Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) is a deeply entrenched cultural practice that affects around 200 million women and girls. It’s practised in at least 25 African countries, as well as parts of the Middle East and Asia and among immigrant populations globally. It is a harmful traditional practice that involves removing or damaging female genital tissue. Often it’s “justified” by cultural beliefs about controlling female sexuality and marriageability. 

(The Conversation)

. . .  “the ELN claims to follow Karl Marx, but it seems to me they believe more in Pablo Escobar.” Indeed, drug trafficking helps explain why, after more than 60 years of armed conflict, peace continues to elude Colombia. The violence briefly diminished after the country’s largest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, disarmed in 2016, but the government failed to take control of coca fields and drug trafficking routes that were abandoned by the FARC. And now ELN rebels and a new generation of criminal groups are fighting over this territory. 

(KAXE)

Representatives for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant declined to comment on how the pause could impact the plant and jobs. …The plant ‘is not the largest employer by any stretch,’ said Bob Durkin, president of the non-partisan Scranton Chamber of Commerce. ‘But it’s a very important employer. The jobs are really high-quality jobs. They are well paying, family sustaining jobs’. 

(BBC)

In a staggering display of police callousness, the South African government has caused one of the worst mining disasters in the country’s history…. The Stilfontein massacre, which left almost ninety dead, has split the South African opposition and exposed a ruling bloc corrupted by mineral wealth. At its heart, it is a story of the contradictions of politics in an extremely unequal extractive economy. 

(Jacobin)

James Schneider, Jeremy Corbyn’s former Director of Comms, argues for a new party…. Zack Polanski, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, says we don’t need anything new. There is, after all, a socialist party in the UK already: it’s the Greens. 

(Novara Media)

. . . William Morris . . . believed that the creation and enjoyment of pre-industrial arts and crafts could undo the assumptions about natural inequality that were baked into capitalism. Influenced by both Karl Marx and John Ruskin, he demanded that works of art should actually embody the equality and freedom that had disappeared in an age witnessing the rise of mass production and excessive consumption on the one hand and widespread poverty and drudgery on the other. In News from Nowhere — his novel-length description of an egalitarian, anti-consumerist society — he aimed at nothing less than rewiring his readers’ minds and hearts. 

(Los Angeles Review of Books)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Editorial: The Festive Season. (1908)

Editorial from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Festive Season.

The usual cant is now being uttered concerning the “festive season,” and the conventional phrases are on most people’s lips. To those with the wherewithal to purchase the good things of life it is possible to be merry and joyous, but to these Christmas is no exception to the rule. They can and do eat, drink and be merry, taking no thought of the morrow, even if it be that on the morrow they die. But although the working class may, for the time being, “forget their sorrow and remember their misery no more,” their ever-present poverty and the constant dread of even harder times, makes a “joyous” Christmas impossible.

What is the position to-day ? Says that wordy describer of evils for which he has no remedy, Mr. Geo. R. Sims :

“No one has any money. The cry of an impoverished people rings through the land. The West End weeps and the City sits in sackcloth and ashes. All parties agree that there is “very little money about.”

One is bound to accept the statement when one hears it so plaintively put forward in every direction. Commercial and professional men, dukes and doss-house keepers, traders and toilers, all tell you the same thing, and yet—capitals, please, Mr. Printer, AND YET

Luxury and Extravagance

leap to your eyes everywhere, and the shop windows this Christmas time are making as glorious a show of goods as ever delighted the eyes of a passing public in the palmy days of booming British trade and national well-being.

Magnificent hotels and gorgeous restaurants, such as the capital never possessed before, flourish and pay dividends ; men who used to go to the City in a twopenny ‘bus are now whirled thither in a thousand-guinea motor-car.”

And yet from all the industrial centres, not those of England alone, but of all parts of the world, come accounts of the distress among the working class. In London the starving condition of the school children has forced leading members of the exploiting class to issue an urgent appeal for funds, fearful lest the supply of efficient wage slaves may be impaired, or that this starvation, in the midst of plenty, if allowed to continue, may goad people into action that may threaten the supremacy of the master class. In the North of England special appeals have been issued for funds to help the unemployed and their starving dependents. As the Newcastle Journal of Dec. 10th said :

“The cry for Relief of Distress is in evidence that the contrivances invented to prevent so many people falling into poverty and to ease the lot of such as might fall have been a dead failure—a most lamentable failure. For, as the means of relief have gone on increasing, the number demanding to be relieved goes on increasing in still greater proportion. . . . Our country abounds with orphan asylums, houses of refuge, training ships for outcasts, hospitals for every kind of disease, convalescent homes, alms-houses, and charity organisations of one sort and another—each and all of which were designed to play their part in reducing the mass of poverty, and in elevating the condition of those dwelling on the borders of pauperism, in social and moral respects. But their failure to attain such end is dismal. Never was the mass of poverty in our country greater than it is to-day—never was the cry of the distressful louder than it is to-day. . . The Distress Committee in every town is proclaiming that the state of things is worse than it was before.”

We agree with the writer that all these benevolent contrivances have failed lamentably “because they do not get near to the root of the evil—because they do not even aim at touching the root of the evil.” And in endeavouring to earn his money as a capitalist hack he, as might be expected, charges the working class with improvidence, thriftlessness, and wastefulness ! He accuses them of being reckless of future needs, and given to living from hand to mouth. As if the wage slaves of capitalism could do other than live from hand to mouth ! He suggests that the distress in Sunderland is largely due to the workers’ extravagance and self-indulgence when the day was long and work was plentiful. Other writers state that these Sunderland mechanics have been receiving £7 or £8 per week in wages, and they have spent it all as they received it. We do not believe these amounts have been paid in wages, but even if they have, and the receivers have spent all their takings each week, what has been the effect? They have found employment in other departments of industry which would not have been provided had they refrained from spending their wages. Tailors, shoemakers, producers and purveyors of food and drink, employees of transit companies, etc., have had work as the result of the “thriftlessness” of these Sunderland shipwrights. Had they “hoarded,” had they put by for a rainy day, it would have been necessary long before this to make appeals to relieve the distress of unemployed workers who have been kept going by the “extravagance” of their fellows.

Under capitalism, it is in the interests of the working class that wealth should be destroyed as quickly as possible after it is produced, and the Newcastle Journal’s claptrap no more suggests a solution of the problem than any of the “contrivances” it writes down.

In the “Empire Beyond the Seas” thousands of good workmen are workless and hungry. From Canada comes the news that every industry is overcrowded. In Toronto there are 10,000 out of work, 4,000 in Winnipeg, and similar numbers in other large centres. Even Lord Strathcona, the High Commissioner, whilst not confirming (nor disputing) these figures, admits that “the general conditions of labour and business are not so brisk as at this time last year, but everything is reasonably satisfactory.” “Reasonably satisfactory” means, of course, that the unemployed are quiet, that they are not making themselves a nuisance. Let it be remembered that these unemployed workmen in Canada are not of “the idle, loafing, profligate class” : they are men who have been mainly selected for their physical fitness and mechanical skill, as only those who can pass a very severe test in these respects are allowed to join the parties of emigrants “assisted” by various capitalist agencies, open or disguised, to “start afresh.” And although it is admitted that there is an acute unemployed problem in Canada, “General” Booth is advertising for 600 men and women to join a party going there, under government auspices, on Feb. 20th !

