Cooking the Books: How would you like your cut? (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like local councils everywhere, the London Borough of Lambeth doesn’t have enough money to pay for adequate social amenities such as parks, playgrounds, libraries, and social centres. In fact, to balance the books over the coming years it will have to cut back on these even further:

‘Lambeth Council has to make huge savings from its budget, equal to more than a third of its annual spending, and is asking local people to give their ideas about how to save money at this time of unprecedented challenge. Over the next four years the council must find £84 million in savings, on top of £99 million in savings already agreed.’

Normally, this would be decided by the council’s cabinet, made up from members of the political party or parties with a majority of councillors (in the case of Lambeth, it’s Labour). This is an unenviable task which makes the council and councillors unpopular. Lambeth Council has come up with a way to try to avoid this, asking people living in the area which services they think should be given priority — and which, by implication, should not. The idea being that, when the cuts are made, the councillors can turn round and say that they were only doing what the public had suggested.

So, those living in Lambeth were asked to choose where the axe should fall. They had to click their way through an online survey and to choose which 3 out of 18 services they wanted to prioritise, leaving the remaining 15 as targets for cutting. Critics have likened this to giving someone sentenced to death a choice between being shot or hanged. They also question why ‘no cuts’ wasn’t an option. The answer to that question goes to the heart of matter.

‘No cuts’ is not an option because the council simply does not have the money, and the council does not have the money because the central government has not allocated it enough. Why? Because the central government is responsible for running things in the general interest of the capitalist class. Profits are what drive the economy, and governments must avoid doing anything that impedes profit-making on pain of provoking an economic downturn. Governments are financed by taxes that ultimately fall on profits and so cannot increase taxes just to improve services and amenities for the general public (they can only provide those that directly or indirectly benefit capitalist production and then at minimum cost). Governments are managing capitalism and have to abide by the economic law of capitalism that decrees that profit-making comes first.

So cuts there have to be, at both national and local level. The only question is who should decide to make them and where they should fall. The national government decides on cuts to national spending while local councils decide on cuts to local spending. Local councils blame the government. So Lambeth’s Labour Council Leader talks of ‘14 years of structural underfunding of local government’. But it’s not the fault of national government, whether Tory or Labour. Such underfunding is chronic because meeting people’s needs is not what capitalism is about.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter who decides to make the cuts; they have to be made. But it is not an extension of democracy to involve the working class in the decision. That’s just a way to get workers to act against their own interest and take responsibility for the worsening conditions capitalism imposes on them. Socialists living in Lambeth refused to take part in the charade, as did many others.

Members Only (2025)

Book Review from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind Closed Doors. By Seth Alexander Thevoz. Robinson. Paperback Edition 2024. £12.99

This is subtitled ‘The Secret Life of London Private Members’ Clubs’ and is an entertaining and well-written account of this phenomenon, from the early beginnings of private clubs in the very late seventeenth century until the present day. Thevoz has previously been librarian of one of the biggest old clubs and also writes for Private Eye, so for the purposes of this book he usefully has an eye for both social connection and gossip.

These somewhat exclusive clubs have been largely centred historically around St James’s and Piccadilly in London, though have spread their tentacles not just to some other upmarket areas of London over the years but internationally as well – including in the heydays of the British Empire, to India, South Africa and so on. Thevoz has included interesting chapters too on women’s clubs, clubs and race and also the rise of working men’s clubs (which were in some ways designed to mimic some of the features of their older and more ruling-class forebears).

Many clubs developed political affiliations – most notably the Carlton Club with the Tory Party and the National Liberal and Reform clubs with the Liberals. For much of the post-war period many of these clubs were in decline though alongside the empire, with crumbling grand buildings and ageing memberships, and literally scores shut before there was a renaissance from the 1980s onwards.

There were two reasons for the uptick – one was the expansion of ‘new money’ and the arriviste estate agents and hedge fund managers who thrived from Thatcher onwards and who saw joining traditional London members’ clubs as a way to aid their networking and also as a sign of acceptance (even if the more longer-term and elderly members didn’t always welcome the presence of these brash interlopers). The other reason was that slowly from the 1960s – starting with Peter Cook’s famous Establishment club – the club model came to be followed by rather different groups of people, typically as a way of circumventing strict licensing laws for alcohol. Arguably the most infamous was the Colony Room Club in Soho but over time others emerged aimed at newer social elites that found the old-fashioned fustiness of White’s or Boodle’s unattractive – and who gravitated towards successful celebrity hangouts instead like the Groucho Club.

Since the turn of the century, in particular, there has been a proliferation of new clubs charging significant membership fees and often aimed at particular types of business professionals, though their presence has sometimes been surprisingly transient. Just before and then since Covid some newer ones have now shut including fashionable clubs like Milk and Honey and the Hospital Club (aimed at those working in the creative industries), clubs which appeared to enter the colour supplements and come into fashion – and then go out of it – with quite some speed.

Others have thrived as businesses and have established multiple locations both in London and internationally – the most well-known being Soho House. Some still thrive on exclusivity, new money and ruling class connections – the most obvious in recent years being 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, which is where, Thevoz argues, key Brexit plots were hatched and deals were done rather than in the venerable old clubs of Pall Mall.

It seems that the older clubs no longer have quite the appeal they once did for the ruling elite. That they may not be so good for a politician’s image, in particular, is summed up by two events in recent years. One was the infamous Chris Pincher groping incidents at the Carlton Club that led to the departure from office of PM Boris Johnson. Then soon after, and lesser-known, was ambitious current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch turning up at the Carlton Club for a grand dinner only to be driven off when she saw all the press outside as she was mindful of the likely negative association of her being pictured there.

Perhaps these days with Britain’s ruling elites it’s a case of not so much ‘seen but not heard’ as ‘heard but not seen’?

DAP

Housing in London (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The root cause of the housing problem in big cities like London is the capitalist system under which housing accommodation is bought and sold. For many years now the housing market has been subject to various controls but neither these, nor council houses, nor subsidies, alter the basic characteristic of housing under capitalism.

Once a city is established as such, the economics of capitalism ensure that the growth of demand for workers assumes a momentum of its own, for the great concentration of people in a city provides a vast market for so-called consumer goods and services. Even in times of depression the drift to the cities continues. But it is in times of full employment that the housing problem becomes acute because in such conditions the rate of growth of employment usually exceeds the rate of growth of housing. Inevitably this creates problems. This basically is what is happening in London today. As the Milner Holland Report puts it:

If the growth of housing does not match the growth o( employment there will be trouble of some kind.

Precisely, and they might have added that, given this basic situation, any measures applied to deal with it can only be palliatives. The Report is in fact a very useful document for exposing the futility of reformism on the housing question, though of course it was not meant to be.

Before going on to look into this, however, it will be useful first to clear up any misunderstanding that the words landlord and rent may create. The source of all Rent, Interest and Profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, using the term Rent to refer to the share of the proceeds of working class exploitation which those who own the land are able to extract from the capitalist class. It does not refer to house-rent which is a different thing altogether. House-rent is not a share of the unpaid labour of the working class but it is a price; in fact the price paid for accommodation.

In the 19th century it was correct to speak of a landlord class distinct and separate from the industrial capitalist class, and indeed between these two classes there was a struggle over taxation and the control of the state. This landlord class was composed of landowners pure and simple. Today the term is also used to refer to those who are engaged in the business of selling accommodation. These two types of landlord should not.be confused; the Labour Party and other demagogues frequently attack “landlords” just as, long ago, John Stuart Mill or Lloyd George tried to dupe the workers into doing the dirty work for the capitalist class in dealing with their enemies, the landowners.

