Sting in the Tail: Another Dud Czech (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Dud Czech

It Is difficult to run capitalism, whether the free-enterprise or the state model. The latest politician to learn this harsh truth is Tomáš Ježek, privatisation minister in the Czechoslavakian government.

Part of Mr Ježek's scheme was the issuing of books of vouchers that can be exchanged for shares in the privatised companies. This scheme is the subject of the usual speculation and sharp practices that can be expected in a market system. According to The Guardian (21 January 1992):

The Czech privatisation minister Tomáš Ježek has threatened to take away the license of any firm shown to be speculating. . . . But the public has been shocked by reports of agents tempting little old ladies with food hampers if they sign over their vouchers.

This Tomáš Ježek is the same out and out defender of capitalism with its wonderful "speculation" who wrote to the Socialist Standard in June 1991 accusing us of "calculated drivel" and "utter self-deception".

Mr Ježek has yet to learn the bitter lesson of capitalism. It is not politicians who control the market system — it is the market system that controls the politicians.

Labour of Sisyphus

The futility of dealing with effects rather than causes has been proved once again by the re-launch of the Anti-Nazi League.

The League was first formed in 1977 to combat the rising National Front. Street battles duly took place and the League was wound up in 1980 when the NF went into decline for reasons which, incidentally, had little to do with the League.

What has brought the League back again is the growth of another bunch of would-be Nazis, the British National Party, and punch-ups between the two are likely.

So the League which thought it could "drive the Nazis off the streets” has it all to do again! That's the fate of all those who think they can deal with capitalism's evils in isolation.

Of Bikes & Bangs

I am fed up with politicians who say "you can't disinvent nuclear weapons". You can't disinvent penny-farthing bicycles either, but I haven't seen many just lately.

(Letter in The Guardian 1 February1992) 

Obviously the penny-farthing didn’t have to be disinvented for it to disappear: it was simply replaced by more effective means of transport as society's technical knowledge advanced.

The same thing happened to the cannonball when high explosives and then nuclear weapons came along, and the latter is still the most devastating means of waging war that society knows.

That letter writer probably wants to see nuclear weapons banned, but this is impossible when the profit-driven capitalist system churns out the conflicts which make weapons, nuclear or otherwise, so necessary and therefore so inevitable.

The Front-Man

The demise of Gorbachev had politicians, journalists, etc., rushing to endorse the Great Man theory of history.

According to this theory, significant changes in science, art or political direction are down to an outstanding individual, and John Major expressed It very well:

It is given to very few people to change the course of history, but that is what Gorbachev has done.

(The Guardian 27 December 1991) 

This shallow thinking ignores the social forces which shape history and which brought down the "communist" dictatorship. Look at how America's economic might bled-white the USSR economy through the arms race and how this in turn produced massive discontent among workers in the USSR with their living standards.

The reform of the USSR economy and political system had to be attempted sometime, and if Gorbachev hadn't started it then another front man would have. To paraphrase Henry Ford, the Great Man theory of history is bunk.

Tough at the Top

The plight of Lloyds’ "names"who find themselves a little strapped for cash has moved the nation to tears and the journalists and TV commentators to indignation and pleas that "something must be done".

At the risk of appearing a little unfeeling about the plight of our "betters" we would just like to point out what kind of wealth you need to become one of these "names".

To be a name you have to show that you have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, a total over and above the value of your first home.

(The Independent 20 February 1992)

An interesting side issue to the "names" affair is that 40 Tory MPs, Including some cabinet ministers, have suffered in this insurance crisis. We suppose that they will all be very philosophic about it — after all they never tire of telling us how we all live in a classless society now.

And of course in this classless society we all have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, don't we?

Easing the Pain

In 1990 the Marquess of Cholmondeley was left £118 million in his father's will — we assume that his dad reckoned that even in Mr Major's classless society the money might come in handy.

Unfortunately the Marquess has three sisters and dear old dad didn't leave 'em a bean. Anxious to see that his sisters don't starve the Marquess has decided to sell a Holbein painting that was part of the estate. This painting is estimated to fetch about £15 to £20 million — so even divided three ways this should ensure that the three sisters will be able to afford the occasional knees-up.

Heartwarming stories like these from the national press are the sort of thing that must cheer those other citizens of the classless society who are huddled In the doorways of shops, shivering in cardboard boxes and wondering where tomorrow's breakfast is coming from.

Caught In The Act: Relief for the Rich (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the August 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Relief for the Rich

Uncaring dole queues did not riot in sympathy with the Names at Lloyd's, even though the media tore at our heart-strings with sad stories of some of them being down to their last Rolls Royce, yacht and country estate. The same stories revealed the existence of something called the Lloyd's Hardship Committee (yes, the word is hardship) of which the chair is Mary Archer — she who had some grovelling judge at her millionaire husband's libel case drooling gormlessly about her "fragrance". In fact Names are people; in the world of insurance they are where the buck stops. Their status is rather beyond Social Security claimants because a Name has to be able to get their hands on £250,000 without delay and their obligation to slump up for insurance claims is unlimited. In good times they rake in a lot of profit but in bad — like the present — they stand to make heavy losses.

