NHS dispute: In place of life (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the long-awaited and greatly feared industrial action by workers in the National Health Service began in South London. Hundreds of ward orderlies, cleaners, catering staff and hospital porters declared a one-day strike. Similar action was taken in Manchester, where three people were arrested after nurses clashed with NUPE pickets outside Oldham and District General Hospital. On May 19 over 600,000 NHS employees took the day off in various parts of the country; and on May 27 and subsequent Thursdays for several weeks two-hour stoppages by selected groups were staged. The action was stepped up in June.

In the months since the beginning of the dispute, hospital waiting lists have soared, admissions have plummeted and tempers have frayed. Rumours are rife that the strikes may be extended to accident and emergency services within the near future.

The aim behind this action is to improve the pay offer for 1982-3 made to nurses, midwives and ancillary staffs by the Department of Health and Social Security. Initially, the offer proposed an increase of 4 per cent on basic income for most ancillary workers, and an average increase of 6.4 per cent for most nursing and midwifery grades, “in recognition of their special skills”, with veiled promises from the Secretary of State for Social Services, Norman Fowler, of future additional payments to nurses “to be drawn from government contingency funds”. Ambulance workers, doctors and dentists and hospital electricians and maintenance staff, whose pay settlements are made separately, were offered average pay rises of 5, 6 and 8 per cent respectively.

In June, the offer to nurses and midwives was increased to 7.5 per cent; ambulance workers and hospital pharmacists were to receive 6.5 per cent and other ancillary workers 6 per cent. These offers were immediately rejected by all except nurses in the Royal College of Nursing, who have now also voted to turn down the offer.

The nurses' and ancillary workers’ claim was. and continues to be, for increases averaging 12 per cent on basic rates, with a reduction in hours of work and more annual leave, and future index-linked pay increases. For the first time, the ten TUC-affiliated unions representing health service workers were to co-ordinate the campaign for these increases through their membership of the TUC’s Health Services Committee. Of the ten, the most important would be the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) with 300,000 technical, ancillary and nursing staff members in the NHS, the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO) with 100,000 NHS members and the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) with 150,000 members employed mainly in psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals. The Royal College of Nursing, which is not affiliated to the TUC but has for some years flirted with the idea of limited industrial action by its 195,000 nursing and midwifery members, declared its support for the campaign in June, though without any change in its "no strike” policy. As it represents more nurses than any other union, the RCN’s support was of crucial importance to the success of the campaign.

Official union plans were to reduce the health service to an emergency service within a few weeks, beginning as early as possible after April 26, organisation being initially by local union branches. TUC policy prevented the withdrawal of emergency cover and there has been no change in this at the lime of writing, although spokesmen for individual branches have asserted that the policy is not sacrosanct.

Since the strike began to bite, with a lull at the height of the Falklands escapade (a propitious exercise for the government from more than one point of view), the propaganda war between unions and DHSS has been vigorous and almost unbroken. The government has naturally gone to great lengths to sugar the pill which its workers are expected to swallow, promising “new arrangements" (unspecified) for nurses' and midwives’ pay in the future, based perhaps on a "comparability scale” of the sort mooted on August 18, and talks on new arrangements for ancillary staff. It has also descended to the unusual tactic of publishing blatantly misleading advertisements to NHS staff in national newspapers (of which more below). But the DHSS campaign has concentrated on the message that, owing to the nature of their work, health workers are morally not entitled to strike or take other action which. in the words of Norman Fowler, "must damage patient services and lengthen waiting lists”.

This judgment has posed a considerable dilemma for health service workers. Indeed, it was thought at first that public outrage against the withdrawal of one of the most vital services — outrage assiduously stimulated by the national newspapers — might seriously weaken the strikers' resolve. In fact, unexpected support for the 12 per cent claim received initially from hospital employees in the National Association of Health Authorities of England and Wales, and from doctors of the usually very conservative British Medical Association and in Scotland and Yorkshire, have greatly improved the NHS workers’ public image. (The Lancet, one of the two most respected medical journals, on August 13 1982. actually called for Fowler’s resignation over the matter. But doubts remain among the strikers about the "justice" and efficacy of their action.

The NHS is the largest employer in Britain, with nearly 800,000 workers, and is the tenth largest employer in the world. NHS pay policy, while it is in the end controlled by the government, is influenced, for some groups of workers, by "independent assessors" like the Doctors' and Dentists’ Pay Review Board. (Senior hospital doctors also retain the archaic right to confer “merit awards" upon one another, which may add around £18,000 to an annual income of £21,000 at top consultant rates, without any party to the exercise being accountable to Parliament or the DHSS.) No independent bodies exist to assess the pay of nurses, midwives and the majority of ancillary workers; the nurses’ and midwives' Whitley Councils are merely negotiating forums. Pay increases in the NHS have not been index-linked and are consequently subject to the vicissitudes of government policy, and have tended to be very low.

The 1974-9 Labour government, pledged to rectify this situation, increased NHS wages and salaries in their first year of office. By October 1975 wage rates were approaching those in other industries, but in subsequent years they again fell behind. The present rate for an unskilled male worker in the NHS is about £65 a wreck. After a 12 per cent increase, the basic rate would still be below the net family income at which supplementary benefit becomes payable (currently £82 a week). So a high level of overtime working is necessary for ancillary workers with families — if it can be had. But there are still workers like the laundry attendant interviewed in the Observer of August 15, who earns £71 take-home pay for a 40-hour week plus 18 hours overtime, and who must support families on that. A first year nurse working full-time on the wards receives £63 (gross) a week, after working frequent night shifts and “unsocial hours" as part of the job contract. Board and lodging costs for nurses in hospitals have risen by between 18 and 33 per cent in the past year. According to COHSE, many of these people would be better off on the dole.

