Lordly Perplexities (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Lordships, Beveridge and Beaverbrook, hereinafter called the two B's, appear to be concerned regarding the future. We shall take Lord Beveridge first

According to the Glasgow Herald (31/12/51) he broadcast “A Letter to posterity," the theme of which was the comments he would like to make on life in Britain in 1951 to the people of Britain in 2052, 100 years hence.

His broadcast commenced with the assertion that the abolition of poverty by levelling up incomes has been part of our social policy for many years. In addition, over the past ten years, there has been tremendous levelling down as well, to pay for wars, their consequences and preparation of fresh wars. He said, “ It is not possible for anyone now to enjoy great wealth or to pass it on to his children.”

We are somewhat perplexed, in view of the real facts, to discover how his Lordship arrived at this conclusion. It would appear that be is unaware of the millions of workers whose gross earnings are £6 per week or less. Also the steep rise in the cost of living since 1945. According to government figures the increase is approximately 29 per cent. Again industrial wage rates have not risen as much, production has been greatly increased, approximately 30 per cent. since 1947. This in conjunction with record profits being made in practically all industries can by no stretch of the imagination be called abolishing poverty. It is in fact the reverse, viz. the intensification of poverty. In this regard perhaps we should recommend that he scan the National Assistance Board figures published in the “Economist” 7th July, ’51. He will find that whereas in 1948 the total number of people in receipt of relief, excluding blind and T.B. cases, was about 785 thousand, by 1950 it had increased to 1272 thousand. Possibly this was only a little extra beer and baccy money for some more of the new “privileged class,” the workers. The same paper (24th Feb. ’51) indicates the absurdity of his claims re levelling down. Figures are given showing that 1 per cent. of the population own 50 per cent. of the wealth. The Economist's comments being—”This is an unimpressive result of forty years of death duties.” Figures given in The Tribune (26th Jan. ’51) show that 16 million people are at the bottom of the social scale with estates of less than £100.

A Lordly nostalgia: —We are informed that he had to leave Fuggal Hall and move into a “middle income group house” in order to make ends meet. He states— “The Baronial Hall with troops of servants laying coal fires in every room was giving place to rows and rows of council houses, each with a radiator and a television aerial.” Shed a tear ye privileged idle and pampered proletarians for the poor, poor rich.

His concern regarding future leadership appears to be considerable. In his opinion the men and women on the stage need leaders. "Just from where in our classless collection of men and women the leadership will come . . . I do not know.” Aristocratic tradition, in his opinion, is a factor of major importance in correct leadership and we are faced with carrying on an aristocratic tradition without the aristocrats. It is of course true your Lordship that people “inherit” traditions; they also dispose of useless traditions. Perhaps your wish is for your tradition to inherit the people. We shall deal with this question further in our conclusion.

His Lordship Beaverbrook is well known for his “modesty and wisdom" through the medium of his newspapers, especially the Daily Express. The opinion column of Scottish Daily Express (31.12.51) while moaning of the loss of Abadan and the rising cost of living states that there is also cause for joy—“The joy that Socialism has been discarded and Mr. Churchill again returned to power.” Further joy—We have escaped war and are still on talking terms with Russia; also, peace in Korea is within grasp and Churchill is on the stage directing and lending the wisdom of his council. In general, the war danger recedes as each hour adds to mounting Western strength. May we remind your Lordship of your very frequently published claims in the Daily Express during 1938 and '39 that there would be no war this year, or next year, or any other year. In fact your last statement, in bold headlines, to this effect was published merely days before the outbreak of war in 1939. How very wrong you were despite your, undoubtedly excellent, facilities for information. Every informed person saw the rapid approach of war from 1935 onwards. Again, since when did an arms race result in anything other than war? You are equally confused regarding Socialism. Capitalism administered by the Labour party or any other parties can never be Socialism. Your judgments in these matters do not at all seem to be reliable. In fact they appear to be parallel with the guesses of Old Moore’s Almanac and should be treated accordingly.

Regarding 1952 and the years beyond, you ask— “Is Britain to have peace without prosperity? Is she to remain for evermore a pinchpenny land in which people live meanly and eat miserably.” When during the existence of capitalism has it been otherwise for the great majority of the people? It will always remain so while capitalism remains, irrespective of the government being an Attlee-Morrison-Bevan, or Churchill-Eden combination. Prosperity, with or without peace, is an almost exclusive enjoyment of the capitalist class. Slums and lack of them, blood and tears, and toil and sweat, whether in times of depression, or prosperity with or without peace has been labour’s reward for honest hard work.

In conclusion a word to the two B’s. Capitalism, the present social system which suits you both eminently shall be abolished eventually. The interest of peace, security, culture and the general welfare of mankind demand it, the sooner the better. A new sane and humane system, Socialism, shall take its place. In this regard you need not worry about leadership, aristocratic or otherwise, as leadership shall also go overboard with other lumber. When one reviews the past and visualises the shabby pretentious collection of bombastic people who have been “our leaders;” whose self-seeking blunders have shamefully abused and squandered wealth and drenched the world in blood, then one realises that the end of leadership cannot be too soon. Intelligent working men and women who organise for the establishment of Socialism have no need for leaders. The end or object, Socialism, means the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the end of idleness and luxury for your class, the ending of stately baronial mansions, likewise the finish of poverty, misery and slums. The Labour Government have been very good friends to your class. It shall be very very different when, for the first time in history. Socialists take control out of the hands of the capitalist class for the purpose of carrying out the revolutionary task, the establishing of Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain carries on its task of making socialists confident that the future belongs to us. Chums, you’ve almost  " ’ad it.”

John Higgins

Our complaint against the "Evening Standard" (1956)

From the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Negative reply from the Press Council

In October last the Evening Standard (12/10/55) published an article by Sir Beverley Baxter, M.P. about the annual conference of the Labour Party, which be described however as the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

We wrote to Sir Beverley Baxter asking “why go out of your way to give to the Labour Party a name that you know is not its own, and why you select for that purpose, also as you know, the name borne by this organization, which incidentally was formed before the Labour Party." He replied as follows:—

“ I have noted your letter of disapproval and am obliged for the trouble you took in writing to me.”

We then wrote to the Editor of the Evening Standard enclosing a copy of the correspondence with Baxter. From the Editor, Mr. Percy Elland, we received an equally brief reply:—

“ Thank you for sending me these letters between yourself and Sir Beverley Baxter. 1 have nothing to add to this correspondence."

We then (on 15 November) sent the correspondence to the Press Council with the following letter:—

“Dear Sir,

We wish to bring to your notice an example of deliberate presentation of incorrect information in the Press. As you will see from the enclosed copies of letters written by us to Sir Beverley Baxter and the Editor of the Evening Standard respectively and their replies, a deliberately inaccurate statement was published but the writer of the article and the Editor both declined to treat seriously a reasonable complaint.

It would seem to us that deliberate falsification of this kind is incompatible with a claim to publish accurate reports.

What is the purpose of this particular practice on the part of those concerned we are unable to guess. We would like to have your views on the matter.

Yours truly.”

Later on (4 January, 1956) we supplied the Council with a copy of an article in the Socialist Standard of June, 1939, showing that at that time Sir Beverley Baxter was habitually describing the Labour Party as the Socialist Party of Great Britain in his regular articles in the Canadian Weekly, Maclean's.

We had in 1939 sent a copy to Sir Beverley Baxter to remind him (if that were necessary) of his error.

We have now received the decision of the General Council of the Press in a letter dated 20 January, 1956, the Council’s Secretary, Mr. Alan Pitt Robbins, C.B.E. 

“ Dear Sir,

I am instructed to inform you that at its quarterly meeting on January 17th, the Press Council considered your complaint against the Evening Standard.

The Council decided to take no action in the matter in view of the fact that readers of the article would clearly understand the organisation to which Sir Beverley Baxter was referring ”

We do not find the reason given by the Press Council at all satisfactory because the absence of confusion is by no means as clear as they would have it. Every speaker on the platform of the S.P.G.B. knows by experience that there are large numbers of people who do not know the difference between the S.P.G.B. and the Labour Party. How does the Press Council know that there is no such confusion in the minds of Evening Standard readers.