From America, the “land of the free,” the paradise that the Tariff Reformer points to, but (like the Christian and his paradise) is in no hurry to go to, we learn, on the authority of the Daily Mail, that

“Distressing stories of a vain struggle for existence in America are told by crowds of sad-faced emigrants streaming from the steerage decks of every arriving trans-Atlantic liner. The vast majority, according to competent assurance I have received, are arriving only with money for the barest immediate necessities. I have interviewed a number of distracted wanderers—broad-shouldered, industrious-looking Galicians, Bohemians, Poles, and Italians—who, in broken English, picked up during brief sojourns in America, declared that they were willing to do any kind of work, they had not earned a dollar for three months” 

(Daily Mail’s Bremen Correspondent, Dec. 5)

These workers out of European countries left their homes (capitalism having broken them up long before the advent of Socialism) because conditions of livelihood were productive of poverty and unhappiness, and they are now leaving Protection-ridden America for the same reason.

Let us take another phase of the workers’ existence.

Early on the morning of the 18th December, an explosion occurred at a mine belonging to the Pittsburg (U.S.A.) Coat Company at Jacob’s Creek, some eighteen miles from Connellsville. Two hundred and fifty miners lost their lives, and we are told that the women relatives of the men gathered around the pitmouth frenzied with grief. What a merry Christmas ! What a prospect of a happy New Year for these women and children deprived of bread-winner by this sudden “act of God” !

This is the third great coal-mine explosion that has occurred in the United States in less than a fortnight. On December 6th between four and five hundred miners lost their lives at the Monongah Mine, and on the 16th another seventy met their doom in the Yolande Mine, Alabama. On the day of the Jacob’s Creek explosion the Commission appointed by Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, issued a pamphlet showing that 22,840 persons have lost their lives in coal-mine accidents in America in the last seventeen years. Half of these deaths were caused during the last six years. In 1906 alone 6,861 persons were involved in accidents, 2,061 of whom perished. In 1906 there were 1,116 lives lost in British mines. It is well that the accidents and diseases of occupations should be borne in mind when our opponents are telling us of the “reward” to which the capitalist is entitled because of the risks he takes. He never risks his life for a paltry wage insufficient at the best of times to keep one decently.

When one takes into consideration, then, the conditions of the working class all over the wide world ; when one remembers that, no matter what political, fiscal, or religious systems are in vogue, all over the world the working class is poor and the master class is rich ; when one knows that their exploitatation must continue, what a farce it is to talk to the wage slaves of “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !” There is no festive season for them. There cannot be until capitalism is abolished. When the workers, organised as a class-conscious party, not only in opposition to those political factions which are avowedly capitalist, but also to those which, while professing to be anti-capitalist are yet pro-capitalist, by reason of their efforts at “reforming” this system and their support of capitalist candidates and parties, shall be preparing to take over the means of wealth production and thus end working-class exploitation, they will be able to indulge in good wishes and encouragement. When, however, their historic mission is fulfilled it will not be a case of wishing each other a good time once in 365 days, but life for all, young and old, will be a festive season all the time. To hasten that good day is the work which the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been doing and which it hopes to do even more vigorously in the year now before it.

Miners and Airmen. A Contrast in Tragedies. (1930)

From the November 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The manner in which the R.101 eclipsed the Walsall miners provides an object lesson in the function of the capitalist press. The scandalous waste of miners’ lives in the production of coal-owners profits makes a mine explosion a tit-bit of little value in the way of news. Of course, there is always “the Royal message of sympathy,” and for two or three days “the disaster arouses the feeling of the whole community”—then it is quietly dropped. In this case, the dropping was rendered quick and certain by the occurrence of a first-rate space-filler.

It was not the immense risk they ran nor the horror of their deaths which made them heroes. Nor yet the fact that they were British. In these respects their case did not differ from that of the miners, for whom there was no military funeral, no flags flying half-mast, no ornate pomp and ceremony, to draw tens of thousands to see their coffins.

The R.101 was bound for Egypt and India. Its mission was professedly a peaceful one; but it belonged to an arm of the State which exists to destroy human lives whenever capitalist interests so dictate. Had the voyage proved a success its next trip might not have been so peaceful.

One journalistic defender of capitalism appeared to have an inkling that its working class readers were not altogether blind to these facts. The Daily Express on October 11th, commented on the necessity for remembering the members of “that large industrial army who died in the performance of their duty.”

Is it duty, then, that sends miners down the pit or the engineers and riggers up in the air? Listen to one of the survivors, Mr. Sinks, of Sheffield. “Shall I fly again? Most certainly ! It is my living !” And any miner would say the same. The workers the world over are driven to risk their lives in order to fill their stomachs and provide shelter for their skins. Their inspiration is not patriotism, but want; and this same want is the modern equivalent of the slave-driver’s lash. By its aid are constructed edifices more mighty than the pyramids, more dreadful than Nero in their capacity for destruction.

To the British master-class the loss of the R.101 was more than mere material, for expensive experts shared the fate of their cheap subordinates. But as the present scribe is no expert, he does not intend to pronounce upon the hotly-debated question of lighter versus heavier-than-air-machines. Suffice it to point out that it is difficult to imagine the natives of tropical dependencies sharing their grief. Whether they are to be bombed from ‘planes or gasbags will, no doubt, appear in their eyes to be a matter of purely academic interest ; and in the eyes of Socialists also. What is of the greatest importance is that the workers of the world should understand that it is not in their interests that these giant war-weapons are being developed. Empires and trade routes do not provide them with fortunes, and (apart from the relatives of the immediate victims) it is not they who have suffered a loss in this “national calamity” ; but it is in the interests of the master-class that they should be led to think so. Hence the whole machinery for the manipulation of the “mass-mind” has been set in motion with a thoroughness reminiscent of 1914.

Eric Boden

A Look Round. (1905)

From the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Councillor Hickmott is asking all who favour the establishment of an active Socialist organisation to write to him at St. John’s, Sevenoaks.

o o o

Active Socialist work in any district is to be welcomed, when it is Socialist, but all who accept Mr. Hickmott’s invitation should have a clear understanding with him before they start work. I do not know whether he is still a member of any organisation claiming to be Socialist, but I do know that he secured his seat on the Sevenoaks District Council as an ”Independent” because “you cannot run as a Socialist down here, you know.” I also know that he was the only advertised speaker at an open-air meeting of the Bromley South Liberal Association held on June 28th, and I am informed that this meeting was one of a series held in support of Mr. Maurice, the Liberal candidate. So I think a warning is necessary.

o o o

The S.P.G.B. is the only Socialist body in this country which does not support Liberal candidates. Socialists of Sevenoaks and other places please note.

o o o

In my June notes I referred to the “Tactics” question in America. Victor Berger, who supported a capitalist nominee at the Milwaukee Spring elections, has been removed from the National Executive of the American Socialist Party. Verily, the way of the transgressor is harder in the States than in this country !

o o o

The working-man is free to work when, where and for whom he likes, say our opponents. Is he ? Lord Claud Hamilton declared last month that in West Ham the Great Eastern Railway Company pay £30,000 a year in rates, and if the cost of establishing a town for 2,500 men were less, they would move them to some other part of the country. The capitalist-class consider the workers as so many goods and chattels, as they really are, to be shifted from place to place as it suits the employing class to shift them. And this is freedom !

o o o

Another point often urged by our critics is that the capitalist is entitled to a greater reward than the worker because of what he risks. But the working-class risk every day that which the mere “investor of capital,” great or small, never jeopardises, and which, unlike that which the capitalist risks, “when, once destroyed can never be supplied”—his life. Such disasters as the recent explosion in the Wattstown colliery illustrates the fact.

