Made in Britain (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exports and Imports

Before the war “Made in Britain” was a selling point. At any rate, enough manufacturers thought so to make something of a splash about it in their advertisements. We don’t hear so much of this now. Down at any youth club, we know, it is Italian clothes which are all the rage. Swedish tableware has won a name for itself as an elegant, durable wedding present. The black leather jackets knock up their tons on motor cycles from Japan, which also supplied a lot of the cameras that clicked away on our damp beaches this summer.

To the casual observer—and this is how we can describe most of the workers whose fortunes under capitalism depend upon their observations being anything but casual—this gives the impression that British industry is being engulfed by a wave of foreign imports. This impression is often coloured by heart-racking stories of the cheap labour which foreign industries are supposed to use. Stories of pregnant Japanese women sweating out long hours in textile mills for next to no pay. Of slum dwellers in Milan being squeezed in the factory until their pips squeak. English employers, of course, are supposed to play fair. No cheap labour is used here. All of this country’s exports are fairly priced and compete honestly on the world’s markets. So runs the popular story. You can hear it in any City restaurant any day of the week.

From there, the argument progresses simply. Because they use cheap labour, the foreign industries can knock out dirt cheap goods. But the British manufacturer, selling his products as if he were playing cricket, sticks to the rules and poor, simple, honest fool that he is, is undercut and outsold all over the world. So British industry packs up and we are left unemployed, staring at shop windows full of cheap cameras from Tokyo and cheap shirts from Hong Kong. This should be enough to teach us all to buy British, even if it does cost us twice as much from our wages.

This argument is so popular, so convenient to British capitalism—and so wrong—that it is worth dealing with.

First of all, nobody should run away with the idea that imports are a one-way traffic. This country, although it imports an enormous amount of wealth, is also one of the world’s great exporters. Last June, for example, Britain exported £327.8 million worth of goods. This holds good also for the specific case of Japan, which is the villain of so many of the dark import/export sales. According to the Director of the Anglo-Japanese Economic Institute, who wrote to The Guardian on 15th August last, Japan is importing British goods at the rate of one million pounds worth each week. Japanese business men do not like the prospect of being outsold any more than their English counterparts do. The letter went on:

” . . many Japanese industries have been protesting to their own Government about possible flooding of the Japanese market by foreign goods once Japan’s 90 per cent import liberalisation plan is in full operation this October. It seems there are two ways of looking at everything.”

British business men should appreciate the force of this as much as anyone. For they, like the Japanese, complain about foreign imports at the same time as they are exporting for all they are worth. Some of them shelter behind protected markets in this country, but demand that the industries which supply them with their raw materials should be subjected to the rigours of freely competing imports. The agricultural interests in this country are notorious for adopting this attitude. Although they prosper on padded home market, British farmers do not care about undermining the interests of other industries in this country, if this means that they might be able to buy cheaper food for their animals or cheaper fertilisers. They object to the chemical industry having its own protected market, making them pay more than they would for foreign chemicals. Last March, for example, the chairman of the Farmers’ and Smallholders’ Association was advising all farmers to buy Italian fertilisers because this was cheaper than the same stuff turned out by British chemical firms. This may be good business for the farmer, but not so for ICI, who were at the time agitating for an anti-dumping duty on imports of the fertiliser.

Another example of this is the attitude of British European Airways, who can always be relied upon to put up a bitter opposition to any private airlines application for a licence to ply along one of their routes. BEA’s objections have nothing new about them. They plead that they have spent time and money on building up the routes and that they will only be able to afford the expensive equipment which a big airline needs if they are allowed a monopoly of British operators on their routes. In their last annual report, they said that they would not make up their mind about how many of the new Trident jets they would order until they knew what competition the government is prepared to allow over these airlines.

Nobody who knows anything about capitalism would expect BEA to surrender their established fields of exploitation without a fight. Neither would they expect any capitalist concern to protect some other industry’s interests. In the same report, BEA announced their new, cut-rate “walk-on” fares to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast. These low fares are especially designed to attract passengers away from the railways. It is obvious that BEA, like any capitalist business, favours competition when they are making the running. In fact, the railways could reasonably object to the new fares by using the airline’s own arguments against them. They could plead that they have built up the passenger traffic over the routes which BEA is now trying to dominate. They could argue that they have a lot of expensive equipment to buy and do not know whether this will be worthwhile if they are to be so easily undercut.

Undercutting

This sort of tangle is not confined to domestic industries. Early last year, an application from the Steel Company of Wales to be allowed to import cheap American coking coal was fought, and defeated by the National Coal Board. The fact that the coal industry had succeeded in preventing the Americans from undercutting them did not stop them trying to do the same thing to coal industries abroad. Lord Robens, chairman of the NCB, is itching for this country to join the European Common Market and on August 29th last he gave his reasons for this. British coal, he said, could undersell coal from the Ruhr into Hamburg; the only thing that slops it doing so is the import quota which the German government, doubtless under pressure from Lord Robens’ counterparts in their country, uses to restrict British coal imports to 400,000 tons a year. Lord Robens frets under this restriction. Without it. he thinks, the coal mines could double or treble their sales in Germany. He likes competition provided it is the “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” variety.

It is obvious, then, that this business of imports and exports is very much two-sided. A broad view sees that the exports of British coal mines are the imports of German power stations and that the exports of the Honda motor cycle firm are the imports of the British dealers in those machines. But capitalists are seldom interested in broad views or any ether such concept. Any industry in capitalism must sell to survive and none of them can afford to be particular about how they make their sales. Sometimes they have to put in some backstairs pressure work upon a government department to protect their market. Sometimes they have to indulge in some double-talk and black-is-white argument. Sometimes they must be inconsistent. And sometimes they must tell lies. For none of them can ever cry enough. While they protect their own markets they must always be seeking new ones, always trying to move into some other industry’s established field of selling. This is typical of the muddle and wasteful anomalies which capitalism produces in such abundance.

Unhappily—and in some ways almost unbelievably—many workers take their masters’ part in this struggle. The miners were behind the NCB’s fight against the American coal. Presumably Japanese workers will back their employers in their protests to the government in Tokyo over the freeing of imports into Japan. Textile workers over here complain about the cheap goods coming in from Japan and other Far Eastern countries, without realising that these goods may have been made in such abundance and so cheaply on machines which were exported from this country. It is too obvious that international trade in an established part of capitalism which no amount of prejudiced and one-sided objection can break down.

This reasoning may not appeal to the redundant motor cycle worker as he watches the Hondas roaring along the bypass. But he would do better to consider the root cause of his unemployment. He was laid off because it was not profitable to employ him any longer. Because everything it makes is meant to be sold, capitalism fits everything into the strait jacket of profitability. If profitability says that foreign goods must be imported, in they come. If it says that an industry must close down, if does so.

Profitability, for example, says that shipworkers must be laid off. In the boom of the early fifties many ships, especially tankers, were produced on speculative orders which hoped that when they were built there would be a market for them. But by the time the ships were ready a new trading pattern had developed and with it a demand for the enormous “super tankers.” This forced a lot of the smaller tankers into the grain market, flooding the market for bulk carriers, bringing freight rates down and driving the shipping industry into a slump. This is typical of the anarchic problems which capitalism’s profitability mania creates in abundance, but can never solve. It was not caused by foreign competition; only aggravated by the fact that all the world’s shipyards were going flat out in boom time to cash in on the market. That is something which every industry tries to do, and will always try, so long as capitalism is with us.

That is where our unemployed worker, and the clerk in the City restaurant, should look for the key to unravel their problems. There has never been any lack of medicine men to peddle their remedies for capitalism’s ailments. But the ailments keep on showing themselves with ever greater complications. Nothing can be too drastic to cure them. Even a bit of straight thinking about capitalism.

