Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres says that 800 million people around the world are living in extreme poverty… [He] had previously stated that nearly three billion people are living in inadequate housing conditions.

[8am media]

In Shanxi, the province that sits at the heart of China’s coal-mining industry, there’s long been a saying: ‘Only go down a coal pit when you have no other way out’. For decades, life in these pits was intertwined with tragedy. It became so common that it gave rise to other sayings: about how miners were ‘exchanging their lives for money’ or ‘staking their lives for tomorrow’ when they ventured into underground tunnels where they died from gas explosions, flooding and shaft collapses. Over the past decade, safety reforms steadily erased the industry’s deadly reputation, and those days were thought to be behind China – until 22 May, when a blast at the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi killed 82 people and injured more than 120 others.

[BBC]

A leading Nicaraguan indigenous leader has died after being detained by the ruling authoritarian regime for nearly three years. Brooklyn Rivera, who founded the central American nation’s indigenous movement Yatama, died due to ‘physical and neurological deterioration’ linked to a Covid-19 infection, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health stated on Sunday. The government, headed by President Daniel Ortega, took 15 hours to confirm the death and are refusing to release the 73-year-old’s body to his family, opposition media report. The Nicaraguan government is routinely accused of political oppression, and Rivera is one of a growing number of dissidents to die in custody. 

[BBC]

Greta Thunberg… has said little publicly about the recent protests in Iran. Similar criticisms have been directed at a number of prominent left-wing intellectuals and activists in Europe and North America, including Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Alain Badiou, Richard Falk, and others. The pattern extends beyond silence. Judith Butler, the American philosopher and feminist theorist, has previously expressed support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, describing them as progressive social movements that form part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle.

[International Policy Digest]

An elderly man spent days on the floor of his HMO while maggots infested wounds in his legs before he was discovered and later died, a report has found. The 69-year-old from Oldham, named ‘John’ in a safeguarding review, was discharged from hospital just two weeks before the fall that led to his death … The recently published report found the local authority and medical professionals at Royal Oldham Hospital ‘missed opportunities’ to support John. Prior to his death, John was treated for severe malnourishment and an acute kidney injury. At the time, he shared with staff that he ‘did not feel safe in his home’, as he lived in a HMO with five other people, all of whom had serious alcohol and substance abuse issues.

[Oldham Evening Chronicle]

 

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

SPGB Snippets: Looking forward to retirement? (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

June 3, 2026

Workers toil not just to live, eat and raise a family, but also to prepare for retirement by building a pension pot. However, recent reports from the Pensions Commission have argued that fifteen million people in the UK are not saving nearly enough to have a secure retirement, even by the miserly standards of capitalism.

Nearly half of working-age adults are not saving into a pension at all, with just 4% of ‘self-employed’ workers doing so. Future retirees may well be worse off than today’s.

Not only does capitalism dominate people’s working lives, the pressures of daily life also make it much harder to get ready to live comfortably after their days of toil and exploitation are over.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mojtaba Khamenei… successor to his father Ali Khamenei, is reported to own the high-end Kensington properties through associates. The apartments, located on the sixth and seventh floors of a building close to Kensington Palace, are believed to be worth more than £50 million. 

[The Standard]

‘I can’t really afford to take full baths anymore. It’s hard work, keeping yourself clean with a bit of water and a flannel’, the 78-year-old, from London, told Big Issue. 

[Big Issue]

According to UNICEF’s 2024 global estimates, more than 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone female genital mutilation. This alarming number reflects not progress but regression. Despite decades of advocacy by the United Nations and other organizations, achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate FGM is out of reach. These statistics boorishly underscore not only the persistence of the FGM practices but also the depth of the systemic, cultural, and political forces that continue to perpetuate FGM. 

[Independent]

‘If the city is saying they’re building the wall to protect people of the N2, why can’t they take the people out of the area to a place where there’s no crime?’ asked Nomqondiso Ntsethe, a 65-year-old pensioner, who shares a shack in Taiwan with 13 children and grandchildren.  ‘It’s a political game’, she said. ‘They’re separating the poor from the rich. It’s segregation’… Mayor Hill-Lewis, who last year put the city’s housing backlog at about 600,000, has remained defiant amid the latest criticism… ‘This barrier was built 20 years ago when the ANC was in charge of Cape Town – the same party now hysterically and hypocritically shouting about our plan to fix the security barrier to keep the people of Cape Town safer’, he said.