This sounds pretty perilous except that nobody will invest in a business which continually makes losses. Lloyd's has been very profitable for the last twenty years; in 1983 they made £509 million. Recent times have not been so good; in 1988 they lost about £500 million and the figure for 1989 is expected to be double that, as the bills come in for pollution claims, oil spills, natural disasters and unnatural ones like the Piper Alpha fire. Some Names have suffered more severely because they specialised in the high profit but high risk business of reinsurance. Some people may call them adventurous, the spirit that built the British Empire and so on. Others — especially if they are on the dole queue — are more likely to think it greedy, an opinion confirmed when the Names squealed for government help in financing their failed gambles.

What the Names suggested was a sort of rich person's outdoor relief — tax concessions. But this had implications which were what might be called delicate because about 60 Tory MPs are Names; what would the dole queues have thought if MPs were caught in the act of giving themselves a handout?

A factor with a more direct political interest was the Labour Party's "broad sympathy" (according to The Guardian) towards Lloyds's long-term problems, which did more than hint that there would be support from the opposition for tax concessions. Well naturally, Labour's Treasury team have been chomping their way through numerous heavy meals with the City's bankers, merchants and insurers in the cause of assuring them that they have nothing to fear from a Labour government. But even the present cowed and grovelling Labour Party thought this would be going too far so the idea had to be disowned, blamed onto the indiscretions of a very junior shadow minister whose career is thereby now uninsurable.

In theory the Names, whose history is rooted in the romance of the coffee houses of 17th century London, should be the very essence of free market dare-devilry, contemptuous of state intervention. In theory, too, the Labour Party should be the sworn enemy of an exclusive club for rich people who produce nothing and who have the nerve to say that social parasites can only be found in places like the dole queues.

Caught out

Not many people expected the England cricket team to make a fight of it against the West Indies, let alone actually pull off a victory. So when England won the first test at Headingley there was naturally some excited analysis of how and why it had happened and whether it was likely to happen again.

All rational observers agreed that it had something to do with batting (like Gooch's century), bowling (like DeFreitas taking eight wickets) and fielding (like Ramprakash's catches and run out). But rational thinking does not always guide every contribution to the deliberations of the House of Commons so there was only mild amusement when the stubbornly Thatcherite MP Gerald Howarth suggested that the House gave their thanks for the victory to not only the England team but also to John Major and sports minister Robert Atkins for the "inspiration". This sort of speech is called Making Political Capital Out Of Sport (it can also be made out of Religion. Human Suffering. Dumb Animals and the Royal Family, which is not to suggest that there are any links between them) but even at that Howarth was going a bit too far. It is not unusual for creeps in the House to attempt to ingratiate themselves with their leaders through grovelling interventions, dummy questions and the like. But to comment on Major's "inspiration" just when he is under a continuous battering from the media, his own party and the last occupant of Number Ten over his grey personality, disastrous speeches and policy dithering is evidence of a remarkable talent for bad timing.

Of course no one should take seriously an ambitious buffoon like Howarth. except that his motion caricatured a fact of life about parliament and those who occupy its benches. Honourable members live under the delusion that when they are in session they are doing something worthwhile. It seems to escape them, that they are at most scratching at the inconsequential superficialities of this society when there is a crying need to decide how to organise a basically different system. Fun and games on the green benches are all very well but they deny parliament's potential role in a change of society. So capitalism grinds on with its misery and destruction and its legislators who can be less relevant to our lives than a game of cricket.

If you have tears . . .

Real wet tears were shed in Finchley — and probably Tunbridge Wells and Bournemouth and the like — when Margaret Thatcher let it be known that she will not again stand for parliament. There may well have been some weeping among the House of Lords too, when she announced that she expects to be practising her verbal bludgeoning on their lordships. There seemed to be widespread agreement that of the many qualities for which she will be missed the most prominent were her staunch principles. All the more puzzling then, that someone so confident of their own correctness should have been so reluctant to face any disagreement or to allow even free discussion. In her prime the word was that Thatcher Rules and if that’s not OK by you then you have a one way ticket to the back benches followed by a re-assessment of your ministerial career and feeble political talent by the Bernard Ingham School of Character Assassination.

But it seems that Thatcher, who never had to change her mind because she was always right, has had second thoughts. On her recent lecture tour of America she informed an audience of New York's business élite that she now believes in open debate, that a bit of healthy difference of opinion is good for you. Of course the fee she was getting for each appearance élite variously put at £18.000 or £30,000 élite may have induced her to be what she would once have regarded as wildly controversial. But did she have to make so radical a U-turn as this:

I think that the decisions which have to be made on Europe are of enormous moment to the British people, to the whole future of our parliament, and the more openly we discuss them and the more thoroughly we discuss them the better.

It will be remembered that when she was Prime Minister her view was that the more important a decision the less discussion there should be. No excessively analytical mind is needed to perceive that Thatcher applied one set of rules when she is in command and another when she is in the ranks. Nor does it require a hugely retentive memory to recall the many other politicians who behaved in the same way. So what does it need for the electors to draw the obvious conclusion from this — that leaders are not to be trusted and that we should therefore trust ourselves to take our own decisions, solve our own problems and re arrange society in our own interests.

Ivan