Editorial: The big freeze-up (1963)

Editorial from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent Arctic spell has seriously tried Britain’s power and transport systems. Many people argue that these services have been found wanting, and the Opposition demands to know why the Government has not increased the number of power plants to meet any heavy demand which is likely to occur every decade or so. Government officials state clearly that much expenditure would result in idle capital, because plant might not be needed for long periods. These two words “idle capital” sum up the whole situation. They explain why the lights go low, the coal cellars remain bare and hospitals have no emergency power units at times of climatic misbehaviour.

Our ruling class does not like good money tied up in empty factories, shutdown railway lines and unused power plants. Production of power is based on a market of average consumption over a given period, with due allowance for increased demand or declining use. This dominates the volume of investment and to demand additional plant and maintenance when it is obvious that no profit would be forthcoming from such little used power is horrifying to any capitalist or to those who administer capitalist society. So when our climate plays havoc with statistics and averages, millions have to suffer inconvenience and some arc even reaped in the grim harvest of death and injury.

Many other things which come to a halt in freeze-ups bear baleful testimony to the effects of the profit motive. Plumbing, exposed to the elements, because generally it was expensive to enclose, bursts and floods homes with grim monotony. Gas mains fracture and people die because even after years of heavy use not enough has been spent on trying to remove the lethal danger from coal gas. Railway points become frozen stiff and are tackled by methods that are known to have only partial success in a damp climate. Why is this? Because effective methods are expensive and a railway system already in debt cannot afford anything better. Travellers will have to wait, not just for a cure, but for one that is cheap. Roads become like ice-rinks and councils struggle along with inadequate and limited cleaning equipment, all the time keeping their eye on the cost. Ratepayers have votes, and expenditure is political fireworks at election times.

Even the half million regular out of work, swollen by weather conditions to over 800,000, are not brought into use. Extra labour means extra wage bills and extra tools and machinery. What profit after all can be made out of masses of men on snow clearance? For the administration such work is just a financial but necessary drain, although makers of snow clearing equipment selling to realise a profit have other ideas. Thus we have the spectacle of unemployed men turned away from Council yards while pavements remain frozen and dangerous.

And the fiasco goes on, one section of capitalists trying to keep down the costs while another, such as the insurance companies with claims now running into more than £18 millions, urges future expenditure and safeguards. One joke in the muddle is the collapse of the smokeless fuel supplies as a bitter east wind blowing over capitalism’s cities makes a jest of the planners’ smokeless zones. In the meantime, workers line up for a pittance at the labour exchange or a pram full of coal at the sidings. The Press, to divert our grumbles, pours out pints of journalistic ink with sad stories such as that about Buckingham Palace being blacked out for eight minutes.

True, no politician can be blamed for the weather. It is the miserable failure of capitalism to face up to natural catastrophes which concerns us. There will be summer and winter under Socialism. There will also be the utmost social effort to overcome the effects of weather extremes. It is the profit motive which really keeps us cold in winter not the weather.

News in Review: Unemployment figures (1963)

The News in Review column from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment figures

The unemployment figures keep on rising and the government assure us that we have not seen the last of them yet.

Mr. Hare, the Minister of Labour, has blamed the weather for some of the unemployment and pleads that that is something which he cannot be expected to have foreseen.

The economic experts have sharpened their pencils and have swamped the government with their advice. The government, of course, has already plenty of its own experts with their schemes and advice; unemployment increases despite them.

Are the experts, then, so useless? Many of them have had a long and expensive education. They have access to all sorts of information which is supposed to help them in their planning to control capitalism.

It is fair to expect them to come up with something special when the problem demands it, as unemployment does.

Well, have they?

Consider, for one, the experts employed by The Guardian. We might have expected that newspaper, with its tradition of sometimes saying the unusual, to have some startling proposals on the out of work problem. And in a way that is what they did have. Here is what The Guardian's first leader proposed, among other similar suggestions, on January 25th:

Lastly, could the schools not be asked to take back all those pre-Christmas school-leavers who have still not found jobs? To lay on proper teaching might not be easy; but better that they should be in classrooms than waiting idly at home or on the street corners.

Read that again, slowly. Ask yourself whether sending back to school the youngsters who have only just left, whose parents are probably relying upon them to help the housekeeping budget, and for whom you know there are not enough teachers, is a solution to the unemployment problem—or even a sensible suggestion.

Then ask yourself if the experts can do anything about capitalism’s shortcomings. And wonder why you do not do something about them yourself.

The expense of cold weather

Most of us have had our grumble about the Arctic conditions which have had us in the grip since the end of last year. The weather itself is beyond anyone's control, but is there nothing that can be done about the effects of it?

Some of the electricity failures in the Big Freeze Up were caused by frozen insulators on the power lines. This problem could be avoided—and incidentally some lovely landscapes preserved—if the lines were carried underground. But the Central Electricity Generating Board claims that this would cost up to eighteen times more than hitching the lines up to pylons and would, therefore, not be worthwhile.

Some of the breakdowns and delays on the railways were the result of frozen points. This is something which could have been solved easily, in a number of ways long ago, but the railways were reluctant to invest in something which they might not want to use very often.

The efforts at clearing snowbound roads were simply pitiful. But the government reasons that there is no sense in keeping a lot of expensive snow clearing equipment which will probably lie idle for about eight years in every ten. And that seems to clinch the argument against having it.

Over here, in short, capitalism gambles on the weather; something it cannot do in other countries where extreme conditions happen more regularly. From the point of view of the British capitalist there is no sense in spending money preparing for something which is likely to come along very occasionally. That is why Britain is so often caught napping by severe cold or floods or some other vagary of the weather.

Anyway, it is only the working class who bear the brunt of the weather. It is only their houses which become draughty hell-holes in the winter. It is poor, working class pensioners who silently die of cold in their unheated rooms, cut off from the hurrying world outside,

It is the working class who have to face the added torture of the rush hour, on rail or road, in the icy spells.

Capitalism has always shown a ruthless concern for its own economic priorities. So can we expect it to spend money uneconomically to prevent such suffering? Not likely, we can't.

The Common Market

Well, it didn't come off.

Mr. Heath and his men came back defeated from Brussels and presented the British public with another bogy man who was yesterday’s friend. President de Gaulle is now the evil man of British capitalism.

The Beaverbrook press took a somewhat different view, implying hopefully that the British government had seen the light from the Express building and had themselves broken off the negotiations.

“And Now—Forward,” screamed the Express headlines. Forward, we may ask, to what? Whatever the Express, or the Government, or anyone else, has to offer can only be another of capitalism’s gambles.

