reminder of the price that has to be paid for “Democracy.” Whether the Fascist Dictatorship can be explained by the fact that Hitler was a bachelor up to the last few days of life and presumably had no family responsibilities, might engage the attention of those “psychological gentry” who are always trying to explain social and economic events by processes which have nothing to do with them. Nevertheless both Goebbels and Goering were family men and for that matter, so was Mussolini.

Doubtless, the raising of families by our Ministers is a worthy and human concession to the democratic notions of our age, but what precisely its connection is with the objective cause of the economic crises of Capitalism, Mr. Clynes fails to explain.

Mr. Clynes then tells us that “as the result of an half-an hour’s angry disagreement we were going out into the desert deprived of four-figure salaries, secure positions, the confidence of bewildered supporters and indeed of any political future for which we had painfully given our working lives.” This, indeed, must have been the supreme moment “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” In view of all this it will not perhaps come as a surprise when he informs us that among the varying emotions experienced by some of his colleagues, avarice was one of them.

And if the gentle reader impatiently asks what has all this to do with the political and economic events of the 1931 period, we can only say that it is Mr. Clynes’ article on the crisis and not ours.

Nevertheless Mr. Clynes does make some attempt to more realistically portray how the crisis came to Britain. For instance we are informed that foreign countries’ confidence in Great Britain was shaken—a not altogether unknown phenomenon in this country’s history. As a result of this lack of confidence “shipload after shipload of gold was loaded at the docks and passed overseas.” “At every bank queues of people tried to draw out silver and notes. Business almost stopped.” Again, £10,000,000 in gold was withdrawn and the Bank of England was by an emergency Act relieved of the necessity to pay out gold on demand. To remove any possible misapprehension these shiploads, of gold were not the nest-eggs of the working class becoming an article of export. Neither were the bank queues those of workers trying to draw out their “savings” as a preliminary to departing to sunny climes. The “going off the Gold Standard” in this country was of no vital concern to the workers because they had never been on it. Indeed the only standard the working class have ever been on in the present system is, a “Copper” one and that will remain their money evaluation as a class, whatever financial arrangements the capitalist class come to in times of crisis.

For Mr. Clynes, however, the cessation of the normal functions of The Bank of England indicated that “Britain shivered on the verge of catastrophe”.

To cap it all that other great working class institution, The Stock Exchange, closed down temporarily. However, those other working class institutions, the Labour Exchange and the Public Assistance Committee, were very much open and marked by a continuous and feverish activity.

“Then,” says Mr. Clynes, continuing his crisis theme, “for no apparent reason confidence returned.” “At mid-day Treasury officials felt a degree of terror. By the afternoon speculators were buying instead of selling . . . the tide had turned … a great crisis was weathered.” Such a description of the nature of the crisis strongly suggests a marked affinity with that vague and unaccountable phenomenon called an Act of God.

At a less sensational level we could offer the somewhat more accountable explanation, that the year 1931 was witnessing one of those familiar trade cycles which Capitalism is periodically subject to. Also the fact of going off the Gold Standard was merely an effect—not a cause of the crisis. Capitalists all over the world, faced with glutted markets and unsaleable stocks, were not only anxious to cut their commitments but were demanding gold as the means of payment in any transaction that occurred. Other Capitalists and their financial institutions were busily trying to call in loans, in view of the slump. Faced then, with the catastrophic decline of international trade it was inevit able that the creditors of British Capitalism should seek bullion as the only means for liquidating debts incurred. Thus a heavy drain on the Bank of England’s gold reserves was an automatic consequence of the conditions brought about by general and chronic “overproduction.”

To explain a capitalist crisis of “overproduction” in terms of financial panics and stringency is like attempting to explain Delirium Tremens by the patient’s shudders and shivers. Although Mr. Clynes tells us “that the crisis in money was passed” a few incidental features of the crisis, like nearly 3,000,000 unemployed, economy cuts, falling wages, distressed and devastated areas and the general intensification of poverty, remained for some years. Such crisis events, however, are not the best kind of reminiscences to keep for one’s political old age. Neither perhaps do they constitute the best form of Sunday afternoon reading for the working-class readers of the News of the World.

We have, of course, on other occasions dealt with some of Mr. Clynes economic fallacies, as far back as 1919 and as recently as the June Socialist Standard of this year. Undoubtedly Mr. Clynes’ consistent propaganda in “more production” campaigns has revealed him as an untiring advocate of harder work for other people.

But Capitalism is a profit-motive economy and it is profit anticipation which not only determines how wealth is produced but in the final analysis how much is to be produced. Thus with every increase in wealth-producing efficiency a greater quantity of goods are enabled to be thrown on to the market. Workers’ wages constituting but a fraction of the wealth they produce, it is insufficient to absorb the ever greater amount of the goods turned out by them. In the case of the Capitalists their effective ability to consume the products of labour is fixed by the limits of their personal and physical capacities. Hence a greater portion of their “surpluses” tend to go into greater investments of those industries which turn out productive goods,. The contradiction between the expanding forces of production and the limited class income distribution inherent in Capitalism is thus intensified. It is this which finally leads to glutted markets. Effective demand ceases, or to put it another way, a condition is reached where no purchasers can be found. Profit anticipation then declines or disappears. Production is, then curtailed; plants close down; workers are dismissed and all the familiar conditions of a slump make their appearance.

Thus Mr. Clynes’ sovereign remedies—greater productive output on the part of the worker—for dealing with unemployment and low wages, provide the very means for bringing about in a shorter time those very conditions which he seeks to obviate.

It would appear that Mr. Clynes has been so busy during his life, assisting or seeking to assist in the administration of Capitalism that he has never had time to acquaint himself with a few simple facts about the system he has, helped to run. Thus do “Practical Politics” keep our statesmen, so far as the understanding of this present system is concerned, in a perpetual economic “Egyptian Darkness.”

Should we then include Mr. Clynes among those politicians he asks us “to have pity on?”