Ivan

The story behind Powell Duffryn (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Regent Street, in the posh shopping area of London, is a shop called POWELL DUFFRYN. Now that nationalisation is once again a political issue it is not out of place to tell the story behind this name.

It begins in South Wales, where Powell Duffryn used to be one of the hated coal combines owning pits in the Red Rhondda valleys. Between the wars these coal combines, by their persistent attempts to worsen wages and working conditions and by their union-busting, aroused deep resentment among miners, many of whom devoted their time to campaigning for the nationalisation of the mines. And on January 1st, 1947 their aim was achieved. The mines were handed over to the National Coal Board; the NCB flag was raised amidst cheering and the singing of traditional Labour songs. Powell Duffryn was dead. Or was it?

As a side-line to mining, Powell Duffryn was also engaged in the making of heating equipment, boilers and radiators. This side of the business was not nationalised. In the years that followed, while the NCB languished, Powell Duffryn used its compensation and flourished. Today it has its shop in Regent Street; it co-operates closely with the nationalised fuel industries—the Gas Board and the NCB. Not long ago the papers carried a joint Powell Duffryn-NCB advert. All of this is a mockery of the devoted, if misguided, struggles of the miners to nationalise such outfits, and yet another monument to the futility of reformism.

It is worth spending some time looking into the concept of nationalisation a little more closely. In its modern sense, the term first appeared in 1869 when the telegraph system was nationalised, though for some time before the concept had gone under a different name. Some people had called for the nationalisation of land, and a clause in the 1844 Railway Act had allowed for the nationalisation of the railway system if necessary. The word itself—nationalisation—gives a clue as to its significance. The dominant theories, popular and philosophical, of capitalism hold that the interests of all those who make up the entity variously called the “nation” or the “public”, on the popular level, and “society” or “the community”, in the textbooks of political philosophy, are one and the same.

This is a fraud. Present-day society is composed of two mutually antagonistic classes, between which there is a conflict over the distribution of the product of labour. The interests of these two classes are completely opposed; they have no interests in common. Once this is realised, it can be understood that “nation” and “public” are often little more than polite words for the owning class.

When the apologists of capitalism wish to refer to the situation which exists after the State has taken over a section of industry in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, they sometimes call it “common ownership”. This is how the phrase is used in the famous Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution in its reference to the “common ownership . . . of the means of exchange” (i.e. financial institutions). To talk of the common ownership of financial institutions is a contradiction in terms, the purest nonsense. But to those who use “common ownership” in its capitalist sense it makes sense. As has been well said, the Labour Party stands for “socialism for the capitalist class”!

The capitalist class has been prepared to consider nationalisation as a solution when their interests as a whole have differed from those of a section. This was the position with land in the nineteenth century. The landowners, by virtue of their monopoly position, were able to extract a portion of the proceeds of working class exploitation from the capitalist class. A similar fear that the railway companies might exploit their monopoly position was responsible for the clause in the 1844 Act. In both cases nationalisation, or the assumption of ownership by the State on behalf of the rest of the ruling class, was considered. This had one drawback; it meant that the State had to assume the management of the estates or railways it might acquire.

Most capitalists were not prepared to put such power into the hands of their State officials. The institution of the public corporation was a solution to this problem. It removed the fear of the State becoming more and more powerful and eventually taking over other sections of industry as well. This fear was not groundless; there are historical examples of this happening, in Russia for instance. Here the capitalist class as well as the working class, such as they were, were subjected to a dictatorship of the State. The system remained capitalism however and it eventually evolved into a form of State capitalism.

Where such disputes break out between the capitalist class and usurping politicians or State officials, the workers are invited to take sides. But their interests are no more involved here than they were in the old landowner-capitalist struggle. Despite this, “Leftwingers” delight in backing the new usurpers against the capitalists; only to find that the usurpers end by establishing themselves as a new ruling class. So nationalisation without compensation is no more worthy of working class support that the more moderate means of nationalisation that have been applied in Britain.

With the public corporation the capitalist class felt less fear about nationalisation, so that in 1944 Herbert Morrison could declare that the Conservatives had introduced more “Socialism” than the Labour Party. The nationalisations of the post-war Labour Government however identified the Labour Party as the party of nationalisation.

Soon after 1945, a large section of the capitalist class were becoming dissatisfied with the efforts of the Labour Party on their behalf. They were becoming annoyed at having to pay taxes to prop up inefficient State-run industries. Not that they were completely opposed to all measures of State control; they just came round to the view that nationalisation was not a suitable means of such control. This is the crux of the argument about steel nationalisation.

The Iron and Steel industry has been subject to a substantial amount of State control since the 1930’s. In 1951 it was nationalised but in the succeeding years the Conservative governments sold most of it back to the former owners. Ironically they could find no-one to buy Richard Thomas and Baldwin’s which is still nationalised today. The plans recently announced by the Labour government provided for the sole shareholder of some 90 per cent of the industry to be a National Steel Corporation which can thus control the industry as it wants. The Conservatives and Liberals favour what they call a more competitive solution.

The compensation measures—since in Britain nationalisation amounts to a business deal in which the State buys out the old owners—have been described in avowedly capitalist papers as reasonable, fair and far better than expected. One referred to “jubilation in the City”. It seems that some £660 million will have to be paid out. In present at stock-market conditions much of the government stock which will be given as compensation could well be sold and the capital re-invested in more profitable fields.

This brings us back to Powell Duffryn. The same story will no doubt be repeated for the steel industry as for the coal industry and the others. We conclude by quoting from a recent survey of the State in industry in Britain:

“Nationalisation deprived many companies of their assets but left them with huge sums in cash and stock for re-investment after compensating the former shareholders, The colliery companies alone received nearly £300 million from this source. Some companies became investment trusts; others took over and developed existing businesses or established new enterprises in fields where they could use their technical and managerial skill. Typical examples are Cable and Wireless (Holdings) Ltd.—now quite unconnected with the nationalised concern, Cable and Wireless Ltd.—which has invested its free money to build an interest in about 850 different companies; and Thomas Tilling (Holdings) which continues to manage the interests of the old Tilling Group that were not acquired by the British Transport Commission, and has used its compensation to acquire holdings in some twenty-five companies in industries ranging from light engineering to glass and plastics and from insurance to book publishing” (Government and Industry in Britain, 1962, J. W. Grove, p. 250).

Adam Buick

Humour most foul (1947)

From the September 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these hard times of restrictions in nearly everything that makes life worth living humour is a precious relief from work and worry. We are, therefore, greatly indebted to the Labour Party for contributing a gleam of gaiety to the times. It has produced a large four-page sheet, printed on nice paper, entitled The Labour News Special, complete with jokes and pictures and selling for the modest sum of one penny. The following extracts from this sheet may provide our readers with a relish for their unappetising meals; they are taken from an article entitled “Nationalisation to the Rescue—The Epic Story of the Mines” :

“The Labour Government’s Socialist policy has been proved right. For years the enemies of progress have pilloried the word ‘ Socialism,’ held it up to ridicule, abused it, distorted it into unrecognisable forms in order to fend off the day when the common people should take their affairs into their own hands.

“That day has at last come, and now it is possible to know the truth about Socialism.

“Here is the truth.

“The first heavy industry to be socialised was coal-mining. On 1st January, 1947, the coal mines became the nation’s property.

“From that date the tempo of coal production began to increase with amazing swiftness and men began to flock back to the mines.”

After a reference to other basic industries in which “these same socialist principles apply,” such as the Bank of England, Civil Aviation, Cable and Wireless, etc., the article concludes :

“With control of these basic industries the nation will stand four-square to all the storms and uncertainties of present-day conditions and will be able to plan its economy for the good of all the people.”