When the British government decided, several years ago, against joining the European Common Market, they were gambling. When they decided that that gamble had failed they put their money on another—on the application to join Europe. They made it quite clear that that was a gamble, that they were not sure whether membership of the EEC would benefit them or not.

So it is with all capitalism's attempts to defeat its own problems.

President de Gaulle is gambling, now that Europe can unite as an independent capitalist power dominated by a Franco-German axis. But there have been plenty of other such gambles and plenty of other such pacts and many of them have failed even by capitalism's standards. There is no reason to assume that France and Germany, whatever their pact says, will not end up fighting one. another again.

Capitalism, in fact, is one big gamble. Since its fortunes hang on the tail of its unpredictable market, it can never be sure of what to do to secure its own interests.

The great tragedy is that the gambles are always paid off in working class lives and security.

Civil Disobedience

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, as it breaks up into its opposing factions, is displaying some typical symptoms of the dying reformist organisation.

One of the unilateralists’ arguments has been—and this applies especially to the Committee of 100—that nuclear weapons were such a threat to human society that anything was justified which helped to get rid of them.

Demonstrations and marches were justified. So was civil disobedience, like sitting down in the roadway. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, we were told, would be justified in forgetting about Socialism to campaign against the bomb. Recently, stirring up and exploiting social unrest at places like the LCC accommodation centres was justified on the same grounds.

This must have convinced many people that the unilateralists were prepared to go to any lengths to save us from nuclear annihilation.

It certainly seems to have convinced those soldiers who want to form an active CND group in the Services.

But the unilateralists will not touch this one with a barge-pole. Because what the soldiers are trying to do amounts to inciting troops to disaffection, and for that you can find yourself in jail for seven years.

That is too much for the campaigners, even for the reckless Committee of 100. So they have all officially disassociated themselves from any move which can be interpreted as stirring up disaffection in the Forces.

It was, of course, the unilateralists who first said that people should be prepared to face imprisonment in the cause of banning the bomb. But having urged this futile action on their followers, what sort of consistency is it which then shrinks from seven years in jail?

We know that the unilateralists are breaking up. Are they at the same time cooling down? Are they, as we said they might, becoming respectable?

Arms Budget

There are no surprises in the United States Budget for the coming year.

The American capitalist class expects to be spending a total of $98.8 billions during the twelve months up to June 30th, 1964, and of this well over half—$55.4 billions—will be spent on the armed forces and their weapons. In addition, $4.2 billions will go to space research and technology where, we fear, the weapons of the future will be conceived and designed.

This sort of expenditure has been rising steadily over the past few years; the USA now has an impressive nuclear arsenal to show for the money it has spent.

There are about 650 American bombers on a fifteen minute ground alert and more than 200 missiles ready to be fired from the ground. Apart from these, 114 missiles are in Polaris submarines, prowling beneath the seas.

Arms expenditure, then, is the first preoccupation of the Washington Budget just as it must be for any capitalist government which knows that its international interests are threatened by a rival.

Other things must take their place, lower down the queue. The USA will spend $0.3 billion on housing next year—less than in the current year—$5.6 billions on health, labour and welfare and $1.5 billion on education.

It is no coincidence that the very things which could make human life a little easier are the least likely to get any money spent on them, while the things which are meant to kill and destroy are lavished with funds.

Capitalism works that way.

Finance and Industry: In the doldrums (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

STEEL

In the doldrums

At a cost of £100 million and more than eight years work Colvilles have just opened a new steel plant in Scotland. A few weeks earlier the similar Spencer mill in South Wales was put into operation by Richard Thomas and Baldwins. Each plant is capable of producing about 750,000 tons of steel a year and these figures could be doubled fairly easily with further development.

Both projects are in fact the result of a Tory Government compromise. The original idea was to build just one plant of one million tons capacity, but there was such a struggle over whether it was to be sited in Wales or in Scotland that it was finally decided to allow one mill to each area (the Government could do this as it was putting up most of the money). Altogether an interesting sidelight on the ways of our political planners, though it must be added that their “expert” advisers then were quite sure that there would be ample room for both plants by 1963. The steel industry was booming and it looked as though it would continue so.

Alas for their prophecies. The Scottish mill is in fact working at only 20 per cent. of capacity and the Welsh one is hardly better. The industry as a whole is ticking over at about 70 per cent. of capacity and output in 1962, far from rising as originally expected, was actually 4 million tons less than in 1960. The prospects are hardly less dim for 1963.

What has happened, of course, is that British steel producers, and nearly all the other steel producers of the world, have widely miscalculated in their estimates of demand. Each nation has invested during the last ten years vast quantities of capital in new and bigger steelworks. It would be too much to imagine that they have done this without being aware that all their rivals were doing the same—capitalists are hardly as stupid as that—but there is certainly no reason to suppose that they did not know the risks.

The harsh reality is that capitalists, either as individuals or as national groups, have to engage in these insane activities if they are to maintain their positions in the race. So we see the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy and the U.K.—having spent huge sums in expanding their iron and steel production —all faced with a large proportion of this plant lying idle for lack of orders.

INVESTMENT

French eyes on the U.S.

Having already upset the United States by keeping Britain out of the Common Market, the French Government is needling them still further. It is trying to persuade the other members of the Six to take a closer look at the way American capital is penetrating into Europe.

Three incidents have recently helped to spark this off. The first was the way in which Chrysler got control over Simca, the French car makers (see below); the second was the big project by Libby, the American food firm to establish a canning factory in the newly irrigated region in the south of France; and third has been the recent closing of the Remington typewriter works at Caliure and the transfer of its production to Holland.

If the French intention is to stop American capital coming into Europe, and even into France, it is wasting its time. Capitalism, whether American or any other variety, hates a vacuum and if there is any prospect of profit they will seek a way of getting it. But the Remington incident is rather interesting since it echoes something similar nearer home.

At the end of February, the Glasgow factory of Remington Rand paid off over a thousand of its workers. The reason? The same as in France—lack of orders. And, again as in France, production of typewriters (portables only this time) will be concentrated in Holland. A nice illustration of the international workings of modern capitalism.

CARS

Chyrsler gets a hold

Of the Big Three in the American motor industry (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler), only Chrysler have not managed to get themselves established in Europe. At least until recently.

Now, by crafty manoeuvrings behind the scenes, largely via Switzerland, they have managed to acquire 63 per cent. of the shares in Simca, the big French car manufacturers. This, of course, means financial control. They are now in a position to do battle in the European market with their fellow American companies; with Ford and their plants at Dagenham and Cologne, and with General Motors at Luton (Vauxhall) and Russelsheim (Opel).

