Sharing our rising prosperity (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent issue of the West Middlesex Gazette front-paged the story of the plight of Indian immigrants in Southall, West London. Unable on arrival in this country to compete with the native-born workers for housing, the Indians are forced to spend a sardine-like existence in houses owned by their fellow countrymen.

These landlords are determined to make something out of their investment and by living themselves in one or two rooms they can let off the rest, with complete disregard for comfort or sanitation. The small exploiter is often the more ruthless, for his field of operation and expansion is so much more limited. The wretched tenants are charged sums ranging from £4 for one room with little or no furniture. In some cases 15 persons are using a kitchen or 20 using one W.C. Housing laws are disregarded, no rent books are issued and attempts to protest are met by threats, or expulsion. The tenants often unorganised and being coloured and poor have only a remote chance of obtaining accommodation elsewhere. For this reason, the newspaper concerned was careful to suppress the names and addresses of the lodgers they had interviewed.

Local officials, councillors and M.P’s. all express concern and promise to look into the matter. When immigrants flock into areas already suffering from inadequate housing for the working class, one would have thought that local dignitaries must at least have some idea about where they are going to live and under what conditions.

Industries and transport then needed certain types of labour (generally for the lower paid jobs) and politicians will seldom seriously interfere with the urgent needs of the capitalist class. After all, the working class elected them to office to run capitalism, whether they call themselves Tory or Labour.

Local councils will run into a problem if they force coloured landlords to unload their over crowded tenants. Where can they go? A strong prejudice prevents most white landlords from having them, and so does their low wage earning capacity. It would be a brave council unconcerned about the threat of not being re-elected, that placed coloured persons at the head of an ever-lengthening housing list. While such sores of human tragedies can be eased somewhat, there is a very real danger that coloured groups will remain in their plight. Capitalism pulls down and rebuilds the Gorbals and recreates at the same time a 20th century brown skinned Seven Dials in Southall and elsewhere.

Statements made by George Pargiter, Labour M.P. for Southall, reflect the mental floundering of our left wing planners. "We must deport the landlords," he says. But what if the landlords are native or have become naturalised? Property ownership has inflicted some shocking human misery on the needy, and nationality has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Pargiter condemned the Tory government's Immigration Act; he now advocates that everyone, black or white, should be discouraged from settling in Southall. He need have no worry about keeping out one group in society; the capitalist class, irrespective of their colour, by virtue of their wealth have a strong objection to eating with a dustbin under the dining table or having their penthouse overshadowed by a gas works.

"The new towns must take more people” points out Southall’s M.P. Alas for our Labour planners, the mills of capitalism are now throwing up the evil of unemployment in such new towns as Stevenage and newcomers are not likely to be very welcome there.

People live in bad surroundings because their wages do not enable them to get anything better. Being without property, most people have to sell their energies to an employer in order to live. The wage we receive for that is basically determined by the social cost of producing our skill and knowledge. No matter how hard people may work, their wages remain low because it costs little to reproduce their labour power.

The working class as a whole are poor, especially when their incomes are compared with the amount of wealth they as a class produce. Within the wages system some sections of the working class are forced down to the point of degradation. We have the technical means to produce fine homes for everyone, but capitalist society will not readily do so unless a profit can be made from them. The higher the prospective profit the greater the incentive to production.

The threat of unemployment is always with us and with it can come more serious clashes between black and white, British and foreigners, over precious jobs. The maniacal theories of Hitler, despised and crushed only yesterday, can be revived again in certain conditions; and those conditions are always latent in capitalism. It is not yet too late for workers to start to overthrow the false conceptions that crowd into their minds.

T. Law

Letter: Juvenile Delinquents (1958)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greenford, Middlesex.

30/7/58.

Dear Sir,

The article by G. R. Russell on the above subject will do little to further the cause of Socialism as both Sir Hartley Shawcross and Mr. Ewen Montague spoke the truth.