Well! Well! Well! But what is the meaning of Mr. Attlee’s repeated doleful forecasts if impending economic disaster; Mr. Strachey’s forecasts of yet more severe food restrictions, and the vicious official outbursts on slacking and absenteeism in the mines for which severe penalties are threatened? But perhaps after all this is only another joke, maybe in rather bad taste !

“O Sweet Content, O Sweet, O Sweet Content.”

Gilmac.

 

Footnote

Inset into the article referred to above is a picture of a coal cutting machine, under which is the following information:

“This is the miracle machine—The Meco-Moore coal cutter and loader at work on the coal face. Fourteen men operating it can take 300 tons at a shift, the output of 30 men working by hand. One of Labour’s first jobs is the introduction of more of these machines into suitable mines and the modernisation of many old and neglected pits.”

It must be heartening to those invited and forced into the mining industry to know that some day they may be displaced by machines !

Gilmac.

News in Review: Hurrah for the NCB (1962)

The News in Review column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hurrah for the NCB

Who was it who once prayed to be protected from his friends?

When he was plain Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, Lord Chandos was a prominent member of the Conservative opposition which duelled with the Attlee government over its nationalisation bills. They fought in the House of Commons all day and. sometimes, all night as well. So effective was their propaganda that to many voters nationalisation became a very-dirty word.

But what is Lord Chandos saying about nationalisation now that he is a big industrial boss, chief of the mighty Associated Electrical Industries combine and of the Institute of Directors?

“Nationalisation of a fairly substantial sector of industry has come to stay. Whatever I may have thought in the first place about the wisdom of this policy, it is quite clear that every loyal citizen must try to make our nationalised industries work efficiently … As an industrialist I want cheap fuel and reliable supplies and I believe that with a little more working together that is what you [Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board] will secure for us.”

Lord Robens need not feel embarrassed at this new friendship. Nationalisation was designed to give just what Lord Chandos wants — cheap and reliable supplies of vital commodities.

The only pity now is that Lord Chandos did not tell us this some years ago, when he was spreading the fairy tale that nationalisation had something to do with Socialism.

New Hospitals

One of the things which have missed out on the post war boom is the hospital. Over a fifth of those taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 were built before the American Civil War. Nearly half of them were built before the beginning of this century.

What has been done to put this to rights? Since the last war only one large general hospital has gone up—in Northern Ireland.

To the reformers who have been worried about this, the recent government White Paper must have come as a ray of hope. For plans are being laid to spend nearly £800 million during the next ten years to give us, in the words of the White Paper.” . . . the physical equipment and the pattern and the setting which will everywhere place the most modern treatment at the service of patients.”

This sounds fine. Who can disapprove of bigger and better hospitals? But we have heard this sort of promise before.

We heard it about the roads and the railways and about the Health Service itself. For Capitalism is full of problems which are left to fester until a government decides to tackle them with heavy expenditure.

Many of these grandiose plans have been axed out of recognition in successive economic crises, when, the government has been looking for ways of reducing its expenditure.

There will be more economic crises. Which means that there will be more cuts in expenditure. Which means that Health Minister Powell’s beautiful hospitals may never see the light of day.

Expensive Royalty

Many tongues were clucked at the news that the Royal Family is to have some more money spent on them.

It must cost around £400 a year in fees alone to send the Prince of Wales to Gordonstoun School. The fees, says the school, vary with the parents’ financial circumstances; which does not mean, of course, that the school is full of clever, deserving boys whose parents pay no fees because they cannot afford them.

It will cost about £85,000 to renovate the wing of Kensington Palace where Princess Margaret and her husband are living—£15,000 more than the original estimate.

Some critics say that Prince Charles should be sent to a comprehensive school, like a sizeable part of his subjects. Others think that the Princess should be content to live in a council semi-detached, which to them seems roomy enough for a couple with only one child.

These views are way off the mark. The Royal Family stand for the possessions, rights and privileges of the British ruling class. It is, therefore, only appropriate that they themselves should live in lavish privilege.

And nobody has yet explained how sending a prince to a council school, or sticking a princess in a small house, would help the working class parents who struggle to keep their children at school past the age of fifteen and who have to renovate their house during their summer holiday.

These problems are typical of what faces workers all over the world, under monarchies and in republics.

While the tongue-cluckers do their measly, pointless sums, Capitalism grinds merrily on, providing a fat living for a few of its people and condemning the rest to dull poverty.

Tory Unrest

The Government took on a slight list last month, under the blast of criticism from many quarters.

The strikes of railwaymen and engineers encouraged The Guardian to sigh that, although they reproved the strikers, industrial unrest was the inevitable result of the Government’s policy on wages. Other critics thought that the trouble was caused because the Government had not explained the pay pause properly to the workers.

Some standard bearers for free enterprise were disappointed at the Government’s refusal to interfere with the free enterprise take-over bid from ICI for Courtaulds. Labour had a go on Lord Home’s criticism of UNO. To cap it all Tory M.P. Sir Harry Legge-Bourke suggested that fellow Old Etonian Macmillan is getting past it and should hand over to a younger man.

It would be interesting to hear how a government could explain a wage freeze so that the frozen workers accepted it. Workers sell their energies to their employers, which means that they are bound to resist any effort to keep down the price of those energies, whatever tricky name it goes under.

Such problems are typical of the confusion of Capitalism and are bound to cause unrest as the Government—any government—grapples with them. Critics and rebels may flex their muscles impressively, but when it is their turn to do the grappling they never shape any better than the men they have criticised.

The fact is that the individuals who say they are in charge of the affairs of British Capitalism really have little control over events. And that goes for their critics as well.

So it does not really matter whether or not Macmillan manages to ride this latest storm. We shall still all be in the same boat together.

Notes by the Way: Something to Cheer About? (1947)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Something to Cheer About?

On November 6th Molotov announced that Russia had solved the secrets of making atom bombs.

The following is from the Daily Worker (7/11/47) : 

“When a mass meeting of 15,000 in the largest hall in Paris were told of the Molotov atom bomb statement, they rose to their feet and cheered enthusiastically for 20 full minutes.”

* * *

Scientists in Russia

In “Scientist in Russia” (Pelican Books Edition, 1s.), Professor Ashby tells what happened to a Russian scientist who opposed the scientific theory backed by the Russian Government. He writes as follows :

“The argument by heresy-hunt was used with deadly effect against the most outspoken and devastating critic of Lysenko, the famous Russian biologist N. I. Vavilov. Vavilov probably went beyond safe limits in condemning the new genetics as an outbreak of medieval obscurantism. He paid a high price. He was accused of dilatoriness in getting practical results, of lending support to fascists by his theory of centres of origin of crops, and of aligning himself with Bateson, the leader of genetics in England. In 1940 he was deprived of his directorship of the Institute of Plant Industry. He was subsequently imprisoned and he died, without any announcement or explanation, probably in 1943. The type of argument used against Vavilov is well illustrated by a comment made to me by a prominent animal physiologist in Moscow in October, 1945. ‘I reject Vavilov’s views,’ he said, ‘because Vavilov believed in Bateson, and Timiryazev condemned Bateson.’ The same argument has been put on paper by Prezent.” (P. 111).

In a letter to the Manchester Guardian, as in the book itself, Professor Ashby made it clear that such intolerance is not in his view the whole picture. He wrote :

“It is true that Vavilov was killed because he adhered to bourgeois genetics; it is no less true that there are to this day two professors of bourgeois genetics in the University of Moscow—no other kind of genetics is taught there, and the official text-book was written by an American. This sort of inconsistency is, in my opinion, the key to an understanding of Russian policy not only in science but also in public affairs.”—(Manchester Guardian, 1/11/47.)

To which the Manchester Guardian reviewer replied as follows :

“When Russian scientists see a political adventurer, half charlatan and half visionary, attacking the most eminent scientist of the country with pseudo-scientific, slogans steeped in political venom ; when they have to stand by helplessly and watch the victim standing at bay and being hounded in the end to prison and death (the campaign took about, ten years from start to finish) – then I am sure they felt exactly as any of us would if this happened here. The more dearly they love their country, the more bitter is their shame and horror, and their seeming unconcern is simply a token of the reigning political terror.”— (Manchester Guardian, 11/11//47.)