As a producer, Simca is not as big as Opel nor is it quite up to Ford, Germany. It is comparable, however, with Dagenham and bigger than Vauxhall. At the same time, though it is the smallest of the French producers, it is the second biggest exporter; it seems clear, therefore, that Chrysler will not wait long before carrying their struggle with their competitors in the United States, into Europe.

Just to add spice to the situation, the big Italian firm of Fiat also holds shares in Simca—about 25 per cent. Latest reports from France are that Fiat has just set up a large-scale network of agents to sell their cars there. At the same time, Simca are busily exporting to Italy.

There are many people who firmly believe that the capitalist system makes sense. They ought to take a long, hard look at the international motor industry.

MONOPOLY

A little light

The Economist reported recently that the electric light bulb manufacturers are increasing their prices by 5 to 10 per cent. Apparently they have all come to this idea at the same time.

Once upon a time, when they belonged to ELMA (the Electric Light Fittings Association) they used to make this kind of decision whilst freely admitting at the same time that they had all got together to make it. But the Monopolies Commission stepped in and they were compelled to disband the Association.

Now, apparently, they follow the practice of courteously telling their fellow companies beforehand of forthcoming price changes. The arrangement is known as an “information agreement." The essential difference from what they did before being that it is not registrable with the Restrictive Practices Court.

Another example of how, under capitalism, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Stan Hampson

Freeze Up: Waste, inefficiency and chaos (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone knows about the world-wide waste of armaments and the destructiveness of war, but quite a lot of people have a feeling that capitalism is really rather marvellous in the way it gets things done; quickly, cheaply, efficiently and all tailor-made to the requirements of “the customer who is always right.”

You only have to spell it out like this to see what a laugh it is.

And whether it is fact or only a misleading impression, there seems to have been more and more criticism in recent years of what is done and the way it is done. Readers of Which, the Shoppers Guide and the Daily Press and any who spend a few hours browsing in the Molony Report on “Consumer Protection” will have had confirmed in general what they already know from particular experience, that capitalist production's smiling image isn't a bit like the reality. (And when we read about Kruschev telling the Russians to improve their efficiency by copying the western capitalist countries it gives a grim impression about Russian standards.)

But in January and February of 1963 the shivering inhabitants of Britain had an unprecedented opportunity (worst for a century) of watching and suffering from capitalism's deficiencies—the blocked roads and railways, the frozen pipes, the failures of gas and electricity supply and inability to get coal because the millions of unsaleable tons were stored in places made inaccessible by snow and frost.

The Molony Committee said in their Report (Para. 12) that apart from solid fuel, they had not thought fit to consider whether “the consumer” needed protection against the nationalised power industries (gas and electricity) because “their functions, duties and monopolistic relationship to the public have been determined as a matter of governmental policy and there is no room to apply the ordinary consumer/retailer/producer principles." Its meaning is rather hard to define, but in January and February quite a lot of would-be but frustrated consumers could have told the Molony Committee a thing or two.

The supply difficulties in cold weather led to demands that the gas and electricity authorities should have surplus capacity in hand to meet emergencies and that they and other suppliers of services should be organised to deal with cold spells.

The howls of complaint were very loud because this time it wasn't just the poor who were going without but often the rich as well: no such volume of criticisms are heard in other winters when supplies are sufficient and only those who can't afford to pay suffer.

The Gas and Electricity Boards defended themselves with the plea that it isn't necessary to have a lot of capacity lying idle for ten months a year just for use in the cold spells. The Guardian backed them up, declaring that to have enough surplus capacity would cost something over £100 million. “This would not be good sense but extravagance.”

Here speaks the true voice of capitalism. Thousands of millions of pounds on armaments, yes, but not a tenth of that amount on providing something useful which might not pay! To the capitalist, capital, whether privately invested or in the nationalised industries must earn its proper return. Idle capital like workers idling on the employers time makes them shudder.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: On Apathy (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist is a confirmed optimist. His optimism is the natural outcome of his conviction of the soundness of his principles and his faith in his class. Pessimism can only come from doubt of one or the other, or both, therefore pessimism is not permissible in a Socialist, and where it shows its dour visage, calls aloud for attention to the victim's dietary, either of the mind or the stomach.

But though the Socialist’s confidence that the future is with him, reduces pessimism to a symptom of ill-health, even the healthy, vigorous revolutionary may become impatient without suspecting himself of being out of sorts.

And when one thinks of the attitude of mind of the working class as a class toward our movement, of the apathy with which they receive our message, of the dull forbearance with which they accept the contemptuous husks that the master class throw to them, it is small wonder that the enlightened worker sometimes grows impatient at the slowness of the pace, and curses the inertia of the proletarian mass in deep, broad and bitter terms.

Of course, the Socialist knows that industrial evolution will make the working class revolutionary; but he has been used to regard himself and his Socialist principles—revolutionary products of that same industrial evolution—as the instrument through which it works, and it is here that the impatience and disappointment is bred. It is easy enough to find acceptance of our message wherever our means enable us to deliver it. Our arguments are too powerful to be withstood; our reasoning is too close to be denied. But after all, what difference is there between he who apathetically admits the correctness of our position and that other who passively differs from us?

Socialism does not thrive on inactivity. The passive assenter is a corpse in this act, and Socialism can only be brought in by live men and women. It is not passive agreement that is wanted,, but fighters—organised workers. It is possible to carry on our propaganda without money, but without workers never.

(From "A Call to Arms", Socialist Standard March 1913.)

The Blessings of Capitalism (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

"If it were not for the British colonising their country, these natives would still be living in uncivilised conditions—always fighting and killing one another. We have given them decent houses to live in instead of old ramshackle huts; proper clothes to wear; factories and mines to work in—in fact, all the benefits of civilisation. They ought to be grateful to us.”

The Socialist is only too familiar with remarks like these from opponents, particularly when he tries to point out that the sole purpose of colonisation is to exploit the resources of the country as well as its people.

In the course of its development, capitalism has spread into the most remote corners of the earth. It has penetrated countries like New Guinea, parts of South East Asia, islands in the Indonesian Archipelago, and the far north of America. Many places that at one time were considered full of mystery are now landing spots for jet air liners. There is hardly any section of the human race that has not directly or indirectly felt capitalism's encroachment. Many backward races are now realising that we are all part and parcel of the same universe.

New Guinea with its several million tribesmen, perhaps the last sanctuary of primitive man many of whom were unknown 20 years ago, is now providing workers for road building. With this development there is gradually entering into the lives of these people all the so-called blessings of civilisation.