On August 6, the DHSS paid about £85.000 for an advertisement in the main national newspapers “to ensure that all NHS staff are aware of the facts". It stated that a ward sister’s “estimated weekly gross average earnings” would be raised by the current pay offer to between £132 and £170 a week. For a staff nurse, the increase would bring in from £107 to £131 a week; for a male ancillary worker (position unspecified) £91-£146 a week, and for a female ancillary worker, £82-£139.

The following day, health workers staged protest strikes in several Scottish hospitals, and COHSE announced that it would report the DHSS to the Advertising Standards Authority. For, as a NUPE official commented, the higher figure mentioned in relation to ancillary staff would apply to no more than 160 top-grade employees, and then only after working up to 20 hours overtime. All the other figures similarly assumed maximum rates of overtime and additional earnings. In fact, most ancillary workers in cleaning, catering and other general service fields are women working part-time, who would be quite unable to earn such amounts.

The DHSS has since admitted that surplus payments were included in its calculations, but insisted they were “statistically valid". Union statistics clearly show that this was not true, whatever “estimated weekly gross average earnings” may be taken to mean. Need we be surprised? Lies and distortions are constantly fed to us to try to persuade people to smoke cigarettes, to insure for private health care, to support the armed forces, so why should the government not use the same tactics in wage-bargaining?

The way in which the health workers’ scruples about striking have been used by successive governments to hold down wages is demonstrated by the recent awards of between 14.3 and 18.6 per cent to top civil servants, the judiciary and senior officers in the armed forces, of 9 per cent to gas workers and 7.5 per cent to public sector manual workers outside the NHS. For the health workers, according to Norman Fowler, 6 per cent should suffice and 12 per cent is "unrealistic" — as if 12 per cent on a pittance made for anything other than a slightly larger pittance.

The question of pay is not the only one to trouble NHS staff. In recent years the loss of small hospitals and the concentration of beds and ancillary services in large district general hospitals, the reduction in patient turnover time and the cut-back in recruitment have greatly increased the work-load on existing staff. In Brent Health District in London, it has been calculated that earlier discharge of patients (five days earlier, in some cases) and a reduction in the time for which a bed is left empty between successive patients have allowed a 25 per cent reduction in beds without affecting waiting lists. As there has been no increase in the number of staff employed in Brent, either in the hospitals or in the community where patients now do most of their convalescing, this has imposed a heavy extra burden on hospital workers. The day-to-day running of a hospital is very labour-intensive; it is difficult to reduce this by introducing machinery. And it must be remembered that 75 per cent of NHS employees are women who, besides their traditionally lower earnings, tend to have pressing commitments and a full job of unpaid work at home.

Women's average earnings now are 37 per cent lower than men’s; 87 per cent of part-time workers and 75 per cent of lower-paid workers are women. Promotion prospects for women in the NHS are poor, and many are forced to take on agency (private) nursing — a notoriously unreliable source of income — in their off- duty hours. On those precious days when they are not working unsocial hours and night shifts for the NHS, they may be doing so for the agency. In truth, they are a peculiarly exploited group of workers.

The long hours are made even more intolerable by the conditions in which they have to be spent. Many hospitals are still situated in old and wholly inappropriate buildings, particularly geriatric, psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals and small general hospitals in underfinanced and inner city districts. Less than a quarter of existing hospitals have been built since 1948, as against half of the existing schools and houses; 40 per cent of hospitals in England and Wales were built before 1918. and 6.5 per cent before 1850 (In Sickness and in Health — David Owen). The task of caring for sick human beings in such decayed surroundings may be a particularly frustrating and at times a revolting one, and not without risks. Occupational accidents are by no means uncommon: orthopaedic injuries constitute a particularly grave risk for nurses, through proper lifting aids not being installed.

Even in the best-run hospitals workers may be exposed to infections, air-borne drugs, chemical toxins and radiation at a high level. Among the identified effects of this exposure are miscarriages, which occur twice as commonly among women with an occupational risk of inhaling low levels of anaesthetic gases than among others. Occurrence of tuberculosis is five times as common among microbiological laboratory staff in hospitals as in the general population (Hospital Hazards —leaflet produced by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1981). It is true that the NHS commonly gives its staff priority over other patients when they are in need of medical advice or treatment; but that can hardly be regarded as a perk. People clearly do not join the health service for the sake of their own health.

In an attempt to play down the penalties of employment in the NHS, Fowler referred to it in Parliament as a “service which enjoys secure and growing employment”. This hackneyed argument no longer holds water. It is true that the number of people employed by the service is expected to rise by around 10,000 in 1982-3 but it certainly is not true that individual employees arc secure in their jobs. In such a labour- intensive industry, the tightening of belts demanded by successive governments over the last two decades has meant lay-offs, either through hospital closures or as a result of the policy of reducing staffing levels by “natural wastage”. The resulting increase in work loads for remaining staff has been partially offset, at least in the short term, by the conscription of student nurses and police cadets, who can be made to work hard for little pay, and by steadily increasing numbers of voluntary workers. These people effectively mask the effects of job losses, and even of strikes; the fear that voluntary labour may be used for strikebreaking has often inhibited workers from taking industrial action in the past. This is not to deny the useful work performed by voluntary workers, particularly in geriatric and psychiatric care, and care of the mentally handicapped. But the extent to which voluntary labour has replaced paid labour in hospitals of all kinds puts in doubt both the future standard of care in these hospitals and the good-will extended to voluntary workers by employees whose livelihoods they threaten.