* * *

Why Financiers Like Labour Government

The following is from the Financial Times, (8/9/47):

“Despite a formidable total of bear points—inadequate supplies of coal, steel and other materials, reduced home consumption, dollar shortage, and a possible autumn Budget—there are more favourable aspects which, at the moment the market tends rather to ignore.

“This is the view expressed in their current circular by a leading firm of Stock Exchange brokers.

”‘There can be no comparison with conditions in 1931 when industry was facing a widespread saturation of its markets through over production,’ says the circular, ‘and while the sequence of events ten years earlier after the 1914-18 war were rather more closely comparable, there is one significant difference—the fact that a Labour Government is in office will surely mean that we need not fear widespread or long lasting strikes of the character which then caused the collapse of post-war industrial activity.”

* * *

Machinery and Unemployment

“NEW YORK, Friday.— Mechanisation and other agricultural developments threaten to make displaced persons of many American farmers, according to a report by the House of Representatives’ Agricultural Committee.

“More than 3,000,000 farm labourers were unemployed last year because of mechanisation, although crops beat all records.

“Further displacement of people now making some kind of living from the land is expected, says the report.–Reuter.”—(Evening Standard, 12/9/47.)

* * *

The U.S.A. and the Mediterranean

“Admiral Bieri, commanding the United States Mediterranean Fleet, has given an interview in Naples to the correspondent of the Milan daily Corriere Lombardo in the course of which he is alleged to have said :

”The United States Fleet is here and intends to stay here in Italian and Mediterranean waters. American interests in Europe will not cease with the signing of the German treaty. In accordance with the policy of the United States Navy Minister American forces will be allocated wherever there are American interests, in closest co-operation with the British’.”— (Manchester Guardian, 10/9/17.)

* * *

The Miners’ New Masters

“Mr. Bernard Rees, chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers’ lodge at Arrail Griffin Colliery, Abertillery, where 16,000 miners are on strike, said this afternoon :

” ‘Surface workers are still being paid wages at starvation level and the National’ Coal Board’s policy of subjection has been worse than anything we ever experienced under free enterprise.

” ‘N.C.B. officials are standing over men to time their movements, and the miners say that they are turning our colliery into something which resembles a concentration camp.’ “—(Evening Standard, 21/10/47.)

* * *

NOT the Socialist Party

“One of the richest men in England has just joined the Socialist Party. He is metal-magnate Steven James Lindsay Hardie, 62-year-old Scot, chairman of British Oxygen Company and its associated companies.

“British Oxygen has a capital of £6,000,000 and directly controls eight companies, with interests in South Africa, Australia, India find Norway.

“Total directorships held by Hardie, 27. Among them is vice-chairmanship of the £2,750,000 firm of Metal Industries, Ltd. As an industrialist Hardie makes metal products ranging from screws to ships.”— (Evening Standard, 14/10/47.)

* * *

Erstwhile Internationalist Proclaim National Sovreignt

The report to the Warsaw Conference at which the new Communist International organisation was formed was made by an influential Russian Communist, Zhdanov. Much of it was reproduced by the Manchester Guardian (3/11/47). One illuminating passage reads as follows:

“Taken up by the bourgeois intelligentsia, dreamers and pacifists, the idea of a ‘world government’ is being used not only as a means of ideologically disarming the people still defending their independence from the encroachments of American imperialism, but also as a slogan specially aimed at the Soviet Union, which constantly and consistently defends the principle of true equality and the maintenance of the sovereign rights of all nations, great and small.”

In the meantime Russia,, like the other capitalist Powers, keeps troops in occupation of several countries and is at the moment trying to induce the Persian Government to carry out the agreement to set up a Russian controlled oil concern in North Persia, the agreement having been forced on the Persian Government last year while Russian troops were in occupation.

News in Review: Wall Street slump (1962)

The News in Review column from the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wall Street slump

Wall Street got the twitch last month and so did London and the Bourses on the Continent. The newspapers rushed out pictures of the panic in 1929 and then had to set their City Editors to work to explain why 1929 cannot after all happen again.

Everybody seemed to have forgotten that just before 1929 the financial experts were assuring us that the crash which was in fact just around the corner could never happen anyway. If this does not make the experts of 1929 look very impressive in retrospect, it must also teach us that the forecasts of all capitalism's economic experts are not worth very much.

Nowadays the experts are fond of pointing out the precautions which (they are confident) would prevent a runaway boom like the one which preceded the 1929 crash and therefore (they reason) would also prevent the crash itself.

This ignores the fact that slumps are not the result of an attack of jitters on the Stock Exchange; rather is it the other way round. Nineteen-twenty-nine was one of capitalism's classic crises and no amount of stock juggling could have averted it.

Nor should we assume that hotheaded speculation is dead. The Observer correspondent in New York reported that the “intellectuals" of Wall Street thought that: “By the end of last year the market had reached heights that brokers now, without blushing, describe as insane." and quoted one New York broker:

"The way some of (the big brokers) have been pushing over-priced stocks at naive investors is nothing short of criminal."

Perhaps a repeat of 1929 is not so impossible after all. For some of the experts were mystified by Wall Street’s 1962 twitch. The Guardian said: "The continuing retreat is puzzling commentators in that there seems to be no apparent reason for it. Mr. Walter Heller, President Kennedy's economic adviser, said there were no economic grounds for the condition of the market." Does this fill us with confidence that capitalism’s economists could not be taken unawares by a repeat of 1929? It does not.

Capitalism could have something up its sleeve, just as it had thirty-three years ago, to surprise the experts and impoverish the rest of us.

Liberal Party promises

Nobody can accuse the Tories of not being worried about the Liberal revival. Faced with the fact that some of the electorate undoubtedly find the Liberal Party attractive, the Conservatives have set out to prove that the very allure of Liberal policy lies in its irresponsibility.

This is being done in the time- honoured way of accusing the Liberals of pushing vote-catching policies without also mentioning that they would increase taxes to finance them. Mr. Iain Macleod has estimated that full application of the Liberal policy would put another eleven shillings on income tax. Most workers are convinced that they are the people who pay taxes: to them, the prospect of a standard income tax rate of 18/9d. in the pound must have seemed like black nightmare.

To back up his case. Mr. Macleod had his research boys dig out some choice examples of Liberal promise-mongering. He quoted Liberal policies for spending more on roads and education, for increasing pensions, repaying post-war credits and much more besides. The Liberals claimed that Macleod‘s quotes were taken out of context.

Yet in one way Macleod had a point, even if he did not know that he was making it. All capitalist political parties have to make a lot of attractive promises and boast that they can do things which they know are beyond their abilities. The Tories, for example, said in 1951 that they would stop prices rising.

Such promises can be effective vote-catchers. The one snag is that a party which is liable to be returned to power cannot make its promises too extravagant, because that would only make their betrayal that much more obvious. On the other hand, the more remote from power a party is, the more reckless its promises can be. The Liberals have little immediate prospect of becoming the government of British capitalism.

We may be sure that if the Liberal revival really gets under way their promises will become dimmer and more sober as the votes mount up. And if they ever get into power again most of the promises will disappear. Grimond and his men would run British capitalism in roughly the same way as the parties they now decry.

End of Eichmann?

No time was wasted, after the Israeli President bad written the quotation from the Bible across the petition for reprieve, in sending Adolf Eichmann to his death and scattering his ashes into the sea.

Why was Eichmann executed? For revenge? One man cannot adequately expiate the murder of six million people; a split-second execution is hardly revenge for the years of pitiless concentration camp horrors.