And it would seem that Sir Beverley has had doubts himself, because in the issue of MacLeans dated 24 December, 1955, his London Letter contains the following:—

“ I am sorry to confess that while I rarely attend the Tory Conference 1 never miss the one held by the Labour Party.”

But we shall probably never know why Baxter started the practice years ago (was it one of those silly brain waves of Lord Beaverbrook?) nor why he has abandoned it now—if he has abandoned it now—(perhaps he is going to have one rule for Canada and another for Britain).

Before the Press Council had given us its decision on the complaint against the Evening Standard we had published in our issue for January, 1956, the editorial dealing with the faking of reports in the Beaverbrook Press in years past. The Council have taken no action on this (understandably perhaps in view of the lapse of time since the incidents referred to occurred) and their letter to us dated 20 January, 1956, refers only to Sir Beverley Baxter's article in the Evening Standard of 12 October. 1955.

There, at the moment, is how the matter stands.

Editorial Committee.

Press Exposure: Bloody Awful (1995)

Beaverbrook by David Low.

The Press Exposure column from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloody Awful

It must have worked wonders for the sales of the Daily Express when, in the 1960s, no less an expert than the Duke of Edinburgh told some people in Latin America that it was "a bloody awful newspaper”. After all, any man on the promenade in Rhyl or in the back streets of Derby must have sensed that a newspaper which earns that sort of description from a massively boorish social parasite like the Duke must have something to be said for it.

In fact at that time Prince Philip seemed to be locked in unceasing conflict with much of die British press, who gleefully reported all his public relations blunders. For example there was the time he genially soaked an assembly of hacks on a lawn at the Chelsea Flower Show by turning on the sprinkler. The antagonism became so intense that, in the midst of the Profumo affair, the Sunday Express published a remarkable article which, after recounting some of the Duke’s more colourful criticisms of the press, warned that unless he held his tongue the Express newspapers might find it their unavoidable duty as a responsible newspaper serving the great British public to reveal some acutely embarrassing details of his private life.

Empathy

Those were heady days for the Express which, under the eccentric ownership of Lord Beaverbrook, could take comfort from a circulation of about 4¼ million and a reputation for employing some famous journalists. The paper's success was said to spring from their natural empathy with the sort of people to be found in Rhyl or Derby (other papers, of course, had a direct line with passengers on buses in Clapham; all of them seemed to suffer from identical bigotries and delusions). It is unlikely that the Duke would bother to criticise the Express now when its circulation hovers precariously on 1¼ million after a fall of about 6.5 percent over the past year.

Beaverbrook bought the Daily Express for £ 17,500 in 1916 and a couple of years later started up its stablemate on Sundays. To say that he stamped his—rather objectionable—personality on the paper would be an understatement, although he did not baulk [balk?] at employing journalists like Michael Foot and Tom Driberg who had political disagreements with him. He was not always frank about his motives. In 1927 he pretended to give up his interest in the papers by passing his controlling interest over to his son. In 1954 it was the Beaverbrook Foundation, supposedly too purely objective to be interested in any sordid political ambitions, which was said to have been given the ownership. He was more open when he gave his evidence to the Royal Commission on the Press in 1947: "I run the paper purely for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive."

Harlots

Of course other people saw Beaverbrook’s motives in a rather different light We have already mentioned how wounded were the delicate sensitivities of Prince Philip. He was only one of the more recent examples. In 1930 Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, smarting under some particularly savage attacks in the papers, included Beaverbrook in the press barons who aimed at “. . . power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Well, whatever else may be said about this particular harlot no one can accuse her of having a knack for infallible forecasts. In May 1938 the Daily Express assured its readers that Germany would not seize Czechoslovakia. In September that year it declared on its front page that "Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either.” Staunchly supportive of the Tory Party, it ran a typically flamboyant selective and disastrous campaign in the 1945 general election. Time will tell whether it got it right when it supported Major in the recent Tory leadership election.

The long drawn out decline of the Daily Express set in after the death of Beaverbrook and has continued through several changes of ownership and management. After Beaverbrook there was his son Max Aitken whose talents as a fighter pilot and a playboy did not extend to running a newspaper. There was Jocelyn Stevens who was sacked by Lord Matthews who ran the great combine Trafalgar House. Stevens, who was a millionaire merchant banker, maintained the Express tradition for getting it wrong when he said in 1987 that the stock market fall should be ignored as it was only a computer blip. The present Managing Director, Andrew Cameron, recently announced an economy drive in which 220 workers would lose their jobs ". . . to put us into fighting shape. (The cuts) are about securing the future."

Poverty

There may be people—in Rhyl, in Derby—who will ask what shape, what future, what security? In other places too. In July the MP for Manchester Gorton, Gerald Kaufman, told the Commons about how some of the people in that city live. Taking the national mortality rate as 100, in Manchester it is 163 for men and 148 for women. The rate for stillbirths in England and Wales is 4.2 percent, in Manchester it is 6.4 percent. For infant mortality Manchester rates 8.4 percent against 6.5 percent for the rest of Britain. These are symptoms of the extremes of poverty, of the stresses of unemployment which force down the wages of whose who are in work; Kaufman mentioned one man who works 64 and 72 hours a week whose hourly rate of pay has been cut from £3.02 to £2.35.

The poverty endured by these people is extreme in comparison but not too exceptional in its nature. Rather, it is conventional to capitalism, part of the process which produces rich people like Lords Beaverbrook, Matthews and Stevens we are supposed to admire and poor people, in Rhyl, Derby. Manchester or wherever, we are encouraged to despise. The Express may be a bloody awful newspaper but there are no bloody good ones and it speaks for a bloody dreadful social system.

Ivan

Homes for Heroes—Deferred (1943)

From the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who wish to improve the housing conditions of the working class have always received considerable vocal support. For a century the housing problem has provoked prolonged debate and intensive efforts from reformists to get something done. Despite these efforts, many workers still live in slums, in unhealthy hovels, and in overcrowded conditions. Recently it was the subject for debate in the House of Lords and in the Commons.

Lord Beaverbrook urged the Government to proceed with its emergency scheme for 30,000 houses for agricultural labourers. His efforts were rewarded by the following compliment from Emrys Hughes in Forward, May 8th, 1943 :

“Good for Lord Beaverbrook. If he devotes his energies to this campaign … he should get our whole-hearted backing and support, with the addendum that he is not shouting half loud enough.” The addendum frightens us; a loud shout may blow these houses down. A report on this scheme came from Bradford (Wilts) and appeared in the Daily Herald, April 20th, 1943. Mr. R. P. Pearce, surveyor, stated “he was very much afraid the amount of timber allowed by the authorities was too flimsy to stand a wind of gale force.” Pleasant prospects !

While the noble Lords were so keenly interested in the workers’ welfare, the Commons were indulging in a “home for heroes” debate. Some significant remarks were made (Daily Herald, May 5th). Mr. Hogg, Tory M.P., stated : “A large part of our population is still living in eighteenth century conditions.” Mr. H. Thorneycroft, Labour M.P., pointed out: “Manchester needs 76,000 houses, and at this moment 68,000 are condemned.” Mr. E. Brown, the Minister of Health, wound up by making no promises either for now or the immediate future, although “he admitted that at least 4,000,000 (houses) would be needed after the war.” For the heroes—hope deferred. Four million is a tremendous advance on earlier estimates; ten years ago, before the war aggravated the problem, 1,400,000 houses were estimated as sufficient to abolish overcrowding !

Now that it is known how many dwellings are necessary to house the workers, statisticians may derive pleasure from ascertaining how long that will take at the pre-war rate of building. Items they should not forget in their calculations are the drive for profit, heavy air-raids with their wholesale destruction of working-class homes, also the thousands of “decent” homes now rapidly deteriorating into slums. The problem will not be solved within capitalism.