o o o

Throughout the United Kingdom about 25 miners lose their lives at work every week, whilst upon the railways last year, excluding passengers, 958 persons were killed and 4,220 injured, which average 18 and 81 per week respectively. All other departments of industry claim their toll of the workers’ lives. Each member of our class takes his life in his hands every time he enters the mine, factory or dock, and all for a few paltry shillings per week.

o o o

A correspondent of a London financial journal, writing from Kalgoorlie under date June 17th, refers to the impending struggle between the Chamber of Mines and the workmen. He says that the prevailing impression is that an all-round reduction of wages will take place. So that, although “the representatives of capital and labour are marshalling their forces,” it is a foregone conclusion that victory will lie with the former, as it must as long as capitalism lasts.

o o o

However, our friend has made a discovery. He concludes his report by saying, “At the same time living on the fields is fairly high, and you very rarely hear of anyone living on the gold-fields from choice.” Does the scribe suggest that men are driven, say by the ever present fear of starvation, to leave England, home, and beauty in order to work and live on the goldfields ?

o o o

The Agricultural Returns for 1904 have just been issued and show that the area under corn crops has decreased from 8,517,000 acres in 1902 to 8,258,000 in 1904. This fact should be noted in view of our article on “Invasion or Starvation” in last month’s issue.

o o o

Eureka ! A Mr. David Lubin has held a meeting in his rooms at Kensington Palace Mansions to fully explain a scheme “to kill corners” ! It is the King of Italy’s plan, but was suggested to him by Mr. Lubin. The agriculturist, they say, is practically at the mercy of such people as the “cotton kings” and “wheat kings” of the United States, and so they will establish an International Chamber of Agriculture which will aim at the world-wide circulation of reliable information, by which every grower, manufacturer, and consumer can know the exact state of the market.

o o o

And this, according to Mr. Lubin, will “stop the ‘monkeyings’ of these new Mephistopheles who call themselves ‘kings’ ; there are to be no more corners.” I can imagine Leiter, Armour, Brown, Sully, and Co. trembling in their skins. Lubin, the new Jack-the-giant-killer, with the aid of a King-by-divine-right, who may be able to govern “his” people, but cannot prevent the real kings, thousands of miles away, from withholding their supplies of food and raw materials, has arisen, and by the aid of an information bureau, is going to lay them low. What do you say ? That the information will enable them to operate more successfully and will place the people move in their power than ever ? Perhaps so. But the real giant will one day awaken, will recognise that the only way to kill corners is to expropriate the possessors of the means of life, to assume the ownership and control, to organise production and distribution in the interests of the whole people.

J. Kay.

Editorial: Heroism or Imbecility? (1905)

Editorial from the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“To no section of the industrious working-class are we under deeper obligation than to the miners …. The Kingdom and Empire of which it is the heart, owe much to Welsh coal. … No deed of valour on the battlefield can surpass the splendid but quiet and unostentatious bravery which these rough workers display . . .” 

Yes, according to the capitalist press the whole world stands agog at the heroism of the miner in times of catastrophe similar to the recent explosion which took such a fearful toll of working-class life in a Welsh mine. But let these same heroes take a stand in order to secure a few of the comforts of life to set off against the dreadful hazards that they daily face; let them organize to fight the capitalist class for some improvement in the unmitigated hardships of their condition ; let them so much as hint a threat against the liberty of their masters to take the whole product of mine labour less that diminishing quantity necessary to the maintenance of the physical effectiveness of the miner, and this same Press will send such a howl of indignation up to high heaven at the unutterable selfishness that would reduce profits, and the crass stupidity whose insistent demands can only be satisfied at the risk of driving trade out of the country, that the workers in alarm cease their agitation or reduce their request by one half or (which amounts to the same thing) hasten to agree to the appointment of a conciliation Board, under the impression that they have done a wicked thing, or, with the idea generally fostered by their leaders, that they must do nothing to alienate public sympathy.

“Heroes” they are when they suffer suffocation without protest; endure hardships without complaint. “Bulwarks of the Empire” they, when they return to work without hesitation even while their comrades’ mutilated bodies are being brought out of the bowels of the earth. But let them organize for some amelioration in what is ironically designated their “lot” and they are scum to be flouted or children to be wheedled or dogs to be shot as at Featherstone—shot ruthlessly, unhesitatingly, with the calculated approval of capitalist hacks misnamed Labour Leaders who, having mounted to position upon working-class backs, betray the trust and sell the interest confided to their keeping. The line between working-class heroism and working-class imbecility is, in the eyes of capitalism, thin indeed. And seeing that, however small the demand, capitalist good opinion (the preservation of which to the unenlightened working-class mind is so important) is alienated; however feeble the protest capitalist love is turned into hate, capitalist bullets take the place of capitalist benevolence, it does seem to the casual observer that workers in the mine and factory stand to lose nothing by increasing their demand from the present absurdly ineffectual ha’penny or penny an hour advance in wages or the establishment of the status quo ante Farwell, to the demand for the full result of their labour and the abolition of an altogether useless and unnecessary capitalist class.

Running Commentary: Base metal (1989)

The Running Commentary column from the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Base metal

Margaret Thatcher, not to mention her advisers. have worked hard at promoting her image as the Iron Lady of Europe. This means depicting her, not just as determined and strong but also as fair and consistent. For a woman of her mettle, there is a Right side of a question and a Wrong side and the twain shall never be allowed to meet.

[The] obstruction of the Queens proposed visit to Russia? Leaving aside the possibility that her objection was inspired by fear of being upstaged, even by the head of the royal family — so base a motive must be beneath the dignity of an Iron Lady — we are left with the argument that no British monarch should be allowed to visit a totalitarian country like Russia. It was also rumoured that Thatcher thought it improper for a British sovereign to so recognise a regime whose forerunners had done in the Romanovs.

There might be a shred of justification for this stance were it consistent. But no government — including this one — has ever refused contact with a foreign power because of an abhorrent record on human treatment. Anyone who has doubts about this need only look at the recent example of Turkey. This member state of the supposedly democracy-defending alliance of NATO is governed by a brutal dictatorship which is notorious for imprisoning and torturing people whose only offence is to voice opposition to it. Yet Thatcher's voice was not raised against the recent visit here of the Turkish President Evren and she is an avowed admirer of the Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozai: the term she has used to describe herself is an Ozalite.

The issue of whether the queen goes to Moscow — which in any case has now been wiped off the agenda by the Armenian earthquake — is not concerned with human interests. Capitalism has a history of international conflict but no states have ever gone to war because one was a democracy and the other a dictatorship. All states deal with each other over economic, political and strategic advantage, which leads to all manner of disputes and alliances. the common feature of which is a ruthless cynicism. Human welfare does not enter into it, unless it can be used to make propaganda points against the other side.

So let not the Iron Lady deceive us. with her audacious claim to be concerned with fundamental human rights and freedoms. Nor with her claim to be any different from, or better than, the other politicians for their common role is to dabble in the brutal mess of capitalism.

Beyond Ken

Strange events in Brent East, where discontent rumbles about local MP Ken Livingstone, who was better known in his hey day as Red Ken of County Hall. During that time, when he was leader of the GLC. Livingstone showed himself to be a tough and clever political operator and to have some flair as a self-publicist. At any rate he rode out some pretty scurrilous attentions from the gutter press and ended his time at County Hall as something of a local hero, the champion of local democracy against the depredations of the Tory government.