P

erhaps nearer the mark were those observers who think that the whole thing—the abduction, the trial, the execution—was meant to establish Israel as a political reality among the other capitalist nations. Political acts in themselves do have significance and for Israel to put to death the man who organised the extermination of the Jews is significant indeed.

Israel has asserted her power—even if, in terms of capitalist legality, she had little right—to bring the Jews' tormentors to book.

But what else has Israel done?

Perhaps she has made a martyr of the clerk-like Eichmann. Racial theories still live in capitalism's jungle; the execution of Eichmann could be the grain of sand around which they crystallise and flourish.

There is no easy explanation of the Eichmanns of the thirties and forties; Nazi Germany will remain a horrifying enigma for a long time to come. But we can say that part, at any rate, of the reason for the electoral success of the Nazis was the crisis of German capitalism after 1918 and the despair and cynicism which this bred in the minds of the German working class. In this mood, they would have supported anyone who sounded as if he had the answer to their problems. And Hitler, with his race mania, sounded like that to them.

Capitalism is always liable to convulsion and in any case it will never stop looking for scapegoats for its own shortcomings. This means that racial hatred is still with us and that even the madness of the Nazis need not be very far away.

The world may not have seen the last of its Adolf Eichmanns.

Coal profits

The nationalised coal mines made £28.7 million operating profit last year. If the Coal Board were a normal commercial company, said chairman Lord Robens when he announced these figures, it would be paying a dividend of 2½% from its profits.

But the coal mines are not, of course, a normal concern. The N.C.B. is liable to pay out on fixed interest stock and loans, which means that its dividend payments bear no relation to its working profit.

Last year the N.C.B’s interest payments came to £42.4 million, which turned its working profit into an accounting deficit of £13.7 million.

There are three things to be said about this.

Firstly, nationalising the coal mines was obviously a good move from the point of view of those who get the £42.4 million interest from a profit of only £28.7 million; much more than they would have got from Lord Robens' two-and-a-half per cent!

Secondly, the fact that millions of pounds profit is being wrung from the coal mines is proof—if anymore were needed—that nationalisation does not alter the capitalist nature of society. For profit, in private or state industry, can only come from the exploitation of workers in the industry.

Which brings us to the third, conclusive point. Many workers in this country were misled into supporting nationalisation because they thought it had something to do with common ownership. The figures which the National Coal Board has produced, and those which the other nationalised industries turn out year by year, show up that it was nothing of the kind.

By The Way (1946)

The By The Way Column from the July 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Socialist" Britain

“These other May Day campaigns were calling us to rise and unite. We had nothing to lose but our chains. And by our unity we would one day—in the far-off future—achieve a Socialist Britain, where the nation would be run for the greatest good of the greatest number.

“Today we have achieved that Socialist State.” 

(Daily Herald, 20/4/46.)

The Exploiters' Rake-off

“The private owner can have his rake off so long as his rake-off is not too expensive . . ."

(Mr. Shinwell, Minister of Fuel and Power, at Leeds. Sunday Express, 7/4/46.) 

Viscount St. Davids commented that City firms which hitherto “went into a panic whenever the Labour Government so much as blinked an eyelid, now take a second look at everything the Labour Government does, and then shout for joy, and up go the share values."

(News Chronicle, 16/5/46.)

12 Months After

“Famine will soon be killing civilians and turning out future Fascists more quickly than Hitler and Mussolini ever could.”

(Mr. Herbert Morrison to President. Truman. Daily Herald, 14/5/46.)

 

"You voted Left—You did Right! ”

Under this title the Labour Party has published its own account of its first six months’ record. It enumerates the following: —

1. Control of Finance.
2. Nationalisation of Coal Mines, Transport, Electricity, Gas, Cables and Wireless.
3. Working Parties for efficiency of private industry.
4. An Export Drive.
5. 24,000 Permanent Houses.
6. Social Services: Health Insurance.

Socialists have only one comment. Not one nor all these measures have any connection with Socialism — neither do they lead to it,

“ Workers Control ” of the Mines

“Salary of the chairman of the National Coal Board—Lord Hyndley—will be £8,500, and other members of the Board will receive £5,000.

“ Salary of the vice-chairman—not yet named—has not yet been fixed.

“ Other members of the Board so far appointed are: Sir Walter Citrine, Mr. Ebby Edwards, Prof. Sir Charles Ellis, Mr. J. C. Gridley, Mr. L. H. Lowe, Sir Charles Reid and Mr. T. E. B. Young.”

(Daily Herald, 13/3/46.)

Strachey—Before and After

Mr. John Strachey, M.P., formerly Under-Secretary for Air and now Minister of Food, now backs the programme and policy of the Labour Government. In his “The Nature of Capitalist Crisis” he showed why Labourism must fail.

“Capitalism is now, we are told, well on the road to permanent recovery; all talk of breakdown, of impending wars and revolutions is now happily out of date.; an epoch of peace and plenty is opening out before us.

What, are we to say of scientists who give way to such ‘wishful thinking'? A dozen times now the cycle of boom, crisis, depression, recovery, boom, crisis, has gone through its phases, and as each crisis has passed into depression, and then as symptoms of recovery have appeared to lighten the depression, the shallower prophets of capitalism have, told us that at length, but now for ever, all was well. Do they still believe it? Certainly we cannot.”

(“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 19.)

“The whole of the present official leadership of the British workers looks forward, like Mr. G. D. H. Cole, to the possibility of an organised or planned, high wage paying, and centrally controlled capitalism. . . .”

“Nor is this the programme of all the leaders of the British Labour Party alone. It is the professed programme of all Fascist parties. . . .

“It is the professed objective of all those 'progressive' Conservatives and 'modern-minded' Liberals (of all nations and the League of Nations), who believe in what is called 'planning'—and form everywhere little societies for the study of their plans. . . .”

"All these parties, movements and groupings are, in fact, holding out to us (with, in some cases, perfect sincerity) the possibility of (establishing an economy which retains the essential principles of the present system, viz., the private ownership of the predominant part of the mean of production, their operation for profit, and distribution of the products by means of exchanges mediated by a monetary circulation, but which eliminates the crises and convulsions, with their consequent miseries, which this system at present produces.

“Nor is this aim any the worse for the number of diverse groups which subscribe to it.

“Unfortunately, however, as we have seen, whatever else may happen upon this uncertain planet, the establishment of a planned, stable and high wage paying capitalism is impossible.”

(The Nature of Capitalist Crisis, p. 354.)

Horatio.

Passing Comments: Why we don’t get the coal (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why we don’t get the coal

The prospect of a coal crisis has produced the usual crop of enquiries about the coal industry. What exactly is wrong with it?

As might be expected, the Sunday Express has the answer. It has gone to the expense of sending a journalist, a Mr. Gwyn Lewis, on a three-week tour of the coalfields. Mr. Lewis has now produced his report: it appeared in the Sunday Express on February 4th.

The article covers nearly thirty-two inches of column-space; and more than three-quarters of it (over twenty-four inches) is taken up with complaints about the idleness of some of the miners. :If every man on the payroll did an honest day’s work the present hardships would have been greatly mitigated.” The article avoids statistics which would give the exact position over all the coalfields: instead, there are vague allegations, interspersed with figures applying only to single pits on single days, which are of no use at all to anyone who wants a true picture of the situation, but which are none the less valuable for propaganda purposes. This is the kind of thing: “In Midlands colliery towns I saw miners’ welfare institutes filled with men playing cards when they should have been working.” There are no details given with the aid of which one could check up on the accuracy of the observation. Which Midlands colliery towns? Which miners’ institutes, and how many of them? What exact number of men is the vague verb “filled” intended to convey? How did the reporter know they “should have been working?” After all, there are some men in a miner’s institute at every hour of the day: in the morning, the afternoon shift men, and in the afternoon and evening, the day and night shift men. Perhaps Mr. Lewis is skilled in telepathy; at any rate, his information did not come from the men themselves, for in his next sentence his complains that “when I tried to get their point of view I could only get ’whose deal?’ and a request not to interfere with the card-playing.”