Basically, there is no such thing as a housing problem. The problem for the workers is poverty, and that will remain so long as capitalism remains. Before the war we witnessed the erection of great buildings for the use of the capitalists, either for homes or for commercial purposes. Colossal quantities of material and thousands of hours of labour were required to do this work. There was no problem—the places were needed by the capitalists, who could afford to pay, so they were built. The needs of the workers are more pressing, but the barrier is insurmountable—the barrier of poverty. Nothing will be built unless it is required by the capitalist or a profit is expected from them. Again we stress the workers live in slums and hovels because they are poor and can afford nothing better.

Two days after the debate had finished, and the problem had been shelved for a few months, evidence for our contention was given in a report on a village fire. Of the 21 houses of Kelmarsh, Northants, 14 were destroyed. These houses were 300 years old. The Daily Herald, May 6th, 1943, reported : “Forty-four people are homeless and nobody knows what is going to happen to them. … Mothers . . . ran for buckets of water. ‘But we had only three taps,’ said Mrs. Vials. . . . They are being housed in empty bedrooms in a wing of the Hall, home of Col Claud Granville Lancaster, M.P.” Comment unnecessary.

Lew Jones

Editorial: The Printing Dispute (1959)

Editorial from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the ordinary trade union point of view of a struggle to enforce more pay and shorter hours, the printers' strike seems to have been well conceived and executed and well timed.

The claim was for a 10 per cent. increase of pay and a reduction of 3½ hours, from 43½ to 40. After lengthy negotiations the employers offered 2½ per cent. and 1 hour, but tied up the offer with a long list of demands for the reorganisation of the industry to increase production. The Unions rejected this offer and rejected also the employers manoeuvre of trying to get them to take the claim to arbitration. Having taken a ballot of their members the printing unions came out on strike on June 17th, over 100,000 men and women being involved. The dispute affected the Newspaper Society and the British Federation of Master Printers, but not the Newspaper Proprietors' Association or the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, so while the Provincial newspapers, the magazines and periodicals and general printers were brought to a standstill the national and Sunday papers and London evening papers carried on, as did a certain number of firms which accepted the Unions' demands. A second dispute affecting printing ink threatened to stop the other papers, but this was avoided.

The timing was favourable for the workers because trade was recovering from the depression, unemployment was falling and the imminence of a general election made the employers, the Government and the big political parties worried lest a long-drawn out strike should hold up the very big volume of literature of various kinds needed for the election.

In the third week of the strike, discussions started under the chairmanship of Lord Birkett. Towards the end of July, at our time of going to press, the employers made an improved offer, of 3½ per cent. increase of pay, and a reduction of 1½ hours. The unions rejected this. They considered that the substantial concessions they were prepared to make to make to increase productivity justified more than 3½ per cent. on pay and at least an undertaking of a further reduction of hours at a later date. Settlement was then Expected at 4½ per cent. proposed by Lord Birkett.

The Sanctimonious “Guardian”

The dispute produced several surprising, diverting and instructive incidents. As was to be expected the Manchester Guardian led the Press in its sanctimonious comment of June 13th, laying down the usual employers' line that everyone believes in the right of the workers to strike so long as they never exercise the right:

The right to strike is a fundamental human freedom, but its exercise ought to be justified by some great cause. There is no great cause in the printing dispute—it is a piece of market bargaining over money.

Can anyone remember the Manchester Guardian ever supporting a strike (except a strike of foreign workers)? The Guardian editor’s further remark was equally hypocritical.

In the nineteenth century, when Britain had few industrial rivals, and when the main domestic industries had well-hedged fields to themselves, a strike or lock-out did not matter much, except in terms of personal suffering.

If some diligent student were to study the Guardian’s attitude to strikes in the nineteenth century, we do not doubt that he would find that the Guardian always managed to find overwhelming reasons for condemning those strikers too.

Lord Sourgrapes

It might have been expected that the newspapers that continued to be published would have solidly defended the employers, though Labour Party supporters doubtless hoped that their two mouthpieces, the official Daily Herald and the unofficial Daily Mirror, would line up with the workers against the employers. It turned out otherwise and some of the liveliest abuse during the strike was to be found in a fierce battle between the Daily Express and the other two. Beaverbrook’s Daily Express roundly accused the big magazine combines of having precipitated an unnecessary strike by their "tough and unaccommodating attitude," and said (4th July) that the provincial newspapers were the “victims of the tycoons of the magazine trade. They are paying a heavy price for their association with these richer more powerful and more belligerent allies." The biggest printing union, NATSOPA, promptly endorsed the charge. The Mirror and. Odhams (the latter owns the People and the Herald) are the “magazine tycoons" referred to, and they angrily denied the accusation. The Mirror of July 6th, in a slashing leader headed “ Lord Sourgrapes—and the drop of poison," explained that Beaverbrook has no magazines except “a couple of inconspicuous comics," called it a “smear campaign,” and passed the buck to the smaller printing firms and smaller newspapers who feared that the Unions' demands would put them out of business. The People (July 5th) blamed the Unions for not having let the claim go to arbitration in the first place. The Herald itself tried to ride both horses. It held that the men have a good case for their original demands, but that the employers “think they have a good case for insisting on increased productivity as a condition of any wage rise" (June 19th). It tried to escape its dilemma by blaming the Government for not immediately setting up a court of inquiry, which, of course, the Unions did not want, anyway.

The “Principle” of Shorter Hours

A weakness of the trade union position (to be found in many other industries as well) is the ambiguous attitude to shorter hours. Mr. Willis, one of the Union leaders and Chairman of the T.U.C., declared at the conference of the Miners' Union that the printers were striking “in support of the principle for which every trade unionist would fight, the shorter week." (News Chronicle, July 8th.) But what are the facts? Though the standard hours are now about four less than in 1938 the actual hours worked in industry are no lower than they were then. The claims for shorter hours have turned into claims for more overtime pay. In 1946 printing hours were reduced by 1½ to 43½, but within a few years the actual average hours of male workers in the paper and printing trade were higher than they were before, and in 1957 were 47 a week.

Confusion about Arbitration and Impartiality

The trade unions are in a muddle about arbitration. The printing unions consistently opposed it on the ground that it would not be “impartial,” but later in the dispute they were asking that Lord Monckton be invited—though he declined the invitation—to preside over the negotiations “to advise, guide and control” the discussions, but not to have power to be final arbiter. Lord Monckton was for four years Tory Minister of Labour (described by the General Secretary of the railwaymen in 1955 as “a very able friend of the N.U.R.! ”) and is now chairman of the Midland Bank, which refuse; to recognise the union of bank employees! Arbitration is established by the Government to settle industrial disputes and it cannot be impartial in the sense of deciding the merits of a case on some abstract principle of humanity. No such principles are laid down for the present court or the one abolished last year. The job of the arbitrators is to find a basis on which the workers can be persuaded to carry on working and the employers can keep in business—with, as an inescapable background, the continuation of Capitalism.

To illustrate the general confusion in the trade union movement it has only to be recalled that last year the T.U.C. and many trade union leaders were deriding the Government for abolishing the arbitration tribunal, which other unions declare they will not have anyway. The Daily Herald then (October 24h, 1958) called it a move to help the employers by abolishing the “referee to see fair play.”

And in the present dispute Mr. Willis, in the matter of strike pickets, was calling on the Government to observe “strict impartiality” (Times, June 26th), as if a government committed to keeping Capitalism going (as all governments must be that take on the administration of Capitalism) could “impartially” stand aside and not defend the property rights of the propertied class.