It seems likely that the government will take advantage of the present chaos in the public service to urge increased openings for private contractors in NHS ancillary services and for medical insurance schemes. Even before the dispute, the growing proportion of the NHS workforce hired from private companies was a source of concern to workers who feared it would divide and weaken the unions at times of industrial action, as well as masking the effects of redundancies in the regular workforce. In Sweden. 70 per cent of ancillary services are contracted out to private operators; and such an arrangement would be favoured by the present government, since contract workers are easily hired and fired, and are often more flexible than permanent workers.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the dispute is the distinctive attitude of the nurses and midwives. Until now, these workers have been well known for their willingness to perform an exceptionally demanding and highly responsible job, often under totally inadequate conditions and for the most punishing hours, in return for very low rates of pay. They have been eulogised on paper and on the screen as earthly angels with unshakeable traditions of discipline and dedication. It has often been assumed, both by governments and by the public at large, that in keeping with their singularly “feminine” (because caring) role, nurses should also be politically weak, and should do the feminine thing by obeying the (predominantly male) authorities, just as they are expected to obey the (predominantly male) doctors. Nurses have tended to accept this and have therefore become among the most conspicuously exploited of all workers. Offers of sympathetic strike action from non-nursing trade unions often reflect this all too clearly. Such support may come across as tactless or patronising and may actually reinforce the popular prejudice that a "caring profession" must inherently be vulnerable to exploitation. Even when their union colleagues can turn this prejudice to their own advantage — as during this dispute, when health ministers confessed that only popular sympathy for the nurses prevents them from taking a tougher line with the other health service staffs many nurses feel like weak and therefore second-class union members.

PC

Blogger's Note:

I'm not 100% sure who 'PC' was. My initial thought was that it could have been an early pen-name for Carl Pinel, but I've since been told that it could have been (Doctor) Peter Cook. Fingers crossed that one of them reads the blog, and clears the matter up for me.

Correction: Whose house (1986)

From the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the July Socialist Standard, on page 136 in the item Whose House?, we discussed ". . . a proposal announced by Norman Fowler, Social Service Secretary, that unemployed home-owners will lose their right to claim Supplementary Benefit to cover half their mortgage interest payments". This proposal in fact refers to only the first six months of unemployment.

Editors.

Running Commentary: Clerics’ confusion (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clerics’ confusion

Are we all god 's children, or are some of us — women — rather more distant relations of his — nieces perhaps? Are we all made in his immaculate image or are those of us in the female sex less capable than those of the male gender?

The Church of England, which purports to instruct us in morality and keeping our place as docile wage slaves in the capitalist order of things, is having difficulty in deciding whether to allow women the same opportunity to be ordained as men. The recent vote of the Synod, to refer the issue to a panel of 53 bishops, was not so much a decision as a deferment, in the hope that the slickest religious brains in the church can use the next six months or so to cook up a face-saving compromise.

This is all rather curious. The church has been operating for centuries as a bunch of intellectual storm-troopers (although latterly rather more like a company in Dad's Army) for class society. Do they think they might perform better, on behalf of the ruling class, if women were allowed to dress up in those silly clothes, perform the same meaningless rituals and preach to us about the rewards waiting in heaven for all who do their duty for capitalism?

On the other hand, why should any of them oppose women priests? (Graham Leonard, the Bishop of London, hinted broadly that he would leave the church if women are to be ordained. Not exactly a grievous loss to us if he did). Other churches have female priests, as does the Anglican church in some other countries. They don't seem to have any problems in doing the church's work of putting across the baseless, reactionary nonsense of religion.

This brings us to the most important question, of why women should want an equal right to become priests, especially if this means first being insulted by people like Graham Leonard. Of course, it's all part of the drive for sexual equality, for proving that women can do any job as efficiently as men. So far the jobs where this has been proved have included the armed forces (in some states there are female combat troops); the police (watch Hill Street Blues of a Saturday night to see how a girl can handle a truncheon); the prison service (there are now female governors of male prisons in Britain, making sure the prisoners are firmly locked away and punished appropriately); and of course there's the Prime Ministership . . .

Perhaps there are some women libbers who think it is a worthwhile result for their long campaign, that they can now do the same dirty work for capitalism as men. In fact, there are worthier aims to campaign for. Like a society free, not just of sexual inequality and repression but also of the religious hypocrisy which has helped to keep us all — and especially women — enslaved for too long.

Health service priorities

Another recent demonstration of the perverse priorities in capitalism is the statement by Norman Fowler, the Social Services secretary, that he has authorised health authorities to pay managers bonuses of up to £3.960 for making cuts in health service expenditure — cuts that are likely to entail the closure of hospitals.

Health service managers who don't mind acting as the government’s hatchet people can expect an extra £ 1.660 a year if they are general managers (five per cent on top of their annual salary of £33.200); for district managers £3,160 (ten per cent of their maximum of £31.600); and for unit managers. who run individual hospitals, an extra £3.960. or up to 15 per cent of the maximum salary of £26.400.

One of the ways in which the government seeks to justify its programme of hospital closures is through the cosy euphemism of "community care". This is the name given to the plan to remove many long-term sick, disabled and mentally ill from hospitals to be "cared for" in the community. Most people would accept that being looked after by loving friends, family or neighbours backed up by appropriate medical, nursing and social work support is preferable to incarceration in impersonal hospital wards. Unfortunately the reality of "community care" is often very different. Many long-stay hospital patients have remained in hospital precisely because they don't have family or friends willing or able to care for them; social services and community medical provision are already over-stretched and are unable to provide the support that would make "community care" a reality; there are insufficient resources being put into sheltered housing, group homes and day centres. The result is that the reality of "community care" for many people is a lonely, near-destitute existence in a depressing hostel; or homelessness or. for some, relapse into illness and a return to hospital.

Health service managers are being offered bribes to close hospitals, not because they are no longer needed but because meeting the needs of those who make up waiting list statistics is too expensive. Neither are hospitals being closed because "community care" is a more humane alternative. They are being closed because it is a cheaper alternative.

Policing pupils

Over the last few months the government has done its best to try to divert attention away from uncomfortable, but real, issues such as the continuing suffering caused by apartheid in South Africa, the failure of economic policies to stem the rise in unemployment, questions being asked about the nuclear power industry after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and so on. Instead we have had our attention focused on a series of pseudo-issues which can be "solved" easily. Litter in the streets: solution — call in capitalist entrepreneur Richard Branson to start a "Clean-Up Britain" campaign. Hippy peace convoys in the New Forest: mobilise an army of police at five in the morning to break up and disperse the camp. Sexual promiscuity among the young: introduce an amendment to the Education Bill to require teachers to stress moral values and family life in sex education classes.