* * *

Contrast

What a contrast this makes with the recent incident at a club which caters for another class of the population. On the one hand we have a group of miners, spending their leisure hours in their own institute, accosted by a Tory journalist who wants to know why they are not working harder: and all they do is to request him politely not to interfere with the game. And on the other hand a group of “gentlemen” in a London club last month were so incensed with the mere inoffensive presence of a man whose political views they consider too Leftish, that one of them, who learnt his manners at Eton and Oxford, made an unprovoked physical assault on him as he left.

* * *

Duties as Citizens

But to get back to these idle miners. A printed sheet was distributed to every one of them containing a New Year’s message from Mr. Attlee, appealing to him to work harder; but Coal Board officials say it has had no result. A Coal Board assistant director tells this woeful tale: “We tried giving the men lectures on their duties as citizens. Most of them listen, but some call out 'Tell us when you are finished.’ ” The lecturers’ task would probably be easier if the duties were the same for all the citizens. As it is, the miners can be forgiven for taking up a cynical attitude when they read an article by a man who hints that colliers are lazy because they are paid too much, but who doesn’t mention the £14,000,000 a year paid to the ex-coal-owners; and who says it is becoming a “common practice” for miners to take Monday off, and sometimes Friday as well, but who has no harsh remarks for the shareholders who take all seven days off and still draw an income.

* * *

No wage-earners need apply

Do you want to be a Conservative M.P.? You stand a poor chance if you come from the lower income groups.

“Comment,” which describes itself as a right-wing magazine run by undergraduates, has published in its January, 1951, number some statistics about the social background of the Conservative members of the House of Commons. Of the 298 M.P.s, the schools of 52 are unknown: but of those whose schools can be discovered, 214, or 87 per cent, went to public schools (including 79, or 32 per cent., to Eton). Again, of the 298 M.P.s, 62 per cent, went to Oxford, Cambridge, or “one of the military colleges—nearly always Sandhurst.”

The occupations of Tory M.P.s are also listed, though no attempt is made to divide them into two or three big groups; “Comment” says it would be difficult to know in which group to place a man “who is perhaps a landowner, director of a big industrial company, and was for ten years in the regular army." Readers of the Socialist Standard might enlighten the editors of “Comment” as to which social group an M.P. with these particular qualifications would belong. But the statistics given are quite interesting enough in themselves. 36 are farmers or landowners; 37 are in business; 16 are in industry; 17 are publishers. These groups provide 106 M.P.s, or 36 per cent, of the total number. Then there are 31 (or 10 per cent) from the Services, and 124 (42 per cent.) are professional„ men. Of those M.P.s who are not listed in any of the above categories, 6 are women, and 59 are put down as “unknowns’’—this figure, which" is 19 per cent., includes all the full-time politicians. Furthermore, “Comment” calculates that there are anything from 500 to 1,000 directorships spread among the 298 members.

* * *

Good opportunities for smart aristocrat

Even after five years of Labour Government with its “inevitable fall in the number of knighthoods and baronetcies conferred on Conservative members,” there are well over 100 M.P.s, more than a third of the total number, who “either hold titles themselves or are intimately related to title-holders.”

And how do these sirs and honourables get into Parliament? Elsewhere “Comment” quotes from a forthcoming book by Mr. Herbert Nicholas on the General Election; and it appears, even allowing for the fact that the Tory definition of “working-class” is more restricted than the Socialist definition, that 54 per cent. of those who voted Conservative last year are working-class electors (compared with 89 per cent. of the Labour voters). So both big parties get most of their support from wage-earners.

* * *

Incomes

Last October the Commissioners of Inland Revenue published their report for the year ended March, 1949; and according to this, in a country which some simple Labourites continue to refer to as “Socialist Britain,” there were eighty-six people left with an annual income exceeding £6,000 a year after payment of income-tax and surtax. There were more than five thousand people having incomes of between £80 and £120 a week, and nearly 80,000 with between £40 and £80 a week after payment of taxes. On the other hand, there are eight and a half million given as having incomes between £3 and £5 a week, and 1,113,000 with between £2 14s. and £3 after tax. Those with less than £135 a year are not mulcted of income-tax by a generous government, so they are not dealt with in the report.

* * *

How to suffer in style

These figures go some way towards explaining the news which appears every so often in the Tory papers about the activities of the rich, and form a strange commentary on the statement of the Continental Daily Mail (26-7-50) that “the wealthiest classes have been almost destroyed by the tax-collector.” If we believed the Continental Daily Mail we would find it difficult to understand how the Eton entry-list is filled up till 1963, when its costs £308 a year to send a boy there, “plus a small amount for extras ” (Daily Mail, 12-12-50); and why Harrod’s think it worth while to insert an eight-inch two-column advertisement in the Observer (11-2-51) devoted to the charms of a fur coat which costs £357—more than most workers get in a year; and how Sir Bernard and Lady Docker can afford to give an “epic” cocktail party at the Royal Thames Yacht Club, which was just large enough, so we are informed, to take the hundreds of guests, while motorists queued for a mile outside to get to the party (Sunday Express, 17-12-50). For good measure we are told, in the same paper eight weeks earlier, that Sir Bernard is having a car made specially for his wife, complete with cocktail cabinet, radio set, silver- equipped vanity case, bookshelf, and fluorescent lighting. Gallant Sir Bernard. And wealthy Sir Bernard. The car is costing £5,622.

* * *

Dodgers and super-dodgers

But the official figures apparently do not tell the whole story. The report issued by the income tax authorities cannot be wholly accurate if some people do not reveal their real incomes to the tax inspectors; and it seems that evasion is being practised on a large scale. One inspector of taxes says: “There are roughly 20,000 dodgers, but half the £40,000,000 withheld from the State each year can be accounted for by approximately 2,000 super-dodgers.” (Sunday Express, 31-12-50). This would make the super-dodgers withhold an average of £10,000 a year each. And what is the total income of a man who should pay tax at the rate of £200 a week”

Yet the Tories still tell us that the wealthiest have been almost destroyed.

* * *

Undesirable familiarity

It is comforting to think that Mr. Millard Caldwell, the head of US Civil Defence, has confidence in us. Mr. Caldwell said in London: “ You will find that your people will take atomic bombs just like they took others.” (Reynolds News, 11-2-51).

An official of the Ministry of Supply agreed with him. He said: “ It would be just the same as in the last war. The more familiar we get with atomic bombs, the easier they will be to deal with.” But just how familiar do we have to get with atomic bombs? J. Bronowski, writing in the Observer (4-2-51) says that whereas the type of atomic bomb used in the last war caused a circle of destruction only two miles across, a hydrogen bomb weighing a ton would “cause irreparable damage over a circle on the ground which measures twenty miles across.” That is to say, it could destroy London from Barnet to Croydon, and from Hounslow to Woolwich; and burns and fires from it would reach through a circle of thirty miles in diameter. Such a bomb dropped on London “would kill far more than 1,000,000 people.”

Has the Ministry of Supply worked out how many bombs of this size will have to be dropped before we consider ourselves familiar with them?

Alwyn Edgar

King Coal makes a comeback (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

State capitalism, just as the Socialist Party predicted all
 those years ago, has been a pathetic failure as far as workers’
 interests are concerned. Now private capitalism has 
returned to the mining industry

At midnight on 30 December British Coal’s 15 remaining deep mines in England passed into the ownership of RJB Mining, a privately-owned company with shares traded on the Stock Exchange.