The International Aspect

The fact is that the trade union movement still broadly accepts Capitalism though prepared to strike against the Capitalists. This was clearly shown by the attitude of the printing unions. They belong to the printing workers Trade Union International, the International Graphical Federation, and some at least of the continental unions acceded to the request that they should advise their members not to do “black” work sent abroad during the strike. But in the middle of the strike NATSOPA released a plan it had drawn up suggesting a deal between the British unions and the British employers. If the latter would concede the demands on hours and wages, in return the unions would cooperate on a joint productivity council: “ The essence of the plan is that the prosperous big groups with stable and profitable home markets will help the small and medium printers, and particularly the printing concerns working on export printing. The plan should make British printers highly competitive in markets abroad.” (News Chronicle, June 23rd, 1959.)

So the unions, while fighting the employers, are quite prepared to collaborate with them to capture foreign markets—where, of course, they will clash with foreign printers who. again with the collaboration of the workers, will be resisting the invasion and trying to counter attack. This, of course, makes nonsense of the object of the printers' trade union international: “To safeguard the economic, occupational and general interests of graphical workers in all countries and to promote their solidarity.” (Our italics.)

In the nineteenth century Socialist critics of the trade union movement used to ridicule the illogicality of workers fighting the employers in the industrial field and electing the same people to Parliament and supporting them nationally. The present outlook of the trade unions shows that they have still a long way to go before they realise that the workers’ interest demands real international working class solidarity against the employers—and for Socialism.

50 Years Ago: A Red Herring (1981)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George’s raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud- slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that. Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party’s meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government’s agreement that were (purposely ?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer.”

To the worker the issues raised at St. George’s were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill- owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

(Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard.)

Greasy Pole: Michael Foot – An example of principles? (2010)

The Greasy Pole Column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

A handy tool for a balanced assessment of obituaries of the Great and the Good is to be aware that the more fanciful the praise for the deceased the greater the relief that they are no longer around to cause any trouble. Consider, for example, the tributes to Michael Foot on his death, at 96, last month. This is Gordon Brown, overlooking that during Foot’s life he would have been one of his consistent opponents: “…a man of deep principle and great idealism…one of the most eloquent speakers the country has ever heard … An indomitable figure who always stood up for his beliefs…” Here is Tony Blair, the intensity of whose antagonism towards Foot would have rivalled that of Brown: “…a giant of the Labour movement, a man of passion, principle and outstanding commitment…” Finally, still dealing with Prime Ministers, this is Margaret Thatcher “…a highly principled and cultivated man…if I did not think it would offend him, I would say he is a gentlemen…” Except that that was not a comment by Thatcher after Foot had died; it was what she thought at the time she had crushed him in the 1983 election. Principle? Idealism? Passion? The fantasies about Foot live on, like a virus infecting those who promote themselves as successors.

Journalism

He was swept into Parliament in the Labour landslide of 1945, when the votes showed that the lies about a safer, healthier world emerging from that greatest ever human crisis had been gratefully absorbed. Foot’s constituency was Devonport in Plymouth, where his comfortably powerful family (his father had been an MP, one brother was an MP, another became Governor of Cyprus) had their affluent home. Before that he had worked as a journalist on the New Statesman and Tribune. Aneurin Bevan, whose reputation as a viperous left-wing orator had not been an obstacle to him forming a close friendship with the Tory press baron Lord Beaverbrook, suggested that Foot (“…a young bloody knight-errant…”) would be a useful employee for one of the unconventional lordship’s newspapers. Perhaps because of Beaverbrook’s seeming vulnerability to those he saw as fellow rebellious misfits Foot was placed in a job which refreshed him with regular pay rises until he became editor of the scandalously strident Evening Standard. In 1945 Foot transferred to the Daily Herald, part-owned by the TUC but later transmogrified into Rupert Murdoch’s Sun with its Page Three girls and screeching headlines.

Guilty Men

By that time Foot’s reputation as a rebel had been cemented into place, although it was typically impulsive rather than consistent. In the 1940s one of his most successful projects had been as the co-author, with two other journalists, of the book Guilty Men. Published by the Left Book Club, this was a best-selling polemic against the Conservative government’s apparent preference for negotiating about – or appeasing – Nazi Germany’s expansionism instead of building up British forces. Guilty Men does not spare Foot’s political allies: “Up to the arrival of Hitler on the scene, the Labour Party officially went through all the antic motions of ‘resisting militarism‘. This consisted of adopting pretty well every half-baked disarmament proposition that was drawn up, and annually voting against the Service estimates”. But effective a rant though that is, it takes no account of the fact that Foot had not always opposed disarmament. In 1933, when the Geneva talks, aiming at multilateral disarmament, broke down he came out in favour of unilateral disarmament . His election address in 1935, when he stood unsuccessfully for Monmouth, attacked the Tory Prime Minister Baldwin for his policy of re-armament, stating that “…the armaments race in Europe must be stopped now”.

Falklands

More recently, Foot has presented himself as “an incessant and inveterate peacemonger” – which was not taken seriously by anyone with so much as a passing acquaintance with his history. Among other attitudes, he supported the formation of the US dominated NATO military alliance and the American policy of propping up the dictatorship in South Korea before the war began there. The audacious cynicism demanded by this was starkly exposed over the Falklands war. In an emergency debate in the Commons on 3 April 1982 the rage of the Tory hawks left Thatcher, in the words of one observer, “humiliated” and of another “strangely halting and subdued”. But Foot changed the course of the debate with a passionately belligerent speech demanding that there was “…a moral duty and political duty and every other kind of duty” to send in the task force to eject the Argentinian occupiers. This “peacemongering” was pleasing to a number of remarkable allies for Foot. Like Edward du Cann whose chairmanship of the Lonrho conglomerate was memorable for Ted Heath’s description of it as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. Like Julian Amery, a leading light of the Monday Club. Like the late Alan Clark, an “historian” whose pitiless egocentricity and human aversion found expression in his excusing the wartime atrocities of the Waffen SS as “heroic cruelty”. Later, in the controversy over the torpedoing of the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano when it was sailing away from the battle zone, Foot was in favour of the attack, even if it did cost hundreds of lives. And this was an opinion which he steadfastly held to.

Principles 

Was Foot trying to re-assure his admirers, as well as his antagonists, when he greeted his election as Labour Party leader in 1980 with the bold declaration “I am as strong in my socialist convictions as I have ever been”? He did not offer any clear definition of the word, which encouraged the assumption that his “socialism” was the kind of confused, panicky responses to capitalism’s crises, notable for the depression of workers’ life standards, which he had been closely involved in during his time as a minister under Callaghan. This had reached its nadir with the Winter of Discontent and, no matter how compulsively Foot wheedled and manipulated at resuscitation, the end of that government in 1979. Among other problems for the Labour Party then there was the exposure of the fact that Foot’s “principles” were as worthlessly malleable as they needed to be in capitalism’s abrasive politics. 

Ivan

The Peace Ballot and the League of Nations. (1935)

From the March 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

The League of Nations Union, formed with the object of spreading information and gaining support for the League of Nations, has come into the news with its Peace Ballot. The ballot is a house-to-house canvass on five questions, drawn up by the Union. The questions are: (1) Should Great Britain remain a member of the League of Nations? (2) Are you in favour of an all-round reduction of armaments by international agreement? (3) Are you in favour of the all-round abolition of national military and naval aircraft by international agreement? (4) Should the manufacture and sale of armaments for private profit be prohibited by international agreement ? (5) Do you consider that if a nation insists on attacking another the other nations should combine to compel it to stop by (a) economic and non-military measures; (b) if necessary, military measures ?

It was to be expected that Lord Beaverbrook and his newspapers would oppose the ballot, as they oppose the League of Nations. They call it the “Ballot of Blood.” War, they say, will be avoided only if the British Government turns its back on the League, cultivates Empire relationships, and firmly refuses to meddle in the affairs of any country outside the Empire. In their wilder moments, Lord Beaverbrook's papers convey the impression that the League of Nations is itself the cause of war.

At the other extreme are the pacifists, who see the cause of war in the machinations of armament firms, and of mysterious wire-pulling international financiers.