As a matter of fact most of the so-called landlords today are not landowners at all. It is a fact that among the groups which the notorious Rachman swindled were those who owned the land on which his houses stood. The basic point here is this: the worker is exploited at the point of production. He is not exploited anywhere else—and no more by the private landlord from whom he purchases accommodation than by the shopkeeper from whom he purchases the other things he needs. He can be swindled by such people—and the Milner Holland Report does expose some swindles by landlords—but this is a different matter altogether and besides is not confined to working class buyers. The worker is exploited as a producer, not as a buyer.

Further, many members of the working class are themselves technically landlords as the table reproduced from the Report shows.

As can be seen the vast majority of private landlords in London only have up to two or three tenants while sixty per cent have only one tenant. These figures speak for themselves. They suggest that many private landlords are members of the working class letting a room or two to supplement their income from working—a point which should be borne in mind when the demagogues shout about “private landlordism”. It means that measures taken against private landlords in general, while perhaps bettering the position of some members of the working class, hit those others who supplement their wages in this way. This, incidentally, confirms that it is impossible to unite the working class on any reform issue because reform movements are not based on the class interests of the working class as exploited producers. Housing reform movements are no exception.

The Table also shows inequality in the ownership of housing accommodation. This inequality is not as great as might be expected. Another Table in the Report shows that “only about six per cent of all dwellings in Greater London are financed by capital drawn directly from the capital market.” This figure also speaks for itself: investment in private houses for rent is unprofitable. This has various results. The big capitalists stay clear of housing, which is thus left to small capitalists and people like Rachman. The Labour Party went to town over Rachman but they overlooked the fact that he was the product of the policies, such as Rent Control, they had been advocating against private landlords. It was these measures which contributed in no small way to making investment in private housing for rent unprofitable—thus opening the way for the Rachmans!

When the Rent Act of 1957 was being discussed Socialists were invited to oppose it,—in effect to support Rent Control. Besides pointing out that at best Rent Control could only be a palliative, we drew attention to the fact that there was evidence to show that Rent Control gave rise to its own problems, in particular to the neglect and decay of privately owned and rented houses, thus worsening conditions for some workers. In other words it made the situation worse for some in improving it for others. A typical reform. Rent Control is in fact a classic case of the futility of reformism, of running fast to get nowhere. The Milner Holland Report contains many similar examples of much-touted reforms and their miserable results.

On compulsory purchase of sweating landlords by local authorities:

Some authorities expressed the view when giving evidence to us, that compulsory purchase was no way of dealing with this problem. They pointed out that even if a compulsory purchase order was confirmed the owner received the full market value of his house as compensation, inflated in some degree by the very high rents which he was charging. With the proceeds of the compulsory sale he was then able to buy another house and charge the same high rents, thus defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

Of local authorities refusing to use statutory powers to improve conditions:

. . . statutory powers, though in theory adequate to deal with overcrowding and the worst effects of multiple occupation, are virtually unused in some districts where the problem is most acute. This may be due to the fear that any action taken is likely to result in evictions to relieve overcrowding, to obviate the need for extra facilities, to make room for extra facilities, or simply as a reprisal against tenants whose complaints have prompted action by the local authority. The use of the available powers in a situation of acute shortage therefore tends to improve the situation in terms of dwellings but may shift the people suffering bad conditions into equally unsuitable accommodation elsewhere, or may even make them homeless . . . The choice is between two evils: on the one hand, allowing over-occupation to continue, and on the ether, insisting on improvements which at best cause distress, and at worst result in homelessness.

Of slum clearance making the situation worse:

The progress of slum clearance intensifies the competition for living space, since it must cater for numbers of households substantially larger than the number of dwellings to be demolished, and it may also encourage a further subdivision of existing households into smaller and more numerous units.

Other examples of the futility of reformism which can be gleaned from the Report are: of slum clearance getting nowhere as slums appear faster than they are cleared; of tenants' legal rights as mere scraps of paper for fear of eviction; of concentration on building new houses leading to the neglect of old homes; of tenants refusing improvements because they could not afford the higher rents which would result.

In conditions of shortage it is always the supplier, in this case the private landlord; who has the upper hand. What is happening in London is that in the competition for housing accommodation those who can't pay get the worse. Some don't get anything. At present there are 1,500 homeless families, some 7,000 people, in London and their numbers are growing. These are the lower-paid section of the working class, who have to put up with really bad housing conditions.

It seems likely that the next reform in this field will be a measure to try to improve the position of this section by giving them greater security of tenure or subsidising special housing for them. No doubt this reform too will have its catch: some other section of the working class will find itself worse off. To quote again the passage from the Report: “if the growth of housing docs not match the growth of employment there will be trouble of some kind". The only question is of what kind, and for which section of the working class. The point is, given the basic situation some people must suffer. The politicians are merely arguing about who this should be.

Overcrowding, high rents, homelessness intimidation and the other ills from which many workers suffer are a direct result of fact that demand for accommodation exceeds the supply. In large cities like London this must happen and is likely to be permanent. The Report itself says as much: “the housing problems confronting great cities . . . are of a long term if not permanent character”. The Report also, very appropriately, draws attention to the fact that this problem is not new. They quote from a similar report made by Charles Booth in 1901. Of course since then some housing conditions have improved in many respects but as the Report points out the problem “remains fundamentally the same."

Adam Buick

The crime wave (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

New York.

"The long-predicted post-war crime wave is beginning to make itself felt throughout America. Not only have murders increased, but there has been a sharp increase in bank robberies for the first time in almost 12 years."—(Report from New York. Evening Standard, 4th December, 1945.)

London.

" C.I.D. to round up 9,000 deserters. Biggest crime wave since 1919."—(Headlines in Daily Telegraph, 10th December, 1945.)

Moscow.

“Armed military police are patrolling the Moscow streets as part of the action taken by the Soviet authorities to stamp out a post-war crime wave in the capital. Additional police are on duty at night."—(Report from Moscow. News Chronicle, 28th November, 1945.)

Grenfell: an unquenchable blaze (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine waking at night inside walls of dripping flames in a fire that’s engulfing your flat in the tower block that is your home. A crackling storm of searing flames, where the walls turn to molten polyethylene (uPVC), a material described by Peter Apps, an editor at Inside Housing magazine, ‘like a solid petrol’ burning. It’s a material that melts as it burns, which it does easily at low temperatures. The air itself becomes as hot as the fire itself, scalding your lungs with each breath. Many victims of fire die in hospital from burn damage to lungs, days or weeks later after inhaling a suffocating thick black petroleum-based smoke. One element of the chemical cocktail released from burning uPVC is cyanide.

The escape routes, once familiar corridors and communal areas, now transformed into dark labyrinths of despair. The firefighters had told you stay put for safety but now the building’s uPVC shell is quickly and fully alight, dripping flaming materials floor to floor.

Grenfell Tower’s residents experienced this horror on 14 June 2017, when the 24-storey block was engulfed in fire, causing 72 deaths. The fire began with a malfunctioning fridge-freezer but spread due to the building’s combustible cladding, revealing systemic safety failures in UK construction and government oversight.

Survivor and campaigner testimonies

Survivors and bereaved families had consistently criticised the lack of accountability from authorities. They argue that Grenfell happened because the people in power saw the residents as expenses, not individuals. Grenfell Action Group (GAG), which was instrumental in raising concerns before the fire, repeatedly warned that a disaster was inevitable. Their warnings, however, were ignored. In a blog post written months before the fire, GAG chillingly predicted, ‘only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’.

Testimonies to the Inquiry, whose final report was published at the beginning of September, revealed that fire safety was sidelined in favour of cost reduction and aesthetics. Architects and contractors ignored basic safety practices, contributing to the mass killing. As lawyer Stephanie Barwise KC, representing survivors, noted, there were repeated opportunities to prevent the fire, but none were taken.

The inquiry has also shone a light on the inequality and indifference shown towards social housing tenants and marginalised communities.

