The Emergency Regulations in the Dock Dispute (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

By proclamation under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, the Labour Government on 11th July issued Emergency Regulations dealing with the dock dispute. The 1920 Act authorising the use of emergency powers was parsed by the Lloyd George Coalition Government against the fierce opposition of the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress. Its repeal was demanded by the Labour Party Conference in 1921, the resolution being moved by a docker. The Act was used by the Tories against the General Strike in 1926 and the T.U.C. that year carried a resolution which held that at no time during the strike need the Act have been used.

Yet this is the Act now used by a Labour Government in a dispute that is of negligible proportions compared with the 1926 General Strike.

The sixteen Emergency regulations give the Government sweeping powers over the working of the docks and over any attempt to interfere with the carrying on of work. The Daily Herald (12/7/49) published a summary of all sixteen regulations from which the following are quoted:

“Regulation 3. This concerns acts of sabotage and declares:

” ‘No person shall do any act with intent to impair the efficiency or impede the working or movement of any vessel, aircraft, vehicle, machinery, apparatus or other thing used or intended to be used in the performance of essential services.’

“Regulation 4. Deals with trespassing and loitering on any premises taken over for the maintenance of essential services.

”Mere presence in or near such premises is sufficient for conviction, if it can be shown that the person’s character suggest a purpose prejudicial to public safety’

“Regulation 5. Covers acts of violence endangering, obstructing or interfering with troops, police and others engaged in essential services.

“Regulation 6. Makes it an offence to induce any troops or police to commit breaches of discipline. Possession or distribution of leaflets or other documents likely to cause disaffection comes under this heading.

“Regulation 7. Authorises the Home Secretary to employ police from outside the area for the maintenance of public order.

“Regulation 8. Gives powers for billeting of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

“Regulation 9. The Postmaster-General is authorised to hold up the delivery of packages and refuse the use of telephone and telegraph services as he thinks fit.

“Regulation 11. Gives police power to stop any vehicle if it is suspected that an offence is being committed against the Regulations. A constable may seize any incriminating evidence he finds.

“Regulation 12. Gives to any constable power of arrest of suspects without obtaining a warrant.

“Regulation 13. Makes it an offence to incite any person to commit offences against the Regulations.

“Regulation 14. Directors, general managers or secretaries of companies or corporations offending against the Regulations will be liable unless they can show that the offence was committed without their knowledge or connivance.

“Regulation 15. Provides that persons convicted shall be liable to three months jail or a fine of up to £100 or both.

“Taking part in, or peacefully persuading a person or persons to take part in a strike is not an offence.

“Regulation 16. Enables the authorities to seize any articles believed to provide evidence of an offence.”

The use of troops and of civilian workers brought into the docks from outside is governed by Regulation 2.

In spite of the long years of Labour Party denunciation of the Emergency Powers Act the Emergency Regulations received the sweeping support of Labour M.P’s. Not one Labour M.P. voted against.

Blogger's Note:

This issue of the Socialist Standard also carried two other pieces on the Dockers' dispute:

• Editorial: The attitude of the London Dockers
• The Dispute at the London Docks

So They Say: Ungrateful Lot (1976)

The So They Say Column from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ungrateful Lot

Much play has been made recently by both Labour and Conservative! groups on their various schemes to allow Council tenants to purchase the properties they occupy. The Southwark Community Development Project and the Joint Docklands Action Group of Newington decided to conduct a survey to discover the appeal of such schemes to those concerned, and came up with the conclusion that “few are interested in buying a typical council flat.” The report in The Times of 29th June seemed to have regarded the findings as something of a foregone conclusion. It argued:

While new houses with gardens on suburban estates or in new towns, for example, would attract ready buyers flats in inner city tower blocks would have little or no appeal.

While surveys like this never cease to amaze us, it shows just, how unreasonable workers can be. Who else but the members of the working class would express disapproval at the prospect of spending their lives, and paying for the privilege at that, packed together well above ground level in noisy and uncomfortable cells of concrete (often, as in the case of Ronan Point, with no visible means of support, or lifts—even if installed), albeit with magnificent views over the previously erected low-rise slums? Come to that, who else but the workers would be offered such a glorious opportunity to join "the property owning democracy”?

O Brother!

"We should not destroy or split or seek to destroy in any way the Labour Government” said Mr. Benn on the 4th July, and no doubt the Labour government gave three cheers for Benn and said "Amen”. He was speaking at the Institute for Workers’ Control in Keele University, in his capacity as Labour’s Energy Secretary, when he also revealed to his audience the information that capitalism was in "irreversible decline.” We do not know if he was standing on his head at the time.

Now we who advocate the abolition of the capitalist system were naturally agog with excitement at a “leak” of this magnitude. Was there to be a surprise announcement from the government? We scanned the newspapers. Yes, there was an announcement from Healey. No, it was not a surprise—except perhaps for his fellow minister Benn.

Britain would be one of the few countries which could look forward to a rapid recovery over the next 18

months . . .

The Times, 7th July 1976

Followed presumably by three more cheers and back-slapping. Considering that both these men are “united” in a political party which expresses the view that a system of exploitation is the only one to which workers are entitled, and capable apparently of both declining and recovering at the same time, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that were they to pool their respective talents and issue a joint statement, it would prove twice as ignorant as either of their individual efforts.

Sir Willie?

The fanaticism with which William Hamilton attacks the Royal Family appeared to have abated somewhat when he voiced “concern” over a motion from other Labour MPs—themselves expressing “surprise” over the Queen’s purchase of Gatcombe Park for her well- breeched offspring Princess Anne. The price was reported in the Daily Telegraph of 12th June as £500,000. No, No, said the microscopically-minded Hamilton, the Monarch should spend her money as she saw fit. What was wrong was that “the Royal wealth which makes such expenditure possible has been due to the failure of successive governments to tax that wealth in the same way as that of all other citizens.”

Can it be that he is angling for something? Considering his immense publicity services to the Crown, he must surely be deserving of some appropriate medal or title. This would be no more than he deserves. We note incidentally that in the Register of MPs’ Interests, he gives one source of income under the appropriate heading of “royalties”—a reference to the money from his literary masterpiece on the Royal Family. While he, and others, spend so much of their time and effort in expressing a petty outrage at the size of the molehills, they have missed the mountains—capitalism rumbles on. But then Labour MPs could hardly be expected to think about anything as fundamental as that.

What could be fairer ?

It is usually the practice, after being led up the garden path by one man, to find at the end of it another who then exhibits a bag from which he releases a cat. Although capable of fulfilling both rôles, Eric Varley, Secretary of State for Industry, has been releasing the cat.

The dictionary definition of a scientist is given as: “A person learned in one or more of the natural sciences” and science as: “Systematic and formulated knowledge.” Now Mr. Varley has not so much altered the definition, but put it into perspective! within the context of capitalism—where, like all other members of the working class, scientists must live by selling their mental and physical energy to the ruling class. He was bemoaning the fact that “to be a technologist or a manager in industry is considered to be a pretty lousy job” and from this erudite premise, drew the conclusion that potential but reluctant scientists just did not know what they were missing:

Qualified scientists and engineers, although numerically a small category, have a particularly significant role. They have the innovative capacity to generate and translate the technology into competitive and saleable products and the responsibility for managing the production processes.

Daily Telegraph, 7th July 76

A significant role therefore, not in an abstract sense of the pursuit of Knowledge, but in the real economic field where the owning class is in pursuit of something else, the accumulation of capital.

Class Distinction

“More than 1000 London dockers, who are being paid £57 a week for doing nothing, at a cost to the Port of London of between £6 million and £7 million a year, are ‘moonlighting’ to double their earnings”, reported the Daily Telegraph of 30th June. “A scandal” is their description. They do however concede that the men, on average 1,250, do no work for the reason that there is often no work for them to do. The men are protected, however, under the National Dock Labour Scheme from sacking on this ground alone, and even the inducement of a £5,250 “golden handshake” to accept redundancy has failed to shift them. Considering the apparently universal exhortations from the press for workers to pull out their respective fingers and earn themselves a living, we would have thought that the taking of a second job would have merited praise. Apparently not, so “a scandal” it remains.