I live on a Council Estate which is really well laid out, grass plots and verges, tree lined roads, and good gardens and there is a Park less than five minutes away where the children can play any game they like. The houses are well built, have parquet floors, central heating, half tiled kitchens, lavatories and bathrooms. The tenants include teachers, store managers, civil servants, etc., etc. Hardly a house (except my own) has less than £15 per week coming in.

One would think that under such circumstances the children would play in the Park and other open spaces provided, but do they? Oh no, its the streets, sitting in the gutters and on the grass plots under the shadow of notices prohibiting such action.

Not long ago three of the boys watched a family go out and promptly broke in, stealing money and articles. Opposite me, a house was being built privately; a work hut with glass along one side, was erected and within five minutes of the owner leaving not a pane was left intact. Later bricks, neatly stacked, were scattered to the four winds and later still, the entire glass in the windows had to be renewed three times. They even broke in and knocked holes in the dividing walls.

Was all this due to “environment” of either parents or children? Was it hell. It was due to lack of parental control and failure in home and school to teach the difference between “Mine” and “Thine.”

Yours faithfully,

B. S. Anderson.

Reply.

The article to which our correspondent refers (“Juvenile Delinquents Again.” July S.S.) commented on the question posed in the Yorkshire Post as to whether the current “light regard for morals or a weakening sense of responsibility” may be encouraged by “something in the nature of the society we have built up.” Our contributor, in his article, answered the question with a yes! and dismissed as superficial Sir Hartley Shawcross’s and Mr. Ewen Montague’s attitude of laying the blame on parents without mention of “ environment and conditions of poverty.”

It is true that our contributor illustrated his case against the capitalist environment in which we live by examples of bad housing and sunless streets, etc., but the case is not against merely the worst conditions but against capitalism itself.

Our correspondent’s examples taken from an area where the workers are more highly paid and better housed does not meet the Socialist case.

To start with, we would want to know much more about the problems of the parents who live there than the bare statement that most of the homes are believed to have £15 a week coming in (not exactly a princely sum to meet the cost of a family anyway). How many wage earners are there to a household; how many of the wives have to go out to work; what are the outgoings on rent and mortgages. A recent article on the similar troubles of the new town of Stevenage may give us a clue. It is a brand new town, with brand new houses, but, says the local Catholic priest. “Families are up to the neck in debt and their big worry is only whether they can keep the HP. going on the telly” (Empire News, 10th August, 1958). The same article instances a family of six with an income of £13 18s., but after paying for rent, food and other outgoings (including 57s. for rent and 17s. 6d. HP. repayments on T.V. and carpets) all they have left to buy clothes “and daily titbits,” etc., is 31s. 3d. a week.

But these are only a small part of the “environment” with which we, as Socialists, are concerned. The children of rich and poor live in different kinds of houses and neighbourhoods, but they all, and their parents too, live in a world given over to wholesale waste, personal and governmental, and to destruction, instability and the ever present threat of war.

Our correspondent wants the parents and teachers to shoulder their responsibility of teaching the difference between “mine” and “thine”; but how will this solve the problem? He asks them to hold with conviction and pass on to the young, the faith that respect for property is of paramount importance for their happiness. But how can the adults or the young find this a sufficient doctrine against the background of capitalism which constitutes the environment in which they live.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: Women's freedom (1972)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

While there is a local branch of your party here, one finds the movement a little impersonal. It is easier for local people to get elected to the council than for any of them to discuss Socialism in the true sense. This town, a potential beauty spot, has had to become a "workers paradise” of cars and motorway systems, and for whose benefit I cannot find out, having little need of a private vehicle, yet travelling about a good deal.

It would be futile to ask whether you have yet successfully sponsored women advocating to serve the community on local councils, for this attitude seems to attract tremendous opposition from the working class. So if there is seen lo be a need for a non-monetary society, there is also a greater need for a non-discriminatory society. The laws discriminate so powerfully against women that it is only because their husbands keep them in absolute comfort that prevents them from standing up to be elected onto councils. The distress in wives who finally must take their freedom from the marriage bond, is actually measured in cash terms. If misery were money, most ex-wives would be tremendously rich from the experience.

So what do you do towards relieving women of their onerous position as carrier of the family burdens, but reaper of no rewards for it?