But he has not found life so agreeable in Parliament. It has been reported that he is an outcast there; he himself has said that anyone who enjoys being in Parliament probably needs psychiatric care — which could not have endeared himself to those who are addicted to their status as Hon. Members.

None of this need have gone against Livingstone in his constituency but recently he has put some scathing views on record about the local council, which is about the most famous in the country for the chaos created by its wild-left administration. Brent councillors have worked on the principle that the capitalist system they stand for, and which they persuaded the voters to vote for, does not exist when it suits their purpose. The result has been historic in its embarrassment and confusion. A veteran of local government, Livingstone has not approved; he has compared the Brent Labour Party to Kampuchea under Pol Pot. along with a few other unkind remarks.

So now there is talk in the constituency about de-selecting Red Ken. There is a delicious irony in this, for the left wing in the Labour Party pushed through the constitutional reform of de-selection on the assumption that it would only ever be used to unseat right wingers. That was what happened in Brent East, where Livingstone was appointed candidate after a long and bitter struggle to turf out the old-established sitting MP, Reg Freeson.

De-selection was hailed as a great step forward to a more democratic, more ' socialist'' Labour Party. In reality it was often used as a steam roller to ensure the unquestioning acceptance of one point of view. Livingstone's offence has been to go against this, to act as if he had some independent thoughts. If he pays for this by the loss of his seat, perhaps he will learn something about the futility of single-issue, fragmentary reformism as well as about the cynicism of his party.

Percentage game

"£14 million for Sainsbury chief" said the Observer headline on 6 November. The item told us that 23 UK company directors received in excess of £1 million each last year in salary and dividends. Against David Sainsbury's £14.846,816. Tiny Rowlands only managed £8,095,754 and the last five only managed £1 million, excluding dividends. 1,451 directors had to make do with salaries of just over £100,000.

Three years ago no-one was paid over £1 million and only 338 received in excess of £100,000. How well invested therefore was the cool £4.5 million contributed by major companies to Tory election funds (Observer, 4 December). After all, of those directors in the above list, the £102,000 contributed by Hanson is less than one tenth of Lord Hanson's salary last year of £1,263,000!

Much was made at the time of Thatcher's decision not to take the last increase MPs awarded themselves. However it is less well-known that, while the cost of running her private office has risen from £4.4 million in 1986 to £5.4 million (an increase of ten per cent per annum), the part-time cook who has worked there for seven years is paid the princely sum of £69 a week — that is, £3,588 a year or just about enough to cover the cost of one of the new sets of drapes Thatcher has just had made for her windows. Expressed in the percentages of which Mr. Lawson is so fond, the cook is earning 0.15 per cent of what her employer spends spends on running her office.

Under the headline "Pay; alarm bells ring — wage explosion fear as inflation rises" (Daily Express. 19 November), we are told of Government fears following another rise in the rate of inflation. Last year average wages rose 9.25 per cent, as firms gave their employees a small slice of the increased profits obtained through their efforts. We should all be used to the Chancellor's attempts to "cook" figures (the latest suggestion is to remove mortgage repayments from the Cost of Living Index) but now the Treasury has gone one further. “If the wage rises awarded to workers were taken out of the equation, instead of a rise to 6.25 per cent in inflation in October, the figure would have fallen from 5.2 per cent in September to 5.1 per cent", we are told in that same article. Obviously. therefore, if we take all figures out of the equation a healthy zero would be achieved!

In more serious vein, socialists do not expect anything other than "double speak" from the owners and controllers of wealth production, who threaten us with dire consequences if we ask for even a small part of increased profits, while justifying the ever larger remuneration they allocate themselves as "essential incentives".

Merthyr Vale

One of the latest collieries in South Wales under the threat of British Coal's axe is Merthyr Vale. If it is closed over 500 miners will lose their jobs, adding to those who have been made redundant at the 19 pits which have been shut down since the 1984 strike to save them. Only nine pits now remain of what was once a vital and dominant industry.

If Merthyr Vale closes it will be especially poignant. It was once known as Aberfan-Merthyr: the first part of the name was lopped off after the disaster in the autumn of 1966, when a spoil tip on a mountainside above Aberfan was loosened by torrential rain and came sliding down onto the village, to kill over a hundred people, many of them children in the village school.

It was clear then — as the subsequent official enquiry confirmed — that this was no accident in the sense of it being unpredictable or out of anyone's control. The spoil from the colliery had been dumped up above the village because — as it was the case in many other mines in the area — that was the cheapest way of getting rid of it. (In County Durham it was emptied into the sea, turning the water and the beach black.) The overriding concern for cheap production fostered a complacency which contributed towards the events that morning, for the great mass of dust and slag had not been properly checked for stability. When the rains came there was some alarm about the heap's condition but still nothing was done and as a result the people of Aberfan experienced indescribably terrible deaths.

At the time there was a natural outcry against those whose complacency was seen to have been a factor in the disaster. Among those outraged voices, it was not unknown for miners to put a different point of view. A colliery, they argued, meant jobs; without it the village would decline into the direst poverty. If the price of the jobs — the price of keeping the pit open — was that lives had to be imperilled, which in the case of Aberfan meant building an unstable hill of slag on top of a mountain, then so be it. After all, the coal industry was no stranger to massive tragedies. Better a paid wage slave than one out of work; better the gentler poverty of employment than the destitution of the dole queue.

Well the employers — the Coal Board — have shown what they think of that stoically self-sacrificing attitude. Merthyr Vale will close if it is adjudged to be unprofitable to keep it open, just as it was once thought to be unprofitable to dispose of the pit’s spoil in some way other than dumping it high above the people of the village.

The profit motive which spawns and drives production in this society exploits millions of people, which means that while it impoverishes them it makes them grateful for their poverty. In many cases it murders them, while persuading them that there is no other way to live, or to relate to each other and in the end to die.

Balance sheets exist to show whether a profit or a loss is being made and how big it is. They are not there to settle debts of suffering. The Coal Board, like any other employer who knows their business of exploiting people for profit, works on the same calculating basis as those tragically compliant miners who would accept death as an unavoidable part of their wage slavery.

The fate of Merthyr Vale illustrates what little account are human lives and welfare in this profit-orientated system. Is it too much to hope, that the workers there will remember Aberfan for what it has to teach them about capitalism, to help them better understand its tragedies and the full humiliation of the part they condemn themselves to play in them?

50 Years Ago: Murder of 137 and Death of a King (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard 

By far the greatest calamity that has befallen the nation this year took place early in May when 137 working men were buried alive in a coal mine in Cumberland. Compared with this the passing away of Albert Edward Wettin. otherwise known as King of England, etc., is as nothing compared with everything. . . .

According to Mr. Henry, under-manager of the mine, the fire started in quite a small way, and could probably have been easily extinguished. Valuable lime was wasted and when experts with life-saving apparatus arrived . . . [they] could not reach the entombed men, but declare that had they been there, earlier the latter could have been saved. And—horror of horrors!—despite the convictions of many . . . that the men below were alive . . . it was decided to no longer try to save the men, but to save the coal . . . So the mine was bricked up and the only possible means of escape for the men cut off, while preparations were also made to flood the pit should those who owned it deem it necessary.

From the Socialist Standard, June 1910.

Editorial: Disaster from profit and profit from disaster. (1923)

Editorial from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capital ! How often are the dividends of the idle justified on the plea that the investor is entitled to a “fair” return on the capital he has ”risked” ? When workers ask for an increase in the beggarly pittances they receive as wages then risks on the workers’ part are forgotten, and “what the industry can stand” becomes the watchword; the first charge on industry being an adequate return on the capital invested.