Surprising then to note that the moral indignation of the Telegraph respectfully faded to nothing when it reported on the twelve, no doubt “just”, women whom Paul Getty “richly remembered in his Will” (10th June 76). Among others they noted that Lady Ursula D’abo, sister of the Duke of Rutland, was to receive 1000 of his shares, worth £93,361, and how she was duly “surprised by the gift. The shares will remain in Getty Oil until I die, as he would have wished.”

All highly commendable; no mention here of a “scandal.” No mention, incidentally, of what happen to the share dividends either—we refer to the large cheque which drops through the letter box from time to time. Work for a living? My dear, who do you think opens the envelope!

Idle-ized

Who was Eric Singer? If you never heard of him— Snap! But on 30th June The Times published an obituary of him. What were his achievements? Take note.

According to the article, he was “an early, though later disenchanted” member of the German Communist Party. In Britain he became “a planning consultant”. To illuminate that, he was able to do his day’s work “before most people had roused themselves from their beds”, which clearly means it was a very small day’s work. What did he do after the rest got up? “He left behind an uncompleted book on inflation and an unpublished work on architecture.” He spent the war “at the roulette tables in Lisbon”, and became “a purveyor of gallantries to ladies, snuff and gossip to men”. “He greeted each day with his freshly-plucked button-hole, his stick and his joie de vivre”.

This reminds us strongly of Fred Bloggs. In his teens Fred joined the Balls Pond Road Libertarian Society, resigning when he discovered he had mistaken its name for “Libertine”. He was widely known in all four corners of the betting shop, while his élan and the je ne sais quoi with which he rolled a Nosegay cigarette made him a favourite of barmaids everywhere. He always alluded to his lifelong redundancy with the characteristic epigram: “Never done a stroke and don’t intend to, mate.”

What a curious world where a man is praised for having had political delusions and spending his life as a fashionable idler.

Alan D'Arcy

50 Years Ago: The Dispute At The London Docks (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The trouble at the London docks is an excellent illustration of the capitalist outlook of the Labour Government. The dockers are willing to unload all ships except the Beaverbrae and Argomont, the two Canadian ships which are involved in a Canadian trade union dispute. The dockers are also prepared to see troops unload the Canadian ships but are not willing to unload them themselves because they contend that these ships are “black ships”. The Dock Labour Board refuses to allow the dock workers to unload other ships unless they are prepared to unload the two Canadian ships. At the moment of writing the government has threatened to declare a state of emergency unless the Port of London is working fully on Monday, July 11th: thus the Labour Government, like all previous capitalist governments, is taking the side of the employers against the workers.

On July 10th Reynolds News contained the following:

“Mr Sam Watson, chairman of the Labour Party, said at Brandon (Co. Durham) yesterday that the dock strike was the work of foreign agencies, was purely political and could be solved if the members of the unions threw out the anti-British agitators.”

What a familiar ring this statement has. For a hundred years every strike of any size has been put down to the nefarious influence of “agitators” sometimes foreign, sometimes home-grown. Many of the Labour leaders who are fighting the dockers were included in this category long ago; now that they support the Labour administration of capitalism they take up the capitalists’ cudgels and sing his tune.

(From the Socialist Standard, August 1949)

Greasy Pole: Death of a Dangerous Man (1998)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

No sooner had the nation recovered from its hysteria over Princess Diana than it was rocked by the death of a man reputed to have one of the most powerful and rational brains ever to invade the House of Commons, but who was politically a pathetic failure. We refer, of course, to Enoch Powell and we know about that famous brain because of all those politicians who told us about it. “ . . . magnetic,” crooned Margaret Thatcher, “listening to his speeches was an unforgettable privilege.” “ . . . one of the greatest orators and foremost parliamentarians of his generation,” clucked William Hague. “One of the greatest figures of 20th century British politics, with a brilliant mind,” gushed Tony Blair, during a short break from gushing about the Spice Girls and Bill Clinton.

Well Powell was not a crooner nor a clucker nor a gusher but he obviously had a pretty high opinion of himself, which he liked to express in a number of eccentricities. In the late 1940s for example, when he was working at Tory Headquarters, he would travel to work on the Tube at an hour early enough for him to buy a cheap “workman’s” ticket, dressed in hunting clothes. However hot the weather he always wore a heavy three-piece, no nonsense, suit. He left exact instructions about his funeral, including that he should be buried in his old brigadier’s uniform. Finally, his very name was eccentric; what are we to expect of someone in the public eye who insists on being known as Enoch when his first name was John?

Intellect

This leads us to the all-important question of what is the basis of Enoch’s reputation for having one of the world’s most rational and incisive intellects? Well it was not consistency. This was a man who pioneered the Tories’ opposition to state planning—an idea which flourished under Thatcher, but who as a minister had supported state intervention in education, health and social services and who, according to his friend and colleague Iain McLeod, produced “ . . . the two longest-term social plans in this country, the ten-year plan for hospitals, and for local welfare services”. This was the man who resigned from the government in 1958 because he thought government spending was too high at £6,524 million but who accepted office as a minister in 1960 although it had continued to rise—by 1961 to £8,134 million. Having got the taste for resignation he did it again—or something like it—a couple of years later when he refused to be a minister in Douglas Home’s government. But whatever objection he had to Douglas Home as a boss had been assuaged by 1964, when he felt able to join the Shadow Cabinet under that same dozy, amiable Scottish aristocrat.

In spite of this Powell could still gain public attention when, in April 1968, he produced the most notorious example of his vigorous intellect with his “foreboding” about the effects of non-white immigration. Among the “evidence” he produced to justify his pessimism was a bit which might kindly be described as anecdotal. A woman in Northumberland, he said, had told him about an elderly woman in Wolverhampton—about 200 miles away—who was “ . . . afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through the letterbox”. The implication was clear—immigrants were terrorising this poor woman, white British people never behave in this way. The problem for Powell was that he was not able to identify this woman and all efforts to find her were unsuccessful.

Scared

But the problem for other people was rather different because Powell’s speech had an instant, unexpectedly disturbing effect. Suddenly he was transformed from an aloof and fastidious man into someone who represented popular opinion:

"Powell had become a rallying point for most of the hostility and rage we encountered, a shorthand for hatred and contempt 'I’m with Enoch/they said, or ‘they should let Enoch sort you lot out’ and that was enough’’ (Mike Phillips, Guardian, 9 February).

A woman, now a mother of three, remembers “I was 18 at the time and I was really scared because so many people suddenly became openly hostile. They all thought we ate Kit-E-Kat so I stopped buying tinned food for the cat.”

It really was like that and the dominant mood was represented by those London dockers who marched in support of Powell. At that time the unions in the docks were extremely powerful, always ready to exert their power through strikes and other forms of disruption. How much did the marching dockers know about Powell’s views on the usefulness of their unions—” . . . [the remuneration of labour] is rarely affected appreciably, upwards or downwards, by combination; and then the effect is more or less temporary and purchased at the cost of the general public, including other workers”? How many of them knew about his callous views on people—they are always workers—who have to wait for treatment in hospital:

". . . if people are on a waiting list long enough, they will die—usually from some cause other than that for which they joined the queue. Short of dying, however, they frequently get bored or better, and vanish.”

And how many of them knew that this man who ranted about the alleged devastation the immigrants were bringing to beauty spots like Wolverhampton had done his utmost to encourage immigration to this country when, as Minister of Health, he had organised a drive to recruit workers for the National Health Service from the West Indies?

Callous

Most of the obituaries for Powell went out of their way to be kind to him. On TV Simon Heffer, his biographer, denied that he was a racist—because he was fond of India, he said. So what, we might ask if Powell was not a racist, why did he do nothing when he saw the effect of his “foaming with blood” speech? Was this another example of the bottomless confusion of this supposedly brilliant mind? Or was it a calculated attempt, after all those years of being denied even a hope of leading his party, to leapfrog his rivals, whom Powell held mostly in contempt, with one dangerous, resounding speech?