The inhabitants of lands which have become fields for exploitation through the growth of capitalism have become or are becoming slaves to a wages system. Like their fellow humans in other countries, their status in society is that of a working class—a large section of the community who have no security of livelihood and who do not possess anything but their bodily powers, which they are compelled to sell to an employer in return for a wage or salary. This is about enough to enable them to obtain sufficient food and clothes and the rest to exist upon and to reproduce their kind. Such is the lot of all members of the working class, no matter of what race or sex.

A strong indictment of the effect of capitalist encroachment comes from the pen of one of the world’s greatest anthropologists Claude Lévi-Strauss. Writing in the Unesco Courier, a publication of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, he states that:

With civilisation have come strange diseases against which primitives have no natural immunization and which have brought deadly havoc to their ranks. They are succumbing rapidly to tubercolosis. malaria, trachoma, leprosy, dysentry, gonorrhea, syphilis and the mysterious disease known us Karu, the results of primitive man's contact with civilisation, though not actually introduced by it.

Kuru is a genetic deterioration which inevitably ends in death and for which no treatment or remedy is known.

In Brazil 100 tribes became extinct between 1900 and 1950. The Kaingang, from the state of Sao Paulo, numbering 1,200 in 1912 today have dwindled to 80. The Munduraku were 20,000 in 1925, in 1950 they numbered 1,200. Of the 10,000 Nambikwara in 1905 1 could trace only 1.000 in 1940. The Kayapo of the River Araguaya were 2,500 in 1902 and 10 in 1950, the Timbira l,000 in 1900 and 40 in 1950.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has written considerably of the effects of capitalism on natives, but unlike the Socialist he does not put forward a practical solution to their problems. Sometimes we are told that capitalism's intrusion into the lives of native people has resulted in an improved code of morals and conduct among them just like the civilised world, yet it is rather singular that among these backward races there are tribes like the gentle Arapesh, who live among the mountains of New Guinea in tiny villages. who combine to help and share their possessions with one another. When there is plenty, all share. When times are hard, all suffer together. Strangers visiting them are well received.

There is much that is commendable in the manner in which these primitive tribes conduct their affairs, but the Socialist does not advocate a change to this form of primitive communism. Their economic structure has not developed to that stage where they are in a position to obtain enough of the necessities of life to ensure absolute freedom from want. A famine or crop failure to them spells disaster, as they have yet to acquire the knowledge of how to cope with the resources of nature so as to be assured of an abundance at all times. This problem does not arise in modern society. The working class under capitalism do not go in want because there is a shortage of necessities, but because they have no free access to the wealth which they have produced.

This insane order of society should end, which would mean a change in property relations. The forces of wealth production, which have outstripped the methods of exchange, must be transferred into common ownership and control and all wealth must be produced for the common benefit of all mankind. Only when this is accomplished will there be a world of free people living together in harmonious relationship.

Dick Jacobs.

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these wintry days the thought of Spring seems a long way off. However, in preparation for the May issue of the Socialist Standard work has already commenced. The issue will in the main deal with the Housing Problem. Writers from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Midlands and London have been invited to send reports dealing with their areas—other articles will deal with political and economic aspects. Branches are urged to gear their meetings and literature sales drives for this issue— it probably will be enlarged--20 pages— and colour introduced — price at usual. Therefore, it behoves us all to sell at least twice the normal number of Standards in May. May Day Rallies and, we hope, better weather will enable an all-out effort to be made. A challenge, but one that we will all take up and see a greatly increased circulation.

Islington Branch is holding a meeting at the Islington Town Hall on Monday, March 11th, see details on Meeting page.

Paddington, Ealing and Bloomsbury Branches have arranged a three-branch series of propaganda meetings. The first of these was held in January at the Paddington & Marylebone Branch room. Comrade Hardy spoke on the Common Market. The event was most successful—comrades from the three branches supported the meeting and many visitors were there. Good questions and discussion ensured and it is hoped that the next event—a Brains Trust at Ealing Branch at the Memorial Hall. Windsor Road, near Ealing Broadway. will take place on Friday March 1st at 8 p.m. Bloomsbury Branch hope to arrange a meeting the following month. This first meeting was such a success that other groups of branches could well follow this example.

Annual Conference is being held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square on Friday. Saturday and Sunday April 12th. 13th and 14th. Provincial Branches are asked to contact the Central Organiser at Head Office regarding accommodation required for their delegates. Early notification helps to ensure that accommodation is available.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: Britain and France (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

But. it may be asked, why should we, the working class in England, care a straw for the workers of Paris? . . . Is not the Parisian worker our enemy? Is he not our competitor in the industrial world? Has not France for centuries been the great antagonist of England? Was it not Napoleon III who. after his ignominious defeat at Sedan, suggested to the victorious Germans that they should settle their differences and make war against the “common enemy’’—England? And was it not against France that Nelson and Wellington gained their most memorable victories?

But the revolutionaries of England recognise that, while we are compelled to compete with the workers of France in the industrial field, as with the workers of Germany and all other countries, we have also to compete with the English workers here, and the French and German workers are no more our enemies than our fellow wage slaves of Britain.

Yet, while we are compelled to compete with each other in the labour market, in spite of this there exists a common interest amongst the working class, an interest that recognises no distinction of race or sex. and that unity of interest is the abolition of the system which compels us to fight for a mere existence. This common interest attaches to the whole working class just as the capitalist class, who combat each other for the world's markets, have a common cause in keeping the working class in subjection.

From an article on the Paris Commune 1871 Socialist Standard, March 1913.

Old Time Music Hall (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A gulf of time separates the original working class entertainer who amused his fellows with rough song and dance, from the plushy, awed restraint of the present- day Command Performance. The Music Hall of yesteryear is gone, never to return. Its roots were in the unsettled, lucre-mad savagery of the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century. All that then remained of the abundant regional folk song and music of the English countryside went into the melting pots of the industrial towns to emerge in a uniform pattern of urban culture.

The rural culture, smothered in the slums of the towns, managed to find an outlet for fragmented skills and techniques in the drink-sodden atmosphere of the “pub.” In those days, the public house was new and quite distinct from the ancient inn. It had cut glass, fine woodwork and gas lighting, and offered more comfort and social contact than the home. It was to the early Victorian worker what the coffee bar is now to the Earls Court bed-sitter.

As industrialisation increased, the skilled worker obtained some change in living standards. Some of his wages remained after his basic needs had been met and the brewing trade had a fairly free field in mopping up this surplus. In time, the larger public houses had halls where beer, food and tobacco were helped down by the mixed talents of the entertainers, with the very necessary chairman in control.