In the inquiry into the coal industry of a few years back employers spoke much of the risks of capital and but little of the risks of the wage worker. The fate of the bulk of the 42 miners entombed in the Redding Pit, Falkirk, on September 25th, is an illustration of the risks the workers run; they risk their lives, and they do so merely for bread and butter. Not only does the miner risk his life, but the miner’s family risks the loss of its mainstay.

Disaster after disaster have overtaken the mine workers, due in the main (as instance the Whitehaven disaster some years ago) to the cheese-paring economy of the mine owners in their desire to extract, the maximum of profit out of the coalmining industry. And yet, in spite of the ever-present dangers to limb and life, the miner only gets in return for his labour, in the best of cases, little more than sufficient to keep himself and his dependants from actual starvation.

In mine and factory, and on the seas, the workers risk their lives daily in order that capital may have a “fair” profit. Not in order that society may obtain the necessaries of life; because where profit is not forthcoming the wheels of industry cease to turn, though society may be groaning for the goods that do not come.

Disasters to humanity are often but sources of profit for the ghouls that control this misery-making function of wealth.

The earthquake in Japan that caused so much havoc a short time ago provides an instance of how precious property is in the eyes of its owners, and also how the economic advantages of a disaster become of more importance to capitalists than pity for misery suffered.

Only a little while ago we read harrowing tales of Japanese misery and a cry was raised to help those who suffered from the earthquake. Later information, however, reduces the protestations to a sham.

The Manchester Guardian Weekly of October 12th publishes an article from their correspondent in Kobe on the “Economic Effects of the Earthquake,” which opens up with the following paragraph :—

  “The immediate economic consequence of the earthquake is that 1,500 Europeans have come into Kobe, where a somewhat smaller number have fed, lodged, and clothed them. And no sooner were they comforted, than they organised two ‘expeditions’ (neither of which has sailed at the time of writing, exactly one week after the earthquake) to proceed to Yokohama and protect not only what movable property may have escaped the fire and the enterprising looter (who soon had the military on his track), but titles to land and so forth” (italics ours).

How much more important in the eyes of these gentlemen was private property than the misery of the poor Japanese, whom they appear to have forgotten !

A further quotation from this correspondent should interest those who believe in the idealism of the profit-seeking capitalist.

  “Of course, between profiteering and ruin the authorities are between the devil and the deep sea. If they have reconstruction they must let the profiteer get his percentage. It is a necessary part of the capitalist system. Big firms here have been advised that the earthquake here had no sooner happened than Japanese in England did their best to get a good grip on the metal market, but not very successfully. Everybody is on the watch for developments, and there is, in spite of the slump, quite a tense awaiting of the revival. The revival of Tokio means the rebuilding of Yokohama. It would be a disaster if, because of temporary embarrassments, British holders of original perpetual leases or even those of ordinary leases were to be forced to sell their holdings, as this would be a blow to British trade. It would be inadvisable for the Government to subsidise them as one subsidy only leads to another. But it is worth while for British firms to lay out money to gain or maintain a footing in the trade that is to come.”

In the eyes of the capitalist, then, the most important fact arising out of the earthquake is not the misery it has brought to those involved in the earthquake, but the profit it promises to those who “risk” their capital.

What a monster is this capital, brother, that it grows fat out of human misery, and dulls in its owners the human feeling of pity ! Doth it not reek with the blood of our fellows, and is it not time that the monster was buried ? Then join with us in digging the grave and burying for ever the exploitation of the many by the few, and with it all the misery and suffering that capital has called into existence.

Editorial: Murder of 137 Miners and Death of a King. (1910)

Editorial from the June 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

By far the greatest calamity that has befallen the nation this year took place early in May, when 137 workingmen were buried alive in a coal mine in Cumberland. Compared with this the passing away of Albert Edward Wettin, otherwise known as King of England, etc., is as nothing compared with everything.

On the night of May 6th this individual died, after an easy, useless life of nearly 70 years duration, and despite the endeavours of five prominent physicians, and the order is given FOR THE NATION TO GO INTO MOURNING. Then, as if to mock the hollowness and hypocrisy of the pantomime engineered by interested parties, and assisted so successfully by their allies of the Press that people were actually beginning to worship the inanimate form of one that had ever been wasted clay—came the shock of the tragedy in the Wellington Pit.

Throughout the mining districts a warning was published on the morning of May 12th, drawing attention to the existing dangerous atmospheric conditions. During the day these grew worse, particularly in the vicinity of Whitehaven, ’til they were practically similar to the conditions observed at the time of nearly all previous mining disasters. In such circumstances no one should have been allowed down a mine save those necessary to tend what animals might be below. And when it is realised that there was no life-saving apparatus near the mine, that the pit in question was a veritable deathtrap, extending four miles under the sea and having but one way of entrance and exit, it becomes increasingly difficult to charge the mineowners with anything short of murder.

According to Mr. Henry, under-manager of the mine, the fire started in quite a small way, and could probably have been easily extinguished. Valuable time was wasted, and when experts with life-saving appliances arrived from Sheffield and Glasgow, it was found that valuable coal and mining plant was being burnt. The experts could not reach the entombed men, but declare that had they been there earlier the latter could have been saved. And—horror of horrors !- despite the convictions of many and the assertion of one who had escaped, that the men below were alive and had fresh air and water enough for a month, it was decided to no longer try to save the men, but to save the coal.

“Alas ! that coal should be so dear
   And flesh and blood so cheap.’’

The decision to brick up the mine in order to smother the fire (and the men) nearly caused a riot in the town —but the mine, if not the men, must be saved. So the mine was bricked up and the only possible means of escape for the men cut off, while preparations were also made to flood the pit should those who owned it deem it necessary.

We venture to suggest that had Teddy Roosevelt, the late King Edward, or even the latter’s pet dog Caesar, been down in that mine, there would not have been such unseemly haste to make it a tomb. But a few score of workmen—what of them! They don’t count: there are plenty more of them at a few shillings a week. And as for the heartbroken widows and. orphans—they are accustomed to such things, you know. A few pounds will solace them! Thus we speak the capitalist mind; and the capitalist Press cynically passes over the brutal murder of workingmen, the fiendish interment of living human beings in a flaming pit in order to save coal and plant, with a report that a relief fund is being raised and that work is being resumed in the district.

Thus the little town of Whitehaven provides an object lesson in the class struggle. To those who believe in the “brotherhood of Capital and Labour” the Whitehaven tragedy is inexplicable, but to us class-conscious workers it is as dear as noon-day. That capital may have its profits workingmen must be sacrificed. And so it will be until Socialism ends conflicting class interests by the abolition of classes.

In the meantime we go on with our revolutionary propaganda. Our sympathy, sincere, deep and lasting, goes out to our brothers and sisters in Whitehaven in this sad hour of trial. The Stoical bravery and fortitude shown by our women at Whitehaven under real grief and suffering, under the mental torture of knowing that even yet their loved ones may be lying in that blazing pit beneath the sea, staring laggard Death in the face through long weary hours— such fortitude as this, we say, we commend in other places, where what is lacking in grief is made up for, many times over, with hired mourners and a mighty show of hollow, pompous mockery and pretence, which could not be complete without Caesar—on a string. 