Whatever the truth of this, one thing needs to be said about this man. He stood for a society of class division, of riches and poverty, of racism, of fear and disunity.The only thing unusual in him was the recklessly callous way he did this. And as for his supposedly brilliant intellect—is this really the best capitalism can offer us?

Ivan

Letters: Is "god" a Socialist? (1996)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is "god" a Socialist?

Dear Editors,

Re your November editorial: “We only have one life: this one" and Adam Buick’s “we do know that it (the human mind and consciousness) can’t exist in the absence of a body that functions” in his Is-David-Icke-Serious? Same issue article.

First and foremost, if socialism is to be established, it's unreasonable and self-defeating to make unwelcome all those who believe in, or are open-minded about life after death, as these views alone are irrelevant.

Opinion polls have shown a majority think some sort of post- mortem survival likely, and there’s very strong evidence from Near Death Experiences (NDE) and mediumships.

Many cardiac-arrested patients have had NDEs, which, after resuscitation, have proved to be accurate accounts of events in hospitals etc. observed by detached “spirits” looking down upon their own physical bodies.

It can be argued that NDEs are "just" a psychic phenomenon associated with a dying brain, but they do show a perceptive consciousness can operate externally at the brink of death.

Furthermore, several sceptical and painstaking investigators of different mediums have been impressed and converted by considerable and precise spiritual information (some only knowable by those who “died").

Just because many people conclude souls may survive briefly, eternally, multi-incarnately etc. doesn’t mean they can’t see a better world for the living will come about through socialism. Such rationalists can readily see that capitalism must go if they’re not shut out.

Religions only grew because an afterlife has been a mystery for aeons, and their leaders are even now suing their claims on this enigma for their own personal. political and capitalistic advantages.

However, no system of faith has exclusive ownership of, or justifiable rule by reason of a hereafter whatsoever, since it would rightfully and equally belong to all (like the means of living while alive): so "god” can logically be seen as a universal coalescent synergy of spiritual entities. Or in other words, if it exists, god's a socialist!

Max Hess, 

Folkestone

Reply:
We have never said that those who believe in an afterlife can’t want socialism. They can, and we know of a number of examples. People can be inconsistent and hold contradictory views: basing one part of their views on what experience has confirmed but basing another part on unverified, and often unverifiable, beliefs, speculations and superstitions.

All we say is that such people are ineligible to join the Socialist Party (but they can be sympathisers), as we feel they would undermine our claim to have a case based on rational, logical argument from scientifically verified facts about history, capitalism, and human nature and behaviour.

It is on this last point in particular that such people fall. If it really was part of human nature to have a spirit that could exist in the absence of a body this would be a very important fact that would have enormous implications for explaining human behaviour. The fact that most people do believe this (or want to believe it) doesn't make any difference. There is no evidence for it. On the contrary, all the evidence goes the other way, confirming that human behaviour and thought, including thinking, can be explained in purely materialist terms.

So-called "Near-Death Experiences” and "Out-of-Body Experiences" don't prove that there is a spiritual life separate from the body since, in any event, they are linked to the existence of a functioning body. They are hallucinations, mental distortions, brought on by the brain being deprived for a short period of enough oxygen. It has been suggested that the particular form the hallucination takes—of floating out of the body, among other things—is due to the particular physiology of the human brain and to the way it organises and interprets the experience of the senses. (For one such explanation see the article by Susan Blackmore on "Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of the Body?" in the Fall 1991 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer.)

You can't be serious about mediums. We thought that it was common knowledge that they were either entertainers (whose tricks can be reproduced by other conjurers and illusionists who make no claims about really being in touch with the spirit of a dead person) or frauds (the list of those who have been exposed as such over the last hundred years is a long one). For the techniques employed to fish for and extract information from vulnerable persons and then re-presenting it to them as if it came from a spirit, see Chapter 4 of James Randi: Psychic Investigator (the book of the 1991 television series).

Finally, would "god” if it existed, be a socialist? Clearly not since, unless it is a useless abstraction incapable of influencing human affairs, it would have used that influence to have got humans to establish socialism long ago. But what do we find? That this "god" allows 14 million or so children under the age of 5 to die each year of starvation and starvation-related diseases. Some socialist!

Editors.

Pressure valve for the working class

Dear Editors,

I found Coleman's comments about the National Lottery (November Socialist Standard) particularly interesting, although I felt that he said far too little about the real objectives behind what is probably one of the most seductive capitalist ploys in history. Apart from the obvious fact that the National Lottery is designed to act as yet another pressure valve for the working class, I feel that its hidden agenda is of a far more sinister nature.

The simpering puppets of the Parliamentary Establishment are finding it increasingly difficult to hide the progressive degradation of British society. The ruling class has had to come to terms with the simple fact that laissez-faire capitalism cannot function without decimating whole sections of our community. The clutter of sleeping bags which fill the shop doorways of our major towns and cities are becoming an embarrassment to an exploitative system keen to conceal the inevitable consequences of its own soul-destroying policies.

In the last century, the capitalist class was able to postpone the full effects of social decay by throwing working class people into workhouses or by relying upon the well-meaning but futile efforts of Victorian philanthropists. The National Lottery is a similar ploy which has been implemented for precisely the same reason. By diverting the squandered revenue of the average gambler into specific charities the Tories can retain an essential facade of comparative normality, thus ensuring a continued acceptance (at least by a sympathetic minority) and managing to stave off the persistent threat of a Socialist alternative at the same time. Sadly, the National Lottery is not simply a "bit of fun”, it is a cynical and manipulative plot to deceive the increasingly credulous masses.

Christian McLean, 

Dover

The ability of capitalist authority

Dear Editors,

Your [November] Socialist Standard review of Charles Derrick’s book A Question of Judgement mentions the vital issue of the ability of capitalist authority, indeed of capitalism, to survive in the face of the withdrawal of the willing co-operation of a majority of class-conscious workers like, presumably, Derrick. My own experience in the army as another unwilling conscript of the 1945 Labour government, whilst not as varied as Derrick's, forced me to consider the effects on capitalism’s stability of even a small minority.

Having refused an order to accompany my unit to help break the London Dock strike of the winter of ’46, I was given military punishment. At this stage the barrack-room politicians of the Communist Party were solidly behind the Labour government in smashing the workers’ attempts to better their living standards, and as far as I know, mine was a one-man revolt. As such it received no publicity.

I had time to reflect on the effect that even a small number of such refusals could have had if made with the integrity and strength of socialist conviction and argument, and backed by a sound party statement. The publicity given by local and national newshounds anxious to embarrass the government, and possible questions in parliament could have pushed the issue of a socialist alternative, however distorted, and the resultant discussion in office, factory and pub would have been out of all proportion to the numbers of socialists involved.

Like everyone else, socialists behave in conformity with their convictions as far as possible. I believe that the effect on capitalism’s workability of a minority of even 5 percent of socialists behaving like Derrick in their various activities would be so profound, that the question of capitalism’s viability would confront the non-socialist majority as a critical issue demanding their political and ideological decision and commitment, at an earlier stage than the assumptions implied by majority action normally suppose.

Bill Robertson, 

Brighton

The Dispute at the London Docks (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The trouble at the London docks is an excellent illustration of the capitalist outlook of the Labour Government. The dockers are willing to unload all ships except the Beaverbrae and Argomont, the two Canadian ships which are involved in a Canadian trade union dispute. The dockers are also, prepared to see troops unload the Canadian ships but are not willing to unload them themselves because they contend that these ships are “black ships.” The Dock Labour Board refuses to allow the dock workers to unload other ships unless they are prepared to unload the two Canadian ships. At the moment of writing the government has threatened to declare a state of emergency unless the Port of London is working fully on Monday, July 11th; thus the Labour Government, like all previous capitalist governments, is taking the side of the employers against the workers.

On July 10th Reynolds News contained the following :

   “Mr. Sam Watson, chairman of the Labour Party, said at Brandon (Co. Durham) yesterday that the dock strike was the work of foreign agencies, was purely political and could be solved if the members of the unions threw out the anti-British agitators.”