Ted Wilmott

How Labour changed (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

1. 1906. 29 trade unionist MPs elected with Liberal support constitute themselves as the parliamentary Labour Party.
2. 1918. The party adopts a new constitution, Clause Four of which reads: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.
3. 1929. An amendment added ‘distribution and exchange’, spelling out that nationalisation (state capitalism), not socialism, was what was envisaged. (Link)
4. 1935. ‘A Labour government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’ (Clement Attlee, Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42).
5. 1945. General election manifesto: ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’
6. 1956. Labour intellectual Anthony Crosland published The Future of Socialism in which he argued that the aim of a more equal distribution of wealth did not require the nationalisation of industry.
7. 1959. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell proposes to abandon Clause Four but this is turned down by the Labour Party conference.
8. 1974. February general election manifesto: ‘It is indeed our intention to (a) bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.
9. 1995. New Clause Four adopted: ‘A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.
10. 2024. ‘Labour is the party of business’ (Starmer). ‘Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.’ (Link )

Labour has failed: give socialism a chance (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing the Chartists understood was the importance, to bring about social change, of first winning control of political power as the power to make and enforce laws. They campaigned for universal suffrage (at least for men) as they rightly saw the vote as the way to political control. Once the workers had the vote, they reasoned, they could use it to send delegates to parliament who would pass laws to improve their social and economic situation.

They weren’t wrong about the need to win political control to bring about social change or about the vote as the way to win such control, but the vote has its limitations. It can’t change the way the capitalist economic system works, based as it is on minority class ownership of the resources society needs to survive and on production for profit.

For over 150 years now, a majority of the electorate in Britain has been made up of workers: those who, excluded from ownership of the means to produce wealth, are forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer for a wage or salary in order to live. From time to time voters have elected Labour governments but, when in office, these have accepted capitalism, only trying to reform it to make things better for workers.

The theory was that a series of successive Labour governments would gradually transform capitalism into a more equal society by extending nationalisation and the welfare state to be paid for by redistributing wealth away from the rich. But what happened was that, instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, capitalism gradually changed Labour, the final result being what we see today under Starmer: a party that proclaims itself the ‘party of business’ and which openly seeks to govern as such by putting profits (and military spending) before people’s needs and welfare.

As Starmer has put it: ‘Our job is to work with businesses to create the best environment that allows them to thrive’ (The Times, 29 January). Businesses ‘thrive’ of course on making profits. All Labour governments have been forced to do this but this is the first one to have openly proclaimed this from the start and to have acted on it so quickly.

Understandably, many who have supported Labour up to now no longer have any faith in it. There are calls to set up a new leftwing party, with Jeremy Corbyn as figurehead. That the Labour Party is a pro-capitalist party is now plain for everyone to see, but it is important to understand why the original Labour project of gradually replacing capitalism with a more equal society prioritising people’s needs failed — and was bound to fail. Otherwise, the same mistake will be made again.

The Green Party is already making this mistake of imagining that capitalism can be gradually transformed by a series of reform measures into something else, in their case into a more environment-friendly society. If they ever get the chance to form the government, they too would fail just as all Labour governments have. So would any new leftwing party if it adopts, as have previous breakaways from Labour, the same gradualist and reformist approach that the Labour Party once did. The plain fact is that capitalism just cannot be made to work in any other way than it does, ie, it puts profits first.

The Labour project didn’t fail because of the betrayal or incompetence or lack of determination of its leaders. It failed because it set itself the impossible task of making the capitalist leopard change its spots. Capitalism is an economic system which functions according to its own economic laws that impose themselves on those who run governments as well as on those who run businesses. Capitalism is driven by the quest for profits. It is a profit-making system that can only run in the interests of the profit-takers and never in the interests of workers whose labour is the source of profits. No government can overcome these laws and all governments have to apply them on pain of provoking an economic downturn.

What is needed is an understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of majority. That understood, it follows that what is needed is a political party based on a different strategy from that pursued by Labour in the past, a party committed not to tinkering with capitalism’s effects but exclusively to abolishing it altogether and replacing it, in one go, by a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of resources with production directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit. In a word, socialism.

Once a majority want this they can use the vote to win political control with a view to carrying out this revolution in the basis of society. Given this, and that currently most people seem to see no alternative to capitalism, the urgent task of socialists is to convince more people that socialism is the way out.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Benn’s road for capitalism (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the run-up to last month’s referendum the man who excited most attention was Anthony Benn. The comments on his prophecies of doom and gloom ranged from stabs in the back from his own colleagues such as Roy Jenkins who said he couldn’t take Benn seriously as an economic minister (Guardian 28th May) to near-hysteria. For example the Daily Mirror (29th May) gave him the Draculean headline of “Minister of Fear”. An “X” certificate will no doubt follow.

The Guardian took the trouble to interview Dracula himself (21st May). The article was headed “Benn’s road to Socialism”. Benn did not define what he meant by Socialism (no Labour politician will do that), he only mentioned the word once. That was almost by accident when he referred to his package of reforms as “British Socialism”.

What concerns Benn is the running of Capitalism. And for those who care to look, it is perfectly obvious that he is determined to run it as efficiently as possible. This means that he is trying to ensure that the workers are exploited as hard as possible — because that is what efficient Capitalism means.

The source of the wealth of the owning class is the amount of unpaid labour that the working class concede to the capitalist class. This may be called robbery. Benn says “I am for more profits…” That is more wealth to the capitalist class. (…)

The rationale behind Benn’s approach is that he can control capitalism by putting into effect his policies. But he plainly admits that it is capitalism that controls the government, and not the other way round. Asked about the best way to use the taxpayers’ money he says:

“The government does not dictate the pace of industrial change. It is forced by events to inter-act with reality”.

Wilson once said the last Labour government was “blown off course”. Benn is saying that there is no course to be blown off in the first place. Capitalism acts, and the government reacts.

[From 'Benn's Road for Capitalism' by Ronnie Warrington, Socialist Standard, July 1975]

The Political Background 1904-74 (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed there have been nineteen general elections in which the working class have testified to their faith that it is possible to reform capitalism in the interests of the majority and that the differences between politicians are real.

This conception can be lived with only by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. The last seventy years is littered with broken promises and declarations. Lloyd George urging men into the trenches with his picture of them returning to Homes fit for Heroes; Jimmy Thomas burbling that he had “the complete cure” for unemployment (1930, just before the number out of work climbed to an all-time high); Wilson’s “new age” of technology. And the numerous pledges to provide us all with a rising standard of living.

The SPGB came into existence about the same time as the Labour Party. In the 1906 election of a Liberal government, there were 52 MPs from the new Labour Party, claiming to represent trade-union interests but promising to flower into a full-blown reformist party:

. . . It will require all our collective efforts to break down the forces of privilege and monopoly that have so long dominated the political life of this country.

That reads like Harold Wilson, promising to clean things up in 1974; in fact it is Arthur Henderson, celebrating Labour’s triumph in 1906.

But the tide receded and the Labour Party was losing seats in 1914. Labour leaders who had mouthed slogans about international working-class unity became patriots, joined the war government and persuaded workers to join up. In contrast, Socialists were standing against the war. That was no easy time to resist. Our propaganda was restricted, our members thrown into prison or forced to go on the run. The SPGB hung on, and there are many stories told of how we did it.