Yours faithfully,

H. Ibrahim, 

Stevenage.

Herts.

Reply:

H. Ibrahim is concerned about local issues—motorways etc.—and wants us to sponsor “women ... to serve the community on local councils”.

We do not sponsor candidates to help run capitalism at national or local level. This is a task for a reformist party, like Labour, not for The Socialist Party of Great Britain. All the problems facing local councillors and MP’s derive from the nature of capitalism—a society where motorways and cars pollute the land and endanger the people, not because this is the best means of transport, but because it suits a system of production for profit.

It would be wasted labour for Socialists to exhaust themselves mending the scars of a profit-seeking society and healing its self-inflicted wounds. Our job is to abolish it, and our candidates both men and women, stand for world Socialism, not a better bypass.

H. Ibrahim is particularly distressed by the position of women in capitalist society. There is, indeed, legal and financial discrimination against women of the working class, 97 per cent of women. (We will leave out the Jackie Kennedys from this discussion as the wealthy do not suffer hardships of this sort.)

Marriage is a bondage. The wife is “tied” to the kitchen sink and the drudgery of daily chores. Going out to work simply means two jobs, not one, as she still has the chores to do. The housewife has no fixed hours of leisure, no holidays and no prospect of retirement. She often does not get a dinner break and usually works overtime unpaid.

Yet work in the home is not counted as work. A recent BBC discussion led off with the remark that “At present around 25 million people are at work” — this on a Monday morning! The 25 million or so housewives then engaged in laundry, cleaning up after the weekend and getting dinner for the kids; their work was not paid so did not count. In capitalism people are supposed to work only for rewards — wages.

However, even under capitalism, the family is still organised in a socially co-operative way. No one, male or female, expects to get paid for helping in their own home. The family functions almost on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”—the same principle which will operate in Socialist society.

Only when we have a society without wages, only then will women cease to demand “rewards”. Only then will they and their husbands feel secure enough to break up a bad relationship, without worrying over the mortgage and probable hardship for the children. Only then will men be relieved of money worry. Only then will love be free and marriage ceases to be a bond.

The emancipation of the workers will involve, necessarily, “the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex”—and this does include women.

Editorial Committee.

New towns for old (1963)

From the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contrary to common thought the creation of New Towns after the last war was not a new thing. Over the last 200 years many towns have been constructed for non-economic and non-geographic reasons and their development has been planned. Examples of these are Washington and Canberra, and more recently New Delhi. In this category of political capitals with planned development Brasilia is the most recent example.

In Britain, prior to the war, garden cities had been built at Letchworth and Welwyn. Even earlier John Laird had begun Birkenhead as a new town and Stephenson had built a New Town at Ashford.

After World War II a number of countries, including Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, constructed new towns to house workers for specific industries.

In the U.K. the aim of the New Town Act of 1946 was to attract industry and population away from areas of congestion. These new towns were to be modelled on the Garden Cities of Letchworth and Welwyn, and were to provide gracious, healthy living conditions.

The basic pattern has been the “neighbourhood" system. This provides for a city centre with satellite neighbourhood centres catering for immediate needs and community recreation. By 1960 there were fifteen such towns in various stages of development.

It was thought that the major problem would be to align housing construction, industrial expansion and essential services. In fact, the first problem to arise was that of school places and accommodation, followed by the lack of facilities for adolescent recreation. These problems were obviously related to the age structure of the new communities. Older people do not easily cut their ties with an area and move, consequently New Towns tend to have populations of young people with dependent families.

Another complaint has been that most New Towns are difficult to distinguish one from the other, in general being monotonously alike in appearance, with the streets too wide and the houses remote. They are thus neither urban or rural, and as most dwellers in new towns came from urban areas with many close neighbours they have found this low-density living plan unneighbourly.

Further, coming from different areas to the New Town the citizens take time to make friends. This, coupled with the fact that their previous neighbourhood is seldom all that far away, enabling them to keep up old friendships, has retarded the growth of community spirit.