What a familiar ring this statement has. For a hundred years every strike of any size has been put down to the nefarious influence of “agitators” sometimes foreign, sometimes home-grown. Many of the Labour leaders who are fighting the dockers were included in this category long ago; now that they support the Labour administration of capitalism they take up the capitalists’ cudgels and sing his tune.

But let us subject Mr. Watson’s statement to a little examination.

First of all the Government’s ultimatum requires that work must be resumed on all ships, including the two Canadian ships. Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the dockers’ attitude over the Canadian ships the fact remains that the Government is prepared to bring chaos to the docks and interfere with the unloading of food ships rather than permit the dockers to abstain from working two out of over a hundred ships, although over ten thousand dock workers have taken up this attitude. And yet we are told that the dock workers are solely to blame for the trouble, and that it is the work of “foreign agencies.”

Secondly the unions are the organisations of the workers in particular industries for the purpose of improving wages and conditions of labour or resisting a worsening of those conditions and wages. The trade union officials that the workers appoint and pay are appointed and paid to carry out the work that the majority of the workers in the union instruct them to do. Since the coming into power of the Labour Government leading trade union officials have attempted to curb their members’ struggles for improved conditions and, in particular, have used their position to try to prevent the workers from using the strike weapon, the only effective weapon the workers have on the industrial field. Labour Government still leaves the workers dissatisfied and struggling for improvement in their conditions; whoever gives adequate expression to this dissatisfaction in particular instances and attempts to put into practice the workers’ wishes is likely to receive their backing, regardless of political colour.

While it is true that the communists strive to fish in troubled waters a communist spokesman can only carry his fellow-workers with him if he is travelling along a road they want to travel. As long as he does this, and as long as the workers control his activities, it is immaterial whether he is a communist or a tory in political outlook. It is often forgotten by those not directly concerned that when workers come out on strike it is a very serious matter for them; they are jeopardising their livelihood and are hardly likely to do this at the behest of a few wild and irresponsible individuals. Whether their action is good policy at the given moment or not is immaterial; they have given it serious consideration and have taken action seriously, and therefore the charge that they are led by the nose by political agitators is particularly insulting when coming from the people they appoint and pay to fight their battles.

The fact of the matter is, in the dock strike as well as the other labour troubles that confront the Labour Government, that Labour Government has gone to the heads of leading trade union officials and they no longer adequately represent the views of their members. They have fallen behind and have given an opening for others who put the workers' case in industrial disputes more near to the demands of the situation.

Mr. Hartley Shawcross, the Attorney General, we are told (Reynolds, July 10th) delivered a “scathing attack on the ‘ wretched ’ unofficial dock strike ” and said:

   “But the freedom of the trade unions, the very right to strike, must depend on the members’ loyalty, and their use of the negotiating machinery."

To whom are trade union members supposed to be loyal? Surely to themselves and not to the officials who fail to carry out the policy for which they were appointed. As a lawyer Mr. Shawcross may be hidebound by legal formulae but that is his affair and not the workers. “Negotiating machinery” was not devised to help the workers but to aid the employers in keeping the machinery of capitalism running smoothly. Give a date weeks ahead when a strike is proposed so that (1) the employers can make adequate preparation to defeat it and (2) so that the workers will be bamboozled by long drawn out negotiations that will weary them into agreeing to compromises favourable to the employers. The strike that has the best chance of succeeding is the one that comes out of the blue and, if unsuccessful, is abandoned before the workers’ organisation has become too weak to enable them to strike again out of the blue with better success.

On the industrial field the workers are fighting the employers and their only loyalty is to themselves. Where the officials they appoint fail to recognise this they should be replaced by those who do. Strikes cause disorganisation and some suffering; if they did not do so they would be worthless as weapons to be wielded by the workers in disputes over wages and conditions.

In the present dispute the dock workers, rightly or wrongly, are taking sympathetic action to help fellow workers on the other side of the Atlantic. Until the Labour Government came into power this was an ideal supported passionately by all who claimed to be acting in the interests of the working class. Now “loyal citizenship ” has taken the place of international labour solidarity and Sir Hartley Shawcross concluded his speech with the threat:

    “The choice between the dockers on strike is whether they will resume work now as loyal citizens, or will continue to jeopardise the security of their employment by waiting until the community asserts its authority, as it can and will, by emergency measures.”

How like a statement emanating from a Tory Government or from the Russian Government? The "community” is, of course, the Government in power.

It is also claimed that the communists influence union action by carefully and artfully laid plans to influence the attitude of workers at conferences, mass meetings and so forth. But are they the only people that play this game? Are the trade union and labour leaders innocent of wire-pulling? What of the carefully-framed resolutions that are brought forward at the “right” moment and the speakers that are deputed to speak at the right moments? Or the weighty declarations backed by “my long and valuable work for the members”? There is only one way for the workers to arm themselves against wire-pulling and falling for seductive speeches and that is to know what they want and how to get it. Penalising people for their political opinions is not only undemocratic—it is fatal because one day the penaliser will find that he is throwing a boomerang which will come back and knock him out.

The Labour Government are now using the emergency powers regulations to try and force to their knees some of those workers who helped to place them in power. Is it too much to expect that this and similar Government attitudes in industrial disputes during the last four years will be remembered when the workers are called upon to vote in the General Election?

The Labour Government, backed by leading Trade Union officials, is constantly appealing to the workers to refrain from pressing demands for increased wages. In spite of this the demands are widespread and more and more insistent; there is unrest about living costs amongst the workers in industries all over the country and the Government does not appear to be able to do anything about it. In face of this, it is curious with what rapidity and unanimity the “state of emergency” was invoked—with everything cut and dried, and in a dispute where the workers adopted a customary trade union attitude of not unloading “black” ships. Can it be that the Government wanted a show-down in order to curb the general demands for increased wages?

Gilmac.

Lyddite For The Fray. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

How the Masters Lovingly Treat the Police in Times of Strike.

"One of the elective auditors of the City of Leeds, who has been dealing with the expenditure of £30,000 on police and volunteer workers during the great municipal strike of last winter, has made public some details of the accounts. The maintenance of some 600 special police alone cost £22,000 including payments of £10,000 to various watch committees. Forty casks of beer, each containing 36 gallons, went into the New Wortley Gas Works alone and other orders given by the Gas Department were for 25,700 bottles of mineral waters. The total number of pints of beer ordered for the police was 4,954. A vast quantity of tobacco was consumed, the orders being for 141 lbs of tobacco, 134½lbs of twist and Rotunda mixture; 151 lbs twist, Union Jack and Redbreast, 166 lbs of tobacco, 190 lbs Bond of Union. The cigarettes consumed ran into hundreds of thousands and over 1,100 cigars were supplied. A large number of luncheons were charged at 2s. each, and all sandwiches were paid for at 4d. each. Among the food orders are 13,475 lbs of roast beef at 1s. per lb. The games and recreations provided for the men behind barricades and police guards included footballs, darts, draughts and draught boards,, cards, dominoes, and a gramophone. One account for towels, blankets, mattresses and other items is £444 14s. 6d., while 493 overalls and bed jackets cost £130. New suits of clothes were claimed by 141 men at a cost of £200.”

*    *    *    *

Voluntary (!) Enlistment.

“It would be an admirable thing if all unmarried men between 18 and 30 without the manhood to offer themselves, were forcibly pressed into the Army and put into battalions where the kicks should be far more than the ha’pence." - “Daily Express,” Aug. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The Men are Called to Fight for their Country.

“How precarious is the life of the London docker may be illustrated by the figures of the weekly earnings of a casual docker, which I take from that invaluable study, ‘West Ham,’ by E. Howarth and Mona Wilson. 9s. 11d , 18s. 8d., 5s. 10d, 33s. 9d., 30s 4d., nil, nil, nil, 5s. 9d., 28s., nil (the net weekly average being 12s. 0¼ d ) On an average day at the London docks, you will find a SURPLUS of at least 10,000 labourers. The scenes which are taking place every day of the week are only the symbol of the miseries that afflict these wretched victims of the industrial machine, of the degradation of character and of the waste of human life.”— “Daily News,” May 23rd, 1914

*    *    *    *

The Three Different Faces of Ben Tillet. Labour “Leader” and Friend of the Poor.