In 1918 the working class looked hopefully for all the speeches to become reality. They reasoned that the men who had organized mass murder should organize something in peacetime and the result was an overwhelming victory for Lloyd George’s coalition. Then came unemployment with its lines at the Labour Exchanges and ex-servicemen selling matches in gutters.

At this time a man who was to deceive the working class for a long time emerged. Stanley Baldwin’s vote-winning image was of the pipe-smoking, country-loving Englishman, which went down well with the workers, even those who had never seen a green field. In truth Baldwin was among the craftiest of political operators.

Baldwin battled to get rid of Lloyd George, and eventually accomplished it. (In the opinion of A. J. P. Taylor, Lloyd George was ". . . the first Prime Minister since Walpole to leave office flagrantly richer than he entered it.” The same could not be said for the people he had ruled over, buried among the battlefields of Europe or sunk in despair.) In 1923 Baldwin tried to persuade the workers that a tariff on imports would cure unemployment, and on that issue fought an election. He failed and for the first time Labour was in office.

Labour supporters rejoiced while their leader Ramsey MacDonald confessed himself “appalled at the poorness of the material” on the Labour benches. Anyone who feared wild revolutionaries was reassured when MacDonald, in full Court dress, showed that British traditions were to remain unharmed. But MacDonald’s government lasted only nine months.

The period which followed held the General Strike, which has been called a great betrayal of the working class. In truth, had the strikers been conscious of their class interests, betrayal would have been impossible. Their leaders were not traitors but expressions of the strikers’ lack of that consciousness. It was a bitter episode for the trade unions and the Labour Party.

By 1929 unemployment had reached serious proportions. In desperation, the workers tried another Labour government, again dependent on the Liberals. In 1931 unemployment reached nearly three million. MacDonald insisted that capitalism needed the unemployed to consume less, and took Snowden, Thomas and others to join Liberals and Tories in a National Government. The workers were allowed to join in the applause for this act of statesmanship; they elected 554 National MPs against only 52 to Labour.

Meanwhile in Germany, the Nazis harnessed working-class despair to rampant nationalism. They were the first steps towards the next war. One effect of that was to revive the Labour Party through support for Winston Churchill — Churchill, who never hid his contempt for the working class. Of course Labour leaders did get jobs in the Churchill government, sharing responsibility for the slaughter of millions.

Again, Socialists opposed that war and were made to suffer. Our stand was clearly justified when from the post-war election emerged the first majority Labour government. Many of its ministers had learned to run capitalism in co-operation with Churchill and the Tories during the war. The new government promised better relations with Russia; they brought in reforms in the social and medical services which would, they told us, end poverty; and they could apply their schemes of nationalization.

The Labour government, with its Foreign Secretary Bevin, fought out the first days of the Cold War, which on occasion came near a hot World War. The health service was a more efficient method of servicing workers back to work. Nationalization was discredited. One of the ministers in that government, Alfred Robens, later said of the nationalization schemes he had championed:

I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalizing these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us that they were going to turn into state capitalism. (The Times, 1 April 1968)

“We are the masters now” said Attorney General Hartley Shawcross, but Labour looked anything but masters. Their response to crises was to try to force down working-class standards; to keep conscription; to start a hydrogen bomb. Charges on the Health Service caused a storm of protest led by Aneurin Bevan. By the next election the Labour Party was broken; in October 1951 Churchill returned. There was little difference between the two parties. This may have contributed to a mood of cynicism and apathy which oppressed political activity in Britain for several years.

In 1955 Churchill, so far into his dotage that he was an embarrassment, handed over to Anthony Eden, one of the glamour boys of British politics. But Eden’s rule turned out anything but a romance. British capitalism was in retreat as the mighty sphere of control, mineral resources and markets once known as the British Empire had shrunk. Most politicians had accepted the reality but Eden seemed to live in another world. In the Middle East, British oil interests had been badly damaged by nationalist takeovers. When a new government in Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Eden ordered an invasion of Egypt and in the resultant uproar he lost not only the Canal but his job as Prime Minister.

Eden was replaced by Macmillan, who looked and spoke like an Edwardian fop but knew how to outmanoeuvre opponents and deceive the voters. Macmillan’s party seemed in ruins and Labour hopes were high : the new leader Gaitskell appeared to be convinced that power lay within his grasp. His chance came in 1959, but when the votes were counted he was openly aghast at his party’s defeat.

Disappointed not to find himself Prime Minister, he tried to persuade Labour to say that what they had been advocating was wrong : such as the meaningless Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution, which was interpreted to mean outright nationalization. The result was an enormous battle at a Labour conference in 1959, when Gaitskell bluntly put his reason: “Nationalization,” he said, “is a vote loser.” The following year the Labour Party was in uproar again, as unilateralists fought for the abandonment of British nuclear arms. Gaitskell was not worried about having to take notice of conference decisions; what did concern him was that such decisions would be unpopular among the workers and damage the chances of returning to government.

Soon, however, Macmillan’s Tory government, caught up in another economic crisis, made an assault upon wages. Partly in an attempt to win back popularity Macmillan sacked part of his Cabinet, applied to join the Common Market and pushed the first racist laws on to the Statute Book, in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. As these bids failed, Macmillan was doomed and the Profumo scandal in 1963 damaged him beyond repair. He resigned and Douglas-Home was appointed — by what one disappointed aspirant described as the “magic circle” of the Conservative Party.

But Home was simply not up to the job. Harold Wilson (who became Labour’s leader after Gaitskell died in 1963) rang rings round him, although when the election came in 1964, the Labour Party scraped home with the slimmest of majorities. Hoping that capitalism would not blow up a storm too soon, Wilson stated Labour’s aim to control wages :

For a Labour Government, no less than for the Conservatives, success or failure In the battle against inflation would depend on its ability to secure an understanding with the unions which would make wage restraint possible. (The Guardian, 25 October 1957)

A “Department of Economic Affairs” was set for the attack on working-class standards. It told everyone that the “norm” for wage rises was to be 3½ per cent, a year and we would all have to work harder.

Nevertheless, when Wilson timed another election for 1966 he got an increased majority. He was “Britain’s clever little man” (The Economist, 26 February 1966), Kosygin, the Russian ruler, is reputed to have said: “Sometimes I think you must have joined the Labour Party to save it from Socialism.”