It was intended that these communities would cater for all the needs of the community—work, shelter and leisure. New Towns in the London area have numbers of commuters using train and car to take them to town. They have a tendency to be dormitory towns, with people working in London gaining their recreation there before returning late in the evening. The isolation of the wives, lack of recreation for the adolescents, long tiring journeys to and from town, have developed what has become known as New Town Blues.

It is apparent that the planners of New Towns did not see far enough ahead. The Guardian recently reported Mr. Henry Wells, the former chairman of the Hemel Hempstead Development Corporation, as being of the opinion that if they had known the motor-car age was upon them, they would have produced “a very different sort of town." He said that Hemel Hempstead was "in the light of current thought, an old town."

Workers in New Towns have no more security than workers elsewhere. The job is not theirs, it is their employers! They have experienced short time, redundancy, unemployment, as workers at Hatfield. Stevenage and Peterlee can testify.

The blame, as always, has been put on the Government. They lacked foresight, they did not institute research into the needs of New Town communities, they withheld capital which would have created diversity, they did not bring about conditions which would have attracted community leaders from the professional strata to live in New Towns. In one sense it is true that the Government can be blamed — for like all reformist governments it claims to have solutions for the various ills of capitalism. But as the Socialist knows, no one can control capitalism in the interests of the working class. The new way of living in New Towns has not been achieved and workers live under the same economic and social pressure of capitalism, as workers elsewhere. The problem of a new way of life is not soluble under capitalism. In this sense the blame is not with the government, but with workers who support Conservative, Labour and all reformist parties.

Capitalism would like workers to be housed efficiently and cheaply. This would raise their productive capacity and improve their physical and mental health. But capital must be invested where the return is greatest, and workers' wages do not allow them to pay for efficient, gracious housing.

If workers really want "New Towns" and a new “way of living " the only way is by the establishment of Socialism. Then and only then will they be able to construct dwellings to suit their requirements.

Ken Knight

Brave New Towns (1980)

The Briefing Column from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the New Town Acts of 1946 over a score of such towns have been designated in Britain. Its object was "to relieve congestion in the big cities and to provide pleasant and healthy conditions for people who would not have to travel elsewhere to find work". According to the Official Handbook of the Information Office, these new towns "represent a notable achievement". The handbook remarks that it was hoped to get rid of the existing slums of the big towns, although it is admitted that the high proportion of unfit houses in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow was so high that clearance would take "longer than usual".

Among the havens of hope were Harlow, Bracknell, Basildon, Crawley, Corby, East Kilbride and Cumbernauld. Nearly a million people have been moved to the new towns in the past 30 years. Are they all living in pleasant, healthy conditions away from the polluted air and poisonous canals of the old overcrowded cities? Do they find it easier to find employment without the need to travel elsewhere? Far from it; unemployment and developing slums reveal the poverty of the planners' ideas and the actual poverty of the people who put their trust in the planners. Many people are saying that they are worse off than before they moved. Those living in Basildon and Pitsea have heard their haven described as a "rural slum"; Crawley reports hundreds more unemployed; while in Corby, thousands in the British Steel Works have lost their jobs, and a great many houses are in urgent need of repair.

What about the much-lauded Milton Keynes? According to the Corporation there is prosperity in MK.

Twenty-six thousand jobs have been created since 1967. More than half of these can be described as genuine new jobs. Most of the jobs are from overseas companies and from expansion of companies already allocated. A pool of workers wooed to the area by cheap housing is now keeping pace with business expansion which is not happening in other parts of the country. Business men here are not moaning about high interest rates or traffic jams or having to lay off their workforce. They moan about shortage of hotel space to put up their numerous clients and about the delay in opening up the new helicopter service to Heathrow.

However, the new £8 million station opens soon. New firms include a domestic wireware business from London and engineers from East Grinstead, Sussex. The manager of the local job centre says that "the recession hitting other parts of the country has barely touched us. Over the next five years there will be another 5,000 jobs here".