It should be remembered that prior to the Theatre Emancipation Act of 1843, straight dramas were allowed only in Crown-chartered theatres of which there were but two in London. This law was evaded by wedging musical comic and acrobatic turns between drama and sketches—“Variety,” in other words. By the time the theatre was freed of restriction, the prolonged effects of State control had already funnelled variety into some form of theatre or hall, and here its ultimate flowering took place. The halls, along with the theatres, were the principal suppliers of performers in growing numbers. In the very poor areas a much lower standard existed in the form of the gin shops, where the “penny gaff” provided crude doggerel, larded with a hefty helping of bad language.

In the early days, the main halls charged admission, which was repaid in food and drink (wet money). This was an encouragement to spend more as the evening wore on. The entertainers were often employed on the premises in some other capacity and received a supplement for their extra efforts. Hence the development of such people as singing waiters. Many publicans were themselves capable performers, such as Collins of Collins Music Hall fame.

But it was Charles Morton who took a big step in the establishment of the music hall. In the 1850’s he enlarged his hall at The Canterbury by demolishing an American skittle alley and created what was for those days a super-modern theatre. Women were eventually allowed in—a good box office draw—and “wet money” was abolished in favour of set admission prices. This meant that artists could now be paid salaries and become specialised—an important change.

Morton himself was very conscious of the need to improve working class taste. Capitalism, after all, needed something more than just a mass of degenerate proletarians. So The Canterbury even sported a picture gallery and selections of opera and ballet were included in the programme; in fact, the first performance in Britain of Gounod’s Faust was performed at The Canterbury. Nor should we forget that in the I860's such halls as Turnham’s White Lion and the famous ’’Met” in Edgware Road, London, had their full-time ballets. Workers who frequented these places did not regard such art form as being above them or effeminate, and although one must allow that standards then were much lower than those of modern choreography, working class acceptance of ballet in its introductory form doubtless played a fair part in its subsequent development.

In the next few years, the halls separated from their public house origin and only the names continued to bear trace of the site of their birth. Laws were passed in 1870 ordering the closing of places of entertainment by midnight and prohibiting the sale of food and drink in the auditorium. This put paid to the Chairman, and correct theatre procedure took his place. But by then capital was flowing into this expanding business and a whole army of song writers, costumiers and small timers were earning their living at it. The audiences still sung, cried and thrilled with the performer, and the personal contact was still a factor, even though it was getting more remote.

By the I930’s, the music halls were in decline. A devastating world war and generally changing conditions saw to that, and it was not to be long before memories were all that remained.

It is interesting now to look back over the years of their heyday and compare them with the present. The most outstanding change is in the type of popular songs) Almost exclusively modern lyrics lean on a theme of sexual love and centre on the young, whereas the old music halls produced songs about almost every human emotion and experience. Love, bravery, misfortune, poverty, snobbishness, death and patriotism they were all there. Workers were still closely knit, even in the large towns, and the isolation behind the lace curtains of suburbia had yet to come. Personal misfortune was eased by the direct mutual aid of one’s neighbours. Today, the state has moved into this field.

As industry develops, every aspect of our lives becomes affected by it, and no field of human activity is left unscrutinised in the search for profit. So the trend in modern songs is not surprising. Who is much bothered if the fervour of young love is aroused by pop singers who, even by general standards, are poor, so long as the money keeps rolling in? Anyway, the ruling class are probably thankful that their young workers spend so much of their spare time shuffling and mooning about broken hearts and frustrated passions. Their minds will not then so readily turn to more awkward aspects of the system.

But modern capitalism has produced something else the quite untenable assumption on the part of many teenagers that we have moved into an era of slickness and high-toned quality in song production. A comparison of the pop songs of today with those of the old music halls will show the falsity of this. There is a difference between the two, yes, but a subtle, one; both are reflections of poverty not only in wealth itself but in the understanding of the capitalist world.

Private property society has divorced its workers from the means of wealthy production and has reduced many of our tasks to simple manipulation. It has also brought about a uniformity of taste, ideas and general behaviour which social reformers may wail about but which none of them can alter. We hope we have said enough by now to show that only a classless, property-less society will make any radical change in this state of affairs. It will be then that we can express ourselves fully and encourage variety in the truest sense of the word. But it is only the working class who can ring up the curtain on this new world.

Jack Law

William Hill discovers a social evil (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ever swelling ranks of society’s reformers have acquired a new “recruit.” Guess who? None other than Mr. William Hill of bookmaking fame. Speaking a little while ago in Birmingham, he complained:

  I was one of those who was all for legalization (of betting shops) . . .  on moral grounds I think it had to happen. Many of you here tonight think that shops are a great success, but I fear that they may eventually become a social evil.
  The existence of betting shops has actually extended betting, with the result that we now have some newspapers warning us that the shops represent a grave danger of a general trade recession.
  Surely it is the duty of the Government to protect the community, for, as I see it, the continued growth of shops can only lead to an increase in betting.

It seems strange that one of Britain’s leading bookmakers should complain about an increase in betting; which really means more business for the layers. When the Wm. Hill organisation insert their large advertisements in the Sporting Press—“Cash or Credit, Hill’s prices lead," and so on—surely they are angling for just this?

In order to understand this speech of Mr. Hill's, let us take a glance at the returns for the year of Holders Investment Trust, which owns the Wm. Hill bookmaking business. According to the Manchester Evening Chronicle of 16th November the profits of this concern fell by over a million pounds in the year to July 31st. Now that’s enough to make any tycoon tear his hair. Nobody need be surprised that if competition from the small fry betting shops has had a hand in this Capitalistic tragedy, then they become a “ social evil ” in the eyes of the big bookmakers.

However, quite without regard to Mr. Hill’s appeal to the Government and his description of “the many gangsters and thugs now holding bookmaker's permits’—the inexorable laws of competition will eventually have their effect, in the usual anarchic way. There will be those who will survive in the betting business and those who “ go to the wall.”

Despite Mr. Hill’s alarm at the number of betting shops sprouting up all over the country and the “cool million” loss in his company—this is the Capitalistic way of life that he and his fellow Capitalists seek to perpetuate. It is front Capitalism itself that the majority of mankind are suffering.

G. R. Russell

A Tot of Religion (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A man who believes that when he is dead and gone, that is the end of him, is possibly going to try and save his own life to the neglect of his duty. Lots of people have been helped by a belief that if they were killed by a bullet that was not the end of it.

(Daily Telegraph, 9.12.62).