Pundits are still analyzing the fall of the Wilson government in 1970. They had outdone the Tories in racist legislation, imposed statutory restraint on wages, supported the American war in Vietnam, kept up the British nuclear armoury. Having abolished prescription charges, they brought them back again. They made another attempt to get into the Common Market, and sketched out their plans for anti-trade union laws. Whatever the workers thought, many businessmen approved :

. . . I have had to rather reluctantly recognise that the current Socialist administration seems to have a better appreciation of business matters than did its Conservative predecessors. (Frank Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds, The Guardian, 27 October 1966)

Edward Heath’s alternative was a refusal to apply statutory controls because, apparently, if wages and prices were left to their own levels we should be swamped in prosperity. In practice his government became famous for changes in policy, but failed to hold down prices, which ran higher than ever; eventually it too imposed controls, and the anti-union laws which had been among the ambitions of Labour and Tories. In a confused election, Heath was turned out. Wilson promised workers that he would get them back to work — and they cheered him, like galley-slaves cheering the whip.

This has been the background to the seventy years of the Socialist Party’s life. We have seen the working class oscillate between Liberals, Labour and Conservative, forgetting the past. Seventy years and still capitalism is entrenched. The working class have misused the vote, which can bring into being a society of human wellbeing. The work of the Socialist is to show its proper use.

Ivan

Editorial: Lord Keynes – Economist of Capitalism in Decline (1946)

Editorial from the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the sickness of its declining years capitalism is being nursed by the Labour Party. Lord Keynes, who died on April 21st, was the doctor who prescribed the treatment. His theories, on which rest the belief in the possibility of “full employment” under capitalism, have come to the widely accepted not because of intrinsic merit or originality, but because capitalists and the Labour politicians alike have dire need of a panacea that will, they hope, make capitalism work or at least persuade workers that it will. Faced with mounting unemployment and the political discontent that it causes, many Tory and Liberal politicians had lost confidence in their ability to save capitalism. Lord Keynes promised them another lease of life. The Labour Party, new to power, never had much confidence in its own ability, and the “economic blizzard” of 1931 that wrecked the  Labour Government destroyed even what it had; so Keynes was their hope, too.

He believed that investment and price trends could be made subject to governmental control and thereby booms and slumps could be ironed out and approximately full employment secured. His views found expression in the National Government’s “White Paper on Unemployment Policy” (1944), in which the Government accepted “as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war”. The Labour Government has endorsed this White Paper. Keynes directly influenced the Liberal and Labour programmes.

“It was mainly through his personal influence”, says the Times (April 22nd), “that the Liberal Party adopted as their platform in the election of 1929 the proposal to conquer unemployment by a policy of public works and monetary expansion”. The section of the Labour Party that opposed the MacDonald-Snowden economy cuts in 1931 quoted Keynes in support of their view. The Labour Party’s report on “Full Employment and Financial Policy” (1944) largely rests on Keynes’s theories. It declares that “the best cure for bad trade is to increase purchasing power and to speed up development”. It looks to loans, “compulsory if necessary”, from the Banks to “help the Chancellor to find the purchasing power required for full employment . . .” “If bad trade and general unemployment threaten, this means that total purchasing power is falling too low . . . We should give the people more money, and not less, to spend.”

Socialists have no hesitation is saying that if the Labour Government attempts anything of the kind – it may, of course, get cold feet and scurry to the safety of “orthodox” financial policies, as did Snowden and MacDonald-it will not succeed in avoiding unemployment and crises. Capitalism depends for its relatively smooth functioning on the capitalists’ confidence in their prospect of selling their goods at a profit. By the time that bad trade threatens the capitalists will already be apprehensive and the proposed government policy would sap their confidence still more. It is one thing to propose to increase the workers’ purchasing power but the capitalists (including the Government itself in State industries) are at all times forced by competition to seek to reduce the purchasing power of the working  class in relation to the mass of goods produced for the market. This they do, if not directly, by wage cuts, then indirectly by installing labour-displacing machinery to increase output and lower costs of production.

Always the workers can buy only part of the commodities they produce (but which belong to the owners of the means of production), the part represented by their wages. Keynes and the Labour Party ignored these basic facts of private ownership and the wages system and looked to financial schemes to relieve the disequilibrium when, periodically, it had produced a crisis of bad trade and unemployment. Events will show that unemployment cannot be abolished under capitalism, even though its growth may for a time be masked by war, war preparations and totalitarian controls.

The extent and nature of the dependence of capitalists and the Labour Party on Keynes’s theories was shown by the estimates of his work published by the Herald and the Times on April 22nd. The Herald,  under the heading “The Great Lord Keynes”, by a Labour MP, Mr. Evan Durbin, said that Keynes “more than anyone else .  . . bridged the gap between Liberalism and Socialism”. The Times developed the same idea at length:-

“The Keynesian approach offered a bridge between the academic economists on the side and ‘the brave army of heretics’—Mandeville, Malthus, Marx, Gesell and Hobson (to name only a few)—on the other. This may yet prove to have been Lord Keynes’s most valuable achievement”.

Marx is here put in curious company, but the Times‘ inclusion of him had a reason. The Times thinks that Keynes had found the way to cure unemployment and thus save capitalism from the challenge of Socialists. It quotes him as defending his policy of full employment through State control of investment “both as the only practicable means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety and as the condition for the successful functioning of individual initiative”.

The Times went on to claim that Keynes had shown how to bring about reconciliation between the orthodox political parties and the “growing army of deeply discontented reformers and revolutionaries”. The claim is certainly true of the Labour Party, but woe betide that Party when Keynes’s full employment policy fails them and the bridge he built collapses. Let it therefore be clearly understood that neither Keynes nor anyone else has reconciled the Socialist demand for the abolition of capitalism with the despairing attempt to make the system tolerable by trying to cure unemployment within its framework.

Capitalist Values in the Modern World (1995)

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The long stated aim of the Labour Party is to run the market economy better than the Tories. What they really mean is that they want to try and run capitalism better — though, as yet, they haven't mustered the courage to use that word. To most people now, the Labour Party is an alternative to the Conservative Party only in the same way that Pepsi is an alternative to Coca Cola

There is a profound dishonesty about the Labour Party’s discussion document, Labour's Objects: Socialist values in the modern world, which is the basis for discussion throughout that party and for its special conference abandonment of Clause Four next month. We use the term dishonesty advisedly, for, the document is a work of confidence trickery, designed to convince Labour’s rank-and-file that it is about “strengthening socialist values”, when in fact it is a total capitulation to the ideology of capitalism.