This amendment to the Education Bill attracted considerable media attention and yet at the same time another two amendments were being tacked on to the Bill which, although they attracted less comment, are perhaps more insidious. They will require school governors to pay attention to the view of Chief Officers of the police when making decisions about school curricula and head teachers to take account of Chief Officers' views when organising lessons.

Are the police going to use their newly-acquired influence to ensure that children are taught about road safety, or the necessity of having lights on their bicycles, or what to do if they witness an accident7 So far the evidence suggests that this is not what the police have in mind. The 1983 report from the schools inspectors suggested that the value (to the police) of closer liaison between the police and schools would be that of "intelligence-gathering":

Police forces generally attach considerable importance to the advantages to be gained through unofficial contact with schools. Home-beat officers “drop in" at school during break for a chat with pupils or teachers . . . Most schools welcome and encourage this informal contact and may ask home-beat officers or juvenile bureau officers to have an unofficial "word" with pupils, or their parents, about whom they feel anxious in relation to criminal activity.

Of course there's an official term for this informal, unofficial contact between police and schools — "multi-agency policing". In practice this means that as many different people as possible are co-opted to do the dirty work of the police and inform on their neighbours and fellow workers through neighbourhood watch schemes and the involvement of social workers. Now it seems that the police, having got their foot in the door of school, are going to be allowed some input into the curriculum too.

Most teachers who attempt to talk about the morality of family life in sex education lessons will simply be laughed down by sophisticated teenagers who have their own moral code. But it's much harder to laugh down a police officer who enters the classroom to glean information through chats with pupils or teachers, or a Chief Constable who insists on his right to vet the curriculum.

Blogger's Note:

Though this Running Commentary column is unsigned, there's a strong chance it was written by Janie Percy-Smith. During this period, she was on the Standard editorial committee and was one of the journal's most prolific writers, and the 'Clerics' confusion' piece indicates that the author is female.

Sting in the Tail: The Ancient Bill (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ancient Bill

In a recent Parliamentary debate Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, revealed that only three out of ten crimes reported in London are likely to be followed up by the police.

This gave Roy Hattersley, Labour's home affairs spokesman an opportunity to berate the present "crime screening" system, whereby priority is given to those crimes most likely to be solved.

Nothing special about this you may think, It is the old parliamentary game of the opposition criticising the government and pretending they could do a better job. But Hattersley went further than this. He was concerned that this would lead to "a decline in trust between public and police."

This view is based on the fallacy that in the past the public had trust in the police. Those workers who took part In the miners' strike would doubtless have something to say to Mr. Hattersley about that!

But distrust in the police force is no modern phenomenon. The first police force in Ancient Athens had to deal with the same problem:

But this gendarmie consisted of SLAVES. The free Athenian considered police duty so degrading that he would rather be arrested by an armed slave than himself have any hand in such despicable work.

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels.

Left-Right Farce

Are you easily confused ? Do you find politics a bit of a mystery ?

If so then don't worry because you're not alone. Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission and obviously a mighty thinker, doesn't know if he is "on the extreme right of the Left or the extreme left of the Right" (The Guardian 16 June).

And according to the media the left wing Labour Party has a right wing (Hattersley, Gould, etc.) while the right wing Tories have a left wing (Heath, Gllmour, etc.).

What all this shows is that different labels cannot hide the basic sameness of outlook of both the "Left" and the "Right".

Source of Value

The price of gold In 1980 reached 850 dollars an ounce but is now around 370 dollars.

Reasons for this collapse include investors' money being lured away from gold by the strong dollar, high interest rates and the recovery of stock markets.

Of course these factors could change tomorrow and gold's price would rise again but there are more fundamental reasons for its decline.

One is the worldwide discovery of new goldfields which have sharply increased its supply. Another is that gold is simply not so valuable nowadays because the amount of labour necessary to produce it has been cut by more efficient mining methods, and labour is what gives every commodity, including gold, its value.

Inflation and Enoch Powell

The government spokesmen are at It again. They are running around the country talking about "inflationary wage demands". The recent increase of 8.8 per cent awarded to rail workers has been greeted with cries of "inflationary wages".

This is of course nonsense. It is not trade union action that causes inflation of the currency. It is governments that cause inflation.

One of the few politicians who recognise this and is not afraid to state it is, surprisingly, Enoch Powell. In the magazine Intercity of July/August he puts the position clearly:

The guilt is not with the public who persist In spending a depreciating currency. The guilt is not — even the suggestion has an old-fashioned sound nowadays — with the trade unions and the workers who obtain "inflationary'’ wage rises or with the employers who pay them.

Guilt there has to be, however, as guilt there will always be when money Is debauched: and the guilt, as usual, Is political, the guilt of politicians who use the power to manipulate the money in pursuit of objectives which, if they were candidly avowed and debated, would be publicly rejected.

Short Memories

Some people have short memories. During a debate in Parliament on the NUR's industrial action, Norman Fowler, the Employment Secretary, told Labour MPs:

The fact is that, however damaging or irresponsible any Industrial action is, you will always support it.

The Guardian 19 July

If Fowler had been dealing with Labour's attitude to strikes when in opposition then his outburst could be excused, but he must know Labour's record when in government.

For example, did Labour governments support strikes by the Dockers in 1949 and 1950, the Seamen in 1966, the Firemen in 1977 or public service employees during the Winter of Discontent ?

These and many other strikes were condemned and the strikers vilified, and this probably explains why no Labour MP told pipsqueak Fowler that no matter the issues in any strike, his party will always support the employers.

In view of these anti-trade union actions by both Labour and the Tories isn't it crazy that the vast majority of trade unionists will vote for them at the next election ? Some people certainly have short memories.

