News: Do the bosses still need the “race card”? (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do the bosses still need the “race card”?

According to a Home Office report released last month, Britain is facing its biggest rise in immigration for a generation. A combination of asylum seekers and people moving to join relatives are among the obvious reasons cited for this new trend, but, as the Times points out, “Britain’s need for workers has also fuelled the trend. The IT industry will need to recruit a further 540,000 people up to 2009, and the report suggests that the custom of employing migrants for seasonal work on farms could be extended to other areas”.

The message should be unequivocally clear. The needs of capitalism are always paramount, so, since a skills/labour shortage and an ageing society has emerged, we can perhaps expect to hear less perjorative language in the media about being “flooded” or “swamped” by “foreigners”. Indeed, Home Office minister Barbara Roche greeted the report by extolling the virtues of immigration.

This European-wide phenomena was picked up by the Economist last year, which ran a cover story telling non-EU workers to “go for it!”. Quite pragmatic, it would seem, for a right-leaning journal.

However, this will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of capitalism. Immigrant workers have always been used to correct a disequilibrium in the labour market. The mass immigration of the 1950s, which underpinned the post-war boom, is a case in point. All things being equal, a labour shortage causes wages to rise and thus puts workers in a comparatively stronger bargaining position vis à vis overall working conditions. Naturally, our masters will always seek to counteract such a situation by importing (often cheaper, more compliant) workers, which in turn intensifies competition among workers, potentially fermenting xenophobia and racism. Needless to say, when demand for labour and/or skills slackens off, the capitalists play the infamous ‘race card’ in order to keep the working class divided.

Historically, this does not depend upon which party is in government. Both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted immigration and denounced it according to the dictates of the markets. Ideology alone does not pay capitalism’s bills!

The working class needs to remember that despite the nationalist and patriotic poison which is rammed down our throats from an early age, our bosses are actually quite open-minded. They will invest anywhere in the world, blazing a trail in their blood thirst quest for profit. Our class enemies may indeed be international,, we, however, are global

The Peter Principle

The resignation of Peter Mandelson from the Cabinet for a second time—an act unprecedented in British political history—has brought allegations of sleaze back to dog the government. Mandelson proved to be a Mr Fix-it in more ways than one but he was caught out and has now paid the price quite publicly. The danger for Labour is that the Party is now tainted in the eyes of the electorate by allegations of financial sleaze and collusion, haunted for the foreseeable future by ghosts like Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson. Luckily for them, of course, the Tories still have political ghouls of their own to exorcise in Jonathan Aitken, Jeffrey Archer and Neil Hamilton, and so do not present any coherent or principled threat.

In truth, every government since the war has been beset by scandals at some point. Even the Liberals can’t afford to sound pious as it was Lloyd George who made a habit of selling peerages at a time before the phrase “cash for questions” was ever heard of.

When people delve under the surface of these scandals only one thing of real importance emerges. It is that there was nothing uniquely corruptible about any of these people, any more so than there is about Mandelson today, even if so many people love to demonise him. All scandals like this really go to prove is that it is the system we live within—the system of ruthless competition, greed and the power of money—that corrupts individuals, not individuals who corrupt an otherwise irreproachable system.

No more yogic flying

The Natural Law Party has announced that it is giving up contesting elections in Britain. So we are no longer to be amused by Party Political Broadcasts which promise to reduce violent crime and international tensions by the mass practice of “yogic flying”. Laughable, but in the end no less incredible than the claims of other parties to be able to solve capitalism’s problems by less outlandish, reformist measures.

The NLP never got many votes but that was never the aim. Contesting elections—and getting nation-wide television broadcasts and the free distribudon of millions of rnanifestos— was a marketing ploy by an international business empire headed by an Indian fakir calling himself the “Maharish Mahesh Yogi”. The aim was to get people to buy its transcendental mediation courses, herbal remedies, oils, aromas, “healing” gems, Hindu horoscopes, books, tapes, etc.

The NLP’s reason for giving up was that “the election system is stacked against new parties”. Maybe, but the real reason will have been the coming into force of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act which requires registered parties to disclose their accounts. This would have exposed the accounts of the “transcendental” business empire that financed the NLP to public gaze.

The NLP never was as amusing as it seemed, but was a flagrant example of how, under capitalism, Big Money can undermine the proclaimed principle of political democracy according to which everybody is supposed to have an equal say. In fact, the more money you have the louder you can proclaim your views.