And to add to our insults and our injuries, this triumph given to Caesar (if we may speak from Caesar'a point of view), is accompanied by the impertinent order that we, the working class of the country, shall exhibit such outward signs of grief as would move these superior mortals to derision were we to display them on account of our own dead. We fling the insult back with scorn and contempt. Between kings and queens and their capitalist henchmen (or should we say masters) and the working class there is a bottomless abyss. Woe to those of our class who forget it: we never can. Across that chasm we repudiate and absolutely reject the invitation or command to participate in the tomfoolery of national mourning for what is in no sense a national calamity. We are not on the same string with Caesar. Across that chasm we fling, in the name of our murdered brothers in that grave under the sea, with undying hatred and contempt, the gage of unceasing battle to the bitter end. That is how we consign a royal relic to its tomb; that is how [we] keep green the memory of the murdered miners of Whitehaven.

The Review Column: Sonic Booms (1967)

The Review Column from the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sonic Booms

Let no one deceive themselves that the sonic booms over various parts of the country last July were inflicted as part of a test of people's reactions.

Firstly, it soon became clear that Wedgewood Benn's Ministry of Technology had not bothered to set up any machinery to gauge reactions to the booms, secondly the booms were nothing like what can be expected if supersonic airliners are allowed to fly overland.

If the development of other types of aircraft is any guide, the operators of the supersonic planes will want to fly them all day and all night, everyday and every night. The prospect which this conjures up is nothing like the single isolated crack of a small jet fighter in the middle of a summer afternoon, described by Wedgewood Benn as ". . . at an intensity well below that of supersonic airliners”.

Of course the booms provoked a lot of protest, but Wedgewood Benn, under fire in the Commons, had the answer to them all: 'Substantial sums are being put by this country into advanced aircraft, the financial success of which will in part depend on whether the aircraft fly from other people’s territory.'

The Concord, then, is no more than a typical product of capitalism. A lot of money invested in it; side effects unpleasant, probably dangerous; competition the driving force behind its production; no profit incentive to solve the problem of its effects.

In this situation, the comfort and safety of people on the ground are only a secondary consideration. There is reason to believe that the booms last July were not tests of our reactions, but the first step in getting us accustomed to the idea of them, in preparation for the days when they are banging off in earnest.

And this, let us remember, is what capitalism calls progress.


Aberfan

The Aberfan Tribunal promised that there would be no whitewashing. They produced a report full of memorable phrases (“bungling ineptitude"; "subterfuge and arrogance by the National Coal Board"; “eight years of folly and neglect”) and they laid the blame for the disaster, on the National Coal Board, its headquarters, its divisional board, and four of its officials.

In this, the tribunal followed the accepted pattern of all enquiries into disasters. Somewhere, somebody—a railway signalman, an airline pilot, a ship's captain—makes a mistake or breaks a rule. It is all too easy, afterwards, to point the finger.

Very few people care to wonder about the context in which the ‘mistakes' are made, the rules ‘broken’.

Only in passing, for example, did the Aberfan tribunal deal with the basic cause of the disaster, which was the very existence of the slag heaps, up on the mountain above the doomed village.

Tipping waste from coal mines is, after all, the simplest and cheapest way of disposing of it. In South Wales, the valleys cannot be used for the tips because that is where the pit heads and the houses must be built. So that the stuff is dumped onto the mountains, where it is a continual eyesore and menace.

Of course they could stop tipping but, as the tribunal said on this very point ". . . the reflection that to stop tipping could bring about the closure of the Merthyr Vale Colliery may well have led to the quick suppression of those doubts . . ."

Of course they could deposit the stuff underground but this, said the tribunal, was neither “technically feasible now nor economically practicable" (The Times estimated the cost of removing tip complex alone at £3 million).

Thus the tribunal accepted the economic confine within which capitalism’s industry operates. It accepted that anything which is not economically practicable must be rejected, it accepted that people must live in the constant need to work for their living. It accepted that, although a certain amount must be done to mitigate the hardships of this social set-up, in the end we must make the best of it.

The economic practicabilities of capitalism have a lot to answer for, in coal mining more than in most other industries. Aberfan was only the latest, if one of the most unusual, of the disasters caused by the ‘economic’ production of coal.

Lord Robens (as the Daily Telegraph of 7th August was unkind enough to recall) once said that the Labour Government in 1950 “washed the blood off the coal” which was normally on it when the Tories were in power.

After Aberfan it may be convenient to blame individual workers, employees of the National Coal Board. The true culprit is capitalist society—and there is still, after all, blood on the coal.

Sandys’ Racialism

One of the first to exploit the irrational fears the Detroit riots created was Tory former Minister Duncan Sandys. In a statement he called for a stop to all entry into Britain of what he called coloured people and added, for good measure, “including relatives of those who are here’’. We don’t know if Sandys has prepared a series of amendments to the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts which will provide immigration officials with a precise standard for judging who are to be considered coloured and who not. We doubt it. For Sandys seems just to be concerned with encouraging hostility between people with lighter and people with darker skin pigmentation.

Perhaps the most revolting part of Sandys statement read:

  The breeding of millions of half-caste children would merely produce a generation of misfits and create increased tensions.

The words breeding, half-caste and misfits seem to have been carefully chosen—with a view to stirring up hostility to so-called mixed marriages and their offspring. What precisely does Sandys mean by misfit? He may be subscribing to the old racialist myth that what they call race-mixing leads to physical and moral degeneration. Or he may just mean that such children will be subject to prejudice. Or perhaps he deliberately meant to be ambiguous; to suggest one thing while having a let-out if challenged. If he means that these children would be the victims of prejudice, we can only assume from the fact that his words encourage such prejudice that he thinks it a good thing; that he favours a virtual caste system under which the so-called whites are on top and the so-called blacks at the bottom. We can only suggest that as a former director of Ashanti Goldfields and other goldmining companies in Ghana he should be careful about biting the hands that have fed him for years. He should also be careful about talking of sending people back. Somebody might take his fancy French name as a reason to send him to Normandy.

Capitalism Kills Again: Another Mining Disaster (2014)

From the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is only a little over a year since the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh killed over 1,000 workers. In May this year there was an explosion at a mine near Izmir in Turkey where  the death toll was 301 miners killed. It is believed a power distribution unit exploded in the mine which blew power supplies to lifts and conveyors, and started a fire. Most of the dead miners were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Nearly 800 miners had been in the pit at the time of the explosion due to a shift change.

It is Turkey’s worst mining accident, worse than the 1992 gas explosion that killed 263 workers near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak. Mining accidents are common in Turkey because of poor health and safety conditions. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan exhibited the contempt of the capitalist class for the working class when he said that ‘these accidents were part of coal mining’ and cited 19th-century incidents in Britain as examples.

A miners’ union leader Tayfun Görgün said that mining accidents would increase due to privatisations, the increasing employment of subcontractors and a lack of strong unions, all of which led to massive pressure on workers to produce as much as possible for as little cost as possible. A goldminer who has joined the rescue operation said that work safety and production pressure was a big problem in Turkey: ‘It’s all about how much you can get out in one day. Work safety just stays behind with such an attitude.’ Another worker confirmed this by saying ‘Production pressure has massively increased, it’s all about the output. If all they worry about is how fast the lines run and how much coal they can bring up and how much profit to make, the people who do this work become unimportant. And what happens to them becomes unimportant’ (Guardian 14 May). Murat Ali, a paramedic with the Izmir fire department wore a sticker on his uniform which read ‘Not an accident, but murder.’