Refurbishment and cladding

It started with regeneration. Decisions in relation to Grenfell made during the refurbishment of the tower avoided consulting residents who before the fire had formed a residents’ committee. The refurbishment project was carried out by private contractors under the direction of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO)

Following decades of deregulation and privatisation, social housing management has often been outsourced to private contractors, as was the case with KCTMO, which managed Grenfell on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This system of privatised management prioritised efficiency and cost-reduction over the safety of the residents.

Originally, fireproof cladding was planned for Grenfell’s refurbishment. However, the material was downgraded to save money. An email from one contractor revealed that lower quality cladding was selected to save money despite warnings about the fire risk posed by the material. As one Inquiry expert aptly described it, ‘the cladding was a time bomb waiting to go off’.

The decision to downgrade the type of cladding was made to increase profits for the subcontractor. It directly led to the rapid spread of the fire. It was a decision that didn’t involve the people whose lives would be affected, but whose lives were ended by this decision. The money ‘saved’ on the cladding and which ultimately ended 72 lives was £293,368.

Grenfell was a block in the midst of one of the most affluent areas of London, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and was considered by its rich neighbours as an eyesore. The cladding served more for aesthetic purposes, making the building blend in with the affluent neighbourhood of Kensington rather than improving its safety. It was, as one resident put it, just ‘lipstick for the building’.

The residents themselves pointed out that they were more concerned with the activities inside the building such as the decommissioning of the communal boiler in favour of installation of individual boilers in the hall outside of the flats. These boiler cupboards were installed so the KCTMO could reduce their own servicing costs while passing the cost of heating and hot water to individual residents, while still jacking up service charges, an area where regulation doesn’t prevent extortion of residents. These same boiler installations were cited by one victim of the fire as what prevented him from getting his daughter and pregnant wife out of the building during the fire. What was previously a straight line to the fire exit was now a series of enclaves that in the thick tar of petroleum-based plastic fuelled smoke, had trapped his family.

Systemic inequality and class divide

The KCTMO repeatedly ignored safety concerns raised by residents. Residents had formed grassroots resistance against the faceless body managing their lives, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. The KCTMO, motivated by cost-cutting, neglected the safety of Grenfell’s working-class residents. The residents were living in unsafe conditions.

Social inequality, an essential aspect of capitalism, was a core underlying cause of what happened. Survivors and campaigners pointed out that the fire would likely not have occurred in a building which housed wealthier residents, because standards of safety and maintenance would have been higher. Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell resident and campaigner, stated:

‘We were treated as second-class citizens because of our postcode and because we were poor’.

Dr Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert, concurred: ‘Grenfell exemplifies how housing policy in the UK, driven by neoliberal economics, has led to a profit-driven culture where the most vulnerable are treated as afterthoughts’.

A major critique emerging from the Grenfell fire is how capitalism treats housing as a commodity rather than as satisfying a basic human need. Housing policy has shifted towards encouraging individual ownership, with little regard for the safety of those left living in social housing. This has been underfunded and neglected for decades, often outsourced to private contractors whose primary concern is profit, not safety. Grenfell epitomises where this leads.

Corporate negligence and government deregulation

The corporate entities involved in Grenfell’s refurbishment, which included Rydon, Arconic and Celotex, are rightly criticised for their role in the mass killing. These companies continued to sell or install materials that were known to be unsafe, driven by the profit motive. Internal documents from Arconic, for example, showed that the company knew their cladding was highly flammable but continued to supply it because it was cheaper and there was little regulatory pressure to stop doing so.

These corporate entities are not just the few bad apples. Maximising profits is the standard practice not just in the housing and building industry but within all capitalist enterprises. Everyone living under capitalism is subjected to this law of the jungle that permeates every aspect in life.

The role of successive governments in the mass killing cannot be overlooked. They must share the blame. The previous Labour government brought in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, weakening fire safety regulations. This measure transferred responsibility for fire risk assessments to building owners and landlords, who rely on private contractors who, as always under the pressure of profit-making, are incentivised to minimise costs rather than maximise safety.

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government which took over from Labour in 2010 is also to be blamed for its role in the policies and decisions that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire, especially Eric Pickles, who was its Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015. His time in office was marked by several actions related to fire safety and housing regulation, many of which are now seen as contributing to the fire.

Pickles cut back on regulations including fire safety, as part of the broader government push to reduce public spending and further ‘cut red tape’. Under Pickles’s leadership, there was a move to reduce the burden on housing developers and councils to meet stringent safety standards. One example was the weakening of building regulations, which reduced the requirement for fire safety inspections in some types of properties.

This drive to deregulate was touted as making construction and housing development more cost-efficient, but by unleashing profit-seeking private companies it compromised safety; it was an outgrowth of capitalist ideology that places emphasis on reducing government oversight in favour of what are euphemistically termed market-led solutions. Profit always trumps the lives of working-class people. As socialists we know no matter how much the market is regulated no length of leash will hold back the mad dog of capital from attacking when his food bowl is threatened.

The role of capitalism

The decisions leading to the Grenfell killings are a reflection of capitalism’s systemic failures. The drive for profit at all costs, the deregulation of safety standards, and the neglect of social housing tenants are all inherent features of this economic system. As a result, the lives of working-class people are deemed expendable in the pursuit of wealth.

In 2017 in the aftermath of the fire David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary in the current Labour government, summed up the situation as: ‘This is what happens when you deregulate and allow market forces to dictate safety in housing. Profit comes first, people come second’.

Grenfell is not just a story of corporate and governmental negligence; it is a symbol of deep-seated inequality. The fire exposed the glaring class divides in London, where working-class residents of social housing are treated as expendable. Now that the Inquiry has reported, the survivors and campaigners remain determined to hold those responsible accountable and to ensure that no other community suffers the same fate.

For survivors and the bereaved, justice remains elusive. As survivor Edward Daffarn stated during his testimony: ‘No one has been held to account for what happened at Grenfell. We don’t just want words; we want to see real change.’

‘Justice for Grenfell’ is not merely about criminal charges or compensation—it is about systemic change, ending capitalism with its class inequality and profit priority.

A. T.

Population and Pauperism. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to a statistical abstract issued by the Board of Trade, the United Kingdom was in 1905 fifth amongst the nations of the world in point of population, being exceeded by Russia, the United States, Germany, and—strange to say—Japan. “Whereas we had 43,221,000 people in 1905, compared with 39,221,000 in 1895, the corresponding figures relating to Japan are 47,975,000 and 42,271,000 respectively. Many people, including the Bishops, profess to be seriously alarmed at the decrease in our birthrate ; but the curious thing is that those who are most concerned about our birth-rate are doing their best to further reduce the population by promoting schemes for emigration. If such schemes only dealt witb “undesirables,” they would be an unmixed blessing ; but their promoters are only too careful to let it be known that “No wastrels need apply” ; and, as a matter of fact, such would not be accepted on the other side, even if they managed to elude observation on this. What, then, is going on is that the bone and sinew of the country is being sent away, while the weaklings are left behind to swell our workhouse population and crowd the shelters of the Salvation Army.

We have no means of knowing how pauperism is dealt with in the other countries of the world ; but our own poor we have “always with us.” It would appear, from a recent return, that there are at present in London more than 128,000 paupers, or at the rate of 26 per 1,000 of the population, this mass of pauperism being greater than in any year since 1872, except 1904 and 1905. It appears, too, that while out-door pauperisn is decreasing, the rush to the workhouse continues, and that there are now in the London workhouses 78,603 paupers—which is the highest number ever recorded. Many of the workhouses are either overcrowded or full, and the Guardians are at their wits’ end to know how to deal with the overflow. The ratio of paupers differs in a remarkable manner in the different workhouse centres of the Metropolis. Thus in Hampstead it is as low as 8.5 per 1,000, while in the Strand it is as high as 76.4 and in Holborn as 49.4. Again, 15.1 in Fulham compares with 47.5 in Poplar and 47.3 in Bermondsey; while Wandsworth is as low as 17.1 and Camberwell (in the same district) as high as 32.9. In the Western district Paddington comes out at 15.8 and Chelsea at 31.2, or just double; while Kensington at 17.0 compares with St. George’s at 29.3, and with Westminster at 24.8. No doubt there must always be a wide range in districts so differently circumstanced; but the excessive ratios in the Strand and Holborn seem to call for special explanation. Outside London the number of paupers relieved on July 1, 1906, was 731,344, and this, added to the number in London, makes a grand total of 865,794 for the United Kingdom, being at the rate of 25.1 per 1,000 of the population, as compared with 26 in London alone.