Money Makers

Victor Keegan usually writes clearly about economics in The Guardian so it was disappointing to read his piece of 17 July on the attempted takeover of BAT Industries by James Goldsmith and his cronies.

Keegan writes that the £3.7 billion which the bid added to BAT shares in just three hours ". . . must surely be the fastest bit of wealth creation ever recorded".

A slip of the pen? Not a bit of it, because he goes on - "The Increase in wealth is real in that if the bid succeeds then the shareholders in BAT will be that much richer . . .".

So they will, but the buyers of the shares will be that much poorer so what has that to do with wealth creation?

For Victor Keegan's information, the financial activities of Goldsmith and his ilk merely MAKE MONEY and they are perfectly happy to leave wealth creation - the production of the goods and services society needs - to the useful majority.

A Brave New World

All of us from time to time have tried to envisage what the future will be like.

However it is doubtful if in our worst nightmares we could have envisaged a future such as planned by the Adam Smith Institute. This bunch of hard right Tory headbangers have been turning their collective genius to the problems of crime.

In a report in The Independent dealing with a book "Streets Ahead” published by the Adam Smith Institute we learn:

The quality of city life would be improved by residents "privatising" their streets, mounting security patrols and putting gates at the end of the roads to keep out traffic, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

The only advantage that we can see in the scheme is that we would be able to repel, at our own privatised Checkpoint Charlie, such socially undesirable types as rent collectors, bailiffs and Tory Party canvassers!

Greasy Pole: An Ex-Prime Minister is Missing (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has anyone seen John Major? We are referring to the man who, until a couple of months ago, was leader of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Her Majesty's First Lord of the Treasury and much else besides but who seems to have disappeared without trace. This is especially peculiar because the said John Major was also a staunchly courageous man who always stood up for what he thought was right, who never ran away from a fight, who thrived when the odds were stacked against him.

We know all this because John Major often told us so himself. He told us when he defiantly said that Britain would stay in the ERM because he knew, as Prime Minister, that it was in all our interests that this should be so—and again when, shortly after, he bravely left his Chancellor Norman Lamont to inform us that it was important to us that Britain immediately left the ERM. He told us as one after another of his ministers and supporters in Parliament were revealed as venal and devious, when he steadfastly denied that they had broken the rules only to abandon them to their fate when their exposure became too obvious. And finally when, with breathtaking bravado, all through those long days up to 1 May, he assured us that he would be leading the Tory Party to another stunning electoral victory and a fifth term in office—until, when he saw the size of the Labour majority, he abruptly resigned the leadership to leave what was left of his cabinet to scrabble over the succession.

Bastards 
And since then we have neither seen nor heard anything from the man. None of the contenders in the struggle for the Conservative leadership seemed to think it worthwhile to ask for his opinion or for his endorsement (did they, it is reasonable to ask, fear that Major’s support would be the kiss of death only much more rapid?). Perhaps more to the point, Major himself did not intervene in the contest, although he was once so certain that some of the candidates stood for policies which would be seriously damaging to the standing of British capitalism.

Remember, for example, the time when he memorably described the likes of Peter Lilley and John Redwood as “bastards”. When he sneered that whenever he got close to colleagues like these he could hear the flapping of white coats. At the time, this was supposed to be John Major being brave and scathingly witty. But if he thought like that why did he not speak out during the fight for the leadership, to warn the Tory MPs of the perils of voting for someone who was mad enough to stand for policies which Major considered insanely damaging to British capitalism?

Of course one explanation is that Major is concreted into a prolonged sulk, bitterly angry with his party for making his life as Prime Minister so miserable and then catapulting his government into so historically huge a defeat. There are one or two comments to be made on this possibility. First of all, what kind of parliamentary leader is it, who can react in this petulant way to the give and take of political life? Would he, in one of his more misanthropic withdrawals, have sulkily decided to press the button to start World War Three? Or sullenly decide one day to go down to the House to own up to the facts about what capitalism does to its people and about the impotence of all its political parties to control the system?

Fed up 
Secondly, if Major were so enraged in his dissatisfaction, what was he doing leading the Tory Party into the election, trying to persuade us to vote them back for a fifth term and obstinately declaring, until the votes had been counted and the enormity of their defeat was undeniable, that they would win and he would be back in Number Ten? He wasn't sulking when he wrote in the Conservative manifesto that the Tory government since 1979 were ". . . among the most successful in British peacetime history"—forgetting that some of the ministers in those governments were "bastards" who should have been carted off to psychiatric hospitals. He wasn’t sulking when he signed his name under the slogan “You can only be sure with the Conservatives”—although he did not elaborate on what we could be sure of.

Perhaps Major is simply fed up with politics, with the bump and grind of it all and of recurrent, insoluble problems. Perhaps now he fancies offering himself for one of those posh jobs in the City or those part-time directorships which pay a lot more than what a minister gets. (Of course one problem in this is that what with all those suddenly unemployed Tory ex-MPs the competition is a lot sharper than it used to be.) He would not be the first.

Exposed 
Norman Fowler, for example, resigned in order, as he famously put it. to spend more time with his family—or should he have said "while the going is good”? As it turned out Fowler spent more time in various boardrooms and is still to be seen doing his bit to influence the running of the Tory Party. Nigel Lawson, after his "boom" had been exposed in the anger and despair of thousands of people who had been seduced by the false dream of capitalism in endless prosperity, symbolically lost a lot of weight and audaciously cashed in by writing a book on dieting—which some of those workers who had had to tighten their belts may have found grimly amusing. It is difficult to imagine what Major would do. Could he go back to the bank? That might work provided his job did not involve any economic forecasting. Try again to be a bus conductor? What with cuts in funding and in wages there aren’t many of them left. Go back to the obscurity of Brixton? Perhaps—if they'll have so spectacular a failure.

And that really is what it is all about—politicians who talk to us so confidentially about their ability, their unique schemes, to control capitalism but who are found wanting when their facile assurances are exposed. John Major is a historical example of this. Has anyone seen him? Has anyone seen one of the more wretchedly exposed politicians of recent times?