In the middle are the people who vaguely accept the doctrine of the Union, that the avoidance of war only requires the cultivation of peaceful and friendly sentiments, plus the habit of using the international machinery of arbitration and discussion provided by the League of Nations. Where all three groups err is in turning a blind eye on capitalism itself. Let us forget foreign affairs and take a look at capitalism at home. Why are there strikes and lock-outs, unemployed demonstrations, frauds, thefts, swindles, forgeries, adulteration of products; hold-ups, property-murders, and a hundred-and-one other manifestations of conflicts over property and the division of the products of industry? Is it lack of propaganda? On the contrary, we cannot escape the cloying stream of pious sentiments in the Press, over the air, in churches, schools and anywhere else where workers can be compelled to listen. Is it lack of machinery? Not at all. Large Government departments, employers organisations and trade unions, and innumerable voluntary associations work day and night under the shadow of a maze of boards and committees designed to dissuade the capitalist and worker from conflict. The class struggle, in its varied aspects, exists and continues because capitalism divides mankind into warring classes, those who live by owning the means of production and distribution, and those who are propertyless and must sell their labour-power to the former. Some people accept this strife as a supposed law of nature. Others preach peace, but steadfastly defend the property basis, which means war. Socialists preach the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life. That is the only way of ending the war of classes.

As it is at home, so it is abroad. Capitalism gives the ruling class the incentive to protect vested interests bound up in trade routes, sources of raw materials, and areas of foreign investment. Control of the machinery of Government gives them the power to wage war. The only sure road to peace is the road which leads to Socialism, conquest of the powers of the Government by a politically organised Socialist majority. While Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, and the rest of the capitalist class, own and control the means of life they are the enemies of the working class and a danger to the human race. Their pious oath that they are not interested financially in this or that armament, or aircraft, or any other particular company, is of no significance. They have the supreme vested interest, a vested interest in the maintenance of capitalism. They can be expected, therefore, to sacrifice the interest of society to the interest of themselves and their class.

The Socialist who examines the Union’s five questions has no difficulty in seeing their futility. The real position boils down to one question: “Are you in favour of depriving the capitalist class of their control over the machinery of Government, including the armed forces?" “Yes," says the Socialist. “ No," says the capitalist and his avowed supporters. “Yes and no, but only gradually, and not unless the capitalist agrees," says the Labourite, with his muddled conceptions of capitalism and Socialism.

It will be seen, therefore, why the Socialist does not share the enthusiasm over the ballot expressed by the League of Nations Union. Nevertheless, even if the mass of the population have a long way to go before they understand the question of war or of the larger question which includes it, the surprisingly large vote for the League of Nations is, in its way, a welcome sign. It is a tribute to the Union’s effective canvass, but it also suggests that the average worker is taking a greater interest in affairs that were once the close preserve of the politician, and is breaking away from old ideas about passively accepting war as if it were as inevitable as changes in the weather. The first two million votes gave a 97 per cent, vote in favour of the League, and votes nearly as large for all the first four questions, and for question 5 (a). Question 5 (b), on the use of military measures, shows a smaller majority, 72 per cent. “for" and 28 per cent. “against." An equally surprising thing is the large number of voters in relation to the total population. In some places well over half the population over the age of eighteen have voted.

One interesting aspect is the efficiency with which the Union has conducted the ballot. By the time it is completed about 250,000 canvassers (mostly voluntary) will have visited 10 million homes and solicited the votes of over 30 million people. That this was possible must be accounted to the large membership and influence the League of Nations Union has acquired. It claims over a million members on its books, about half being paying members, and is well supplied with funds, some of the donations amounting to thousands of pounds. The Union would, no doubt, lose many of its wealthy supporters if the ruling class, after having formed and entered the League of Nations without asking the electorate, should decide to scrap it— also without asking the electorate.

Edgar Hardcastle

Ghosts. (1921)

From the December 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is suffering from a plethora of fat boys who will persist in trying to make our flesh creep. We have no objection to them practising their black magic in the privacy of their back parlours, to the prostration of their maiden aunts, but the limit is reached when they insist upon the rest of the world witnessing their performances. We refer to that cult of neurotics of both sexes, viz., "Spiritualism," and to the publicity that the "sensation press" is giving it.

Some time ago the Weekly Dispatch worked overtime getting out extra copies, while it was running a series of articles by Mr. Vale Owen which purported to convey "communications from departed spirits." Now Mr. James Douglas, the editor of the Sunday Express is performing similar stunts albeit in the guise of a "not-yet-convinced agnostic." Yet it is easy to perceive that Mr. Douglas, as a smart journalist, is, among other things, endeavouring to emulate the commercial success of his contemporary and draw the coppers from the pockets of the mystified working class to the coffers of Lord Beaverbrook, "the apostle of success."

Although one may have a doubt as to whether Mr. V. Owen was a knave or a fool, Mr. Douglas has a more accessible public record, and we know he is no fool. It is perhaps only just, however, to concede him the point that he is the tool of an exploiting master class, to whose interest it is that confusion should exist in the minds of the workers.

It is not our mission, or of any propagandist value to debate "Spiritualism" as distinct from any other phase of religion. Socialism as a system of society means the end of supernatural beliefs. Our work has as its objective the overthrow of Capitalism, and we do not care to spend much time on its various side shows. We therefore are not primarily interested in exposing the credulity of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the senility of Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr. Joseph McCabe and others can do that quite well enough in their professional capacity. But where we are concerned with the question of Spiritualism is that Capitalism prolongs its lease of life while the minds of the working class are confused and side-tracked from the path of progress towards their emancipation.

That the phenomena supposed to have been experienced by Mr. Douglas at the "Black Seance" cannot be substantiated by any scientific fact is obvious to the logical mind, but that the working into a hysteria of nervous apprehension of a great proportion of the populace is a direct advantage to the Capitalist class in their business of keeping the working class submissive and enduring is obvious to the Socialist.

If a table can defy the law of gravity and float round the room of its own volition, well and good; scientists must alter their texts books accordingly. And if a spirit can sing "The long long trail" without a larynx, anatomists must also revise their opinions ! But what we do discover about these seances is that no dead Socialist has come back to tell the readers of the Capitalist Press how they are exploited in the interests of the humbugging Capitalist class! And there must be many of our comrades wandering about the Astral Plane we think! Perhaps—horrible thought—the spirit of Capitalism reigns up there too, and has clapped our departed pals into ghostly jails so that they shan't blow the gaff on the fat men below !

But, maybe, we wax flippant. The situation has really no funny side. It calls for the same stern comment that the Armistice Day hypocrisy demands, and indeed, as do all the dodges that Capitalism uses to maintain its existence. The Cenotaphs and bunting, the ceremonies and sentimentalities, the panem et circenses, that seem to be more in evidence than ever before, all serve their turn, and the brutal rapacity of the Moloch we endure battens on the ignorance they signify.

Spiritualism will have its brief turn on the stage of history and make its exit, and something else will take its stead in the public mind and eye; but in the meantime the facts remain that Society here below is rotten to the core, that a small section of it lives in luxurious idleness on the profits rung from the remainder, who, as a consequence, suffer the pangs of hunger, the diseases attendant on slum working class should fix its mind upon. Directly the master class discover that flying tambourines and mystic ventriloquisms no longer absorb the attentions of an awakening proletariat they will command the spirits they have summoned to emulate the Arabs by "folding their tents and
silently stealing away." It will be almost time then for the Capitalist class to do likewise.

S.

A Red Herring. (1931)

Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George's raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud-slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party's meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government's agreement that were (purposely?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer."

To the worker the issues raised at St. George's were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill-owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

Do You Know? (1930)

From the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

That an Examiner in the Bankruptcy Department of the Civil Service, who was fired on the 18th February for accepting a bribe, was paid the munificent rate of £4 5s. 0d. per week? And yet you are urged to support Government ownership!

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That according to Fenner Brockway, London M.P., and member of the National Council of the I.L.P., "The present tendency is that, despite a Labour Government, Capitalism is being strengthened.” And yet the I.L.P. urge you to support the Labour Government!