Financial News

This Superiority Notion (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be obvious, really. Whenever they test another H bomb, or run into another economic crisis, or whenever a politician opens his mouth and puts his foot in it, or whenever we think about the strain and ugliness which are the modern substitute for living, it should be obvious. Capitalism, is not a desirable or a sensible method of running human affairs.

But instead of being obvious it is infuriating. There are the facts, there is the mass of evidence, all screaming for attention. Yet the message gets through, if at all, only slowly. For one reason or another the working class still like capitalism. This is not to say that they like war, or any other problem that capitalism brings with it. They think of these things almost as elements outside human control, like the weather. But capitalism they do like, they support the system which leaves the ownership of the means of life to a very few of the world’s people. They support the system of rich and poor, of palaces and prefabs, of ripe pheasant and Spam.

If at any time the workers have to think about why they like capitalism they may say that it gives everyone his chance and that it is our own fault if we are not all like Paul Getty or King Saud. Or perhaps they will offer some equally inane reason. But mostly the working class do not think about why they support capitalism. They absorb the ideas of the system effortlessly. As if by instinct they build up a wall of ignorant, indefensible ideas which all play their part in sustaining1 the social system of destruction and insecurity. And that can be very infuriating.

It would take up many issues of the Socialist Standard to enumerate every one of these ideas. In any case, they have all been dealt with at some time in the past. Let us now take a look at just one of the strange notions with which capitalism is supported on its pedestal of ignorance. This idea is a popular one among the working class. It is also, in some ways, a surprising idea. Let us call it the Superiority Notion. It is, simply, the conviction which many workers hold that they are in some way better than anybody who comes from another working class group.

In one of its most easily identifiable forms, the Superiority Notion is. race prejudice. White workers think that they are better than coloured workers; even if they do not want to discriminate against Negroes they often feel sorry for them, just as they would for someone who had cancer. Colour prejudice is so widespread partly because its victims are most easily recognised. Race prejudice itself extends beyond mere white-against-black antipathy, reaching out to embrace anyone who is “foreign” It is almost a tradition among English workers, for example, to distrust some types of foreign workers. (Some, on the other hand, they may trust; many English workers think that Chinese people are naturally honest.) They are content at one time to blame the troubles of the world onto French temperament, at another onto German belligerence, at another onto American irresponsibility. (Although we should notice that this particular fallacy has its fashions. Young workers nowadays think it glamorous to be Italian, but that is not what their fathers, in 1941, thought.) In England, in other words, many workers think that the only person who can be trusted, the only person who makes a desirable neighbour or workmate, is English, while and gentile. In other countries they have their own version of this particular prejudice. A popular idea on the Continent is that everyone in England is a horsey fop.

The Superiority Notion does not end at race prejudice. It is common for workers in one part of a country to think that they are better than those in another part. In Southern England they think of the North as an endless slag heap, with flat-capped dinosaur-brained inhabitants to match. In the North they think the South a cissy lot, a pretentious bunch who sound their aitches alright but are strangers to a good day’s work. This feeling can even extend to different parts of the same town. There is at least one dilapidated area in London, dissected by a dirty canal, in which the slum-dwellers on one bank think themselves better than those on the other. These examples could go on for a long time.

The basic ingredient of the Superiority Notion is that, no matter how depressed a worker may be, he can always look down upon somebody else. Even those who are themselves the victims of widespread prejudice have their own Notion. Some Negroes look down upon other coloured people: some Jewish workers regard Negroes as inferior, and so on. And if we ask why the Notion is so popular, is the answer that the working class occupy such an inferior situation in society, and eke out such restricted lives, that it is practically essential to their peace of mind to be able to console themselves with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is lower than they are?

The Superiority Notion is booming, for example, in Southall in Middlesex. Southall has a rubber factory, a massive lorry works, a cereal factory, a canal, a gas works and a ten pin bowling alley. It also has a large Indian and Pakistani population, who have taken some of the jobs at the rubber factory and the gas works for which it is now difficult to get white workers. So Southall also has a race ignorance problem because, apart from any personal objections there may be to the immigrants, there is also the usual deep-rooted opposition to strange men whose skin is a different colour and who speak a language which sounds incomprehensible.

So the Southall workers feel superior. Yet a walk around the place quickly puts their Notion into perspective. Street' upon street, the dingy houses stretch away. Sometimes they are houses which were built in the 18th. Century; sometimes those which were built since 1900. Some are even post-war. But the drab sameness, the cheapness and the restrictions, are all there. These houses, standing in the richly combining vapours of the molten rubber, the exhaling gas works, the oozing canal and the roasting cereals, each day feed the local industry with its supply of human ability. To be blunt, Southall is one of the dreariest imaginable working class areas. It is a problem to appreciate how anybody who lives there could keep up the pretence that he is better than anyone else. But the Southall workers manage it.

There is only one way to deal with this ridiculous situation and that is to cut right through the middle of it with the facts. Socially, there are only two types of people living under capitalism. One type is the capitalist who can live without going to work because he owns places like the gas works and the canal and he gets the profits from them. The other type is the worker who does not own any factories or anything like them and who can only live by working for a wage. For the worker, capitalism is an unpleasant system. It brings him problems like war and insecurity and the ever present strain of balancing his budget. It puts him to live in places like Southall.

But capitalism does something else. It separates and illuminates the fact that all workers all over the world, whatever language they speak and whatever the colour of their skin, are suffering the same sort of problems. The capitalist world has innumerable Southalls—and many worse places besides. Thus capitalism makes it plain that the interests of workers everywhere are the same; to get rid of their problems, to get rid of capitalism. To do this, they must get rid of their Superiority Notion, in all its forms, and of the other baseless, ignorant ideas which keep capitalism going. Capitalism itself, day by day, piles up the evidence in favour of its own abolition. It stares the working class in the face.

It should be obvious really . . . But this is where we came in.

Ivan.

Doubts and Difficulties: Do the Workers Live on the Verge of Starvation? (1906)

From the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much discussion has been evoked at one time or another as to the statement alleged to have been made by Sir H. Campbell Bannerman that twelve millions of the population of Britain were living on the verge of starvation. To many people the important question has been as to whether the afore-mentioned individual made or did not make the assertion substantially given above. In all the discussions I have heard on the subject the question has never arisen whether the statement, whether made or not, was true in substance or in fact.

o o o o

To the Socialist the matter is one of vital interest. Half a century ago Karl Marx, after a close and searching examination of the conditions of English industry, arrived at the theoretic position that so long as the present basis of industrialism—the capitalist, privately-owned property basis—existed, for so long would the wages of the worker be determined by the cost of his subsistence, that is, by the barest amount necessary for maintaining the worker and his family. This theory arrived at by deducing from the basic laws of capitalist production, he verified it by a careful review of the conditions of the workers as found in practice and as described in the reports of Royal Commissions appointed to enquire into such conditions.

o o o o

True as the theory of a bare subsistence wage was found to be some sixty years ago so to-day is it true that the wage of the worker is similarly governed. An exhaustive analysis of present day conditions is not necessary to satisfy us as to the truth of this but for the benefit of some who may not have sifted the evidence for themselves, a few pointers may be useful in showing where the evidence may be found.