1st Face.—Writing in “Justice,” June 15th, 1912, while the Transport Workers were on strike:
    “The governing classes . . . have the habit of thinking of the worker as a slave and are prepared to kill him with bludgeon and soldiery if he dares to struggle with his chains . . . 300,000 children are wanting food and protection; 100,000 women are wanting support; 100,000 men are fighting for dear life and principle. Our fight is against the capitalists, who not only want to destroy our liberties, making slaves of us, but they would destroy our home and home life as they have done and are doing to the vicious beat of their malignant hate.”

2nd Face — Writing in “Daily Herald,” Sept. 5th, 1914:
  “Every able-bodied man must either fight or be ready to defend his country . . . The objection taken by very many intelligent workers is that . . . there are at least 5 to 10 millions of working-class folk in slum and starvation who could not be worse off by a German invasion or the Government of the most brutal savages  . . . These contentions are true, but nevertheless there is need now to protect the United Kingdom against invasion."

3rd Face — Writing in "John Bull," October 10th, 1914:
   “We must fight because the British worker has more of constitutional and democratic freedom together with social opportunity to guard than the enemies enjoy.”

Comment would spoil the beauty of these three extracts.

*    *    *    *

The Cause of the Workers' Diseases.

“Professor Metchnikoff, the prophet of the microbe or germ theory on whom the mantle of Pasteur has fallen, recently lectured at the Royal Society of Medicine on ’Warfare on Tubercle,’ in which he said that no remedy for tubercle had been discovered. Doctors know however, that the TRUE cause of tubercle is living in slums, unhygienic surroundings, sweated wages and the accompanying starvation.”—Dr. Boyd Known, M.R.C.S., LR.C.F., in “Daily Herald,” January 28th, 1913.

*    *    *    *

The Cowardly Rich.
 

 “Paris is bearing up. Most of the shops and very many of the houses are closed and shattered. The rich man has packed up his traps and with his menservants and maidservants, his oxen and his asses, the wife of his bosom and the children that are his, has slipped away, either southward, whither the Government has sped, or to the more peaceful watering places in the South Coast of England.”—“Daily News,” Sept. 9th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Breaking of Treaties.
   

“Russia has broken treaties in the past, so has England . . . There is not an important treaty of modem Europe but has been partially denounced, revoked or altered in times of peace. The treaty of Utrecht 1713, of Vienna 1814, of Paris 1850, of Prague 1866, of Berlin 1878, have in part or in whole been denounced. The Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris and the Batoum clause of the Treaty of Berlin were openly and frankly denounced and repudiated by Russia in her own sole interest. Let us all admit that Europe accepted the Russian denunciation.”—Arnold White in the “Sunday Chronicle,” Oct. 14th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Atrocities.
  

“In the course of his letter of resignation, General Beyers made a bitter attack upon the British Government. It is said, he wrote, that war is being waged against the barbarity of the German. I have forgiven but not forgotten all the barbarities in this our own country during the South African war. With very few exceptions, all farms, not to mention many towns, were so many Louvains of which we now hear so much.—“Daily News,” Sept. 22nd, 1914.

  “Here is an idea for Lord Kitchener. Why not arrange to have all German prisoners whom we capture during the war sent over to England via the North Sea, in barges propelled from behind by tugs over the mine strewn area.”— “John Bull,” Sept. 5th, 1914.

  “The British left wing have again covered themselves with glory . . . The forests of Chantilly should rank with the plains of Waterloo. The sterling work done in the shadow of these ancient trees will go down to history. Despite sentimental French advices they FIRED a part of the wood and slew the Germans concealed therein like rats as they scuttled forth.”— “Pall Mall Gazette,” Sept. 10th, 1914.

   “The Zouaves and Chasseurs d’Afrique arrived in hundreds of taxi-cabs . . . You will hear with less revolt of the horror I passed earlier in the day, some 240 Prussians dead in one farm together, black and unburied. They were killed by shell fumes possibly, but had been bayoneted for double security.” “Weekly Despatch,” Sept. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Liberality of the Liberals.
  

“Let us bear in mind what this war will do for tens of thousands of young women is to rob them of their husbands, to create a loss which in many cases can never be filled, to alter utterly the meaning and the value of life for many of the bereaved. This is something we cannot pay for and no possible pension that we can devise can touch this main point. . . . Is 7s. 6d. what a great and rich nation should offer to . . . its women who will bear the real burden of the war? It seems to me that to ask this question is to answer it. I have not yet found a single person who attempts to justify the 7s. 6d.”— “Daily News,” Nov. 11th, 1914. (Article by C. Money.)

*    *    *    *

The Alliance of Labour and Liberalism.

 

 “On what outstanding feature of domestic policy during that time (i.e., the last 8 years) has the feeling of the Labour Party been with the Opposition and against the Government? Was it so in the Trades Disputes Bill, Old Age Pensions, the Coal Strike, the Insurance Act, the Labour Exchanges, the Budget of 1909 or the Parliament Act? Is it so in the case of the Home Rule Bill, Plural Voting or Welsh Disestablishment? The fact of course is, that on every fundamental question of home politics, the Government has had no more constant supporters than the Labour Party.—“Daily News,” Jan 28th, 1914.

   “They must recognise that the Labour Party was not a Socialist party. Many of its members had been driven into its ranks and still continued to maintain the closest possible connection with the Liberal organisations in their constituencies . . . The policy of the Labour Party has been deliberately to keep the Liberal Party in office.”—“Labour Leader,” April 16th, 1914 (reporting speech of Philip Snowden).

*    *    *    *

THE Casualties of Peace and the Casualties of War. 

  

"Peace hath her casualties no lees saddening than war. There were for example, no fewer than 476,920 cases of disablement, and 3,748 men killed in seven of the principal industries of Great Britain during the year 1913.

  “These figures are contained in the official statistics issued on Saturday of the working of the Workmen’s Compensation and Employers' Liability Acts for last year. They may be compared with the British casualties during three months of the present war of approximately 60,000.

   “The industries to which these figures apply were those connected with mines, quarries, railways, factories, harbours, docks, constructional works and shipping, and the army of workers in them number 7,509,353.”—“Daily Citizen,” Nov. 16th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The War and the Financiers. 

  

 “This morning the public has before it the biggest and best loan ever offered for subscription. The British people are invited to find the money to the amount of £350,000,000. The finding of the money requires no sacrifice whatever . . . The return offered to the subscriber is exceedingly handsome . . . the yield being as high as 4 per cent. . . . offered on the best security in the world. . . . The war has brought the investor good. . . . From both the patriotic and the financial point of view it is a magnificent in vestment. — “ Daily Mail," Nov. 18th, 1914.

Frank Vickers

Death of Another Old Comrade (1944)

Obituary from the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the death of Comrade W. Howard, of Hackney Branch, at the age of 66. A docker by trade for the greater part of his life, he was formerly a member of the Social Democratic Federation. Realising the futility of the reformist policy which had overtaken the S.D.F., he left it to join the S.P.G.B. in June, 1912. For 32 years he gave his unstinted efforts to the work of the Party as lecturer and in the organisation of the Branch, and passed on the benefits of his experience to younger members. He rarely failed to attend Branch meetings even during the last four years when he suffered from a heart ailment. Comrade Howard will be greatly missed by all who knew him. We extend our sympathy to his relatives in their loss.

Intoxicating spirit (1997)

Book Review from the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Price of a Cigar by Peter Wood,  Anchor Books, £9.95.

Books written from film scripts and from the texts of plays are comparatively rare, but here is one. Based on the play The Strike of 1889, which ran for 26 sell-out performances in 1994, The Price of a Cigar, tells the story of the London dockers' strike of 1889.

I didn’t see the play but the book makes easy, often compelling. reading. The author claims that the events took place much as they are described and this seems credible.