Thus says Colonel Peter Vaux, a British Army Staff Officer, advocating the indoctrination of the troops for several hours weekly in the Christian myth—the belief in a life after death. Religious instruction will be an “extra” in the life of the rank and file, a further up-to-the-minute technique in the annihilation of the enemy, wherever he may be found. Once they gave them rum before sending them over the top—now its going to be religion.

He says that the troops should be coaxed into taking an interest in religion —into the belief that though they may be killed, they will not really be dead. If they can be convinced of this, it will provide them with what many have missed in the past, that “inner strength,” which in the wars to come, will be an essential, according to St. Peter Vaux. It will enable survivors to overcome the horrors they encounter and “coolly fight on without orders and with very little information.” Lucky soldiers.

Religion always was the handmaiden of private property, and Colonel Vaux’s remarks should serve to remind us of this. Here is a man under no delusions about the prospects for a third bloodbath, and the part which religion can be made to play in getting workers to slaughter each other in their masters' interests. Enough said.

Billy Iles

The Passing Show: Implication (1963)

The Passing Show column from the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Implication

The recent work-to-rule campaign of the electrical power-station workers led to the usual press campaign. In the newspapers, a number of journalists and letter-writers said that the power workers should not be allowed to take any industrial action, such as striking or working to rule. Almost every prominent strike leads to similar suggestions. Even misguided members of the working class propose that workers (in other industries, of course, not in their own) should be forced to work. The obvious question which then arises—should the workers be forced to work on their own terms or on the employers’ terms?—is seldom answered in so many words, but the implication is usually plain: the workers should be forced to work on whatever terms the employers see fit to offer.

In a time of inflation, when workers have to take or threaten to take industrial action in order to try and keep their earnings abreast of rising prices, this proposal can usually be put in very reasonable-sounding terms: that existing wages and conditions should be maintained. In a time of deflation, such as occasions in the twenties and thirties, when prices are falling, it is the employers who often have to resort to industrial action to force wages down. And at those times the letter-writing brigade seldom suggests that lock-outs should be forbidden by law, and that employers should be compelled to continue employing their workers on the existing terms.

Moral right

But in the power strike, a number of newspapers went further: they made the astounding discovery that the public has a “moral right” to food, lighting and heating. And such is the lack of understanding of the way the capitalist system operates that this announcement went apparently unchallenged. Yet five minutes’ thought would show anyone the falsity of this belief. What would happen if you went into the baker's and told him you had a “moral right” to food, and that you had decided that sixpence was a reasonable price to pay for his ninepenny loaves? Unless you left the shop in a hurry, you would find yourself at the local police station being charged with a breach of the peace. Under our present system, to all intents and purposes, everything is bought and sold. No one has a “moral right” to be supplied with the necessities of life. If the seller of bread and the buyer of bread can agree on a price which the buyer can pay, then the bread changes hands; otherwise it doesn’t. Everyone understands this in practice; no one would go shopping believing anything else. And yet people can so far delude themselves as to write to the papers claiming they have a “moral right” to be supplied with food.

All the aces

Just as food, clothing, and so on, are bought and sold, so is human labour-power. Under our present system, men and women work for the capitalists because they are paid to do so. If the employer and employee can arrive at a bargain as to the price to be paid for a certain amount of work—a wage or salary—then the work is done. Otherwise it isn’t Admittedly in this process of bargaining all the aces are in the hands of the capitalist. For if the worker refuses to work for what the employer pays him, then he faces unemployment, and severe deprivation for himself and his family. The employer, on the other hand, can at least live on his money if no bargain is arrived at; that is what makes him a capitalist.

Both ways

Nevertheless, however strong one party to the bargain is, and however weak the other, a bargain—an agreement as to wages and conditions—there must be. And the very people who are now talking about "moral rights” are exactly the people who insist that this must be so. When one argues for Socialism, and suggests that men could operate a very much better system for supplying themselves with food, clothing and shelter if they did away with money altogether and worked on the principle of common ownership of the means of production, what an outcry follows! These “moral rights” people are exactly those who are first to deride the Socialist solution, and to insist that our present commercial system, where money is the god without which nothing can be done, is the best possible system. But as soon as they are put to inconvenience by the very workings of the system which they themselves uphold and vote for at each election—what a squawk they put up! They are like children who gobble down their share of cake and then cry because it’s gone. They want it both ways.

Massive attacks

It seems paradoxical, but the only members of the public who could justifiably complain when their lights and fires went off as a result of the power-workers’ campaign were the Socialists. Only those who have done their best to put an end to our present capitalist system, only those who have tried to bring in the Socialist alternative—only they could justifiably grumble at these further inconveniences and discomforts which the operation of the capitalist system makes inevitable. Of course, in practice, it is precisely the Socialists who have always supported the working class when they have taken action to maintain or improve their living conditions. The support of Labourites and Communists is never to be relied on: it depends on a dozen factors, such as whether there is a Labour or a Communist government, whether our capitalist class is making war on any other capitalist class, what the Russian ruling class is doing, and so on. Even when there is a Conservative government in power, many of our “progressive” politicians publicly join the massive attacks which are always mounted against workers who try to keep or even increase their small part of what they produce. Only the Socialist Party—as could be expected, since it is the party of the workers —can be relied on to keep the issue straight

Right to strike

A wage-worker has a number of advantages over a slave (although the slave at least doesn’t fear unemployment), but by far the most important one is that he has some degree of freedom. And of this degree of freedom, the most important element is his ability to refuse to work. The alternative is near-starvation, but still it means that he has some final retort against the capitalist who seeks to push him still further down into poverty. Judiciously used, the right to refuse to work, the right to strike, can serve in certain economic circumstances to defend or to improve wages and conditions. But this right to strike, this most important single factor which distinguishes the wageworker from the mere slave, this right is under constant attack from the capitalist state’s organs of propaganda. After reading and listening to such attacks, one has the impression that the worker has the right to strike only so long as he never uses it. Whenever workers use their right to strike, it always seems that —although, of course, the right to strike in general is quite a good thing—still this particular strike is for various reasons a very bad one, and should be ended immediately. It may be “the country's economic position,” it may be “the need to export"; it may be the particular industry the workers are employed in; there is always some reason why this particular strike is totally unjustified.

All these attacks spring from one source: the realization of the ruling class that the strike is one of the few effective weapons the workers have in the class struggle. Our rulers do not wish to revert, to slavery—the present wage-labour system is better for them in many ways: which is why slavery has been abolished in all capitalist countries. But it has this unfortunate aspect, that the workers are technically free to strike. Hence the continual propaganda against any groups of workers who exercise their right. For if they could delude the workers into never striking, the capitalists would be in the happy position of enjoying all the advantages of the capital and wage-labour system, without one of its very few (from their point of view) drawbacks. No wonder their newspapers, radio, TV, and pulpits never cease to attack strikes!