The government had prepared the way for this change-back to private ownership by crushing the NUM, closing down all unprofitable pits (and not a few not-profitable-enough ones too), and watering down the safety regulations in this notoriously dangerous industry. Now RJB Mining hopes to be able to make sufficient profits by exploiting the remaining 8,000 or so miners to be able to pay a dividend to its shareholders and pay off with interest those who loaned them money to buy what was left of the industry.

Considering that for years the nationalisation of the coal mines had been top of the list of the miners’ union's demands the actual moment of denationalisation passed off without any fuss. There were no strikes, no sit-ins and no demonstrations.

When the mines were nationalised — forty-eight years previously, on 1 January' 1947 — it was a different story. Then the miners did celebrate the ejection of the private owners, a particularly vicious and vindictive lot who had been responsible for grinding them into the dust after the failure of the 1926 General Strike. A notice was stuck up outside every pit in Britain proclaiming “This colliery' is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people”.

British capitalist class

This wasn’t true of course, as the miners were soon to find out. The Coal Board’s job was to manage the pits on behalf of the British capitalist class as a whole. At first this meant producing as much cheap coal as possible for the rest of British industry. Later this meant producing cheap coal for profit in competition with other fuels like oil. At no time did it mean production to meet people’s needs. Not one lump of coal was ever produced to be given to a pensioner to stop them dying of hypothermia. As many thousands did throughout the period of nationalisation.

Working conditions did improve somewhat, but wages remained a bone of contention. How could they not, since the more the miners obtained in wages the less of what they produced remained as profit? A profit that was needed to pay compensation with interest to the former owners as well as to invest in new machinery and equipment.

The whole period of nationalisation was marked by conflicts over wages — from the illegal strike at Grimethorpe in 1947, through countless local disputes, to the successful national strikes of 1972 and 1974, to the heroic but doomed year-long national strike which ended in failure ten years ago this month.

State capitalism

Ironically, it was the Coal Board and not the NUM that first recognised that nationalisation had nothing to do with socialism. In 1968 Lord Robens, a minister in the Labour government that had nationalised the mines who was appointed NCB chairmanin 1961, told a NUM weekend school:

"I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalising these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us then that they were going to turn into state capitalism ” (Times, 1 April 1968).

Someone did tell them We did. This is what we wrote in our 1945 pamphlet Nationalisation or Socialism ?:

“Only when industry and transport, etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or State Capitalism is not the solution of the problem. ”

It took the leaders of the miners' union ten years longer than Robens to realise the truth. It was not until his retirement in 1976 that Dai Francis, the Secretary of the South Wales Area of the NUM. was prepared to admit that "there was no difference between the old . . . coal owners and the National Coal Board. They were now turning it into state capitalism ” (quoted in H. Francis and D. Smith The Fed). Former NUM General Secretary Will Paynter hit the nail even more squarely on the head when, surveying three decades of nationalisation, he noted that “progress from private enterprise capitalism to state capitalism does not change the fundamental status of workers in society ” (The Miner, November-December 1977).

No doubt this explains the lack of reaction by the remaining miners to the return of the coal industry' to private ownership. They had learned by bitter experience that state capitalism was no better, if no worse, than private capitalism, so that a change from the one to the other wasn't worth getting worked up over.

Profitable basis

Socialism does indeed involve the management of industries "on behalf of the people”. But this was not what nationalisation did do, nor, as we pointed out in 1945, what it was able to do. Nationalisation represented the purchase by the state of an industry from its previous owners and the appointment by the state of a board to run it on a profitable basis with the workers remaining excluded and exploited wage and salary' earners.

Privatisation, on the other hand, represents the resale of an industry to private capitalists for them to run for their own private profit instead of it being run by a state board for the benefit of the capitalist class as a whole. As far as the workers are concerned, it makes no fundamental difference.

For industries to be run as a public service in the interest of all, they must first all be taken into common ownership at the same time, and without any compensation being paid to the previous owners, and they must be made subject to the democratic control both of those working in them and of the community in general. Such genuine common ownership is something quite different from nationalisation, or state ownership.

Production for profit will come to an end and there will be no exploitation, no property incomes either in the form of dividends or of interest on compensation or other government bonds, and no wages system. Instead, people will be able to cooperate to produce what is needed on the basis of the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

This is what socialism is and it hasn’t yet been tried. It is high time that it was.

Adam Buick

The Coal Board and targets (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Daily Mirror (6/9/49).

“It would be difficult or even impossible to sell Coal abroad if coal output targets were achieved." Professor A. Beecham told The British Association yesterday. He said such a situation could only be met by unemployment, wage cutting and further losses for The National Coal Board and added: “The Coal Board should press the Government for lower output targets. It should be more active in closing uneconomic mines and it should set about reducing its labour force."

So according to Professor A. Beecham, the miners have two choices before them, one to increase their output and two. to lower their output, but whatever they do the results apparently will be the same.

It is only under Socialism that this situation will not arise, for coal will be produced solely to satisfy human needs, and not as to-day for a market with a view to profit.

J. P.

The Lot of the Miner (1961)

From the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deep down in the efficient modernised, mechanised and electrified mines men still grovel, sweat and inhale black dust. But they should not grumble; the wages are high, the hospitals that treat their special diseases are bigger and better. They have all the public's sympathy for any small inconveniences met with while extracting Our Coal. What more could a miner ask? The gentlemen of the Board have done everything. In their clean trim offices where the supporting beams never collapse, they think mining has reached the millenium.

The miners apparently do not. In spite of fantastic changes, pit head baths and the like; in the face of every improvement, free coal, and more pay, the fellows still complain. There are better jobs outside the pit they think—which only shows the extent of their ingratitude. For just who saw salvation in bureaucracy and clamoured for a Coal Board?

In an age that reaches for the moon, the mining of coal a mile under our feet, without turning men into moles, would seem rather a small order. But ours is a paradoxical society; aspiring to dizzy heights we plumb the depths of human exploitation. At the end of the last century after a life-time of study that saved untold millions, Louis Pasteur commented regretfully on this terrible and characteristic feature of our advanced civilization. Just as large numbers of medical workers all over the world are busy curing diseases and wiping out plagues and fevers while other men are devoting all their skills to designing bombs which can shrivel whole cities, so also in the field of commerce as one interested group tries to solve problems which may free men from degrading toil, another section of the industry sees profits threatened and resists progress. The complexity of the antagonisms and contradictions in any one trade would fill a book.

The miners' employer, anonymous shareholder though he is, views the goose as coldly and dispassionately as the former mine-owner did; he levels the machine against the worker as keenly as his nineteenth century counterpart did, when he secs the possibility of increasing profits. What! with this steel navvy at his beck and call surely the miner's life is easier? Surely the old. back-breaking toil is gone? But the machine, simply because it is a machine does not tire. To tend it the man must go at the machine’s speed and this proves a great strain, physically and mentally. He may work fewer hours but the pace during those hours has become fiercer. The man now works for the machine, he has become the appendage of a machine.

Delving in dark places, the miner has at last seen a glimmer of light; like the rabbit in the trap he longs to be free. And in these boom-times jobs are waiting for men. Here then is freedom. What strange freedom though! Freedom to work; freedom to work overtime: freedom to do exactly what the boss says; freedom to draw national assistance when job-less; freedom to send wives out to work to pay for things men's wages cannot buy. The miner is free to change his occupation and let us admit he is the best judge of whether the change is a good one. But it is a sad, as well as a safe thing to say, he has only thrown off some of his shackles. A sensitive ear can still detect above the din of the bright and busy factory, a rattle and clink of chains.

M. B.

Proper Gander: Crossing the line (2024)

The Proper Gander TV column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent strikes by teachers, drivers, lawyers, medics and others have been a reminder that this kind of organised action is one of the few ways workers have to defend our position in capitalism. This latest wave of strike action, however effective in the short-term, hasn’t managed to resonate across wider society as much as the mid-80s miners’ strike did for the previous generation. To mark the 40th anniversary of this flashpoint, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary series Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain. Without a spoken commentary and with sparse on-screen text to set the scene, the story is told by archive footage and new interviews with miners, police and solicitors, still affected by what happened, particularly at Orgreave.