But these startling claims leave many observers wondering. Andrew Blowers, a sociologist of the Open University, says that: "Workers here earn up to 15 per cent lower wages than in other parts of the South-East. Rents are higher than in London and quarterly central-heating bills of around £150 a year are common." He blames the Corporation for giving the new city a prestige image and attracting firms offering low wages. Most people could not afford to furnish their homes and were at the mercy of door-to-door salesmen with HP cons and inducements. While denying this poverty, the Corporation says "MK is no way isolated from normal economic and social national pressures".

That hundreds of new city children are living in poverty became clear from recent reports in the local press. "Many families were without gas or electricity. A lot of people are on the breadline." And on top of "normal" wages, high rents and the increasing dearth of jobs, they are faced with pollutants such as sulphur-dioxide and flouride emissions from the brickworks, the dangers of asbestos exposure in the Rail Works, housing cuts and large numbers of unemployed, especially among school-leavers.

Looking through the property columns, however, gives one a different picture. There's a 300-year-old cottage at Great Linford—offers in the range of £70,000. One among scores ranging from £52,000 in Hanslope to £82,000 in Towcester. Or if you are thinking of returning to London, there's a nice penthouse in Kensington at £115,000 (99-year lease) and one near Hampstead (freehold this one) at £245,000.

As the end of the 20 century approaches these glaring contradictions expose capitalism as criminally inefficient and anti-social, fit only for the end that has overtaken all previous class-divided societies.

Charles Kincaid

Political Notebook: Double standard (1979)

The Political Notebook column from the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Double standard

As the days get shorter you may care to be reminded of last winter. Remember the crocodile tears shed by the Tories over the sick who were endangered because of the strikes in the NHS, the hypocrisy over schoolchildren who could not continue their studies, the nauseating cant spewed out over the dead who were not being buried because of the grave-diggers' strike, the simulated sympathies they whipped up for the OAPs and claimants who were unable to collect their weekly pittances because of civil service strikes? The humanity shown by the Tories was truly impressive. Now they are in office several people, including some union leaders, have noticed something odd. Those same humane Tories, so concerned over the young, the sick, the old and the dead, are now ruthlessly trying to reduce government expenditure with the result that services for these groups are going to be hit far worse than by any of last winter's strikes.

For example, education spending is being slashed, and long term prospects for the young in education are thus becoming far worse than anything that might result from a few short strikes. With a savage nineteenth century anachronism like Rhodes Boyson in charge (as much use as swine fever to agriculture, as one Labour MP put it), the Tories are laying about higher education like Samson in the Temple. The NHS is being drastically cut too. So workers who are suffering from illnesses (many caused by capitalism anyway) will have even less chance of being admitted to hospital, and will get even poorer services when they get there. Where are the crocodile tears now? The Tories are looking after the profit system; the tears will look after themselves.

Of course, it was not only the Tories who suddenly pretended to be concerned about working class living standards in last year's show of union strength. Their twin brother, the Labour Party, also have their share of people who can say black when they mean white. The Labour government were as concerned as any to try to get workers back to work. And, as few fireman would have forgotten, their ruthlessness in breaking strikes was quite impressive. Is it too much to hope that union members will see through the party that the trade unions created and realise that the Labour Party, just like the Tories, when faced with the realities of capitalism promise one thing but always do another.

It seems that at least one trade union leader is coming round to the point of view that unions only exist to struggle to improve the working conditions of their members and ought not to be concerned in supporting capitalist political parties. The August and September ITV strike brought forth the following from Alan Sapper, leader of the ACTT:

"We are a capitalist trade union", says Mr. Alan Sapper, leader of the biggest of the ITV technicians' unions. "We are selling the labour of our members for the highest and best price, using any and every related reason to get it. That is what a trade union leader does. He is not a philosopher or a socialist writer. I am a trade union negotiator and I am selling a product." (The Guardian, 23 August 1979.)

We have been saying something similar for seventy-five years. But the realisation that workers sell their mental and physical energies in a market for the highest price possible is only half the story. What follows is that the actions of trade unions are limited by the forces of capitalism itself, with the result that however high a price the unions negotiate for the sale of their members' abilities, every wage deal is a 'sell-out'. This is because no capitalist will employ workers unless he is going to get a profit out of the deal. That means he is going to get something for nothing. If he cannot get that, production is stopped.