Alwyn Edgar

Trotskyism or Socialism (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trotskyists claim that the Labour leadership has “betrayed Socialism.” In fact they themselves are no more Socialists than are Wilson, George Brown or Frank Cousins.

What is today known as Trotskyism originated about forty years ago as an opposition movement within the Russian Communist Party to the Stalin leadership, and much of Trotskyist theory is concerned with the nature of Russian society. To them Russia is not Capitalist, but a “degenerate Workers’ State.” They argue that the 1917 Revolution ended Capitalism in Russia but that a few years later, as a result of the failure of the world revolution, a bureaucracy was able to usurp power from the workers. This means that Russia still remains for them "a basis for the international State for the abolition of war, for possibilities as yet undreamed of” (The World Revolution, C. L. R. James), and it is the duty of the workers of the world, we are told, to defend this gain.

If the Soviet Union goes down, then Socialism receives a blow which will cripple it for a generation. And therefore, though seeing the Soviet Union as it is, the Trotskyists, uncompromising enemies of Stalinism, will defend the Soviet Union is peacetime as in war. (ibid pp. 418-9).

The question now arises: Is the Russian economic system “progressive”? Is it any more Socialist than that of the West? We answer that it is not. The economic system in Russia exhibits all the essential characteristic of Capitalism: production for sale, wages, markets, money and profits. Certainly a large part of industry is nationalised but nationalisation is nothing to do with Socialism. As for war, its basic primary cause is Capitalism’s struggle for markets, raw materials and trade routes; since the workers throughout the world have no interest in the maintenance of Capitalism so they have no interest in the prosecution of its wars. The Socialist in fact expresses his unqualified opposition to all wars, whether they be wars of aggression, of “defence” or ‘‘national liberation,” for “democracy” or for anything else. We do not just say, as do pacifists, that men should not fight in wars, but that men should reorganize society to remove the cause of war. Socialism will do away with war since trading and markets will disappear when goods are no longer produced to be sold. Socialists see no reason therefore why the workers of the world should fight and die for Russian Capitalism any more than for British or American or any other Capitalism.

The argument about the “progressive economic system” has even less merit than that employed by those alleged Socialists before the first World War, who held that the workers must be prepared to defend the democratic institutions of their country “ because it is the only means by which they can peaceably achieve their emancipation.” For Russia is not even a democratic country: the workers there have to put up with a dictatorship which denies them the most elementary rights needed to protect their interests—the right to organise politically and the right to strike. Yet the Trotskyists are prepared to make common cause with these, and with similar dictators. They acted as recruiting sergeants in Cuba when the Castro clique was threatened by an American backed invasion in April last year. “Workers’ and anti-imperialist organisations and parties,” declared the Trotskyist Fourth International, “must immediately organize brigades, open recruiting for volunteers to defend the Cuban Workers State.” A cardinal point in the programme of the Trotskyist groups in Britain is nationalization under workers’ control. Young Guard (March, 1962) expands [on] this:

. . . we can say that trade unions under socialism should concern themselves with all questions of wages, conditions, automation (and in these problems they should always have at their disposal the right to strike). But at the same time we should press for the establishment and recognition of the factory committee, whose purpose is the participation with the state in all matters of control and administration of wealth production.

The reference to wages implies, of course, the existence of an employer, presumably the State, and that the workers should co-operate with this employer. We point out at once that a society in which people still have to work for wages cannot be called Socialism. Socialism is based on common ownership, which means that money, wages, profits, buying and selling and all the other features of private property society will have disappeared. The wages system is in fact one of the cornerstones of Capitalism and for this reason we distinguish it from other systems by the fact that those who produce work for wages. The wages system is completely incompatible with Socialism and to talk about a “Socialist wages policy” is nonsense.

What is the Socialist alternative to the wages system? First, let us look at this system a little closer. The wages system cannot flourish unless most people, to all intents and purposes, own none of the means of production, while a few own them all. The majority therefore have no choice: they must work for those who own. Socialism by making the means of production common property will end this inequality of wealth on which the wages system flourishes. What common ownership will mean is that nobody will be denied free access to the means of living, and the ownership of these means by individuals will appear quite as fantastic as does slavery today. Under these conditions the satisfaction of man’s needs will be the sole end of production: the Labour Exchange will disappear along with the Stock Exchange.

How people live under Capitalism is well known. Those who have no ownership in the means of production sell their energies and abilities for a wage and use the money received to buy what they need to maintain themselves and their family in working order. Under Socialism people will work and receive as much as they think they need: they will freely give their labour and take what they require. This is the Socialist alternative to the wages system and anything short of this is not Socialism.

Nor does the fact that the State instead of a private individual is the employer alter the Capitalist nature of society. On the contrary, far from abolishing Capitalism this would strengthen it since all the power of the employing class would be concentrated in the State. It is a fact that Russia, the country with probably the highest percentage of State ownership, is the only country of which it can be said that the power of the working class to resist has been almost completely crushed. Even in Britain it is those in the state industries who suffer most from any Government's wages policy: it takes little imagination to see how much more easily, for example, a government could impose a pay pause if it were the only employer. State control is in fact a form of Capitalist ownership; the State acts as the representative of the employing class as a whole and shares out amongst this class what the workers produce over and above their wages—interest on government bonds, bloated salaries for higher administrators, expense accounts, bonuses, tax concessions and other such privileges.

We can now see that nationalisation under workers' control is a meaningless concept; for as long as the workers own nothing—and they must continue to do so as long as the wages system exists—they can have no control. Power will remain in the hands of the propertied minority, those who benefit from the state industries in the ways we have mentioned.

We say then that the Trotskyists do not stand for the overthrow of Capitalism since they envisage the continued existence of the wages system. They are not, and have never been. Socialists.

Adam Buick

Labour's new leader (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the moment, at any rate, the firing has ceased. And out of the settling dust of battle, a little tattered but nevertheless smiling heartily, has come Mr. Wilson, confirmed by the votes of anxious Labour M.P.s as the Labour Party's new leader and perhaps, therefore, the next Prime Minister of this country.

Some time before the first ballot, the fighting lines had been drawn up. Certain M.P.s announced that they were sponsoring one or the other of the original three candidates and some newspapers came down for the man of their choice. The Guardian wanted Callaghan as long as he was in the race; The Economist wanted George Brown.

Everybody was wondering: Who will win? Nobody seemed to be interested in asking the question which really counts: Does it matter?