The story traces the life of one docker and his family, describing in touching detail the squalid, crushing poverty of life in the East End of London. We follow the beginnings of the strike, and its subsequent development, through the actions of the strike committee, the rapacious behaviour of the London Dock Employers, and an American reporter employed by the Times. If the dialogue is sometimes less than convincing, with common language of the late twentieth century occasionally intruding into nineteenth century speech patterns, this seems not to matter very much. Wood tells the story with drive and gusto, and manages to capture something of the intoxicating spirit which drove the strikers on.and which finally led the employers to climb down and accept the strike committee’s demands.

But it was a pyrrhic victory. Nothing really had been changed. Over a hundred years later, in 1994, the remnants of the once vast army of Liverpool dockers were sacked as they protested against the return of precisely the conditions which had led the London dockers to strike in 1889. Their union seemingly powerless to intervene— hamstrung by the anti-trade union legislation of the 1980s.

Writing about the book John Monks, the present chairman of the Trades Union Congress. describes it as "A moving and truly memorable account of ordinary lives that changed history.’’Moving and memorable"? Well yes. But "an account of ordinary lives that changed the course of history"? Not really. The capitalist class remains in power; workers continue to be exploited; the essential social relations which obtained before the 1889 strike remain in place.

Workers understandably fight to improve their conditions under capitalism, but the burden of their efforts, strategically, must be to change history by replacing capitalism, not by reforming it or concentrating on defensive struggles alone. Nothing less will do.

Michael Gill

Author’s note: 

As he has no wish to needlessly swell the coffers of W.H. Smith, Dillons, etc., the author intends to forward the profit from all books sold as a result of this review to the fund for the families of the Liverpool Dockers The price of the book is £9.95. Any reader requiring a copy should send two cheques, one for £5.55 payable to Anchor Books to cover the cost of the book plus packing and delivery, and one for £4.40 payable to the Merseyside Dockers Family Hardship Fund. Post both cheques with order to: Anchor Books, Anchor House, 54 Whiteadder Way, London El4 9UR. Copies will be signed by the author if requested.

Jack Dash (1989)

From the July 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I last saw Jack Dash he lay dying in an East End hospital; he said he knew that his time had come, but hoped that he had contributed his bit to the struggle of his class. The time before that we sat in a pub and argued with the ferocity that good friendship allows. Although we were separated in age by half of a century, and in ideas by an even greater gulf, Jack and I were real mates. He was a marvellous story-teller, and able poet who could recite with passion and sing old cockney songs in ways that brought their class origins to life. When, a few years ago, a discussion circle on Marxism was set up in Jack's flat it was a pleasure to see how willing he was to think afresh about the complexities of Marxist theory: in all his years of being praised and vilified as a "Marxist" he had found little time to delve into the complexities of the history of our class, and it was tremendous to share in the process of such discovery when giving talks to Jack and his friends at those informal classes held on the eighteenth floor of a tower block.

Three passions governed Jack's political life. He was a member of the Communist Party. A real loyalist: not a word would he hear against the Socialist Fatherland which dominated his political vision like Jesus on the Cross in the mind of a God Squad zealot. Secondly, he was a militant trade unionist. Never an official man, Jack. The T & G tried to offer him official posts, but Jack preferred to stick to the rank and file. "You win strikes with the men, not sitting in a union office making plans for them", he would say. He knew the docks as if they were his home and the dockers as if they were family: to sell them out would be like stabbing a relative in the back. He said of the TUC that "there are more knights around the table than there were at King Arthur's. If I'd had my way they wouldn't be knighted but neutered". Thirdly, he loved the arts: poetry (Shelley was his favourite, but he liked plenty of others, including the required "Soviet: writers) and paintings and songs and plays. When Unity Theatre (the first working-class theatre in London to put on radical plays) were being built he volunteered as a labourer. His partner on the site was Paul Robeson who stayed with Jack while he was in London; Jack would complain about Robeson hogging the bathroom in the morning and singing at the top of his voice. Imagine that: months of having one of the finest singers ever to live annoying  you with his unpaid entertaining as you prepare for a hard day's work in the docks.

Uncritical of Russia
Capitalism is a monstrous system which makes fools of worker's ideals. As a socialist, the present writer was hostile to Jack's Leninist politics. Without a doubt, he wanted a better world to love in. When the present writer described the socialism that we so urgently need to establish, Jack would be filled with enthusiasm. His hatred of the profit system and hunger for something new are not to be sneered at. But for all of that he was an unrepentant Stalinist. Not a word of criticism would he ever voice against the atrocities committed by the state-capitalist police state which exists in the Russian Empire. He would lose no time in apologising for it. When Stalin was purging millions of so-called enemies of "socialism in one country", Brother Dash was there to explain that most of Stalin's crimes were invented by the capitalist press, and the others were justified by the "counter-revolutionary" activities of Stalin's opponents. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin, Brother Dash pointed out that Stalin had gone too far, but now the socialist state was in safe hands. All of the obscene corruption of the Brezhnev years was defended without the merest hint of criticism. When the so-called Eurocommunists began to express complaints about all not being perfect in the Russian proletarian paradise, Brother Dash denounced them as anti-Marxists—or, to use the crazy terminology of the mixed-up "Communists", enemies of "Marxism-Leninism". When Gorbachev introduced the latest reforms, in an effort to integrate the Russian Empire more fully into the capitalist world market, Brother Dash agreed that this is what had to be done in order to modernise socialism. It was one long lifetime of having to pretend that black was white: that oppression was freedom and state capitalism was socialism. It was a life of having to close one's eyes to the Russian bureaucrats whose privileged lifestyles compare well with the fatcat profit-takers who are the capitalists in the West. The poverty of so many East European wage slaves was something to be denied, just as a Tory denies the same social features in Britain.

Why do men who are filled with a burning hatred of the inequities of the profit system allow themselves to be dragged down into this web of self-deceit—and then, inevitably, the deceit of others? Why do they blind themselves, these Stalinist dogmatists who refuse to admit that the whole Bolshevik project has been the most awful disaster for the workers who have been its victims? Here we enter the field of political psychology; it is a field which socialists may have to tread upon a few more times before we complete the road between here and human liberation. One factor in it is the sectarian need to stick to the Party line. The CP says that Russia is the Socialist Fatherland and it is the duty of every loyal comrade to prove that true. When loyalty to the organisation—any organisation—overcomes commitment to historical truth (to honesty), then all is lost in a terrible sectarian haze. Perhaps another motive was the desire on the part of some workers to be able to imagine that an alternative to capitalism was actually in existence. A sort of self-delusion to offer comfort to those who have to live under and suffer the miseries of capitalism. Bogus socialist countries might serve to soften the hardship of living in a world which is really dominated from top to bottom by the capitalist system.

Whatever the motives for the irrational faith in the phoney socialism of the Leninist states, socialists must expose the dangers of such beliefs. Fortunately, history is doing our job for us: these days it is mainly the old-timers who still entertain the crass fantasies about socialist countries existing (although there are plenty of younger leftists who are gullible enough to accept variations on the same old Leninist theme). Sadly for Jack, after years of loyalty to the CP, he was forced to leave it shortly before he died. There has been a very recent split between the Communist Party of Great Britain (which is the Marxism Today official CP) and the Communist Party of Britain which remains loyal to The Morning Star and its uncritical stance towards Russia. (There is yet another CP—the New Communist Party—which argues that even The Morning Star is not Stalinist enough and only they are the true inheritors of the truly fascistic outlook of the heyday of the 1930s.) Jack could  not bring himself to talk about the split which was accompanying the collapse of the CP; he just went on as of nothing has changed, pretending that his little faction was the party.

The Dockers' Way Out
As for his loyalty to the dockers, how ironic it was that Jack died a month after the government announced its intention to abolish the Dock Labour scheme. On the day he died hundreds of dockers went out on unofficial strike after the courts had refused to accept the legality of a three-to-one vote (by secret ballot) in favour of striking. What bloody audacity this this: a government passing laws telling the unions that strikes must be preceded by ballots and then sending in the unelected Judges to declare such a ballot illegal because a dockers' strike could damage the national interest! The fact is that the dockers are up against a system which cannot make profits out of them like it used to and so they are being prepared for the economic slaughter. Jack had fought with admirable militancy back in the 1960s when containerisation threatened the wages and conditions of the dockers. But King Capital is mightier than the mightiest defender of the working-class interest. There comes a point at which defence will not do the trick. Only tackling the wages system itself, with its right to exploit for profit, will prevent the dock employers winning. The dock workers, some of whom marched for Enoch Powell in the late 1960s and voted Labour like sheep to the slaughter are not yet in a position to take on the system. That is what they must do. Only by organising to abolish the wages system, with its employment and jobs, and not by the pathetic demands of "Jobs for Life", will the dockers really win.