Of course, Labour has always been a capitalist party in the sense that it has never sought to abolish production for profit and establish production for use. Even veteran left-winger, Tony Benn, whose knowledge of the Labour Party is rather longer and broader than that of Tony Blair, has repeated persistently that "the Labour Party is not — and probably never was — a socialist party” (Independent, 17 May 1989) and that "Socialism has been explicitly repudiated. Capitalism is hardly ever mentioned. The only political choice seems to be between two management teams, both committed to . . . the status quo. " (Tribune, 8 April 1994). Most Labour activists know that Benn is right, so the current talk of “socialist values” is nothing more than fraudulence.

Neither democratic nor socialist

Never in recent times has the term “socialist” and“socialism”appeared so often in a Labour Party document as in this latest one. It is there as a sop to the party's members. It is an insult to their political intelligence, treating them as mugs who will be won over by empty words. Sadly, in many cases it will succeed. But the mugs will pay their price, for once the leaders have their new constitution you can be sure that the term “socialism” will be as absent from future speeches and literature as it has been from every recent Labour Party manifesto. The truth is that these power-seeking politicians are embarrassed by those of their “comrades” who joined the party thinking (mistakenly) that it was socialist.

Not only is it dishonest, but also undemocratic. Blair announced that he wanted to change the objective of his party. Having stated this and called for debate, when the first response to his view came in a Guardian ad placed by a number of Labour MEPs who totally repudiated his position he admonished them for daring to criticise him in public, declaring such action to be “immature”. Is that Blair’s idea of a democratic discussion? According to polls, the overwhelming majority of constituency Labour parties are opposed to scrapping Clause Four. Blair’s response is to move the goalposts and insist that all book-members of his party have a vote, ensuring that the constituency activists will be outvoted. When the current document was circulated there was no invitation to opponents of the leader to circulate their points of view' in the same mail-out. Such democracy would not even occur to a fundamentally undemocratic party like Labour. Indeed, worse than that, on the green “Response Sheet” within the bogus consultation document, incredibly, there exists no place to state any support for Clause Four.

Contrast this with the Socialist Party where all policy is made by conference, which is mandated by all members, or by a party poll of each and every. member. Any move to change our Object or Declaration of Principles would be thoroughly debated, undoubtedly the subject of a party poll in which all sides would have their views published and circulated at the party’s expense, and then decided by a vote of members after full discussion without any priority being given to leaders (we have none) or officials That is the only way to conduct socialist debate and those who stray from the ways of democracy have absolutely no right to call themselves socialists.

Capitulation to capitalism

On page two we are told that “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party” which is a lie: it is neither democratic nor socialist. But you have only to read on to page eight to see just what that means to them: "We believe in an economy that works in the public interest. A competitive market economy, with a strong industrial and wealth generating base is in the public interest. ”

Now, you are either in favour of production "in the public interest” (i.e. for need) or within “a competitive market” (i.e. for sale and profit). The two aims are mutually exclusive. The market cannot be run in the public interest because it is a market in which most of the public are themselves on sale, as items of labour power to be bought for less than the cost of what they produce. Profit arises out of the difference between what workers produce and what we are paid. So, in supporting the market Labour is necessarily opposing the workers’ interests. We are prepared to accept that Blair and his co-leaders are quite ignorant of this point and really believe that you can run a socialist society on the basis of market competition. They are theoretically shallow people whose sole political experience has been gained in vote-trading and devising policies for capitalism. But surely many of their followers, some at least of whom will have joined Labour in revulsion against the market and profits, will see the absurdity of the position they are being asked to vote for.

Again dishonestly, the document explains that talk of “common ownership” only came about because "there was a genuine revulsion at the sheer anarchy and exploitation associated with the free market of Victorian capitalism”. The reference to “Victorian capitalism” is a clever piece of trickery, leading readers to assume that of course 1990s’ capitalism is free from economic anarchy, the exploitation of wage labour and the vandalism of “the free market”. Many Labour members and supporters will know just how much this applies to capitalism in 1995, especially when looked at as a global system.

We offer no advice to Labour's membership as to whether they vote for or against Clause Four. If it is retained the party’s leaders, including Blair, have already declared it to be meaningless and to have meant nothing to them for years. (So much for what is written on every' Labour Party membership card!) If it is scrapped the process of turning Labour into a more successful version of Owen’s SDP will be completed No self-respecting worker seeking the end of the market-capitalist economy will remain in the Labour Party.

Power at any cost

But there is one reason for supporting anything that Blair proposes, however dishonest, undemocratic, confused and at odds with what you actually believe it might be, and that is spelt out in the second paragraph of the document:

"There are those who will ask why it is necessary to have this debate. The answer is simple. We will not win an election unless we win the trust of the people. ”

But what precisely is winning “the trust of the people”? Is it really the case that millions of workers (who, oddly enough, have put Labour in a massive poll lead because they are so desperate to get rid of the Tories) are saying “Well, we would vote Labour, but not until they can convince us that they support a competitive market economy”? We think not. But you can be quite sure that the Murdoch Empire and the Stock Exchange are after a firm assurance. Remember, in the last election the crook’s own daily, the Financial Times, urged its readers to vote Labour. Blair’s job is to convince as many of these people as possible that his government can provide a low-taxed, low-waged, highly-policed competitive market economy in Britain. The increasingly obnoxious Daily Mirror on 30 January carried an editorial entitled “There's No Clause for Concern” in which readers are urged to "be cheered by (Blair’s) determination to create a just and equal society”. This is fraud, not that different from the tradition of the Mirror's unlamented old crook of a proprietor (himself an ex-Labour MP).

There will be those workers within the Labour Party who will reluctantly bow to their leaders and do simply anything to get a Labour government elected. Anything, they will tell themselves, must be better than the Tories. Must it? What about a party of Blair-led Labour-Tories, funded by union money and acting like recent Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand which, according to workers there, are worse, if anything, than their conservative rivals? Power at any cost is a very foolish course to adopt.

It is not as if there is no choice. There is a Socialist Party. Our Object is what any self-respecting and principled socialist would support. Tony Benn says that he will stick with the Labour Party until he dies: an act of dogmatic commitment worthy of religious zealotry. But what about workers who are young enough to want something more than loyalty to a dishonest capitalist party for their future? You owe it to yourselves to find out more about what genuine socialists are saying and doing.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Whatever happened to ‘full employment’? (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In The ‘Queen’s Speech’ on 29th October Mr. Wilson included a pledge about unemployment. ‘My government’, it read, ‘in view of the gravity of the economic situation, will as its most urgent task seek the fulfilment of the social contract as an essential element in its strategy for curbing inflation, reducing the balance of payments deficit, encouraging industrial investment, maintaining employment, particularly in the older industrial areas, and promoting economic and social justice.’