o o o o

A good many years have now elapsed since Mr. Charles Booth set himself the task of exposing the “wild” statements of the Socialist as to the poverty of the workers. The result of his work is shown in his “Life and Labour of the People of London,” a remarkable indictment of our vaunted civilisation. The figures he gave of the poverty of the London workers showed that the statements of the Socialist were not an exaggeration but an understatement of the position. 1,300,000 of the population of London, or over 30 per cent. of the people of the richest mother-city in the world, were receiving a wage of less than a guinea a week !

o o o o

A guinea a week was the mark at which he had drawn his poverty line, and there were in London thirteen hundred thousand people below that poverty line. Assuming that this rate of poverty ruled throughout the whole of the United Kingdom we should, taking the population figures of 1901, have 30 per cent. of a population of 41,600,000 living under the poverty line adopted by Mr. Booth. Thirty per cent, of 41,600,000 ! 12,480,000 !! What a picture of misery, of degradation may be conjured up by a contemplation of these figures !!!

o o o o

It was, however, always open to critics to contend that owing to London’s premier position men and women were more likely to drift thither than to other towns, and that in any event, in the rural districts, such a rate of poverty must be impossible. Unfortunately for this contention, it was not in accordance with the facts, and subsequent investigation has proved that what obtains in London obtains likewise in rural villages like Egremont, and in small provincial towns like York.

o o o o

With Egremont I do not intend to deal, and I shall also pass over investigations into similar and subsidiary poverty problems in other towns. But with regard to York I may be permitted to write at somewhat greater length.

o o o o

In the Autumn of 1899, which was a period of comparative prosperity, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree conducted a house to house investigation into the conditions of working-class families in York. The results he arrived at were published for him by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. in a book called “Poverty. A Study of Town Life.” From this it appears that in York in 1899 “families comprising 20,302 persons, equal to 43.4 per cent. of the wage-earning class, and to 27.84 per cent. of the total population of the city, were living in poverty,” and Mr. Rowntree sums up by saying that the fact that nearly 30 per cent. of the population are found to be living in poverty is of the gravest significance.

o o o o

30 per cent. of the population in York. 30 per cent. of the population in London. Truly remarkable the way in which the results of capitalism are uniformly displayed. At page 133 he explains that the poverty of unskilled labour is due to low wages. I believe I have formerly quoted the following remarkable passage but it bears repetition:—

o o o o

“It is thus seen that the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency. It will be remembered that the above estimates of necessary minimum expenditure are based upon the assumption that the diet is even less generous than that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency.

“And let us clearly understand what ‘merely physical efficiency’ means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco, and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation, ‘Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description.’ Should a child fall ill it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.

“If any of these conditions are broken, the extra expenditure involved is met, and can only be met, by limiting the diet ; or, in other words, by sacrificing physical efficiency.

“That few York labourers receiving 20/- or 21/- per week submit to these iron conditions in order to maintain physical efficiency is obvious. And even were they to submit, physical efficiency would be unattainable for those who had three or more children dependent upon them. It cannot therefore be too clearly understood, nor too emphatically repeated, that whenever a worker having three children dependent on him, and receiving not more than 21s. 8d. per week, indulges in any expenditure beyond that required for the barest physical needs, he can do so only at the cost of his own physical efficiency, or of that of some members of his family.”

The italics in all cases are Mr. Rowntree’s.

o o o o

In face of these statements we can only conclude that there is more than sufficient evidence to show that at least twelve millions of our people are living below the poverty line, and that those living on the poverty line are on the verge of starvation. Nor is this all. Those who to-day are above the poverty line may to-morrow be below and vice versa. The conditions persist though the persons vary. Says J. A. Hobson “Only three out of every ten persons in the richest country in Europe belong to a class which is able to live in decent comfort . . the other seven are of necessity confined to a standard of life, little, if at all, above the line of bare necessity.”

o o o o

The persons differ. Again I quote from “Poverty.” “The life of a labourer is marked by five alternating periods of want and comparative plenty. During early childhood, unless his father is a skilled worker he probably will be in poverty; this will last until he, or some of his brothers or sisters, begin to earn money and thus augment their father’s wage sufficiently to raise the family above the poverty line. Then follows the period during which he is earning money and living under his parents’ roof; for some portion of this period he will be earning more money than is required for lodging, food, and clothes. This is his chance to save money. If he has saved enough to pay for furnishing a cottage, this period of comparative prosperity may continue after marriage until he has two or three children, when poverty will again overtake him. This period of poverty will last perhaps for ten years, i.e., until the first child is fourteen years old and begins to earn wages, but if there are more than three children it may last longer. While the children are earning, and before they leave the home to marry, the man enjoys another period of prosperity—possibly, however, only to sink back again into poverty when his children have married and left him, and he himself is too old to work, for his income has never permitted his saving enough for him and his wife to live upon for more than a very short time.

“A labourer is thus in poverty, and therefore underfed

(a) In childhood when his constitution is being built up.

(b) In early middle life—when he should be in his prime.

(c) In old age.”

o o o o

It thus appears that the number of the workers at some time or other below the poverty line is not confined to 43 per cent. It is true that this is the number at any one time. But the individuals at present below will to-morrow be above and their places will be occupied by others of their class. But the “aboves” and the “belows” cancel one another and we thus derive the result that the normal condition of the working class is to exist on the poverty line. The worker has absolutely no guarantee that he will escape from the position of having to receive less than is necessary to maintain him in a state of merely physical efficiency.

o o o o

The reason for this condition of things is that he must sell his labour-power in “free” competition with his fellows in an ever overstocked labour market. Hence no reform can do anything for him. The only remedy is to abolish the present method of private property-holding, the operation of which can be shown as the cause of the overstocked labour market with its necessary corollary of a subsistence wage. This abolition would be no mere destructive policy, but would be the preliminary to a system of common property holding, the end of which would be care of all and not the aggrandisement of a few.

o o o o

I think, therefore, that there can be little doubt that the statement that twelve millions of our population are on the verge of starvation is an understatement of the case, and that if this were clearly recognised to be the result of capitalism there would be a more speedy growth of a Socialist Party in this country than at present seems probable.

o o o o

Be that as it may the struggle has commenced, and to those who have studied the question there cannot be any doubt that victory lies with the working class and with Socialism.

Economicus.

Real Life Monopoly (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we were children around about the time that we were tiring of Ludo and Snakes and Ladders we discovered the board game Monopoly. I can’t remember the details or the rules – something about cards that said such things as “Pass Go, collect £200”, “Go to jail”, “Get out of jail”. In real life it is usually found that going to jail meant the only people to collect money were the lawyers, but whatever the rules were it was good fun building hotels in Park Lane while your opponent was stuck in a hovel in the East End somewhere or off to jail and not collecting £200.

When we grew up of course we quickly learned that the Grosvenor Hotel and a mansion in Park Lane were not for “the likes of us”. Our fate was to be members of the working class who had to work for a wage or a salary and lead an anxious life between weekly or monthly pay cheques. However there are people who wheel and deal in such properties and a recent newspaper article gave some details of these deals.

Two separate properties in Park Lane valued at £5m-£6m, one in Grosvenor Street for £10m and one in Reeves Mews at £25m. The astonishing thing about these desirable residences is that they have been vacant for between five and ten years. According to the empty properties officer for Westminster council Paul Palmer the owners intend to keep them empty for the present.