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That Baron Rothschild and his friends, "in a six weeks' trip . . . bagged five lions, five buffaloes, two rhinoceros, and five antelopes.” They did it from an aeroplane because it was safer! And yet one and a half millions of workers cannot find a job, and the rest are urged to accept reductions because industry "cannot afford to pay” a decent wage to all!

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That British motor-car producers (in the interests of free competition!) threaten to "force British agents to sell only British cars . . . It is the intention in future contracts, it is understood, to change the wording to enable the supply of cars by any British maker to an offending agent to be stopped at once. All producing firms in the British motor industry have agreed to this.” And yet the hypocrites who rule us complain and threaten war when the Chinaman or the Hindu suggests "supporting their home industries” !

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That the Labour Party are only administering Capitalism, like the previous Governments, and therefore cannot make any appreciable difference in the number of unemployed, because they cannot force the self-acting doors on the tube railways to bring back the discharged porters, the automatic machines to bring back the booking clerks that are superfluous or all the other improvements in machines and organisation—in Government departments as well as outside—that "save labour” to suddenly bring back the workers that have been rendered superfluous. All sections of the International Capitalist class are engaged in a mad rush to obtain markets by cheapening production, i.e., by reducing the number of workers employed to produce given quantities of goods.

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That Ramsay MacDonald has found from his practical experience of "Government” that his earlier ideas were too "advanced”? That’s what comes of wearing a top-hat and going to dinner with "the people that prey.”

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That "the Angel of Mons were motion pictures thrown upon 'screens' of foggy white cloudbanks in Flanders by cinematograph projecting machines mounted on German aeroplanes which hovered above the British lines,” that the British Command was aware of the trick and turned the vision to their own benefit? No means are too despicable for employment in modern wars, because the latter are the product of one of the most despicable instincts—profit-seeking.

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That Lord Beaverbrook’s new party is only the latest stunt to keep the worker’s mind off the real cause of his troubles—the private ownership of the means of production. One can prophecy with a fair amount of confidence the line the next General Election will take: On the one side, Conservatives, and on the other Liberals and Labourites arguing about the incidence of this or that item of taxation, and the worker’s slave position will be obscured by the smoke screen of useless argument. Whether there are high taxes, low taxes or no taxes, the worker remains a slave to the owners of the means of production, who, at the same time, are the rulers of society today. And until the worker turns a deaf ear to all kinds of stunts he will remain a slave.

Gilmac.

Pathfinders: Plastic not so fantastic (2018)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 10 July 1940 war-time Britain saw the launch of the Great Aluminium Scare and a Beaverbrook campaign to ‘turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes, Blenheims and Wellingtons’. Patriotic citizens responded by sacrificing useful metal kitchenware and bathroom fittings which created mountains all over the country. Scrap metal mania even extended to tearing up the railings round municipal parks, though cast iron scrap had little practical value. Indeed most of these scrap mountains went into landfill or post-war scrap metal shops since, as RAF Museum curator Rob Skitmore pointed out in 2005, ‘in fact we had lots of aluminium, what we needed more of were pilots’ (see Link).

The point of course was to give the population something practical to do so they could feel like part of the war effort. In short, a propaganda exercise. After all Lord Beaverbrook, aside from being Churchill’s minister of aircraft production, was also owner of the Daily Express, the world’s largest circulation newspaper at that time.

Is something similar happening today with the Great Plastic Scare? It seems to have started with the BBC Blue Planet II documentary earlier this year, which highlighted the problem of plastic ocean waste and resurrected 2016 World Economic Forum predictions that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Now the rush is on to ditch the use of plastic cups, cotton buds, plastic straws, wet wipes, plastic bags, plastic food wrappings, in short, plastic anything. The UK government is now compiling a list of plastic items to ban and a plastic tax is being considered by the Treasury (‘Public ‘back’ taxes to tackle single-use plastic waste’, BBC, 18 August). Practically overnight, plastic has become the new demon.

The problem is, things are always more complicated than news headlines make them out to be. While there’s no doubt that global capitalism is using the planet like a giant dustbin, the solutions aren’t always so obvious. Whatever you do is going to have an environmental impact. If you swap single-use plastic bags for a cotton tote bag, you’ll have to use it 131 times before reaching impact parity, because of the high environmental cost of cotton production (New Scientist, 13 June). If you avoid food containing palm oil but drive with the latest ‘green’ biofuels, you’ll be burning palm oil instead of eating it and thus still contributing to the devastation of Madagascar. In theory one could use different vegetable oils in fuel, but they would require massively more land than oil palms need. If you decide to avoid fossil gas central heating in favour of a trendy and ‘clean’ wood burning stove, you’ll be treating your neighbours to the equivalent of eight trucks parked in the street with their engines on all night (New Scientist, 2 June).

People during the war probably didn’t need or want to know that they were making pointless sacrifices. What they craved was the feelgood factor. So today people don’t perhaps want to know that most of the contents of their recycle bins is likely to end up incinerated or in landfill, or sent abroad. According to the National Audit Office, the government doesn’t have any idea whether or what percentage of ‘recyclables’ is being recycled, has ‘turned a blind eye’ to known problems in the waste stream, has only carried out 40 percent of the recycling checks it was supposed to, and has been exporting over 50 percent of the waste it claims as ‘recycled’ (‘Recycled packaging ‘may end up in landfill’, warns watchdog’, BBC, 23 July).

You’d be excused for thinking that the whole recycling programme is a bit of a con. Most of the plastic we rinse and put in recycle bins is not actually recyclable, largely because manufacturers use cheap, low-grade and non-biodegradable industrial polymers. Well of course they do, but other reasons are more trivial. Fresh food containers are very often carbon black because food products apparently look good on black, but recycling machines can’t detect black (‘Plastic food pots and trays are often unrecyclable, say councils’, BBC, 4 August). Plastic cups don’t get recycled, not because they couldn’t be, but because there is no regional collection infrastructure for them. And if there was, would the road haulage fleet required then cancel out the carbon benefits of the recycling?

It’s not that we shouldn’t bother making any individual efforts. Of course we should, and many of us do, because a future socialist society wouldn’t last five minutes without a strong and abiding sense of personal responsibility. But too much focus on little things like cotton buds and wet wipes – which apparently cause giant ‘fatbergs’ in London’s sewage system – can become a seductive invitation to forget the big picture, to kid yourself you’re doing something when you’re really not.

Some young activists, too young even to vote, are making bold attempts to take their governments, or international corporations to court over climate change (New Scientist, 18 August). How much success these ‘climate kids’ are going to have suing capitalist institutions inside capitalist courts is something socialists can hazard a cynical guess at. But at least they’re trying to raise the climate stakes to match the rising temperature.

What really needs putting in the dock of course is capitalism itself, and the total control and squandering of Earth’s resources by less than 1 percent of its population. If the public scare about plastic is viewed as an indicator of a growing sense of communal outrage on behalf of the planet, we might be encouraged, but only if this outrage starts to take an explicit and political form. If however people are happy to settle for tokenistic efforts for the sake of a quiet life, the class war will continue indefinitely, and socialists will have to battle on alone.

Genoa Bridge Collapse

As we go to press the cause of this collapse is not yet known, but metal corrosion in the steel cables reinforcing the concrete structure is suspected. Acoustic sensors are a new technology which can ‘hear’ internal corrosion, and recently resulted in London’s Hammersmith Flyover being urgently refurbished, but most bridges don’t have them, as the cost would be huge. Globally bridges are often in a poor state. 7 percent of French bridges are at risk of collapse, 12 percent of Germany’s are in bad condition, and 54,000 US bridges are ‘structurally deficient’ (New Scientist, 17 August). No doubt a 10-year recession and government cutbacks in every country have done nothing to improve matters. Whatever the state of road bridges in socialism might be, at least we can say that saving money wouldn’t be a factor.

Paddy Shannon

By The Way: Atrocities (1945)

The By The Way Column from the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Atrocities

As atrocities seem to be of great interest, just now, the “Socialist Standard” has pleasure in giving evidence of other atrocities to which the attention of Parliament and the Press might he called, besides the Horror Camp in Germany.