Steve Coleman

Plus Ca Change . . . Aristocracy, old and new (1969)

From the August 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The French have a saying which, roughly translated, reads: "The more it changes, the more it remains the same thing". This is a very apt description of one aspect of capitalist society. It is constantly changing. Lots of things are very different from what they were even a decade ago, while if a worker of a century ago could come back to life (we're not saying he would want to, of course!) he would, at first at any rate, hardly recognise the dear old system. However, it would not be long before he realised that it really had remained the same thing: society was still divided into two classes and the minority that owned still lived on the proceeds of the exploitation of the majority that did not own. And although he would marvel at the fantastic progress over the last century (after all, when he died only that comparatively short while ago, he knew nothing of cars of planes or nuclear energy or even old-fashioned electricity), he might utter a sardonic comment or two before returning to the peace of the cemetery when he realised that the average worker still left behind him, when he kicked off, more or less the same as he did. Just his bones.

Nevertheless it is sometimes interesting to notice some of the changes which do take place within the system, while not affecting in the slightest its fundamental nature as a system of exploitation. One such change is in the relative positions of different groups of workers in the social scale. Before the war, the upper crust of the working class was generally thought to consist of such people as policemen, teachers, bank clerks and so on. (So much so, that if you met a bank clerk at the tennis club, the odds were that he would indignantly deny he was a member of the working class at all. His white collar qualified him for membership of some vague entity he would call 'middle class'. Nowadays, he would probably not quarrel with the term 'white-collared workers'. Some progress, anyway.)

Today, however, when one reads glib phrases in the papers about the 'aristocracy of labour', they seldom mean this type of worker at all. In fact, it is a complaint among policemen etc. that whereas before the war they were looked up to as the lucky ones because they had fairly secure jobs while the spectre of unemployment was always hovering around most groups of workers, nowadays they have fallen a rung or two on the ladder of jostling wage-slaves. Unemployment 'only' affects a couple of million people (including families) at present so that there is no longer a premium on security. Only the actual size of the pay packet counts now and in that sense these groups are not among the aristocrats. Who are the new aristocrats then? Well, it seems dockers are (among others of course). It seems they get the vast sum of about 30 quid a week and while there are still groups of workers, such as agricultural workers, who average less than half that princely figure, the dockers really are rich beyond the dreams of avarice. (It's true that even 30 quid is only about five or six in pre-war money but let's not quibble over details.

'Love on the Dole'

Now, I am a trusting sort of chap and would never think of doubting government figures about that 30 quid. Indeed, not all government figures are automatically false (only most of them), One recalls, for example, that Marx went out of his way to praise certain government factory inspectors whose reports he used in connection with his researches. And it happens that, having lived most of my life in an inland part of the country, I doubt if I have stumbled across many dockers. I have merely read about them as being those difficult chaps who are not satisfied with their good fortune but who on the contrary persist in holding the country to ransom and going on strike. And it seems they they don't even give a damn about 'our' balance of payment problem (which worries the rest of the working class so much) when they refuse to load the ships with those precious exports.

But a few weeks ago, I found myself early one morning in the heart of London's dockland and went into a dockers' 'caff' for breakfast. The little place was crowded with about 20 dockers and they looked anything but aristocratic. In fact, the whole scene looked very much like one from Love on the Dole, the famous pre-war play about the depression years in Lancashire. I have no wish to wring anyone's withers and I am not  saying the dockers looked quite like the pictures from Biafra, but it was impossible to resist the thought that if these were the aristocrats the word has certainly changed its meaning. Or, to put it another way, if these were aristocrats, it was Gold help the peasants.

After I had risked my life by making some corny joke about how honoured I was to breakfast with the new aristocracy, one of the blokes pulled out a crumpled wage slip showing £12 and assured me that he had not averaged more than that in take-home pay for months. It seemed, too, that his mates were in more or less the same case. They were enjoying the benefits of 'decasualisation'. One of the great reforms of recent years has meant that dockers (in return for certain concessions on their part, of course), were guaranteed a 'fallback' wage of around £12 a week in cases where they could not get work owing to the spasmodic nature of the industry. These aristocrats assured me that many of them had to live on that sort of money for many months. And how would I like to do that with the present cost of living in London? It seemed they could not even afford to throw bottles at their favourite Millwall football players because they couldn't afford the beer. But while it is good to see that workers cab still keep their sense of humour in such circumstances, it was difficult to see anything funny in the situation. Even less so a little later when I gave one of the men a lift to his dock a mile away. (When I ventured to remark en route that the general impression was that every docker had at least one car outside the door as a basic right under our 'socialist' government he merely gave me a withering 'do me a favour'.) And there I saw how the dignity of man has been rescued under the new enlightened régime since decasualisation.

A group of dockers stood waiting patiently to see if any of them were going to be privileged to be exploited that day. If they were selected, then presumably they would be able to earn the rate of £30 a week we hear so much about. If not, then not. My friend explained to me that, except where there was a sudden spate of urgent work, there would always be a number who were not wanted each day. And, as one would expect, it was usually the same ones who would be chosen. Presumably the ones with the strongest arms. And the weakest tongues. Under any exploitative system, the exploiters will be bound to want workers who are docile and not those who kick against the pricks. It may well be that the old system was even worse. Which only proves that capitalism remains capitalism and the very act of one class buying the other's labour power for the purpose of exploitation is degrading in itself, no matter whether the exploitation takes place under a (more or less) privately owned economy as in America, a so-called mixed economy like Britain's, or a wholly state-owned one like that in Russia. Reforms are merely surface tinkering. It is the thing itself that must be abolished. The act of employment is in itself a degradation.

And just to complete the picture, by one of those little ironies with which life abounds, on the same morning I read in the papers that a real aristocrat, not a peasant or a docker, called Lord Melchett, was dissatisfied with his wage as chairman of the 'socialised' (ye gods!) steel industry which the Wilson government has bestowed on a grateful working class. It seems he was only getting around £20,000 a year and he needed another £5,000 to make it pay (figures very approximate; workers shouldn't quibble about a few thousand here or there for their masters). And a little more irony here. How did his lordship become an aristocrat and a millionaire? Answer: he inherited both from his grandfather, Alfred Mond, the founder of ICI and in his day as fierce a fighter against trade unions as any capitalist could wish for. And now the successors of the union leaders of those days are happily rewarding Mond's successor with the overlordship of their own ark of the covenant, the nationalised steel industry. It is as though they are trying to make it clear to the workers that the more it changes the more it remains the same. But when will the workers see?

One last item. My docker friend averred that the dockers' position would be a lot worse were it not for their unofficial leader "good old Jackie Dash". And of course it may well be true. The official union leaders have to try to play ball with the government, especially 'our'Labour government. So a 'communist' like dash can easily fish in troubled waters and gain credit for the Communist Party while so doing. I confess I did not even try to point out that if the Dashes had their way, then the rights of trade unions would go the same way as all democratic rights have gone in the CP's fatherland, the Soviet Union. My friend was clearly in no mood for thinking about such things. He had enough problems on hand in trying to make ends meet that day. But until the dockers, along with the rest of the working class, aristocrats and the rest alike, start thinking about Socialism, they must be resigned to accepting all the miseries that capitalism has to offer.

L. E. Weidberg

Editorial: The attitude of the London Dockers (1949)

Editorial from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The action of London dockers in coming out on strike over two ships that were concerned in a dispute originating on the other side of the Atlantic is a gesture that must be applauded by all those interested in the solidarity of labour. Whatever the merits of the dispute these London men were prepared to make sacrifices in a cause that had no direct influence on their own wages and conditions of labour. It is this aspect of the dispute that is heartening to socialists as it is one of the harbingers of that wider and more pregnant solidarity that will herald the triumph of Socialism. This particular strike has occurred at a time when prominent trade unionists and all the Labour Governments, including the Russian, are stressing the importance of nationalism.