 [Al Jazeera]

Atlas has averaged $2m (£1.49m) a month in bunker sales this year, but Hubbard predicts this could rise to $50m (£37m) next month. ‘Bunker building is like being a farmer. When it’s time for harvest, you have to reap all you can.’ The Texan insists he is ‘not the type who hopes for war’, but admits ‘from my point of view, I don’t have to advertise very much [at the moment]’.  ‘Now that they’ve been bombed, they’re all going to want shelters. It’s just a fact of life’, he says. 

[The Telegraph]

The working class does not have to choose sides! The proletarians of the whole world must not succumb to the siren calls of nationalism or take sides with either camp, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. All nations, all bourgeoisies, whether democratic or authoritarian, left or right, populist or ‘progressive’, are warmongers. Despite the pompous rhetoric of hypocritical morality, pitting ‘civilisation’ against ‘barbarism’, ‘good’ against ‘evil’, ‘aggressors’ against ‘victims’, wars are nothing more than clashes between rival bourgeoisies. In these ever-increasing conflicts, it is always the exploited who are taken hostage and sacrificed for the interests of those who oppress and kill them. To end wars, capitalism must be overthrown! 

[ICC]

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

SPGB Snippets: Poverty grows (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

April 8, 2026

There are over 13 million people in the UK living in relative poverty (which means in a household with income below 60% of the average income). This includes four million children and nearly 1.7 million pensioners. The figures are for the year to March last year, during which the total rose by half a million.

The Work and Pensions Minister described the situation as ‘wholly unacceptable’. This is right of course, but, like all politicians, she has no understanding of the causes. It’s due to capitalism, a system which, in the midst of potential abundance, relies on poverty and inequality as a means of coercing people into wage labour and hence exploitation.

The "Prosperous" Working Class (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are often told by people who do not really understand its meaning, that poverty no longer exists. Largely they mistake poverty for destitution, and think in terms of pre-war days of dole-queues, hunger marches, and the general hardship suffered from not being able to afford sufficient food, clothing and shelter.

Workers who feel secure in their jobs at the moment must bear in mind that the era of full employment was started by the last world war, when a vast amount of industry was smashed up, and the world market at the end of it had six years dearth of consumer goods to make up, and, all the while, massive preparations have gone on for World War III.

If our measure of prosperity is to be that we have all got "jobs,” it still leaves Capitalism, with a great deal to answer for. In the first place, our jobs are not really “ours ” at all, because they can be taken away from us, and today, just as before the war, how long they last depends on how long our employers can sell, at a profit, the things we produce.

Neither poverty, nor destitution, has been abolished, and these evils of Capitalism only smite the useful people of society—the working class. Poverty is not something which depends on what Government is in power, it is a permanent condition of the wage-earning class.

Poverty can be recognised in the existence of hire-purchase; it can be seen amongst the crowds of window-shoppers looking in at the things they cannot afford; it is the reason why workers “save” for holidays, Xmas, clothing or furniture; why they live in low-rent homes; take out insurance against their old age; shop more in Brixton than in Bond Street; buy one necessary thing, and forego others; and generally live from pay-day to pay-day.

There are many other instances of the condition of poverty, but the above will be sufficient to take any heads from the clouds, in order to take a closer look at the world we workers “live’ in. Destitution is always a threatening possibility to wage-earners, as their only source of income is through finding hirers, and, as we shall see, all kinds of dire consequences can follow when the hired are dispensed with. The old age pensioners, the disabled, and the sick, ca still be found destitute, on the pittance doled out by the “Welfare State.” .

One example of the prosperity we are all supposed to be enjoying, comes from a report in the Daily Express of 15th October, 1956. In Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, the Chamber of Trade is starting a “Black Book” of customers who do not pay. “The idea is to protect traders from people who run up accounts at one shop, and then open accounts at others, when they cannot pay off the first In another town, housewives may be secretly investigated, and find it difficult to open accounts at a second shop, after exhausting credit at the first.” 

Mr. Raymond Broad, President of the Chamber said:—

“ Many people who formerly paid cash now want credit. Things are getting more difficult for traders."

" Some women in Axminster have been going 10 miles to Honiton, to run up new bills. But a woman who leaves her grocer, when he asks for his money, will find her new grocer more cautious,’ said Mr. Herbert Jeffery, Secretary of Axminster Chamber of Commerced."

We are sure to be told that people who cannot pay the grocer must be buying television sets or motor-cycles but, after 17 years of full employment, for workers to have to choose between paying the radio shop or the grocer, is poverty.