“There are an estimated 1m empty homes in the UK, and as empty properties officer for Westminster council, Palmer is responsible for about 3,000 of them. Every day he visits some of the ritziest addresses in the capital and does his best to get them lived in again. What makes his job unique is the staggering value of the properties on his books; some of his Mayfair mansions are worth as much as £50m, even in their dilapidated state. … The properties usually aren’t abandoned for reasons which might prompt sympathy. Palmer believes many elusive owners don’t have the slightest intention of bringing them back to life. ‘So often offshore owners have little or no interest in the property as a building it is merely an asset to be traded as they see fit,” he says adding that offshore firms are tricky to track down.’ (Guardian, 17 October)

The article points out that in some cases where property is owned by offshore companies, no UK capital gains tax is payable, and there are cases where the wheeler dealers sell a £1m property after a year for £2m and avoid the 18 percent tax. These traders do not look upon these properties as places to live but as chips in their grown-up game of Monopoly. All of this financial skulduggery goes on against a background of millions of workers living in sub-standard housing, thousands homeless and hundreds even sleeping in the streets around about these empty luxurious mansions.

Compared to the complexities of capitalism socialism is a simple social system. Houses will be built for people to live in, not counters in a horror version of the kids’ board game like we have today. At 21 Upper Grosvenor Street there is a house valued at £25m, it has been empty for more than ten years. Once we establish world socialism it will be occupied immediately by a family at presently homeless. A simple socialist solution to a problem that capitalism finds insoluble.

Richard Donnelly

Rowton Houses (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here the soul finds poppy-juice to ease and glad her,

   And the radiant lotus-flower of royal slumber.

Surely this cemented stair's a golden ladder

    Angel-cohorts, bearing lilies, climb and cumber . . . 

     (Rowton House Rhymes.)

Dirty washing never flapped more disconsolately on a line than these men. They hang over the barrier at the Broadway’s edge watching the traffic pass, stamping their feet among muddy newspapers. The neon lights flick on and off, touching their flesh first red and then green. They stare at the bright shop windows and at the painted faces borne perilously past on stiletto heels. Spasmodically, they drift off home to bed. For them, and for a few thousand like them, that means to the local Rowton House.

To most people, the term “Rowton House” evokes an image of a verminous flop-house where dead-beats and desperadoes rub shoulders, paying a copper or two for a couple of feet of rope under the armpits (has anyone ever slept like that?) The Houses are the butt of many a music-hall joker and the subject of much prejudice; few employers would take on a cashier who gave the local Rowton House as his address and it has been known for a mother hearing that her son was living at a House, to storm hotfoot from the provinces to take her boy away from such supposedly evil surroundings. Yet it is a fact that if such impressions ever find their way into print, a sharp solicitor’s letter is enough to extract a public withdrawal; once the B.B.C. had to climb down and apologise after a comedian’s crack about Rowton Houses in the programme “Palace of Varieties.”

So it seems that Rowton Houses are not as bad as most people think them to be. What is the truth of the matter? What are they like, what type of person uses them and what goes on inside them? And how did they come about?

Light-hearted Aristocrat

The founding of Rowton Houses was the work of Montagu William Lowry-Corry, who was a light-hearted 19th Century aristocrat, a favourite of Disraeli, who caught the famous man’s attention by livening up a stodgy party at Raby Castle. Corry became Disraeli’s private secretary and served unflaggingly through all the years of his chief’s prominence as Chancellor of the Exchequer and later as Prime Minister. When in 1875 Disraeli persuaded the Cabinet to try for a loan from Rothschild to buy a substantial interest in the Suez Canal Company, it was Corry who ran the errand from Downing Street to get the banker’s approval. Later, when Disraeli had relinquished power and was a pitiful figure, it was usually Corry’s arm he was seen to be leaning on in public. Corry got his reward in 1880 when he became the first and last Baron Rowton. When Disraeli died (with Rowton; of course, at his bedside), he left all his papers and letters to his secretary’s discretion.

Rowton conceived the idea of his Houses in the early 1890’s after the investigations into common lodging houses which he undertook as a trustee of the Guinness Fund. At that time the lodging houses of London were little better than the sort of place which Dickens described in Bleak House. The Lodging House Bill of 1851 had been drafted to stamp out the kip-houses where, it was said, the bugs could be scraped up by the handful and the only sanitary arrangements were communal buckets placed one to a room; a room which could hold anything up to 60 people. But there were many convenient loopholes in the Bill and it is certain that 40 years on there were still some unsavoury establishments for Rowton’s investigations. The aristocrat also made it his business to approach the Embankment sleepers—one story tells of him leaving the House of Lords of an evening and spending the best part of the night talking with the Thames-side down and outs. It was then that Rowton decided on his scheme to build cheap working men's hotels, where at prices they could afford, the homeless of London would find a clean bed, food and somewhere to sit of an evening. At the same time, the venture had to yield a return on the money invested in it; Rowton’s slogan was said to be “ Philanthropy—at five per cent.”

First Night

Brushing aside the warnings of his friends, Rowton put £30,000 of his own money into the building of the first House at Vauxhall. This was opened on the very last day of 1892, when only 77 men paid their sixpence for a night's lodging. Over 400 beds were left empty and the first day's takings in the catering department came to about 15s. 10½d. The building had been designed so that in the event of failure it could easily be converted and sold as a warehouse and it seemed that this would have to be, but business became brisker; in the first month over 200 beds were taken nightly and soon the 400 mark was passed. In 1894, a company, Rowton Houses Ltd., was formed with a capital of £75,000, of which £30,000 was given to Rowton in return for the money he had invested in the Vauxhall experiment. At the company's first annual meeting it was reported that the House had been full to capacity on nearly every night and a comfortable dividend of four per cent. was declared. Other, ’Rowton Houses were subsequently built at King’s Cross, Elephant and Castle, Hammersmith, Whitechapel, and Camden Town, each in densely populated areas, within easy reach of the principal transport termini and centres of employment in the markets, docks and railway goods depots.

The Houses have always been an interesting barometer of the prevailing economic weather; for instance during the slump of the thirties, there was a decrease in the number of beds booked by the week and a striking increase in reservations on the days when the dole was paid at the local employment bureau. At that time at least five doctors and nine journalists were resident at Rowton Houses, touching elbows with men whose living depended on a charity ticket. When the 1931 dole was reduced to 15/3d., the Houses cut their prices so that a man could live there (just about) on the money. Their budget allowed for nothing apart from food and lodging; not surprisingly, many men took to a bench on the Embankment rather than face a tobacco-less existence. During the two World Wars the Houses were variously used as barracks, refugee centres and unofficial air-raid shelters.

Rowton Houses To-day

Rowton Houses Ltd. is to-day a solidly flourishing £505,000 capital company, with assets of some £650,000 and a dividend steadily at about 8 per cent. It is not a charitable institution or a trust and has no connection with any religious organisation; business, pure and simple, is its line. “Although we are undoubtedly doing a good work,” said a one-time director of the company, “there is nothing of patronage or philanthropy about it.” The Houses never spend money on public advertisements, yet something like 98 per cent, of the 5,000-odd available beds are filled each night; how many hoteliers would like to be able to make a similar claim? The company has its own laundry and maintenance staff and supplies a barbering and cobbling service in the Houses. Charges have recently been increased from 2/6d. to 3/- a night (in 1910 it was 9d.). It is here that the profit is made— although the catering department pulled in nearly £130,000 during 1955, there is little profit in this side of the business. Post-war full employment has made its mark, in the Houses which now offer special private rooms, instead of cubicles, at 35/- a week. A dinner of soup, steak pudding with potatoes, followed by plum tart and custard, costs 2/8d. (in 1910 again, it would have set you back by 7d.)—and the House dining rooms are open to non-residents.