Maybe Labour Party supporters are reassured by this mumbo-jumbo, but they ought to examine the small print very carefully. If they do they will notice how the form of the pledge about dealing with unemployment has been discreetly watered down. Now it is part of a ‘strategy’, along with other aims, all of them dependent on the nebulous ‘social contract’, and the word ‘full’ has been dropped. And all of it stems from the grave economic situation — their euphemistic way of describing a normal crisis of capitalism, aggravated by the inflation that Tory and Labour governments alike have brought about and are still promoting.

When the first post-war Labour government came into office in 1945, buoyed up with the fatuous belief that they had mastered capitalism and abolished crises for ever, their committal to deal with unemployment was in very different words. Then it was ‘Jobs for All’ and ‘Full Employment’. In the early post-war years (due among other things to making good wartime destruction) unemployment was exceptionally low. In several years average unemployment then was under 300,000, about 1.2 per cent., and of course the Labour and Tory governments claimed credit for it.

Since the mid-fifties unemployment has been moving to higher levels, but as late as 1966 in the Wilson Labour Government John Diamond MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, boasted that they had got unemployment down from 1.6 per cent, to 1.2 per cent, and ‘that is how we propose to continue doing it’ (Hansard, 6th March 1966). Capitalism, however, was not listening to Mr. Diamond and by the time they went out of office in June 1970 unemployment had gone up by about a quarter of a million to 579,000 (2.5 per cent.). In October 1974 it was 643,000 (2.8 per cent.), and with unemployment rising in most parts of the world the Government’s advisers are fearful that next year it may pass the million mark, as it did in 1972.

(Socialist Standard, December 1974)

50 Years Ago: ‘Vote for them but . . . ’ (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity organizers of the International Socialists certainly know how to produce an election poster to catch everyone’s eyes. Their technique is so simple too, even the most politically apathetic passer-by cannot fail to notice a poster designed to produce a laugh. ‘Defeat the Tories’ it cries, ‘Vote Labour, but no to social contract’. ‘Vote Labour, but’ indeed! It’s a bit different from the usual IS rubbish of ‘Vote Labour, then . . .’ (and then kick them out and put us in their place.)

Unfortunately it has a slight flaw. No-one seems to have told the IS that there is no provision on a voting slips for ‘buts’. How convenient it would be if there was, but there is not, there are no if’s, and’s or but’s about it at all. If you vote Labour you get Labour, you get continued uncontrollable capitalism, you get futile reformism, you get nothing for the future of the working class, and you get nowhere towards Socialism. And whether you get social contract or not is totally irrelevant.

No matter how sincerely a Labour government wishes to protect the interests of the workers, no matter how benignly they impose their unwanted ‘leadership’ upon us, they can do nothing other than be puppets of the economic forces of capitalism. It makes no difference whether Tory or Labour govern, the real power is that of the capitalist system and only its replacement by a genuine Socialist society will do.

When will International Socialists realise the futility of ‘Vote Labour’, and when will they realise that Socialism will only be achieved when we have awakened the social consciousness of the working class throughout the world? Socialism will be won by struggling to free the minds of the workers from their capitalist bonds, and never by putting in a Labour government and then trying to overthrow it by violently accentuating the evils of capitalism.

[From the article, 'Vote For Them But . . . ', Socialist Standard, November 1974]

Labour landslides: then and now (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was to no one’s surprise that a Labour government was elected in 2024. The Tory administration was falling apart, the opinion polls were deafening, and Labour presented itself as ready to take over. On the other hand, it was to everyone’s surprise that a Labour government was elected in 1945. Britain was one of the allied powers that had defeated Hitler with its highly popular Conservative prime minister ready to continue in office, there were no opinion polls to take into account, and the only experience the Labour Party had previously had of power was brief and bitter. And yet, in the July 1945 election, what happened would nowadays be called a landslide – for Labour. Can what happened to Labour then and in the years that followed be compared to what is happening to it now and may happen in the future?

Welfare state

It is often said that Labour’s triumph in 1945 shocked its leader, Clement Attlee, who claimed that he had seen reducing the Conservative majority as his best hope. But rather than depending on the views or hopes of political leaders, election results, as has often been demonstrated, hinge more on what has been called ‘a readiness for change’ among the electorate. And this is the likely explanation here. The report drawn up by the Liberal Party’s Sir William Beveridge in 1942 proposed what it called ‘social insurance’ for the British population, a plan for the state to provide social security (eg, sickness and unemployment pay, old-age pensions, free healthcare) for everyone. This was followed in 1944 by a government committee recommending the nationalisation of services such as gas and electricity.

The Labour Party was enthusiastic about the programme, calling it a new ‘welfare state’, while the Conservatives were lukewarm. And this may well have been the main driver of the electorate’s preference for Labour. The way George Orwell put it, in an article published in late 1945, was that Labour had seized an opportunity it did not create. At the same time Orwell expressed doubt that Labour would end up delivering on all of its manifesto, which proclaimed:

‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain—free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organized in the service of the British people.’

What then happened when Labour came to power is a matter of historical record. Coal, gas, electricity, iron and steel, railways, civil aviation, telecommunications and the Bank of England were nationalised with full compensation to their previous owners.

General state benefits for the unemployed, sick and aged were brought in. A National Health Service was established supplying health care free of charge with staff at hospitals becoming government employees. There is no doubt that these represented significantly beneficial change for the vast majority of British workers.

However, even though the Labour Party had proclaimed itself to be ‘a Socialist Party’, this was certainly not socialism in the sense we understand it as a society of free access to all goods and services. In fact Labour now in office made no attempt to challenge the existing social order of capitalism, whereby the vast majority of the wealth was owned by a tiny minority and production and distribution of the means of life took place on the basis of profit rather than need. What it sought to do in fact was to make that order more secure by suggesting to workers that, via nationalisation, they had more of a stake in it and that, with ‘social security’, protest and challenge to the existing system were unnecessary since, whatever their circumstances, they could rely on being looked after ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

Downhill

In reality the unspoken rationale of Labour’s ‘welfare state’ was to try to make production more efficient and more cost effective by the state having more control over it and to remove unnecessary hindrances to workers’ productivity by trying to create a more benign form of capitalism. Yet none of this could prevent the usual crises that beset the market system from presenting themselves. After an initial ‘honeymoon’ period, prices began to rise causing workers to press for wage increases and to industrial unrest. Labour’s response was a policy of ‘wage restraint’, which brought it into collision with striking workers, leading, for example, to the use of troops to replace dockers for unloading ships.