The Daily Express, a day later, carried an even more remarkable story. After we have been told, by Eden and others, of the terrible fate in store for "us,” if “we” lose the Suez Canal, the Express gives an account of what happened to the family of a reservist, who was called back while the Canal dispute raged. The income of Mrs. Bedford was "chopped from £14.16.0 a week, to 16/- for children’s allowances. Food ran out. Her three little daughters, Anne, aged five, Christine, three. Denise, two —began to fret, and then weep with hunger.” The mother “broke open the gas meter at her home in St. Paul’s Road, Middlesbrough. She was found out. Yesterday, she was conditionally discharged, on payment of 15/- costs. The electricity authorities have cut off the current, because she has not paid the last bill.”

It is indeed ironic that the same Capitalist State machine, which took the man away from his work, was responsible for cutting off his electricity, and imposing the Court costs on his wife. Even more remarkable, in view of the story of the Canal being vital to our survival, and the fact that we are told that the public own nationalised electricity.

The eventual allowance from the Army was £4 0s. 6d. per week, and, being a member of the working class, with no property income, Mrs. Bedford had “9d. left out of the allowance, after she had paid:—

Rent                  £1    8   9

Clothes on credit      £2    0   0 

Furniture, H.P. ... 11   0

Total                   £3 19  9

This woman had a child “ recovering from polio,” and “was expecting another baby.” Before her allowance arrived, she had taken sheets and blankets off one of the beds, and gone to the pawnbroker with them. “ He allowed me 18/-. With that, I bought bread, margarine, and milk, and gave them to the kids. They were ravenous.”

The fact that workers do not own the Empire, the oil, or the Country, is often tragically brought home. As the S.P.G.B. pointed out at its formation,“ the machinery of Government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the Capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers.” (See clause 6 of our Declaration of Principles).

The last example we will give here, is of how the “benevolent” State treats wage-slaves from whom profits cannot be made, as they are too old. It is from a letter to the Sunday Graphic for October 14th, 1956:—

“There are large groups of humans, men and women, who suddenly cease to belong economically to the everyday world that swirls around them, almost over them. They grope and scheme for a little food, a little warmth, and, above everything else, a little security.”

The writer is a pensioner, aged 71, with a semi-invalid wife.

“ We receive a weekly sum of £3 18s. 6d., for all our needs. After budgeting for rent, gas, coal, and clothes, it leaves 6s. a day between us and starvation. And the dread of the winter is on us. The little extra something an old body craves in the winter, is beyond the few shillings needed for sheer necessities to keep alive.”

After going to a rally of the Old Age Pensioners’ Association, and listening to the speeches by the High Sheriff, a padre, and others, about what must be done, "Hope surged again,” and, after the collection was taken, “I trudged back home. My twopenny bus fare was in the plate. The heart and soul shrink from the dreary, hopeless future that stares bleakly at us. For how much longer now? Who knows? Who cares?”

As Socialists, we care about the poverty suffered by workers. We also know how long it will last. It will last as long as the working class are content to work for wages; for as long as they look for solutions to their problems within Capitalism.

Whilst a minority owns the means of production, and profit remains their goal, older workers, who have slowed down, will always have to make way for younger, faster ones. Consideration of human suffering and hardship is a luxury which Capitalism must always place as a poor second to profits. It is only with Socialism that the peoples’ needs will count first

When the means of production are held by society in common, the fruits of our social labour will be available for use. Goods of all kinds will be freely distributed without the barrier of money.

If only workers, young and old, would ponder the possibilities of this sure but simple solution, instead of allowing competing reformist parties to deceive them into the continued support of Capitalism, the misery, poverty, destitution, insecurity, and war threats, with which our whole lives are cursed at present, would be banished for ever.

Harry Baldwin

The queer side. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under a capitalist regime one is either exploiter or exploited ; there is ever a gulf between the two sections of society, and that gulf widens as the system developes. The affairs of every-day life give the lie to those who, from ignorance or interest, promulgate the idea of the identity of interest between robber and robbed.

* * *

“Before an audience of 10,000 sightseers and guarded by a band of 300 police, Lord Deceis has been married to Miss V. Gould, heiress of Mr. G. Gould . . Lord Deceis is 45 years of age, his bride 18. . . A cake costing £200 was imported for the purpose from Scotland. . . . The bride wore a dress of white satin embroidered with silver . . and a rope of diamonds.”