What are the Houses like? From the outside they are imposing, barrack-like buildings with their smooth red-brick and small windows. Their impressive size—for example at Hammersmith—is often blanketed by the buildings which have sprung up around them. Inside, overwhelming impressions are of the white and chocolate glazed bricks which are everywhere in all the Houses, the smell of cheap tobacco, the men who are openly down on their luck and looking for something cheap and quick, men who are existing on their wits (on one afternoon visit, nearly every other lodger seemed to be studying a greyhound race card). Men stand aimlessly in the entrance hall, despite stern notices asking them not to. The floors are stone or wood and there are no soft §eats— all the furniture is in wood, mostly with iron standards. The dining rooms and kitchens are unfailingly clean, with much up-to-date equipment. There is a billiards room (always well full of an evening), writing room and lecture room—now, of course, with television installed—in each House. For some reason, draughts is a passion of Rowton House residents; regular demonstrations take place, which give men the chance to show off their considerable skill at the game; the 1948 English champion was a Rowton House regular. All the Houses have their permanent lodgers—some of them have been booking the same cubicle, week after week, for over a quarter of a century. 

Queer Types

Because Rowton Houses offer such cheap accommodation, we can expect them to attract some poor types. Sure enough, there are descriptions of wanted men in the reception desks, alongside the file of past residents who are now banned because they fought or stole or carried lice or made a mess in their rooms. No one is allowed to book in unless he produces some evidence of identification, which is checked against these files. Occasionally, gangs form and make a nuisance of themselves until the management can weed them out. The reception staff show all the signs of being case-hardened towards people who, after all, are their clients. And among the residents are the simply queer cases: the man who wore two jackets (and this on a stuffy evening).

Apart from these, the Houses are used a lot by young men who have left home to follow a job—the list of letters awaiting collection reveals the number of Irishmen and foreigners in residence. For these the Houses are not a bad proposition; they are usually earning a wage on which they can afford to get out in the evening, when the glazed bricks and old men’s pipes are by no means at their most attractive. It is a different matter for the old ones, who make up a good part of Rowton Houses’ customers. These are the men who have no family to care about them, whose life has been reduced to the tightrope act of living on a retirement pension. For them, apart from the cheapness, the Houses offer the attraction of living in the company of fellow human beings instead of eking out their last days in a lonely room. Here is one of the tragedies of post-war conditions; the lot of old people is to-day as precarious as it has ever been—indeed, some say that it is worse since the Welfare State boys took over the running of British Capitalism. Evidence of the tragedy can be seen in the Rowton Houses, in the old men sitting out the long evenings on the hard wooden seats, staring with patient eyes at the walls, waiting for the next meal, for bedtime, waiting in the end to die.

None is Secure

The Houses are fond of describing themselves as working men’s hotels—one of their officials actually went so far as to use the term “residential Club.” (A brochure says “Up to London? Stay at Rowton House”). Of course, all this is to rather stretch the meaning of words; no Rowton House lodger is ever called "sir” by the staff and nobody gets a hand with his luggage when he arrives. We can say that the Houses are not dirty or verminous, nor are they the stamping grounds of footpads and cut-purses. The most respectable among us could spend a night in them without fear. Because of this, a first inspection can give a strongly favourable impression; but that is only because one goes there expecting something much worse. In cold fact, they are places where men put up when they are too poor to have an independent home. The problem of not being able to afford the good—and some of the not so good—things in life is the bugbear of the great majority of us in the Capitalist world, where everything has its price and the amount we can buy is restricted by the narrowness of our wage packet. Some of us may live in a semi-detached in Accacia Avenue: but if some day we should be unable to work because there is a slump or because we have suffered an accident or have grown old then we could easily become clients of Rowton Houses. It is poverty which has been filling the places for over 50 years and will go on filling them as long as Capitalism lasts. Nobody is secure. The next time we see someone shuffling through the doorway of a Rowton House we may all reflect that there, but for the grace of something-or-other, go we.

Ivan.

More Satanic Verses (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hell is Camden Town as the sunsets. Drunks stagger towards gutters which are home; the children of the hypodermic needle inject some bought and deadly fake happiness; the old ones who chatter to themselves speak of “bastards” who tried to push them off the bus and bomb shelters where the roof leaked; the girls on the game pursue what only something as monstrous as capitalism could boast of as the “oldest profession”, selling submission for the price of fast-food; a man with a metal stick limps nowhere in particular and curses blacks, as if they all made him lame; a Dickensian figure whose arse is literally hanging out of his trousers sings “There’ll Always Be An England” and holds out his dirt-caked hand for pennies that will not come; kids lie in doorways in sleeping bags which should be used for jolly camping trips, but are now the substitute for home for thousands in a country which has more empty houses than homeless people; and the police shoot past in cars with Nazi-like sirens, now to collect their kebab and then to intervene in a fight between two wage slaves who enjoyed their evening’s release from misery so much that they tried to kick each other’s brains out over a penalty decision in a football match.

Graffiti on the wall says “Wogs Out”, “Cath Loves Jason”, (who is probably the Jason who will always be separated by a thick glass TV screen) and “Don’t Pay The Poll Tax” (as if the Council Tax is somehow' a merciful release from oppression). Now here is it scrawled “Dante Woz Here”, but it feels like there could not have been a much better inspiration for his vision of Hell than the streets which we have become used to. Perhaps that is the one thing worse then eternal damnation: not knowing that you’re in hell.

Camden Town is not unique. It just happens that this writer is there frequently, witnessing the destitution of the people of this late-twentieth-century abyss and the impossibility to pass by without the inner sense of wanting to vomit, as if the malignant sore was within rather than all around. Visiting Easterhouse in Glasgow or Handsworth in Birmingham or Toxteth in Liverpool or St Pauls in Bristol or the South Bronx of New York the same gaping pits of urban hell scream out, echoing in their impotent rage the high boasts of the market which will provide life for anyone at a price—and will strip you layer-by-layer of living dignity if you are short of the price.

The hell which was Auschwitz or Dachau is the most pregnant image of brutality available to our modern senses. Nothing compares with the total awfulness of systematic, industrial genocide. Visiting Dachau, the overwhelming memory is not the gas chambers or the starkly sadistic regulations on the wall or the infertile land all around the camp where plant life simply will not grow; it is the hill overlooking Dachau camp where houses stand and stood as workers were being tortured and exterminated. Somebody was looking on. Perhaps they walked the dog or told the children not to run too close to the wire. Maybe they too just vomited within, refusing to lift a finger because it was someone else confined to hell for now .

But the most moving scenes from the camps—for this writer at least—were the photographs of liberation. We do not know what those who survived were thinking. But we know what they were entitled historically to think: Why, oh why, did you not come sooner?

Be clear, this is not about saving other people—although wishing to unlock the doors of hell is no act to be ashamed of. But the platitudes of moralising salvation can be left to others who make a business from it, sitting in their golden Vatican palace and archbishops' mansions weeping crocodile tears for the poor “who will always be with us” as Christ was so eager to remind us.

Why abolish hell on earth? Because it is near me and its stink can't be avoided. Because its flames are unpredictable and catch passers-by who imagined they were safe. Because most people reading this are only an insecure job and a few pounds in the bank away from the gutter. Because Dickens, when his family lost its money, was confined to the hell of Camden Town and after a century of energetic reforming the ragged wretches of its streets would still be recognised by him. Perhaps because it is impossible to be a complete human while others are being dehumanised before us. To live on the hill overlooking the death camp of our own times—which we don’t call death camps because only the future recognises the indifference to such miseries which are so conveniently and euphemistically hidden from the moment of the present tense—is to be a collaborator in something so awful that one must either ignore it or destroy it, putting in its place something which seems decent.

Steve Coleman

"Tuppence all the way" (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Or three sections for a penny! Those workers who were familiar with London Passenger Transport at the time of the so-called General Strike, and subsequently experienced unemployment, will have clear recollections of the trams which in those days were still under control of the London County Council and competed with the “private enterprise” passenger transport provided by the then London General Omnibus Company (L.G.O.C.) and the "pirate buses."