Transport workers on strike in London and Belgium

As London Transport workers ballot on whether or not to go on strike, and the employers and the media prepare to whip up a campaign against them for “inconveniencing the public”, they could consider copying what their counterparts in Brussels did recently. From 22 December to 1 January, the buses, trams and metro in Brussels were free, as workers continued working but prevented the ticket machines from functioning as they pursued a claim for better wages and conditions. The public were not all inconvenienced. Just the reverse. And it showed that it is workers, not money, that make the world go round. What would the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail be able to say if this happened in London? No doubt they would accuse both the public and the workers of cheating the employers. Technically, this would be true and the courts might enforce it.

Ironically, less than a month previously, a court in Brussels had done just that. Three members of a group advocating free transport were fined £300 each for deliberately travelling without a ticket, using instead a “right to transport card”. In court they pleaded that the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed a “right to free movement” which charging for using buses and trains infringed. A good point. The judge replied that “this right can be exercised by going by foot”. Which about sums up the value of grandiloquent “rights” under capitalism.

Voice From The Back: The Obscenity of Capitalism (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Obscenity of Capitalism

The columnist Richard Morrison, in an article mocking the ridiculous prices paid for modern art, refers to Don Thompson’s book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and brings to notice the obscene wealth enjoyed by a handful of billionaires. Remember we are dealing with the social system of capitalism where many exist on a $1 a day. “He looks at the buyers for ‘trophy’ art; billionaires such as the American asset manager Steve Cohen, who bought the shark with what, for him, was loose change (it would have taken him five days, Thompson estimates, to have earned the $12 million price tag).” (Times, 16 January) Overlooking the term “earned”, we are talking about someone whose income is over 2 million times that of another. Doesn’t capitalism make you sick?

Not So Primitive

Daniel Everett once was a missionary in Brazil dealing with so-called primitive tribes, but his experience of the Pirahã people made him give up that calling to become a linguist. When asked how he had changed his views he replied: “They lived so well without religion and they were so happy. Also they did not believe what I was saying because I did not have any evidence for it, and that made me think. They would try so hard to understand what I was saying, but it was utterly irrelevant to them. I began to think: what am I doing here, giving them these 2000-year old concepts when everything of value I can think of to communicate to them they already have?…” (New Scientist, 19 January)

Toothless Watchdog

The sole purpose of capitalist society is to make profits, so we can imagine the following report will come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about how it operates. “The government will be publicly castigated this week over its failure to help poor people – by the watchdog that ministers set up to monitor fuel poverty. Ofgem, the energy regulator, will also be criticised for not stopping energy companies from making excessive profits at the expense of consumers. Peter Lehmann, chairman of the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, will criticise the government over its record on fuel poverty, which he labelled ‘incomprehensible, unjustifiable and shocking’. Consumers now pay more than 50 per cent more on utility bills compared with five years ago, yet energy companies’ costs have risen by only a fraction of this. In the past month, four of the biggest suppliers have announced substantial rises in the price of gas and electricity.” (Observer, 3 February)

Loaded But Stupid

We are constantly being told by supporters of capitalism that the extremely rich got that way because of their superior intellect. That seems invalid thinking when we see how much the extremely rich will pay for a stupid pointless motor car licence plate. “But nowhere is the craze for a unique plate more intense than in the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation that holds the world record for the six most expensive plates. Here, it’s all about how low you can go — with people battling it out at auctions to win the chance to show off license plates with the lowest digit. The numbers “5” and “7” have already been snapped up,

Transcendental Materialism

The death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi led to many newspapers rehashing the stories about the Beatles contact with his Transcendental Meditation, but it has transpired that his TM could have more properly stood for Transcendental Materialism. It seemed the great man had sited his HQ in a Dutch village for tax reasons. “As ever, the business-savvy guru was ahead of the game: the big draw is a financial regime that has made the Netherlands the EU’s top tax shelter. Among those who have set up holding companies there are Ikea, Nike, Coca-Cola and Gucci.” (Guardian, 7 February) Like many religious leaders before him this guru told his followers not to be concerned with the material things of life, but in practice was very shrewd about the way capitalism operated.