The disaster has triggered protests across Turkey, and the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions backed a one day general strike. A joint statement from Turkey’s four main labour unions said: ‘Hundreds of our worker brothers in Soma have been left to die from the very start by being forced to work in brutal production processes in order to achieve maximum profits. We call on the working class, labourers and friends of labourers to stand up for our brothers in Soma.’

The authoritarian Turkish state responded in its usual way with water cannon, tear gas, and truncheons. Security forces deployed tear gas and water canon against around 20,000 protesters in İzmir. Kani Beko, general secretary of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey, was injured in İzmir after police ‘intervened.’ In Istanbul the streets became heavy with tear gas, the police and water cannon trucks chased protesters, and protesters carried a banner which read ‘It’s not an accident, it’s murder.’ In Soma protesters chanted ‘Soma’s coal will burn the government’ and ‘Tayyep the murderer.’

Gulizar Donmez, the daughter and wife of Soma miners said ‘the wives of the miners kiss their husbands in the morning. When they come back, even if they are five minutes late, everyone starts calling. You never know what is going to happen’ (Guardian 15 May). Every day throughout the world members of the working class are being killed because of the global economic system that we live in. Capitalism is injurious to the health of the working class, it kills the working class of this world in its pursuit of profit through commodity production. The working class in Turkey and in the whole world need to transform human society into a socialist world where production would be for human needs and not for profit.

Steve Clayton

50 Years Ago: Aberfan (2017)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Aberfan Tribunal promised that there would be no whitewashing. They produced a report full of memorable phrases (“bungling ineptitude”; “subterfuge and arrogance by the National Coal Board”; “eight years of folly and neglect”) and they laid the blame for the disaster on the National Coal Board, its headquarters, its divisional board, and four of its officials.

In this, the tribunal followed the accepted pattern of all enquiries into disasters. Somewhere, somebody—a railway signalman, an airline pilot, a ship’s captain—makes a mistake or breaks a rule. It is all too easy, afterwards, to point the finger.

Very few people care to wonder about the context in which the ‘mistakes’ are made, the rules ‘broken’.

Only in passing, for example, did the Aberfan tribunal deal with the basic cause of the disaster, which was the very existence of the slag heaps, up on the mountain above the doomed village. Tipping waste from coal mines is, after all, the simplest and cheapest way of disposing of it. In South Wales, the valleys cannot be used for the tips because that is where the pit heads and the houses must be built. So that the stuff is dumped onto the mountains, where it is a continual eyesore and menace.

Of course they could stop tipping but, as the tribunal said on this very point “. . . the reflection that to stop tipping could bring about the closure of the Merthyr Vale Colliery may well have led to the quick suppression of those doubts . . .”

Of course they could deposit the stuff underground but this, said the tribunal, was neither “technically feasible now nor economically practicable” (The Times estimated the cost of removing the tip complex alone at £3 million).

Thus the tribunal accepted the economic confine within which capitalism’s industry operates. It accepted that anything which is not economically practicable must be rejected, it accepted that people must live in the constant need to work for their living. It accepted that, although a certain amount must be done to mitigate the hardships of this social set-up, in the end we must make the best of it.

The economic practicabilities of capitalism have a lot to answer for, in coal mining more than in most other industries. Aberfan was only the latest, if one of the most unusual, of the disasters caused by the ‘economic’ production of coal.

[Socialist Standard, September 1967]

The Mining Disaster (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again an English mining town has been stricken by a tragic disaster, this time Barnsley. In the early hours of Friday, August 7th, at the Wharncliffe, Woodmoor Colliery, occurred one of the worst explosions this country has known.

Fifty-eight men who had gone down the mine to work returned—but to the mortuary: their bodies twisted and battered beyond recognition. The wives, children and dependants who gathered at the pithead had one—though pitiful —consolation: death was swift. Unlike many previous disasters, the victims were not buried alive for days to suffer the tortures of lingering deaths.

There is hardly a year in which there is not a big disaster or series of accidents in the mines. They have come to be taken for granted. The miners accept the risk they run, inevitably, as men who have to earn their daily bread. They receive neither medals nor decorations, which such risks would bring in other spheres. Rather, their earnings are almost the lowest among organised workers.

Can mining be made safe, or safer, so that the risk of the loss of life through accidents may become non-existent or at least very much reduced? Responsible and professional opinion says that it can, as the following from the Daily Telegraph (July 29th) shows. Reporting the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines, sitting at Caxton Hall, Westminster, the evidence of Mr. Arthur Roberts, President of the Colliery Under-Managers of Great Britain, is given as follows: —

 If the provisions of the Coal Mines Act, with the accompanying regulations and orders, were consistently carried out by all the parties concerned, he said, there would be a big drop in the accident rate. This particularly applied to accidents caused by falls of roof and sides, haulage and machinery.

And again, the evidence of a Government inspector in the same newspaper on the same day:—

  Nearly half the colliery accidents in the North-Western Division last year could have been avoided, states the Divisional Inspector of Mines, Mr. W. J. Charlton, in his report issued yesterday.
 He reports that 99 persons were killed and 322 injured during the year in the division, which contains the coalfields of Lancashire and Cheshire, North Staffs and North Wales.
  Falls of ground accounted for 54 of the deaths, and Mr. Charlton calls attention to the “disturbing increase” in the number of accidents from falls of side at the working face.

Here is opinion from two independent and opposing sources that mining could at least have been made safer to the extent that nearly fifty per cent. of the accidents in a certain period could have been avoided if “the provisions of the Coal Mines Act” had been “carried out.” Why were they not carried out? It is doubtful whether that question will be heard outside a Royal Commission of Inquiry. It is a measure of the ethical standards of capitalism that the complete resources of its scientifically equipped police force, supported by immense funds, would be set in motion to track down an homicidal maniac, yet expert opinion, which says that negligence has caused workers' deaths, is just quietly reported. There are no screaming headlines; no Scotland Yard sleuths to fix culpability for the slaughter.

It has often been argued that the cost of making some mines safe is prohibitive; that the result would be less profits and the inability to compete with fellow-capitalists in the markets, or no profits. Mark this, fellow-workers in the mines: Profits—but twisted and battered bodies and widows and fatherless children. No profits or less profits and less of these appalling and tragic "visitations from God”—which? If the choice were between these two simple alternatives then capitalism would choose—the first.

That is the tragedy.

When society is organised to produce things for use only, instead of for profit, then will risk to life in daily work be reduced to its minimum, and human life, health and well-being, be looked upon as society's first duty.

Harry Waite

Mine Accidents and Compensation: A Correction (1935)

From the December 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader has drawn our attention to the statement in the first paragraph of the article, "The Greater War" (see October Socialist Standard), and asks if it is correct that mine disasters, "substantial enough to be classed as 'Acts of God' . . . absolve the colliery proprietors from liability for compensation." On making inquiries we find that it is not now correct.

The writer of the article, who based his statement on the common assertion of miners, has now consulted officials of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. From them he learns that prior to the Compensation Act of 1908 it was no uncommon thing for explosions to be classed by Coroners' Juries as “Acts of God," owing to the magnitude of the occurrence. In such circumstances the proprietors declined to indemnify the relatives and dependents of those killed or injured. Since 1908, however, the companies are usually insured, and the only cases of non-payment are where the mine company, not being insured, goes bankrupt, and the men are not quick enough to put in a claim by the legally recognised date.

The writer explains that the wrong impression is very widespread in the mining area where he lives.