Later things went further downhill when there was a financial crisis and a run on the pound led to devaluation and further price rises. And, with the ‘free’ health service becoming unpredictably expensive, plans were made for charges to be brought in for prescriptions as well as for NHS dentures and spectacles. As it all unravelled, it became increasingly clear, if it had not been already, that no Party committed to running the buying and selling system of capitalism in any form could adjust it to work in the interests of the majority class in society, those obliged to sell their energies to an employer for a wage or salary in order to survive. Yet this was evidently not clear enough to most members of that majority class – the working class – when in 1951, if with no great enthusiasm, they voted capitalism’s other team, the Tories, back into office. Never more than on that occasion did the words of the old socialist dictum ring true: ‘Governments are not elected, they are dismissed’.

Landslide to where?

That’s something that can also be said of the outcome of this year’s election. No one would claim that that there was any great love among the electorate for Keir Starmer and his Labour Party, yet this time too, as in 1945, Labour gained a landslide victory over the outgoing Tories. What this showed is that, as ever in capitalism, governments – in this case the Tories – do not control the system they are meant to manage. The system, or to be more specific, the market, which is its beating heart, has a mind of its own, an unpredictable one, and all governments can do is tinker at its edges and hope that somehow such tinkering will keep the pieces in place. If they try anything too drastic, it is very likely to make the situation worse, as Prime Minister Truss found to her – and her party’s – cost just a short time ago.

So how is Starmer who, like his Labour counterparts did in 1945, has called himself a socialist, planning to tinker? His election manifesto, ‘Our Plan to Change Britain’, held out such promises as ‘a rebuilding of our country, so that it once again serves the interests of working people’, ‘to drag my Party away from the dead end of gesture politics and return it once more to the service of working people’, and ‘to kickstart economic growth by reforming Britain’s economy’. It’s obviously quite unclear what all this means – if anything. But in stating that ‘the economy is about things like money, businesses and buying and selling things’, it is clear what kind of society he’s wedded to.

And what does another of his promises, to ‘focus on long-term strategy, not short-term distractions’, mean? How, in fact, in the hurly-burly of capitalist politics, can any party focus on much more than ‘short-term distractions’? After just a few weeks in power, in fact, Labour are already finding themselves having to face a whole cluster of ‘short-term distractions’ – race riots and a dearth of places for offenders in prisons already full to bursting, a potential ‘run on the pound’ leading them to scrap the winter fuel allowance for pensioners who may already struggle to put the heating on, and cash-strapped universities on the verge of bankruptcy. They’re blaming the previous Tory administration for leaving ‘a black hole in the economy’, and they’re saying, despite all the fine rhetoric in their manifesto, that ‘things will get worse before they get better’ and that we must ’accept short-term pain for long-term good’. They are clearly not about to have the same ‘honeymoon’ period’ as their counterparts in the 1940s.

Alternative team

So how do the two Labour governments – the 1945 one and the 2024 one – compare? The earlier one came to office in the shadow of the 1930s’ economic depression and then six years of war, and so virtually any steps it took were perceived as representing more stability and security than Britain’s workers previously had. But after 3-4 years of what has been called ‘rebuilding space’, the reality of capitalism’s priorities set in and led to it losing the favour of the electorate and being dismissed from office in 1951. The current Labour government, as we have seen, seems to be running into trouble more quickly than its post-war predecessor, again under the pressures of needing to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs. Yet it would be premature to predict that it will be less or more long-lived than the 1945 government, since we cannot foresee the precise effects that the twists and turns of the market system will have on the alternative team for managing British capitalism that is currently in office.

Howard Moss

50 Years Ago: Does capitalism need the House of Lords (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years we have warned the workers against the danger of Labour Governments. Capitalism can be administered, as regards essentials, only in one way—the Capitalist way . . . The Queensland railwaymen [employed in a nationalized industry] tried to help some workers who were on strike in the sugar industry. The “Labour” Government met this sympathetic action by dismissing the 11,000 railway employees, and was able to force them to desert the strikers and go back to work. Thus Queensland is vindicated as a territory which is still safe for Capitalism.

#    #    #    #

For those who imagine that the existence and powers of a House of Lords are questions of first-class importance, it is useful to remember that Queensland long ago abolished its Upper House. When it is necessary to crush revolt among the workers, a single chamber in the hands of a “Labour” Government in Queensland can be as drastic and as brutal as anything England or the U.S.A. can show, and what is of more importance from a Capitalist standpoint, it can act so much more promptly than can a cumbersome two-chamber system.

[From an editorial "Capitalism in Queensland—Ferocious Labour Government". Socialist Standard, October 1927.]

Britain’s Third Labour Government (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

“This time there can be no Alibis.”

For the third time Great Britain witnesses the spectacle of capitalism being administered by a Labour Government – though this time with a difference. The Labour Governments which entered office in January, 1924 (for eleven months) and in June 1929 (for two years) had only minority representation in the House of Commons, and were dependent on the support of Members of Parliament belonging to the Liberal Party. This time the Liberal Party is almost wiped out (only twelve M.P.s in a House of 640), and the Labour Party has an overwhelming majority. There are 390 Labour MPs, and with the support of three I.L.P. M.P.s, two Communists and some Independents and Liberals it can count on well over 400 votes as against about 210 Conservative M.P.s and others who will vote Conservative. As one of the Labour M.P.s writes “Labour has no alibi left. If it fails to produce the goods – full employment, all-round national prosperity, international concord, health, homes and happiness for the whole people – it can fall back on no excuse.” (Garry Allighan, M.P., Daily Mail, July 31st).

This time the Labour leaders have given away in advance the “alibi” they used in 1931 when they pleaded that their failure, and the secession of their leaders to form National Government, as the result of an “economic blizzard” – the world industrial crisis – and of a “Bankers’ ramp.” They are going to nationalise the Bank of England and are naively confident that through a National investment Board they can eliminate the normal capitalist trade cycle of expansion and depression. Nationalising the Bank merely means bringing this country into line with the rest of the capitalist world. As the Manchester Guardian points out “Great Britain is almost the only country in the world to have a privately owned central bank.” (Manchester Guardian, August 2nd)

In an Election broadcast Mr. Herbert Morrison, who occupies one of the most important Cabinet posts in the Labour Government, declared that the Employment Policy accepted by the late Government (in which, of course, the. Labour Party was strongly represented), “has quite a fair chance of smoothing out booms and slumps. The idea is very simple. It is one of Labour’s basic ideas. It is to make sure there is enough spending power to buy enough goods to keep everyone at work making them. The thing can be done. Whether it will be done depends on bow firm a grip the Government intends to keep on the spending policies of the great private industries.” (Daily Herald, June 30th, 1945)

The experience now being embarked upon is that of trying to run the capitalist system as if it were not a capitalist system. A Labour Government is going to try to straddle the class struggle and to represent at one and the same time the interests of the owning class, and of the class exploited by the owning class! Labour supporters expectantly and hopefully await the outcome. Socialists do not need to wait to prophesy failure.