Ivan

Caught In The Act: Out of touch (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Out of touch

Willie Whitelaw went down to the mid-Staffordshire by-election to help the Tory candidate but probably lost him a bucketful of votes when he bought a box of chocolates and grandly said he wanted only the pound notes in the change. The shop girl had to remind him gently that we use only pound coins now—the notes went out years ago.

Being out of touch is one of the criticisms being levelled now at the Thatcher government—out of touch over Poll Tax. mortgages, interest rates, privatisation, the National Health Service . . . They are so out of touch that they lost a rock-solid seat like mid-Staffordshire— and that to a Labour candidate whose pre-packaged. master-minded campaign was openly contemptuous of the voters. Like football teams—or rather like their managers' excuses—when governments are out of touch they are also out of luck. Whitelaw's well-meant blunder was hungrily recorded by the news-hounds who accompanied him on his sweetshop safari, to be retold to an increasingly bewildered and irritated electorate. Thatcher's standing has crashed, as if she has fallen off a cliff, from that of a woman who single-handedly beat the Argentinians. Arthur Scargill and inflation and who then went on to persuade the people of eastern Europe of the benefits of McDonald's burgers and privatised water, into that of a reckless and stubborn dogmatist who would do everyone a favour by applying for her pension and her bus pass.

Squabbles

Of course there are still some hard-core Tories who pretend that all these difficulties are, to use one of Nigel Lawson's unhappier expressions, a “blip" and that all is in fact well within the government. But these loyalists ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears and what they read in their favourite newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun. To begin with, there is the squabble over the leadership, before it is officially available to squabble over, between Heseltine, Tebbit and Howe. Not that any of them ever admit that the leadership is in question or that they would ever dream of opposing Thatcher. It is just that, in all modesty, if the party were ever to be in need of another prime minister who will give his all in the service of this Grand Old Country, well perhaps they have something to offer, perhaps they could be persuaded . . Since all these hopefuls also say that they wholeheartedly support Thatcher's policies and will do their utmost to ensure that we get another dose of Tory government under Thatcher at the next general election it is rather difficult to see why anyone should take them seriously.

Another symptom of the government's malaise has been the sudden eagerness of some of its prominent members to desert it. We refer to the moving examples of Peter Walker and Norman Fowler, both of them the slickest of political operators but who are now revealed as sentimental family men. Walkers survival through the years of opposition to Thatcher, while all around him other ministers were being picked off to crash into back-bench obscurity, must rank with the world's most thrilling escape yarns. Norman Fowler had some of the stickiest jobs in the Cabinet, some of its dirtiest work directly connected with class conflict and working class poverty but he adroitly rode most of his problems by setting up enquiries. By the time the enquiry reported Fowler was off to some other ministry, leaving an exceptionally unpleasant can to be carried by his successor— like the hapless John Moore at the Department of Social Security. Walker and Fowler have left the government, earnestly professing undying loyalty to it. on the excuse that they need to spend more time in their sumptuous homes with their lucky, secure families—a lot luckier than the families who desperately try to make the best of the cruel reforms which Fowler initiated at the DSS. Does anyone believe these reasons? Perhaps there should be an enquiry to find out.

Labour ecstatic

Naturally the Labour leaders are ecstatic about these developments as each day brings yet another crisis for the Tories. As they scent the government's impending doom they are presumably spending less and less time with their families. All that is needed, they happily burble, is one last electoral heave to dispense with the Tories and then we shall have a government of realism and humanity. People who worry about how they will pay the Poll Tax. or about whether the Building Society will be asking for their house back, or what will happen if their doctor's budget runs out just as they need some treatment. may find this an attractive vision. A reference to the history of Labour government should deflate their misplaced optimism.

In the middle of 1968 the Wilson government were facing a crisis which was remarkably similar to that of the Tories today. They had been returned to power, on a surge of expectation, with an increased majority in 1966. But two years later they were in an economic crisis with a persistent deficit in the balance of payments; they were in continual conflict with the unions over the statutory wage-freeze (the BOAC pilots were constrained to make a little history in this); they had lost a series of by-elections, the opinion polls said that only 27 per cent of people were satisfied with Wilson as prime minister and that if there were a general election then the Labour Party could expect to hang on to only 50 seats.

Plots

George Brown had finally managed to resign from the government because he objected to being left out when they were discussing economic crises (apparently he still wasn't bored by them) and Ray Gunter left the Cabinet grumbling about it being ‘overweight with intellectuals". It wasn't clear whether Gunther thought the government's crises could have been avoided with a bit of educational subnormality. In any case his departure was not deeply mourned. There were active plots to ease Wilson out of Number Ten, on the theory that he alone was responsible for capitalism's waywardness, encouraged by the Times, the Observer, the Economist and. under the deranged guidance of Cecil King, the Daily Mirror. Meanwhile, the Tories busily promoted their own candidate for prime minister as a "Man of Integrity". It was, of course, Ted Heath. Yes. it was rather a long time ago.

The Wilson government's response was to do just about the only thing they could do—plough on patching things up as best they could while pretending that the problems were only temporary provided everyone kept their nerve. Wilson soothingly assured the nation ". . . new and spectacular evidence from all over the country showing the robust strength of British industries" —rather like Tory ministers today who bleat about the "underlying strength of the British economy" or words to that effect. The Labour Party got out a mid-term manifesto which admitted some mistakes but insisted that basically the government was on the right lines—which is what the less obdurate Tories now try, when they harp on the violence among Poll Tax protests—to divert attention from their current problems by setting up a conflict, between the Commons and the Lords, a revival of the famous battle cry of Peers versus People.

Good and bad luck

What this shows is that governments do not basically differ. They all grapple with the problems of capitalism which are always beyond their powers to influence significantly. How the voters judge governments is based largely on what might loosely be called luck. Governments have their good times when, perhaps to their surprise, capitalism's affairs go well for them and the voters love them. And they have their bad times when the crises come one after another and the voters switch their support to another, equally ineffectual, style of reforming capitalism. These are the times when the cracks show, the squabbles become public, when some ministers suddenly want to go home to their wives and families and others can't remember things like what currency to use in a shop.