This correction does not touch the main point of the article, that the drive for profit is at the bottom of the "accident" rate. The writer sends a cutting from the "Sheffield Independent" (November 6th), containing a report of an inquest at Barnsley on the 19 victims of the North Gawber Colliery disaster. The Coroner (Mr. C. J. Haworth) said: —

   We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that explosions due to shot-firing do take place from time to time. The obvious thing to say is that precautions should be taken, and I am going to ask you to recommend that the whole question of shot-firing should be drastically reconsidered. I am not talking about this pit, but pits generally.
    With intensive mining of to-day there are certain dangers which would probably not have existed some years ago.
    If you are going to have this speeding-up and the advancement of the face very much faster than before, I think it is exceedingly necessary that the whole question of the regulations, especially with regard to ventilation and shot-firing, should receive the most serious consideration of the authorities.
    I ask you to support me in putting forward to the Mines Department that the overhauling of the regulations for shot-firing should be seriously considered.

Editorial Committee

Editorial: Futilities & Tragedies. (1931)

Editorial from the December 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year that passes brings out with greater clearness the contrast between the professions of the League of Nations and its accomplishments. Organised for the avowed purpose of solving international tangles by arbitration, and thus doing away with the recourse to force, every dispute it has set out to settle has demonstrated its utter ineptitude.

The latest manifestation of the League must be food for infinite laughter to all who have a sense of humour. The League holds numerous and heated meetings; its delegates sit day and sometimes till late at night; first-class diplomats from all nations represented make hurried trips in aeroplanes to its meetings; frenzied notes are sent out to Japan and China to cease fighting and arbitrate. And the result?—Japan goes marching on to protect the £200 millions her capitalists have invested in Manchuria.

The central fact is the permanent condition of capitalism. Where a group of capitalists are aiming at markets for their goods they are always prepared to use force to accomplish their object if cunning is not sufficient, and if they believe they can safely do so. The only deterrent factor is the fear of superior force. The permanency of force should have been made sufficiently clear by the abortive disarmament conferences and the way in which Germany, when restricted in the size of ships and weight of armour, succeeded in producing in smaller form as destructive ships of war as formerly.

The final and most effective reason for the maintaining of an armed force by each capitalist State is the enemy within its gates — the working class —who, at times when the burden of poverty and oppression becomes too much to be borne in silence and weakness, tends to revolt blindly and fiercely, and threaten the foundations of capitalist wealth. Although blind revolt cannot build a new society, it could damage or even destroy an existing one.

The amount of money willingly spent by various nations on the futile and fatuous work of the League of Nations is in striking contrast to the niggardliness of the expenditure on inside matters that affect the life and welfare of their workers. In factories and mines, and elsewhere, thousands. of workers lose their lives every year in the work of piling up wealth for the capitalist. When an event occurs that is outstanding and .cannot be conveniently ignored, the papers are full of tales of the heroism of workers and the cheap sympathy of those who profit by the workers' toil. One such event has occurred in England this week. At the Doncaster Colliery thirty-four miners have been killed and many injured in a disaster that has been a common feature of the mining industry.

Yet these very miners have been fighting for years against reductions in their already meagre wages, and in the forefront of the sympathisers are those who use the powers of Parliament to force down the miners' standard of living. Once again it has been shown that coal mining is an exceedingly dangerous occupation, but when the trouble has blown over this fact will be forgotten and all attention centred on the “League of Nations" and similar futilities.

King Capital, The Butcher. (1913)

Editorial from the November 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lancaster Pit of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd was again the scene of a fearful explosion, in which 435 of our fellow workers have perished—sacrificed to the greed of that butcher, King Capital. Although on the occasion of the last disaster (1901) in this mine, the coroner’s jury found that the mine was not sufficiently watered, and Professor Galloway, the Government Inspector of Mines, reported that the necessary precautions in watering the roadways had not been attended to, yet the mine owners allow conditions to prevail that send to their doom 435 miners.

Every time coal dust has caused a mine explosion the warning has been given, but it has passed unheeded. When the toilers were entombed at West Stanley in 1909, the Government investigators reported that “unless the grave danger which exists at many collieries owing to the pressure of coal dust is attacked with much greater earnestness than it has been in the past, disasters of a similar nature will occur from time to time." At Whitehaven in 1910 the inspector proclaimed that "the precautions against the accumulation of coal dust were of a haphazard and unsystematic character," and he also stated that “the ventilation of the working face was inadequate for the needs of the mine having in view the gassy nature of the coal." Following upon this the same inspector made this sinister statement to a Press Agency representative:

“ Practically every risk which exists could be eliminated if cost were no object."

These burning words could be backed up by plenty of other quotations from leading agents of capitalism, but let these suffice. The plain fact emerges from every disaster that the toilers’ lives are sacrificed to dividends and interest. Mines Acts are passed, as that of 1911, with special provisions excluding mines which do not "pay’’ well from adopting precautions. As for the others, the owners please themselves. The Mines Inspectors are so few, and their powers so meagre, that the regulations are broken with impunity. Last August a fire occurred at the Carron Co’s, pit at Cadder, and 22 miners who went down to earn their pittance on Sunday perished. And notwithstanding that the Mines Act of two years previous enjoins every mine to have complete rescue apparatus, the rescue men had to travel forty miles to obtain life saving apparatus.

“Speed and Grab" is the password of the profit mongers. Exhaust the coal seams throw up clouds of dangerous dust, but do not bother about safety for mere workers.

Lord Merthyr, managing director of the Senghenydd mine, is a Tory; his cousin, D. A. Thomas, is a Liberal. They shed crocodilian tears when the miners are murdered below, hut when these men want a little more grub they threaten them with a “lock out." When they stay away because the mine looks dangerous they are fined for being absent without leave. When they strike they are given over to starvation and bullets. When they ask for a dollar a day for five days a week, then Press and profit-mongering mine-owners denounce them as selfish strikers. Pah ! the hypocrisy of their slobbering over the children they have orphaned and the wives they have widowed offends the nostrils!

What shall we say, too, of the cant of the snuffling priest. He is always on hand to preach submission to the victims. The Bishop of Llandaff told the women of Senghenydd the usual tale of the “hand of God." The Archbishop of York said at a meeting of the Church of England Men’s Society held at Cardiff :

  “We are surrounded by the spirit of bravery and hope with which our brothers here are facing the trial and anxiety which God it asking them to pass through. . . .  I am sure you all feel there would have been something lacking in our spirit as Christian men assembled as a great brotherhood pledged to Christian sympathy if we had not placed the burdens of those our brothers and sisters before the Throne of Christ, commit ting them to the care of the Heavenly Father.”

Thus the Church does its work as murderers’ agent. "Place the burdens before the throne of Christ" ! How much better than placing them on the employers responsible!

Why are not the shareholders brought to trial as was the engine-driver of Aiegill Junction? He was charged with the manslaughter of Sir Arthur Percy Douglas—the mine owners merely killed workingmen. Bourgeois juries acquitted Caudle at the inquest on the working-class victims of the railway accident, but when it came to one born in the purple Driver Caudle gets two months.

The ridiculous lightness of such a sentence, however, for the crime of manslaughter, shows how clearly it was recognised that little of the fault lay with Caudle. A defective engine and small coal had been supplied and were the primary cause of the disaster. Yet the profit-grabbing directors and shareholders of the Midland Railway Co. are allowed to go scot free. These wealthy exploiters of half-starved railway servants are the real culprits, but, of course, they plead ignorance of the working of the line when blame is to be apportioned, notwithstanding that they claim tremendous directing ability when it comes to sharing out the plunder.