Up in smoke

Sections of the left have claimed to be able to bring exploitation to an end by the use of the co-operative. There are several variants on this particular version of slavery run in the interests of the slaves. The basic idea is for workers to combine with management to run a factory in the interests of the employees. It is of course a pipe-dream, and as the realities of capitalism break in on the cooperatives, their ideals go up in smoke. In the 1970s this particular dream has been pushed hard by the pipe of Tony Benn. In a smoky fog of euphoric confusion, this Labour Party answer to Noddy in Toyland helped create the Meriden motor cycle co-operative. The workers were going to run the factory, and the problems of production for a ruthlessly competitive market were to vanish. They did not. The co-operative has had to lay off workers and is under intense pressure to repay the interest due on the original loan made by the then Labour government to enable it to start.

The final irony is not that the capitalist system has defeated another Utopian scheme. The co-operative is almost certain to be shut down because it cannot pay its debts to the local Coventry Council. Coventry gave the co-operative ten days in which to pay the outstanding rates of £72,000 (The Guardian, 22 August 1979). If the co-operative does not pay (it almost certainly can't), the Council will bring court proceedings which may be the end of Meriden. The Coventry Council is Labour.

New slums

Another Labour Party pipe-dream was the post-war 'new towns' and local authority high-rise developments. The idea this time was to try to improve the workers' housing conditions. Millions of pounds were spent on these prestigious new developments. And now some of the most expensive attempts to take workers out of the slums have resulted in merely producing different types of slums. Six of the new towns — Corby, Harlow, Stevenage, Bracknell. Sedgefield and Peterlee — are facing particular difficulties. They are trying to get the Department of the Environment to pay the bills of millions of pounds that will now have to be spent to make their new slums inhabitable.

Generally the houses have a multitude of faults. So far everything from leaking roofs to rotting timbers and cracking walls have been detected. It seems that in the great rush to build the houses to establish the new towns, a certain amount of caution was thrown to the wind. (The Guardian, 20 August 1979.)

Peterlee, a new town of some 26,000 inhabitants in a mining community in County Durham, has problems that no doubt sound familiar to many of our readers. "The flat-roof houses in Peterlee have caused enormous problems. Many of them leak badly, walls are cracking, wall tiles are corroding, gable ends are deteriorating, and windows and doors are rotting." If anything, the high-rise flat movement has been even more of a disaster. For example, the pride of the Liverpool Corporation development in Everton has been abandoned completely after the developments became uninhabitable. The locals called the developments 'The Piggeries'.

Housing for the working class has always been cheap and nasty. In the rush for low cost production, it is not so much caution that is thrown to the wind but the interests of workers that are thrown to the dogs or, in this case, frequently the rats that often invade these new developments. However, design faults and poor building are not the result of technical inability. These faults are the inevitable outcome of production for the bottom end of the market. In capitalism, the new workers' homes of one year are the slums of next year. Sometimes the interval between prestige development and embarrassing unhabitability is remarkably short.

Out-of-date swinger

Another fabrication that does not always last the pace is the protesting folk singer. Remember the swinging sixties and Bob Dylan? He was going to bring the revolution by strumming a guitar and stringing together a few rhyming couplets. Well, this hero of the protest movement, who still has a large following of ageing mums and dads and over-30 teenagers, has become a 'born again Christian'. He has joined that select group, including revolutionary hero President Jimmy (I'm alright God) Carter, who call themselves the brothers and sisters of Christ. (The Guardian, 31 August 1979.) Instead of lyrics that make the youth of America steam up to protest about Vietnam or some other horror of late twentieth century capitalism, the lyrics now include lines like: "God don't make promises that he don't keep". No doubt the new album will sell well at services and Sunday schools. We might be entertained by trendy vicars leading with Dylan's songs instead of hymns from the pulpit. Dylan's financial staff will face such a prospect with equanimity. Meantime, the real revolutionary task goes on, and Dylan is just another has-been who wanted to change the world without doing anything about it.

RAW