Ivan

Running Commentary: Royal parasites (1986)

The Running Commentary Column from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Royal parasites

Two things were blindingly obvious in the first television reports on the engagement of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew. The first was the total absence of even the feeblest note of dissension. It would have seemed, to a viewer from another planet, that the entire nation were ecstatic over the betrothal of these two brainless parasites. Not even the most cautious voice was allowed to suggest in the most tentative way that perhaps there might just be another point of view.

When so resolute and comprehensive a blanketing of opinion is practised by the state capitalist dictatorships of Eastern Europe, the media in this country react with a contemptuous scepticism. And this is, after all, democratic Britain where there is a free and equal opportunity for all attitudes to be expressed . . .

The second thing was the apparently boundless and seemingly invulnerable confidence of the couple in their own class superiority. What jolly fun, while the world is still being fed with pictures of the pitifully starving children of Africa, to tell everyone about this prince making you eat profiteroles at a banquet! How ripping, soon after a cold spell which killed so many old workers who could not afford to heat their miserable homes, to show which class you belong to by spending £28,000 on an engagement ring!

In the same news bulletin, the cameras visited a school where blind and deaf children are being taught to communicate with others. This is real, necessary, demanding work, performed by highly skilled people who, as far as anyone can under the bestial capitalist system, operate to an approximation of the morals which socialism will have — that human needs should be the only reason for human activity.

The relief from seeing this school was only partial; this brief hint of how a humane society will deal with its unavoidable problems was in all too sickening a contrast to what is happening now under capitalism, when human needs are the lowest priority. In a world infested with misery, overshadowed by a desperate peril, the media were preoccupied with the irrelevant antics of a useless couple wallowing in their class privilege to the point of disfigurement.

It could only make anyone concerned for the welfare of the human race seethe with anger for what is happening now and with impatience for what will happen in the classless future.

Parsimony

No, not houses to live in; not much-needed hospitals or schools — not even prisons. Street shelters are to be built for claimants in the queue at the offices of the DHSS. The Guardian (4 March 1986) quotes Peter Jones, branch secretary of the Civil and Public Services Association:

  Some days we have 200 to 300 people claiming benefit . . . Many people start queueing at 7am for the office to open. They often have to wait outside all day before they can be seen and if they arrive later than 10.30am they are too late to be served.
. . . Half the staff in offices are in their probation year. There is an 80 per cent turnover for clerical officers and a 100 per cent turnover among clerical assistants. Many staff are taking Valium because they can t stand it — others are turning to drink for relief. . .

However there are some in government circles who consider staff at the DHSS underemployed. The new Social Security Bill put forward by Norman Fowler and currently being examined by a Standing Committee of MPs has found a new job for them (Guardian 12 March 1986). To save government funds, instead of grants being made for the purchase of necessities such as furniture to people with savings less than £500. members of their families and even friends and neighbours are to be approached by the DHSS to ask if they are willing to lend the money.

Apart from the ethics of this exercise in parsimony, no thought seems to have been given as to how long this would take, how the already over-worked staff are going to find the time to do this, nor how it should be done. Will these good people be invited to attend the local DHSS office? Will they be visited or written to? How often will they be reminded that a reply is required? How long must the claimant wait before the DHSS pays out in the absence of a willing private lender? There is also the possibility that friends and good neighbours who have been helping in other ways might back off when they find that they are going to be pressurised into lending money which they have saved for other things or may not even have. Will they have a means test to establish if they can afford to make the loan? Who will decide who is to be asked? And of course it is most unlikely that those already on supplementary benefit would be able to repay the debt. And this is called Social Security . . . On the other hand, perhaps it could be called a return to Victorian values.

Class apart?

So, to the consternation of the leadership of at least one of them, the two main teachers' unions are inching towards some form of unification — in thought if not as yet in deed. About time too, some might add. But, given the circumstances, exactly what good will it do? Listen in on an average staff-room discussion of labour problems and you will shortly begin to wonder how it is that so many teachers can associate with so downmarket an institution as a trade union at all. (Indeed, since in at least three titles the terms "association" is preferred to "union" perhaps many teachers feel they do not).

For if there is any one weakness that strikes most fatally at the heart of genuine social understanding on the part of your average pedagogue it is what Karl Marx described as a false consciousness of class. This refusal to identify, consciously or subconsciously, with their fellow workers is presumably what enables so many teachers to troop unquestioningly into a hymn-and-prayer session every morning (how many other workers would put up with such rubbish?). This blindness helps them to pass off, with massive imbalance, the loaded "history" and social-scientific half-truths of our ruling class' approved texts while blithely castigating identical practices in the — so-called — communist world.

Ordinary workers though they may be, obliged as are any other wage-slaves to sell their skills to an employer in exchange for wages (sorry! salaries!), far too many of them lack the enlightenment to do other than snipe at manual workers and their union spokespersons. (Scargill is a very dirty word indeed in many staff-rooms).

What. then, is the answer? To start with, no comprehensive solution is possible given the continued existence of world capitalism However, teachers — indeed, any group of workers — can do little to alleviate the consequences of their own exploitation if they wilfully ignore their own class condition, preferring to hide behind a mask of "respectability".