Gaitskell's death has been described as a great blow to the Labour Party and to the people of this country. As usually happens when an eminent somebody dies, all sorts of people have rushed to the television or the radio or the newspaper to tell us what a great man Gaitskell was. How wise. How knowledgeable. How honest. And as well as all this, how gay. Countless fellow-politicians have gone out of their way to draw attention to supposed qualities in Gaitskell which these same men had assiduously ignored when he was alive. We should all be feeling shattered. It seems that the Labour leader's death was a bit of massively bad luck for us all.

It was, of course, not time to dwell upon Hugh Gaitskell's political mistakes. No time to recall that he blundered over Suez, when he openly appealed to Conservative M.P.s to desert the government—a move which, of course, stirred up the Tories' loyalty and so had the opposite effect to that which Gaitskell intended. No time, either, to recall the mistake over Clause Four, when Gaitskell first aroused the muddled pioneer element in the Labour Party and then hastily withdrew from the battle, when he must have known all along that he could ignore Clause Four anyway. Gaitskell's period as leader was a succession of public rows in the Labour Party, accompanied by the expected nervous assurances that the party was solidly united. It is doubtful that, if he had been made Prime Minister, he would have been remembered as one in the crafty, ruthless mould of, say, a Lloyd George nor as one in the casual contemptuous mould of a Macmillan.

As he died, Gaitskell seemed to be coming up for his turn at the top job. Now that the government's popularity is registering such a low point, with even the weather co-operating in making them seem inefficient, the Labour Party is all in a sweat that their fortunes should hold until the next polling day. Labour M.P.s now go carefully, lest a word or a vote out of place should upset the delicately balanced apple cart upon which they hope to be wheeled in triumph to Westminster. It is, of course, an open question whether the Tories will work the old trick again and, as in 1959 when many people, including Gaitskell, expected the Labour Party to take power, turn all the forecasts upside down. If this happens we may be sure that there will be more rows in the Labour Party, with the disappointed office-seekers blaming the new leader for yet another defeat.

Perhaps Labour's greatest difficulty is the theory, which seems so popular among workers that the Conservatives are the natural ruling party of British capitalism and that the Labour Party is a bunch of rather reckless dogmatists. When we remember the unmistakable way in which the Attlee government ran British capitalism—breaking strikes, freezing wages, protecting the overseas interests of the British capitalist class—we know how laughable this theory is. Nevertheless, it exists, and there are certain historical reasons for it doing so.

At one time the Labour Party was loaded with theorists. They had their share of men like Strachey and Cripps  who knew something about political theory and could argue it. Both these men were, naturally, sober and respectable upholders of capitalist virtue in the 1945 Labour government. But presumably the memory of the things they said in the old days dies hard, Cripps, for one, was once an outstanding nuisance to the Labour Party, which expelled him for his activities in the Socialist League, Even when, as Minister of Aircraft Production, he was organising the making of the bombers which pounded the German cities, and when as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was fighting to hold down wages, the taint of his earlier indiscretions still hung about him. He was never a popular minister.

The past

Nor does it end there. It is typical of the confusion in Labour Party thinking that it should keep in its Constitution quaint traces of democracy which clash directly with its desire to take over British capitalism. These traces are vestiges of the days when the theorists were farther from power than they are today, and therefore were safer and more respected. The Economist, on January 26th, was fretting about one of these vestiges:

The most appalling feature of the parliamentary Labour Party's constitution is that it provides for this sort of election for the party leadership to take place every year . . . there is unhappily no guarantee that whoever is elected leader next month will be accorded similar security of tenure (as Mr. Gaitskell)  . . .

What is capitalism to make of a party which in theory can elect a new Prime Minister every year? A party which does not know whether it wants to run capitalism or to appear to be a democratic organisation? 

This was something of what Hugh Gaitskell was trying, albeit clumsily, to destroy. He was the leader who made it clear that the decisions of Labour conferences could be ignored by a future Labour government. This was something which Attlee had always appreciated; it was typical of Gaitskell that he chose to fight a public battle over an issue which he had won before he started. Perhaps Gaitskell saw his party's salvation in their openly becoming another Conservative Party, entirely shorn of theorists and standing only as a responsible administration for British capitalism. There has never been any fundamental difference between the two parties anyway. Samuel Brittan, Economic Editor of The Observer, is one who has realised this. On January 27th last he wrote:

One of the myths of British politics is that there is a huge difference between the Conservative and Labour Parties. Businessmen in particular tend to suppose that a change of Government would bring a radical change in the whole economic environment. Faced with this myth it is hardly worth saying: "No such luck! The basic approach of the two parties is all too depressingly similar."

If the Labour Party are an alternative administration for British capitalism, we may well think the ruling class sometimes wish that they were a stronger alternative. A party which seems almost unable to lose an election, as the Tories seemed for so long, could be a nuisance to some sections of the capitalist class. Such a party could come to think that it was virtually unbeatable at election time and so could do whatever it liked. Capitalism does not want such a government. It wants a government which is open to pressure, a government which can be moulded, a government which treads carefully. So capitalism needs an alternative government always ready. It must have been greatly disappointed in the Labour Party over the past few years.

And for the future? The result of the ballot can make no difference. The newspapers may have got het up over the various candidates, but the fact is that this is all a waste of time. The next Labour Prime Minister will run capitalism, as far as he can, just as the Tories have run it—in the interests of the capitalist class. He will make war, if British capitalism demands it. He will oppress the working class just as much as ruling class interests say they must be oppressed. He will fight the workers over their wages and working conditions just as any other Prime Minister has done. He will, for example, be concerned to restrict wage claims as far as possible. This is what Mr. Harold Wilson wrote about wage claims in the Manchester Guardian on October  25th, 1957:

Whether . . . a Conservative Government can now create the conditions in which wage restraint could once again become a reality is a matter for opinion . . .
For a Labour Government, no less than for the Conservatives, success or failure in the battle against inflation would depend on its ability to secure an understanding with the unions which would make wage restraint possible.

Here the Labour Party attitude to wages is set out clear. They know that capitalism cannot allow unrestricted wages for its workers and they argue that they, with their special connections with the Trade Union movement, are better equipped to hold them down than are the Tories. Which shows how little the working class can hope for from a future Labour government.

Hugh Gaitskell is gone to his untimely end and nobody wants to be mean about that. But the facts must be clear. Leaders may come and go, but capitalism will go on until the very people who support and admire the leaders come to understand the social system they live under. The leaders always say, as Gaitskell used to, that they stand for a world of peace and human dignity. But only when the system needs the leaders is gone will their empty and cynical words become reality.

Ivan.