After experiencing Labour attempts to run capitalism in Great Britain the workers will discover that Labour administrators cannot make capitalism function in any but the accustomed way.

The reasons for the Labour victory are many, though it must be admitted that hardly any observers expected the turnover of votes to be so large. “Working class mistrust of the Tories, who had been dominant since 1931 in all the National Governments; the discontent and impatience with slow demobilisation of men in the Armed Forces, most of whom voted Labour ; the usual desire of many electors to have a change; the feeling that the very acute housing shortage would best be tackled by a Labour Government – these are some of the factors.

How have the Capitalists taken the event of “Socialism”? Their attitude may, perhaps, be described as one of waiting on events, worried but not seriously alarmed. The avowedly Capitalist Press is disposed to assume that the cautious Labour leaders will prevent any very drastic demands of the rank and file from being pressed. This is illustrated by the attitude of the Conservative Daily Mail (August 2nd), which urges the Labour Government to take steps to let the Press and public in the U.S.A. know that their “ludicrous and dangerous doubts and fears” of the Labour Government are needless and misplaced. The Times (July 30th), accepts that the Labour Government may nationalise coal, at least part of the transport industry, and possibly electricity and gas supply, and is not greatly perturbed. It points out that “to bring public utilities under direct public control and possibly even outright public ownership, is not wholly revolutionary; and coal is politically a special case.” The Times goes on to plead that “with steel, or with manufacturing industries of any kind, the case is rather different,” and takes comfort in the view that “the responsible leaders were more hesitant” than the rank and file on nationalisation, and that they may seek a further mandate from the electors before converting any manufacturing industry into a State monopoly.

The Liberal Manchester Guardian (July 27th), declared that “Banking opinion expects the Bank of England to be ‘nationalised’ but does not turn a hair at the thought.” Mr. Herbert Morrison recalled during the Election campaign (Daily Express, June 18th), that in 1932 the Tory Lord Beaverbrook was advocating nationalisation of the Bank of England in his Daily Express, and likewise it was Mr. Morrison who stated in a speech on February 11th, 1944 ” that more Socialism ” (meaning State Capitalism) “was done by the Conservative Party, which opposed it, than by the Labour Party which was in favour of it.” Times, February 12th, 1944). Mr. Morrison had in mind, of course, the nationalisation of Telegraphs and Telephones and setting up of Public Utility Boards (which are the model the Labour Party will follow in its nationalisation schemes) such as the Metropolitan Water Board, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the London Passenger Transport Board. The last named was initiated by Mr. Morrison and completed by the succeeding Tory Government.

A factor of importance from the capitalist standpoint is that the Labour Party is wholly committed when taking over industries to do so “on a basis of fair compensation” (“Let us Face the Future,” Labour Party, 1945, p. 7). Some capitalists – those in declining industries – can welcome a change which guarantees their investments against further depreciation since they may receive Bonds with a Government guarantee in place of shares dependent on the ups and downs of fortune of a private company; which recalls a curious comment made by the Times (September 19th, 1942), in an article which urged its readers that “we must beware of the people who advocate Socialism in order to make the world safe for capitalists.”

Doubtless the Labour Government will do away with the restrictive clauses on trade unions introduced by the Tories in their Trade Union Act of 1927. This in itself may have little direct effect in the direction of encouraging strikes, but it is certain that the rule of the Labour Government will be accompanied by many and large industrial disputes. A Tory Government at this time would be faced with much industrial unrest, but with a Labour Government there is no doubt that the trade unions will feel encouraged to make large demands for higher wages and shorter hours. This was doubtless foreseen by Mr. Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in the Churchill Government, who has now become Foreign Secretary instead. The Daily Express (July 28th), published the following report from Stockholm of a statement made some time ago by Mr. Bevin to a Swedish trade unionist. Mr. Bevin is reported to have doubted a Labour Victory and to have said “Even if we win we shall have hard times before us. To convert industry to peace production with lower wages as a result will be an enormous problem.” Like other governments in this dilemma the Labour Government may be tempted to make the adjustment by allowing prices to rise instead of lowering wages.

In one field the Labour Government will be tackling a problem that many leading capitalists and capitalist politicians are agreed has to be tackled, in order to prevent the interests of the whole capitalist class from being damaged, that is the problem of monopolies. Here the language of the Tory Times and of Mr Churchill in his calmer pre-election frame of mind, is identical with the views advocated by Mr. Herbert Morrison in a series of speeches in recent years. Mr. Churchill in a broadcast in 1943 said – “There is a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise, especially in relation to monopolies of all kinds.” (Manchester Guardian, April 5th, 1943). And the Times put its view in words every one of which could have been lifted from one of Mr. Morrison’s speeches: “It is a sound principle that, whenever competition is ousted by monopoly, the monopoly must come under Government control – though certainly not under Government management – either through a public utility corporation or by other means appropriate to the differing circumstances of different businesses.” (Times, Editorial, September 19th, 1942)

On Foreign Affairs Mr. Bevin hastened to declare “British foreign policy will rot be altered in any way under the Labour Government.” (Evening News, July 26th). In this sphere and in handling India, Egypt, Palestine, etc., the Labour Government will be faced with many knotty problems, not of their own making or to any extent under their control, but arising inevitably out of the normal trade rivalry between the Powers. Here in a most glaring form is demonstrated the childishness of the Labour Party’s belief that Labour Governments, by exercising goodwill, can keep capitalism and yet suppress its tigerish propensities.

To conclude we may repeat the words published in the Socialist Standard in June, 1929, when the last Labour Government entered office:

“We deal elsewhere in this issue with the failure of Labour Government in Queensland. We prophesied that: failure, and with absolute confidence we prophesy the similar failure of Labour Government here. No matter how able, how sincere, and how sympathetic the Labour men and women may be who undertake to administer Capitalism, Capitalism will bring their undertaking to disaster. As in Queensland, those who administer Capitalism will find themselves, sooner or later, brought into conflict with the working class. Like their Australian colleagues, the Labour Party here will find themselves in a cleft stick. Raving no mandate to replace Capitalism by Socialism, they have pledged themselves to solve problems which cannot be solved except by doing the one thing for which they have no mandate.”

There is no need to add anything to that. It still stands, as those who have voted Labour will discover.

Edgar Hardcastle