Fowler reorganises poverty (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Welfare State was created on the basis of the recommendations contained in the Beveridge report, the declared intention was to abolish "Want", to provide a "cradle to grave" system of income maintenance so that no-one would fall below what was deemed to be the poverty line as a result of sickness, unemployment, old age or raising a family. Since that time the system of welfare benefits has been altered and added to, new benefits have been tacked on and others cut off in accordance with changing economic conditions and the prevailing political climate. At present the Social Security system is a ramshackle maze of numerous benefits often carrying different conditions for entitlement: insurance based benefits, means-tested benefits, discretionary payments, payments as of right, universal benefits, selective benefits. It is administered by thousands of civil servants working in different government departments. themselves under pressure from the increasing numbers of claimants, cuts in their staff numbers and the complexity of applying a system which few fully understand. Many civil servants dealing with claimants in social security offices are themselves in receipt of benefits such as Family Income Supplement (FIS) because their pay is so low. At the same time there are millions of people in Britain who continue to live in a state of poverty and insecurity despite social security benefits and have to suffer the additional indignity of investigation of their lives by social security officials. Beveridge's declared intention has dearly not been fulfilled.

The present minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, Norman Fowler, has promised us in his Social Security Green Paper (Reform of Social Security: Programme for Change, HMSO) “the most substantial re-examination of the social security system since Beveridge". The government's particular concerns in conducting this review were as follows:

Rising Costs: the Social Security budget presently stands at 40 billion pounds. Since the Conservatives took office there has been a 30 per cent increase in real terms due to both higher levels of unemployment and more people becoming entitled to means-tested benefits because of low income.

Poor Targetting: the government believes that benefits are going to people who are not genuinely in need while those paid to poor people with families are too low.

Work Incentives: people claiming state benefits are thought to be deterred from seeking employment since some are as well off. or even better off, claiming benefits than they would be were they in work.

Complexity: the system is not fully understood by either claimants or staff.

Underlying these declared concerns is the belief that rising social security costs will threaten the carrot of tax cuts that the Tories have dangled before the electorate for so long and hence adversely affect their chances of re-election. They also reflect the so-called Victorian values that the government seeks to uphold; namely, the notion that individuals should provide for themselves rather than have the state do so and that families should be responsible for their dependants. This totally ignores the lessons learnt in the Victorian era. which eventually gave rise to Beveridge, namely that people cannot provide for themselves or their families in capitalist society when they are likely to become the victims of unemployment through no fault of their own, or of long term sickness, itself frequently related to poverty, bad housing and unhealthy working conditions.

The new measures proposed in the Green Paper do not represent the radical restructuring of the benefits system that was promised. The exact impact of the changes in terms of who will gain or lose in financial terms is difficult to assess since no figures for benefit levels were provided. But it can safely be assumed from this that there is no good news for the poor — if the changes were going to benefit substantial numbers of people then the figures would have been given prominence. Instead the government does not propose to give exact figures until existing benefits have received their annual uprating in line with inflation. The intention can only be to obscure the facts.

Despite this lack of hard evidence in the Green Paper two observations can be made. Firstly the proposed changes are to be introduced at "nil-cost''. This means that no extra money will be made available for the social security system as a whole, so if any benefits are to be increased they will have to be paid for by cuts in other benefits. Thus "targetting" of benefits, primarily towards poor families, will mean taking money from one group of poor workers in order to give it to another group of poor workers who are deemed to be more "deserving". The only result of this will be that many already poor workers will get even poorer. Secondly, no attempt has been made to examine the system of "fiscal welfare" whereby the very rich are subsidised by the state by means of huge tax concessions. We can be quite sure that their benefits will not be reduced in order to "target" resources on those most in need. In fact, as suggested earlier, at least part of the reason for this whole exercise is to provide the cash for increased state benefits to the better off by means of tax cuts.

It is only too easy when looking at social security to let our sense of outrage at the cynical and callous ways of governments cloud the fundamental question of why we have a system of Social Security at all.

Capital needs workers, but it doesn't need us to be employed as wage slaves all our lives. First we must be trained and socialised as children within the family and education system and then, when we slow down, capital wants us to be replaced by younger, faster workers. At other times during our working lives we may be sacked when our skills or labour power become temporarily or permanently surplus to capital's requirement. The most efficient way for the capitalist class to maintain us during those times when we are not directly producing surplus value is through a state scheme of income maintenance. The type of system provided will be determined by economic factors, the prevailing political climate and electoral considerations. What the social security system is not intended to do is to meet workers' needs in any meaningful sense. Benefits are fixed at the lowest level that political considerations will permit forcing claimants into a state of real poverty. To be forced to make a choice between paying an electricity bill and buying your child a new pair of shoes is not meeting needs. To force the elderly to choose between turning on the heating and eating a good meal is not meeting needs. To force the young unemployed to return to family homes by stopping housing benefits is not meeting people’s needs. Life on social security benefits is insecure, deprived in both material and social terms and subject to humiliating bureaucratic interference.

The Fowler review will not change these features of the system at all. It is a particularly blatant example of manipulation of social policy to meet short term economic and political ends, with callous disregard for the hardships caused to the poorest workers. Workers don't need a review of social security. What we do need is a review of the system of society which creates the need for such benefits in the first place. That system of society capitalism cannot meet the needs of the working class, whether they are in work or out of work, sick or healthy, old or young; it cannot meet our needs because that is not its intention. Its purpose is profit, and production, distribution and all the supporting services that maintain it are directed towards that end. In that total process workers are just more cogs in the wheel that must be maintained in reasonable working order at minimum cost, forced to work or not as and when capital dictates. But unlike machines, workers have the capacity to reproduce themselves, thus providing a never-ending supply of new workers to feed capital. Workers also have the unique ability of creating more wealth than it costs to produce their labour power. And it is part of this surplus value, created by workers ourselves, that is used to provide us with state benefits when capital does not pay us a wage or salary.

Any number of reviews of social security, or simplifications or changes in benefit entitlement cannot eradicate this crucial feature of capitalist society. Workers will continue to live in poverty and watch their children grow up deprived of the things that make life worthwhile until we, the working class, organise together not to change the benefit system but the whole basis of society so that the sole aim of production will be to meet people's needs. But above all socialism will enable everyone to participate democratically in running society, in making decisions that affect us and our communities. No longer will we be impoverished and rendered impotent by the activities of bureaucrats and politicians.

Janie Percy-Smith