Between the Lines: Letter from the BBC (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter from the BBC

Last May, following the total exclusion of the Socialist Party's ideas and actions from the BBC's extensive election coverage, we published in this column an Open Letter to the Director General of the BBC. We pointed out that it was a principle of democracy to allow time for the expression of minority ideas; that it is inexcusable to refuse radio or TV coverage to a small party such as ourselves on the ground that we are small, not in small part as a result of media silence as to our existence. We made what we regard as the strong case that we are confident that if we advocated bombings and street violence — and, better still, acted upon such advocacy — we would doubtlessly obtain plenty of media exposure. The BBC is penalizing our party for being democratic, rational and peaceful. The BBC failed to assist in creating a democratic electoral atmosphere, but contributed to the undemocratic carve-up of TV and radio time by and in the interest of the existing ruling parties.

On 15 December 1992 a letter of reply was received, not from the Director General, but from one Douglas Evans who is described as Chief Assistant, Political and Parliamentary Affairs. He writes as follows:

  "I think I would find it helpful to know more about the campaign which you conducted at the time of the General Election. For example, how many seats did you contest and how did you make sure that your views and policies were communicated to media organisations? Were these prominently reported by other news media?
  I am sorry that you are dissatisfied with the rules governing the allocation of Party Election Broadcasts, but I should point out that these rules are devised by the Committee on Political Broadcasting and are not the sole responsibility of the BBC."

We thank Mr Evans for his letter on behalf of the BBC and have published it because we intend to keep this correspondence open to the scrutiny of all our readers who will be free to judge whether the BBC is acting democratically or otherwise. We shall respond with some comments and some questions to Douglas Evans.

Firstly, we find it strange that the BBC, the largest news-gathering body in Britain, envied across the world for its professionalism, needs to ask the Socialist Party how many seats we contested in the last British election (a fact which was published in most quality newspapers). We contested one (Holborn and St Pancras), the main reason being that we are a small party and are restricted by the government-imposed deposit of £500 per candidate. It could be argued that a party contesting only one seat deserves to be ignored. If so, the BBC should let us know that this is their policy and tell us how many seats we should contest before they will stop ignoring us. We would remind the BBC that the Natural Law Party, with extremely rich backers and a few bizarre policies, paid to put up enough candidates to buy a Party election Broadcast. The Natural Law Party, formed in 1992 as an electoral stunt and now dissolved obtained that much BBC coverage, whereas the Socialist Party, formed in 1904 with eighty-eight years of principled and well-argued policies was worth no time.

Secondly, we can inform Mr Evans that the Socialist Party called a Press Conference, which was held in central London, within days of the election being announced. All media organizations, national and local, were invited to attend. We made it clear that if they could not attend they could contact our candidate, election agent or other speakers. They were sent copies of our official manifesto. No TV or radio station reported on these, "prominently" or otherwise. There was coverage in the local press. But our campaign was of national importance. We were the only political party standing in the 1992 election committed to the common ownership and democratic control of all social resources. We alone stood for the abolition of the money system; of the economy based upon buying and selling. We were the only leaderless party in the election, making it clear at all times that our candidate was not seeking followers and would refuse to lead anyone wishing to follow him or our party. We were the only party urging electors not to vote for us unless they agreed with what we stood for. Such policies might be rejected as absurd by controlling editors at the BBC. They are free to conclude that, but our concern is to allow the millions of people voting in the election, many of whom expressed the view that they were presented with little choice, with our revolutionary alternative. Let them judge what we say on its merits.

Thirdly, we note with disgust that the Committee on Political Broadcasting — a body appointed by and comprising those who have won previous elections — are free to determine the rules regarding media time for elections in which they intend to ensure that they will win again. In short, politicians who have deceived their way into power in the past set the rules for who may have public exposure in the future. We would be pleased to know when this Committee was elected, by whom, with whose authority and to whom it is accountable. We assume that this is not secret information.

Finally, some question. Would the BBC confirm or deny that any party, however newly-formed or lacking in policy, may have BBC exposure if it can afford to pay the £25,000 deposits entitling it to enough candidates to give it preference over the Socialist Party which has less funds? Is it the ease that an invitation to a press conference in which our party proposed to advocate acts of terrorism would have stirred more BBC interest than the total indifference which our democratic position resulted in? Is there a BBC policy to guarantee the right to be heard of minority political parties or does the BBC regard this aspect of democracy as unimportant? As the Socialist Party is refused a slot on the BBC "access" programmes on the ground that we are a political party, and we are refused electoral exposure on the ground that we are not a big enough political party, can we assume that the BBC expects us to either wind up as a political party so as to obtain half-an-hour of access TV or abandon our principles in order to be accepted as a winnable force by the BBC?

Steve Coleman