First a report from the Manchester Guardian, of Famine Enquiry Commission headed by Sir John Woodhead, Acting Governor of Bengal, 1934-1939).

   “After considering all the circumstances (it is stated), we cannot avoid the conclusion that it lay in the power of the Government of Bengal by bold, resolute and well-conceived measures at the right time to have largely prevented the tragedy of the famine as it actually took place. The Government of India failed to recognise at a sufficiently early date the need for a system of planned movement of food grains, including rice as well as wheat, from surplus to deficit provinces and states.”—(Manchester Guardian, May 8th, 1945).

The Guardian continues: —

“Enormous Profits”   But the public in Bengal, or at least certain sections of it, are also held to have their share of blame. Reference is made to the “atmosphere of fear and greed which, in the absence of control, was one of the causes of the rapid rise in the price-level,” and the report adds: “Enormous profits were made out of the calamity, and in the circumstances profits for some meant death for others. A large part of the community lived in plenty while others starved., and there was much indifference in the face of suffering. Corruption was widespread throughout the provinces and in many classes of society.”
   “A million and a half of the poor of Bengal fell victims to circumstances for which, they themselves were not responsible. Society, together with its organs, failed to protect its weaker members; indeed, there was a moral and a social breakdown as well as an administrative breakdown.
  “By August, 1943, it was clear that the Provincial Administration in Bengal was failing to control the famine. Deaths and mass migration on a large scale were occurring. In such circumstances the Government of India, whatever the constitutional position, must share with the Provincial Government the responsibility of saving lives.”

Second the following report of the worst air raid of the war on Hamburg on July 23th-26th, when the city “ceased to exist.”

   Twenty thousand Germans died and 60,000 were taken to hospital after one R.A.F. raid on Hamburg on the night of July 25-26, 1943, when the greatest firebomb inferno raged throughout the centre of the dock area. It lay waste the equivalent of three London boroughs.
     Official sources state that German air raid precaution statistics confirm these figures.
   That night fire-bombs set light to the dock warehouses and installations in the dock areas covered by the three suburbs Hammerbrook, St. Georg, and Borgfeldt.
   The heat of the fires, which lasted several days, was so fierce that several fruit trees produced blossom again and the oxygen became so rarifled by the heat that people died from suffocation.
    This was probably the worst air raid of the war. The total of casualties caused by Allied forces in their raids on the port is said to be 250,000, and of these it is estimated that 50,000 were killed. - - (Sunday Despatch, May 13th, 1945).

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The Old, Old Story

Lord Beaverbrook has delivered himself of his awe-inspiring thoughts for the future prosperity of the nation in a speech at Bradford. According to his own paper, the Sunday Express, May 27, it is the “Way to a better Britain.” “Full work and high wages.” "How are we to have full employment”? he asks and answers “by setting a high standard of life for the people.” It’s as simple as that! A little more detail? “By satisfying the demand of the home market the output is built up and as the output is built up the costs of production are reduced. When the costs of production are reduced sufficiently then it is simple and easy to find foreign markets.”

Just like that! “The first export market I wish to seek is the export of an idea—the export of the standard of living to other countries, too.”

Whether this is to include Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, etc., the noble lord did not say. Or even India, where a million died of famine last year.

“The Government should take part in such policy on two principles. The first is that the Governments of the world should meet together.” (Shades of the ill-starred World Economic Conference of 1933). Well, they’ve been doing this for several hundred years, now—they might as well go on, “for the purpose of setting the standards of living high enough and strong enough to provide work for every man.” The second principle should be that when there is a decline in employment, not only in Britain but in every country that is a party to the agreement providing for higher standards of life, that decline should be met by a rising scale of wages. A rising scale of wages will check the evil of Unemployment by providing increased buying power.”—(Sunday Express, May 27).

Which means: Increase output to cheapen cost of production to find foreign markets—BUT the Governments are to agree to increase wages when unemployment spreads throughout the world to “increase buying power.”

Why it will be necessary to find foreign markets with cheaper products his lordship does not say.

If it were possible to enable the workers to buy back even a large part of their produce, why not do it here?

If the policy will work, HOW does Beaverbrook KNOW that there is going to be a “decline in employment” throughout the world?

And do we have to have a decline in employment first so that the Government can “raise wages”?

Actually, Governments can no more “raise” wages, than they could raise the dead.

In a falling market after the war, the Government which tried to raise wages would “fall” quicker than the wages.

The intelligent workers are becoming more tired than ever of the “raise the standard of living” rubbish, started by Lloyd George and the Liberals in 1910, repeated by the Labour Leaders, 1919, and in “Socialism and the Living Wage” of the I.L.P. (1926), and by the Social Credit chumps of 1932.

Apart from the absurdity of proposing to call Conferences of the Governments of the world, immediately after sacrificing thousands to destroy half of them for five years, “cheapening cost of production” to “capture foreign markets” is reduction of Relative Wages—and however many “friendly” conferences are held, leads inevitably to WAR.

Wages are the price of labour-power. Prices fall in a condition of ample supply and falling demand—“when Johnny comes marching home again.”

The echoes of the last shots are still reverberating around the world. Millions are still in the modern mass concentration camp known as the “Forces.” And all this “great brain” of the Tory Party can offer is “the mixture as before”; bidding the exploited worker, like a blue bottle on the window-pane, after having fought his master’s battle—to restart his painful and arduous attempt to crawl into the sunlight—only to crash once again into the abyss of poverty he longs to escape.

Horatio.

50 Years Ago: Hurrah for Inflation (1982)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The General Election in October last was fought largely round the fear of inflation. The national government leaders waved worthless German 100,000 mark notes before the eyes of their listeners and told horrifying stories of the hardships inflation and rising prices would bring in their train. Now, six months later, inflation is all the fashion.
The Sunday Express, one of Lord Beaverbrook’s papers, says:

   How rapidly the situation has developed! How swiftly minds have moved! Inflation is now no longer left to Lord Beaverbrook. Or, in the House, to Mr. Boothby. The movement is growing and spreading. Most public men are now in favour of inflation. Practically every Member of Parliament speaking in debates is an inflationist. (Sunday Express, 15 May 1932.)

(From an editorial “The Campaign for Inflation" published in the Socialist Standard, June 1932.)

Notes by the Way: "Capitalists" at the Rubbish Heap (1937)

The Notes by the Way column from the December 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Capitalists” at the Rubbish Heap

Lord Iliffe, speaking at the Annual Conference of the British Junior Chambers of Commerce at Coventry on September 26th (Daily Telegraph, September 27th, 1937), said that “we” (presumably he meant the Government) are “curing the ills of capitalism as well as of Communism by creating capitalists as quickly as we possibly can.” A fortnight later the Daily Express (October 8th) published a striking photograph of dozens of women—some of Lord Iliffe’s "capitalists”—groping in a heap of colliery refuse at Longsight, Manchester, for bits of coal: —

   Three days a week are reserved there for women gleaners, three for men. . . . The women, here, were too busy to think of the camera. A lorry had just sent its load of refuse down the slope. Before the black dust had settled, seventy women were on their knees. For twenty minutes only the rasping of metal scrapers among the refuse was heard.

This is one of the "rights” free-born Britishers are asked to defend against foreign powers!

* * *

Beaverbrook is Candid—or Is He?

Conversation overheard in a Lyons’ tea-shop : —

   “I prefer the Daily Express, particularly now that Lord Beaverbrook says it isn’t run for profit.”
   “But isn’t it?” 
   “No. Lord Beaverbrook doesn’t get a penny out of it.”

That was the impression conveyed to one reader of the Daily Express, and, doubtless, to many others, by Lord Beaverbrook’s personal statement published on September 24th. It is one of those very candid statements which conceal more than they disclose. It starts off by saying that the profit of Express newspapers is limited to just under £150,000, “which is less than three per cent, of the gross turnover ”; but it does not tell us what is the capital and what percentage the profit represents of the capital. To relate profit to turnover in this instance means nothing at all.