It was of great advantage for an unemployed worker who signed on at the City Labour Exchange or at his Union offices, to be able to board one of “our” trams at Camberwell Gate Walworth Road, and travel to the Embankment (Blackfriars) for a penny! This midday travel concession could also be taken advantage of on buses where they ran on parallel routes with the Trams.

Those living further out, in Lewisham or Clapham, were able to take advantage of the concession that, providing you reached your suburban destination before 4.30 p.m., it was “tuppence all the way ! ”

Most of us are now familiar with the development of the Control of London Passenger Transport: and, now that it is under state control, midnight of Saturday, July 5th, saw the finish of the last London trams, operating from the New Cross tram depot.

The increase in the cheap midday fares and their ultimate withdrawal was the inevitable outcome of the elimination of competition resulting from the setting-up of the London Passenger Transport Board (L.P.T.B.) and its culmination in the present-day London Transport Executive (L.T.E.) which is merely a department of that State octopus, the Transport Commission.

The workers today then, who require transport to and from their place of employment, are given the “privilege” of travelling threepence all the way, provided they reach their destination before 8 a.m. On the return journey home from work it is full fare ! Gone are the tuppenny and fourpenny workman’s return tickets—such are the fruits of “ progress.”

While many of us, no doubt, will breathe a sigh of relief that our ear drums will not any longer be offended by the rattling, grinding crescendo of noise that indicated the approach of a tram, we should remember that the unpleasant noise of travel is infinitely preferable to the even more unpleasant noise of war.

For, workers should not be under any delusion that the trams have been taken off the main roads of London for philanthropic reasons. Our masters may be much concerned that their racehorses or prize cattle are conveyed by the most up-to-date methods of transport. But we doubt that they lost any sleep on behalf of the crowded workers who endeavoured to keep on their feet—or their last meal down—as they swayed, swerved and rattled on their way to and from work, packed together like the proverbial sardines!

The antiquated London trams—often referred to by some workers as boxes on square wheels—could have been removed long ago and replaced by more modern and comfortable means of transport. But what this would have cost in millions of pounds far outweighed any alleged consideration for those workers who are not in a position (by reason of the limitations of the contents of the pay packet) to take advantage of other and more congenial forms of transport.

We would remind workers in London and elsewhere that it is also the intention of the transport authorities to cease from extending the trolley-bus services and to replace these also with the modern diesel-engine omnibus.

Workers might well ask themselves what all this points to. The cessation of trolley-bus services means an economy in the upkeep of a costly overhead system necessary to convey precious electrical current. The obsolete tram lines will yield thousands of tons of precious steel so necessary to the armament programme of British capitalism and its “allies.” Steel that Mr. Winston Churchill pleaded for in America recently. Steel that is required to build the weapons of war! For it is in war that capitalism finds the need for a modern and efficient fleet of mobile buses which, when workers are not required to shed their blood in their masters’ interests—will continue to convey them to and from their place of employment, on payment of the due fare, despite damage to roadways through bombing.

We saw the result of bombing in London during the second world war and its effect on passenger transport vehicles. If the overhead system of a trolley-bus service is laid on the ground as a result of “enemy” activity then those vehicles are immobile until repairs are effected; this makes apparent the limited availability of the trolley-bus in time of war and its inferiority compared to the independent diesel-engined modern bus, free to come and go !

Likewise the tram track which has been "hit,” necessitating a trunk bus service over that part of the tramway that is out of action. While it is possible to push trolley-buses off main roads, it is not a practical proposition to push a tram up a side street if the track is damaged or the tram has been put out of action. So, in addition to questions of relative cost the powers that be have also, no doubt, been influenced by the fact that it would be impossible to maintain an outmoded tramway system in an important metropolis like London in the event of World War III with possibility of large-scale devastation, resulting in streets made impassable by debris and craters and stranded trams adding to the chaos.

In war an important consideration would be facility for moving troops rapidly through London should the necessity arise. To this end a large fleet of modern double-decker buses could be a useful contribution. And it won’t be "tuppence all the way ! ”

Guido.

Finance and Industry: What is an incomes policy? (1966)

The Finance and Industry column from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is an incomes policy?

Last month we examined the wealth of people at the time they leave this world and found, in the majority of cases, that they had little to leave. Could it be that working on the basis “you can’t take it with you" they had the wealth at one stage, but had frittered it away on a merry-go-round of solo, scotch and sex? Alas, the answer, as they say in the best American war films, is negative.

For our evidence on this point we again turn to the report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for the year 1964-65, where we find the table of personal incomes for the year ended 5 April. 1964, on page 82: —

It is difficult to understand how so many people enjoy such affluent pursuits as Continental holidays and motor cars, until it is realised that of 12,780,900 married men included in the above table 36 per cent of them send their 4,592.000 wives out to work.

We do not intend to join the argument here as to whether the place of a wife is in her home. But the evidence does suggest that there is a large number of families who might be homeless if the wife did net bring home that additional pay packet.

There arc some ladies of course who are not even bothered by the thought of losing their job because of the Selective Employment Tax as they are already in the £20,000 per year class.

What can a government armed with an “incomes policy" do about such incomes? If words were the answer it would all be resolved by now. But the words have to be translated into actions that are consistent with capitalism. And the only thing consistent about capitalism is that the few will continue to exploit the many—just as long as the many are prepared to stand for it.

Them and us

One thing abundantly evident from the previous item is that we still live in a world of them and us. The wide disparity of incomes coldly tabulated in columns of figures can be confirmed upon examining the dual quality of commodities produced, even those satisfying such basic human requirements as a house to live in.

The latest occasional bulletin issued by the Co-operative Permanent Building Society is an analysis of the 2,802 people to whom they advanced mortgages, during the quarter December, 1965-February, 1966, to purchase new dwellings. From the survey Mr. Average emerged as 28 years of age, producing a deposit of £846 toward a house costing £3,864; and earns £24 14s. 0d. per week from which to pay a mortgage of £20 9s. 0d. per month for approximately 25 years.

As two-thirds of these workers were buying homes for the first time they were probably pleased to get them before the increase of “hundreds of pounds” threatened by the National Federation of Building Trade Employers in response to the government's proposals to raise the standards required of building and house equipment.

If this is how some younger members of the working class are trying to acquire a piece of the property-owning- democracy—and you will notice there is a prejudice against the older ones—how does the enemy fare?

The London Evening Standard carries a property news page, and on July 7 it had items on the following which might be of interest to you. A fifth-floor flat overlooking Hyde Park; the owner. Val Parnell, only asks £37,000. Are you a top executive fed up with commuting and want to move back into London? Your solution is in course of erection at Enismore Gardens, price range £35,000-£68,000. Perhaps you are only a younger executive, then unfortunately you must commute to the riverside at Chiswick, mooring fees are £13,000-£I8,000. Did you enjoy canvassing for the Socialist Party of Great Britain in Hampstead at the last election? Then you will be sorry you missed the eight bedroomed house sold recently for £40,000 by Sir Arthur Porritt, the Queen’s surgeon.

Do you still think there is an equality in poverty?

146 Shopping days to Christmas

Most newspapers make claims on the earnings of their readers in the scramble to attract advertising. And although many products are advertised in most newspapers there are some which only appear in those papers generally thought to be read by the higher income groups.

In case you missed the Sunday Times of July 3, we would like to bring the following to your notice, which might be of some help when preparing your present list for Christmas.

Firstly, Dupont have a new range of lighters selling at £10 I5s.-£165 and they even boast that “a few people can afford a Dupont."

Secondly, if you are fed up with the old plastic salt and pepper pots used  by your mother-in-law, nip along to Gerrard, the crown jewellers; they have a silver set for £44 10s. Or perhaps she would prefer the sauceboat for £24 10s., the sugar dredger for £25 or the coffee pot for £101 10s.

When you go, please don’t show your working class origin. Don’t ask for trading stamps.

Ray Guy.