In March 1984, the National Coal Board announced the closure of 20 collieries with an expected loss of 20,000 jobs. This triggered miners to strike in Yorkshire and Scotland, supported by the National Union of Mineworkers, then led by Arthur Scargill. The NUM called for action in all areas but didn’t hold a nationwide ballot, so regional branches instead voted on whether their members would withhold their labour. The strikes lasted almost a year, in which time communities changed forever, the violent nature of the state was exposed again and the NUM ended up weakened. These three aspects of the strike were covered in each episode of the documentary.

As described in the first part, communities such as Shirebrook in Derbyshire had built up over the decades around their local mines. As well as being the main employer in many towns and villages, a colliery would also run sports clubs and social events for employees’ families. So, when miners went on strike, they did so not just with the aim of defending their jobs, but also their communities. Unfortunately, these were damaged not just by the fight between the miners and the capitalist class’s representatives, but also that between miners who went on strike and those who continued to work. To shouts of ‘scab’, strike-breakers were driven to work on buses with grilles over the windows, guarded by police. The programme is quite sympathetic to the strike-breakers, emphasising the view that they continued to work because they were following the majority decision from ballots of local workers which were overturned by the NUM without a national vote. This, along with Scargill’s often-inflexible leadership style, raises questions about how democracy was managed in the union. Would it have been stronger if it had been more democratic?

The second episode focuses on how the state weaponised the police and courts against the strikers. The battle at Orgreave in South Yorkshire on 18 June 1984 was between strikers and lines of police equipped with truncheons, shields, crash helmets and horses. Footage recorded by the NUM and even the police shows the brutality of those in uniform. An interview with one of the officers saying they ‘never aimed for the head’ cuts to video of a dazed picketer with a bleeding head injury. Biased news reports at the time portrayed the miners as aggressors. Solicitor Gareth Peirce says it was ‘not accidental’ that police drove people away from the field where the confrontation began to the village, as doing this moved events to where others could be affected. This meant that those arrested could be charged under legislation applicable to ‘riots’, one of the criteria for which is that other people are frightened. Being found guilty of rioting could result in life imprisonment, whereas convictions for ‘unlawful assembly’ carried less harsh punishments.

Another method used by the police is described by one of the officers at Orgreave interviewed for the documentary. He says he found it ‘really bizarre’ when a senior detective dictated what he and his colleagues would write in their statements about what happened. Defence barrister Marguerite Russell says that there was ‘mass corruption’ in how the witness statements were recorded. However, all 55 miners at Orgreave charged with offences were found not guilty. One of those, Arthur Critchlow, tells us that how the charges were framed had a longer effect than the beatings. No police have faced disciplinary action for their conduct. Then-Chief Constable Tony Leonard tells us that the police were there to ‘protect’ people’s right to work as well as people’s right to picket. His words echoed those of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who also said she would ‘never negotiate with people who use violence to achieve their objective’ even when the police had used violence to achieve her objective. The battle of Orgreave and its aftermath demonstrate how the capitalist class uses parts of the state to protect its interests and keep workers subdued, although the documentary doesn’t explain it that way.

The third episode turns to other approaches used to oppose the strikers. We’re told that a pivotal character was David Hart, one of Thatcher’s advisers who was a ‘self-promoting Scarlet Pimpernel kind of figure’, according to then-Private Secretary Andrew Turnbull. Hart’s strategy involved the National Working Miners Committee, which had been formed with the aim of ending the strike by taking legal action against the NUM. Hart brought funds to the NWMC, including contributions from capitalists such as John Paul Getty, enabling it to afford renowned lawyers. They won in court when the strike was ruled illegal as it hadn’t been decided by a nationwide ballot. After Scargill refused to halt the strike, the High Court ordered that the NUM’s assets be sequestrated, and he was further knocked when links between the union and dodgy Libyan leader Gaddafi were reported. The strike was called off in March 1985. Thatcher, who Turnbull says didn’t want to risk her reputation being harmed by the unions, had won.

The series doesn’t present a comprehensive account of the strike, as there are only brief mentions of the National Coal Board, and none at all of the Trades Union Congress or the impact of cheaper coal imports from Poland. What the programme reveals about the tactics of the state are useful, but by dwelling on the motives and actions of figures like David Hart, Arthur Scargill and Thatcher, it doesn’t reach far enough to examine the strike’s wider economic context. There’s only a rushed outline at the end about how coal had become less profitable than the emerging financial services symbolised by the up-and-coming yuppies. Another episode to explore the strike’s place in the history of capitalism would have been welcome, but wouldn’t have been commissioned.

Mike Foster

Bloggr's Note:

The SPGB's 1985 pamphlet, The Strike Weapon: Lessons of the Miners’ Strike, is available at the following link.

Nationalisation: A Solution for the Disillusioned (1955)

F

rom the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The decision of the National Coal Board to close Brynhenllys Colliery has cast a shadow over the mining valleys of South Wales. “Last Friday 193 miners received notice to finish work on August 26th. The previous day the N.C.B. accused men of “indiscipline.” (South Wales Evening Post, 16/8/55).

Many of the people in the mining districts of South Wales supported nationalisation of the mines, believing it would solve their economic troubles. They did not and still do not understand that nationalisation is no different from private ownership insofar as it is still Capitalism. But now many of the miners from the colliery in question have openly stated they preferred the conditions operating under private Capitalism. Here then is a clear and sad picture of the confusion in the minds of workers everywhere on the question of “nationalisation.”

As Marx pointed out in “Value, Price and Profit,” “Capital presupposes wages; and wages presupposes capital; one cannot exist without the other.”

So the existence of the Capitalist system presupposes the wages system; wherever this exists, Capitalism exists. All that happens under nationalisation is that capital, instead of remaining in the control of private individuals, passes under the control of the State; it becomes centralised. But the Capitalists do not lose by this move, rather do they gain; for what greater security can one have than State bonds. All they now have to worry about is the economic stability of British Capitalism as a whole Even if all the collieries closed down, they would draw their interest. In Russia, in China, in America and Great Britain, and in almost every other part of the world. Capitalism operates either as State Capitalism or as private enterprise.

If the workers of the world will only stop and think about these things, instead of allowing themselves to be led up the garden path by leaders of any variety, they will realise the solution lies with themselves, and not in trusting to leaders. They will vote for the abolition of Capitalism and the wages system, and introduce a system of society based on common ownership of the means and methods of production and distribution by and in the interests of the whole community; irrespective of race, sex or colour. Goods will be produced for use and not for sale; there will be no buying, no selling, no trade and no barter; the money system will finish in its entirety. Man will then have proved that he is civilised. There will be no war for there will be nothing to have wars about, since things will be commonly owned. There will be no stealing; for what man will steal from himself. All our ideas of ethics and morality will change; because the laws operating under minority rule are related to property. A man’s wife is his property in law, just as much as his lawn mower. Under Socialism men and women will be equal; the only bonds will be bonds of affection. There will be opportunity for each to follow the occupation of his or her choice. Opponents of Socialism say human nature wont allow it to work; when what they really mean is “ human behaviour.” People will not behave in the crazy way they do today; after all because there is plenty of water in the tap we do not leave it on all night. In the same way when Socialism becomes a fact people will not hoard things up. Why should they? since they can have as much as they want anyway. They will not refuse to work since work will not be as it is today, everything will be done for the benefit of man; conditions of work will be different from now, since there will be no bosses; there being nobody to boss for. In short, a sane people will see the necessity for Socialism and so they will behave in a sensible way. For the first time in history they will be able to control their destiny.

Phil Mellor