It is true that trade union internationalism is a long way from the internationalism in which socialists are interested but it still expresses, even if at times unconsciously, a recognition of the identity of the workers' interests all over the world as opposed to the interests of the international capitalist class.

The attitude of the dockers is in striking contrast to the views of the Government. Whereas the dockers were, in their action, giving expression to an international outlook the Government's is almost entirely national as witness the following statement by the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross:

"These unofficial strikes are an act of economic treason to our trade unions, to the Socialist movement and indeed to our country." (News Chronicle, 14/7/49.)

As "our country" does not belong to us but to those who own the means of production and distribution, the Labour Government definition of "economic treason" is one that should not worry the dockers or any other workers. The fact that it has not done so in the present dispute is one that must give satisfaction to the socialist.

Enoch Powell: aftermath or prelude (1968)

From the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alice has stepped through the looking glass. The London dockers have cheered right wing Tory M.P. Gerald Nabarro. Jack Dash has tried to stop a strike. Dockland Communists have taken a couple of clergymen down to the East End for, presumably, moral support. These were some of the immediate results of Enoch Powell's infamous speech.

One of the many ironies in this situation is its central character. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Powell, whose first name is John, should want to be known as Enoch, with its suggestion of an arid crank, too eager to pronounce harsh judgement. (Quinton Hogg once called him "a sort of Mao Tse-Tung of Toryism".)

Powell has always acted the part of Enoch. It is doubtful if many of his recent supporters are familiar with his opinions on issues other than immigration, or would understand what he was talking about if they tried to find out.

How many dockers, for example, would agree with what he wrote about the usefulness—or rather lack of it—of trade unions in the Sunday Times of September 6 1964:

(the remuneration of labour) is rarely affected appreciably, upwards or downwards, by combination; and then the effect is more or less temporary and purchased at the cost of the general public, including other workers.

How many Smithfield porters would support his attitude on price control:

. . . and management had no business to accept any such responsibility for keeping prices stable or reducing them. The duty of every management was to conduct the business in a way which was likely to maximise the return on the capital invested. (The Guardian, 29/1/64.)

How many of those who now think they back Enoch would go along with what he wrote about hospital waiting lists in his book Medicine and Politics:

It might (!) be thought macabre to observe that if people are on a waiting list long enough, they will die—usually from some cause other than that for which they joined the queue. Short of dying, however, they frequently get bored or better, and vanish. 

 Nobody knows if Powell has ever tried to make a joke, but if he has that passage was not one of his attempts. It was written, with much more in the same heartless vein, by a man who was once Minister of Health.

There is plenty of evidence to support the view that Powell has an unrepentant contempt for popular opinion. The question is, now, is why he has suddenly played for the mass vote, using the well known demagogue's trick of throwing a mass of mud knowing that most of it will stick? Why did he use forecasts of immigration which were loaded and distorted? Why did he talk about the man who fears that in fifteen or twenty years the black man will have the whip hand over the white in Britain? Why did he trot out the story of the lonely, harassed widow who cannot be found, even by Powell himself?

This was the first case of a prominent British politician—a prospective Prime Minister, no less—stimulating, and appealing to colour prejudice. Powell's was a cunning speech which gave him a hero's reputation but it was a dangerous game he was playing.

What justification is there for Powell's reputation - How consistent and honest is he?

Most of his vociferous supporters have probably forgotten that during his term as Minister of Health the Health Service was eagerly recruiting immigrant workers of all types to plug the gaps in its manpower. They are also probably unaware that Powell has always stood out for the free movement of labour, for example in this speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery in February 1964:

We are fearful of the big movement of population and of industry without which industrial progress is not possible. We are timid in the face of change in almost any form.

Immigration, of course, is a "change"; it is also a "big movement of population".

Then there was Powell's famous resignation in 1958, often cited as evidence of his integrity, with Peter Thorneycroft and Nigel Birch. (Duncan Sandys criticised the resigners, Nabarro accused them of "rocking the boat"; Macmillian dismissed the whole matter nonchalantly, as a "little local difficulty".) The point of dispute was the proposal to increase government expenditure during the next year. Powell was quite clear where he stood on this; in a speech to his constituency party after his resignation he aid:

If Mr. Thorneycroft's conviction that Government spending should be limited to its present level could be legitimately criticised, then it should be on the ground that it was too lax, not too strict . . . (The Times, 10/1/58.)

It is instructive to consider what followed this great stand on principle. In 1958, public authorities' current expenditure, that is, the combined central government and local authority expenditure, was £6,524m. This kept in rising until in 1960 it reached £7,441m. On principle, then, Powell should have stayed out of government. But in 1960 he managed to stifle his misgivings and accept office as Minister of Health, Government spending continued to rise—in 1961 it was £8,136m. and in 1962 £8,668m. But Powell hung on to his job.

He did, in fact, get in another resignation of sorts, after the Tory magic circle selected Douglas-Home to succeed Macmillan. Powell gave no reason for his refusal to accept office so it was widely assumed that he objected either to Douglas-Home (unlikely—politicians learn to embrace men they loathe) or to the method of his selection, which so clearly excluded the Powells of the Conservative Party.

Whatever his objections, Powell had no difficulty in forgetting them when he wanted to; after the Tory defeat in October he suddenly found it all right to join Douglas-Home's Shadow Cabinet and there he stayed until Heath sacked him after his Wolverhampton tirade.

These manoeuvres can be simply explained if we forget the theory that Powell is a man of rock-;like integrity and accept him as a normal, ambitious capitalist politician. His withdrawal after Macmillan's retirement came after a struggle for the Tory leadership. He came back into the Shadow Cabinet—and perhaps, in his own estimation, into the leadership stakes—when Douglas-Home was clearly on the way out and subsequently he stood, with little hope, in the election which gave Heath the job. Now Heath's standing is in doubt; there is strong criticism of him in his party for not making the most of Labour's predicament. If Labour begin to pick up their support again this criticism will intensify. This is typically a time for Powell to strike and now that he has done so we may be sure that a fierce and ruthless battle is raging behind those urbane Tory exteriors.

The danger is that Powell has started something which he will not be able to control. The appetite of racialism grows by what it feeds on; each tightening of immigration control in this country has come after a political panic—Smethwick, Duncan Sandy's scare over the Kenyan Asians and so on. What will happen if other politicians join Powell's bandwagon and if the working class begin voting in any numbers for organisations like the National Front and Union Movement? Already it is possible, and reasonable, for The Observer to comment "We must only be calm, but must also be willing to have our teeth knocked out in defence of tolerance." (28/4/68). In this atmosphere it cannot be said that it can't happen here. 

Parallels can be taken too far, but there are undeniable similarities between the present political situation in this country and that in Germany in the Thirties, There is a discredited Social Democratic party, whose responsibility in the failure to solve a chronic economic problem has brought widespread disillusionment with democratic politics. There is a popular impression, as the troops come back from East of Suez, that this country has suffered a military defeat.

There has not yet been a slump to rival the pre-war crash, but there are signs that a catastrophic collapse need not be far off. (The Economist of May 4 cheers us all up with its opening words: "It is possible that there will be another international currency crisis within the next few weeks.") There is an easily identifiable racial minority to take the blame for all working class problems and frustrations. Finally, there are now politicians in power or close to it who are trying to exploit the situation, as Schleicher and Von Papen did in Germany.

One fact that seems to have been overlooked is that Enoch Powell, an openly declared enemy of the working class, is no more than another capitalist politician. There is no reason to think that he will succeed where others have failed; a Powell government—or even a Powell dictatorship—would no more solve the problems of the British working class than have the Wilson government or the Hitler dictatorship did the problems of the German workers.

The abiding question is what the working class may be willing to go through before Powell is no longer their hero. We are now living in the unpleasant aftermath of his venomous speech. Is it a prelude to something even nastier to come?

Ivan