Then, after telling us that “more than seventy-four per cent. of the ordinary shares are owned by me,” Lord Beaverbrook makes the statement which so impressed his admirer in the tea-shop: —

   I have never drawn a penny of salary from the newspaper. My sole and only object is to serve the public interest . . .” (italics ours).

Of course nobody supposed he did draw anything as salary, but what about his ownership of three-quarters of the ordinary shares? The accounts of London Express Newspapers, Ltd., show that the amount of profit available for dividend on ordinary shares averaged nearly £39,000 a year on the past three years. As Beaverbrook owns three-quarters of them, it appears that he is in a position to draw nearly £30,000 a year. Whether he owns any preference shares as well is not known. If he does his income will be correspondingly greater.

What about a little more candour, Lord Beaverbrook ?

* * *

The 'Daily Herald's’ Case for Capitalism 

Mr. Douglas Jay, formerly on the staff of The Times, then of the Economist, is now City Editor of the Daily Herald. He has written a book called "The Socialist Case" (Faber & Faber, 12s.6d., 362 pages). The publishers declined to send us a review copy, but it does not appear that we have missed anything. Mr. J. A. Hobson, reviewing it in the Manchester Guardian (October 15th, 1937), finds in Mr. Jay two merits, one of which is that—

   he discards from practicable Socialism the indiscriminate attack on profits, rent and interest which Marxism put into the Socialist theory.

Mr. Jay proves why it is necessary to retain rent, interest and profit. ‘The interesting point about this is that it goes even further in its acceptance of capitalism than the Labour Party itself. The policy in the past has always been to attack profits and rent, and even promise to destroy them, but to retain interest. Now along comes Mr. Jay and states the case for a monstrous edifice which is called Socialism, but which stands on all three of the capitalist pillars.

The unkindest cut of all, delivered at Mr. Jay, comes from an old colleague on the Economist, who says: —

   Purists, perhaps, may doubt Mr. Jay’s Socialism, and dub him rather an enlightened democrat . . .”— (Economist, Oct. 9th, 1937.)

Mr. Jay may be a democrat, but is it really enlightened to rehash all this old stuff about a reformed capitalism?

* * *

History Embarrasses the Communist Party 

The Evening Standard (November 12th, 1937) tells the following entertaining story about the Communist Party's embarrassment over a written record (which carried Lenin's endorsement) of Trotsky's part in the Bolshevist seizure of power. The record in question is "Ten Days that Shook the World," written by the late John Reed, which the News-Chronicle proposed to serialise: —

   This contemporary account of the Bolshevist uprising was written by John Reed, the American Communist, who was a close personal friend of Lenin. When he died in 1921 he left the British copyright in his book to the Communist Party.
    When the News-Chronicle approached the copyright owners for permission to serialise the book it was gladly given. The Communists asked no fee, and made only one stipulation—that all reference to Trotsky should be eliminated from the text.
    Confronted with this modern version of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, the Liberal organ abandoned the project.

The book was filmed by the Russians prior to Trotsky’s downfall, and shows him taking an active part. The Communists still show the film in this country, but their commentator now tells the audience that Trotsky was sabotaging the efforts of  the Bolshevists! What is more, one of the commentators, when questioned about this, admitted that he had not read the book and therefore did not know how his instructions falsify the written record.

* * *

He Could Not be Worse than the Others

One writer on the career of Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Frank Owen, who is well aware that MacDonald was never a Socialist at all, sums him up neatly and briefly, and his former associates as well: —

   I will say this of him, that he was perhaps not less of a Socialist at the finish than he was at any other time. And I will add for the benefit of old colleagues who have abused him so savagely in later days that he was no worse a Socialist than most of them.—(Daily Express, Nov. 10th, 1937.)

* * *

Dictator’s Diversion

Reynold's Illustrated News (October 24th, 1937) publishes the following extract from a book written by Mussolini's airman son, Vittorio, on his Abyssinian adventures. It shows the appalling gulf dictatorship creates, so that a young man can be entirely bereft of all sense of the consequences of his actions for other human beings: —

   I have never seen a fire. . . . Probably someone here was aware of my frustration and therefore some planes of the 14th squadron were ordered to effect a bombing in the zone of Adi Abo and to use incendiary bombs exclusively. I do not believe a more important reason existed. . . . It was most diverting.

* * *

Dilemma of Sir Stafford Cripps

The position of the man who says it is desirable to stay inside the Labour Party in order to convert it to Socialism is hopelessly false. In the New Leader, organ of the I.L.P. (October 29th, 1937), Mr. F. W. Jowett asks Sir Stafford Cripps how he squares his new declaration of loyalty to the Labour Party with his other statement that its policy is "Liberal Imperialism in Foreign affairs" and "Capitalist Reformism in Domestic affairs."

* * *

The Russian Wages System

The News-Chronicle recently published some articles on Russia by a special correspondent, Mr. Paul Winterton. It was noticeable that, though his avowed intention was to describe facts, there was a considerable admixture of opinion, some of it of a kind which obscured rather than explained the subject matter. In particular, Mr. Winterton went to some trouble to explain that, though there is great inequality of income in Russia, this is not a sign of a drift to capitalism. He reported, for example (News Chronicle, July 30th, 1937), that the lowest paid worker receives 125 roubles a month, the highest (with a few exceptions) 3,000 roubles a month. He expressed the opinion that “there is no such range in Russia as that between the 30s. a week of the British unemployed family and the £10,000 a year of the company director," but admitted, at the same time, that he had been told of the head of a Russian constructional enterprise reported to be in receipt of 12,000 roubles a month. It will be noticed that 12,000 roubles is 96 times as much as 125 roubles, and the range between the two figures is therefore not so very much less than the range between 30s. a week and £10,000 a year. The latter is 130 times the former. Even 3,000 roubles is 24 times as much as 125.

The point of major interest is that Mr. Winterton appears to be quite unaware that the present Russian practice in this matter is in flat contradiction with the views of Lenin and the earlier Bolshevists, who were firm advocates of equality. Not only Mr. Winterton, but most of the present-day British Communists are unaware of it, and the reason is that Communist and "Left Wing" books and papers are nowadays curiously silent about the former advocacy of equality. A good illustration is to be found in a Left Book Club publication, “A Handbook of Marxism" edited by Emile Bums. It runs to nearly 1,100 pages and contains reprints of many of the smaller works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. But when you look up the index to see what Lenin, for example, had to say about equality, you discover the regrettable omission of references to Lenin’s opposition to inequality.

In his “Soviets at Work,” Lenin regretted the necessity in 1918 of paying high salaries to specialists, and said: —

   Such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against capitalism . . . but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker.

He went on to say that “to pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.”

But Lenin’s “Soviets at Work” is not one of the works reprinted in the “Handbook of Marxism.”

Lenin had also emphasised this principle of equality in his “State and Revolution.” But while two chapters of this work are included in the “Handbook,” the chapter containing the references to equality of wages is one of those omitted on grounds of space.

The “Handbook” does, however, find space for Stalin’s latter-day Bolshevist doctrine ridiculing equality and actually quoting Lenin to. that end and making it appear that Lenin was opposed to equality (see pages 939 and 940). Needless to say, the quotation from Lenin does not really support Stalin’s view, but is concerned only with ridiculing the bourgeois notions that Socialism is based on the assumption that all men are equal. But even supposing that Lenin had on some occasion shared Stalin’s view, it is still most misleading to publish only a one-sided selection of his statements and omit the others, thus giving the false impression that the Bolshevists had always taken up the same attitude that Stalin and his Government take up now.

Before Mr. Winterton and others express opinions about what they find in Russia, and say there is no drift to capitalism, they could usefully acquaint themselves with what Marx, Engels and Lenin had to say on the subject of equality. But to do this they will have to go outside the publications of the Communist Party and the Left Book Club.

Edgar Hardcastle