* * *

“That the worst of slums may exist even in fashionable Folkestone was proved at an inquest on the body of an old woman, of 72 named Mary Sellars. The evidence proved that she died under the most terrible conditions of suffering and neglect. ‘In a small attic 8 ft. x 10 ft., which contained as furniture an iron bedstead, an old chair and a pail,’ said the coroner’s officer, ‘he found the deceased, in the midst of the squalor, lying naked save for the protection of a pair of trousers, an old skirt and a coat thrown over her.’ The deceased had suffered from pleurisy and peritonitis, and had not had any food for hours before death.

“The husband was a corporation labourer earning 18s. a week. The coroner censured him severely, and the jury returned a verdict that ‘Death was due to natural causes.’ ”

* * *

The above cuttings are from the same issue of Reynold’s Newspaper (12.2.11). The first refers to a marriage of members of the capitalist class—people who have never performed a necessary function in the production of the wealth they waste. The latter records the death of one of the exploited—a member of the class that produce the wealth that loafers such as Lord Deceis may roam the world in luxury and comfort, and that the daughters of millionaires may purchase titles.

Such is the evidence of the “identity of interest.” Wealth produced by one class whose members starve, and owned by another class whose members squander.

* * *

“Death was due to natural causes.” It is, of course, natural for a person to die under such conditions, but are the conditions natural ?

It was natural for a policeman to die after receiving a bullet in a vital part, but the twelve “good men and true” returned a different verdict. But then the policeman was a defender of private property, while the woman was only a worn-out toiler. More evidence of the “identity of interest.”

* * *

A writer in the same paper says “Pauperism is the question of the hour. . . The public mind is aroused to the importance of the subject and measures heroic are advocated in order to strike at the root of the evil.” He also quotes Dr. Chalmers as having said “It is thus, then, by a sort of festering and spreading operation, the sphere of destitution is constantly widening in every parish where the benevolence of love has been superseded by the benevolence of law. The following might be given as an example of the benevolence of love.

* * *

The Evening Times, reporting an interview with a Mr. Mumford, chairman of the Paddington Works Committee, quoted that gentleman as follows :

“These figures might be given as an approximate estimate of the numbers of willing to work “out of works” in the building trade :

Painters 3,823

Plasterers 297

Bricklayers 847

Carpenters 597

Navvies 1,269

Labourers 5,254

“It is a simple proposition in the economy of labour to suggest that housewives get their houses in order early this season in order to give work to the painter and others, and to save the extra money they will have to pay when the men are in demand for the Coronation week.”

* * *

The usual form of “benevolence.” Get the work done now, primarily in the interest of the poor unemployed workman, but incidentally—quite incidentally of course—to save money. That means that the same amount of work will be spread over a longer period at a reduced cost. It means that, in the long run, less wages will be paid. That appears to me to be a good method of increasing poverty—but then, of course, the more poverty there is the greater scope for the “benevolence of love,” for this particular sentiment, like appetite, “glows by what it feeds on.”

* * *

The other brand of benevolence can be witnessed in the spectacle of the kind Liberal Government endeavouring to persuade the aged pauper to leave the workhouse and starve outside on five bob a week. According to a writer in the London Quarterly Review, the cost of London indoor paupers, including all charges, amounts to £34 15s. 11¾d. per head per annum. The benevolence of the law offers them £13, and that fierce democrat, Lloyd George, swells his manly buzzum and talks about “sweeping poverty from every hearth.”

* * *

The fringe of the evil is not touched by such reform, much less does it “strike at the root.” The cause, as Lloyd George admits, “lies deep down in the social system,” where also that antagonism of interest finds its root—in the ownership by a class of the means of life. It is indeed questionable whether George & Co. could do anything if they desired to, as all things work to the interest of those who own.

* * *

A contributor to the Nineteenth Century Magazine (Jan., 1911) says that the introduction of State maintenance means that the husband gives the wife less for housekeeping because the children are now provided for by the benevolence of the State. True, and the unemployed worker will reduce the price of the said husband’s labour-power by the amount so saved in order to obtain a job, and so in a short space of time the average wage will suffer a depreciation equal to the diminution of the burden placed upon it.

Nor does it necessarily follow that money wages will drop. The cost of living of the working class is continually on the increase. The Board of Trade Labour Gazette (January, 1911) shows a steady increase in the price of necessaries. The price of food in 1909 reached a point that has net been recorded since 1884. So, even did money wages remain stationary, the workers’ condition would be worsened. The same official return for Feb., 1911 shows a fall in the total wages bill of £49 per week, while the number of unemployed has increased.

The interest of the ruling class is to rule and to keep a subject class as cheaply as possible and all such alterations will be toward that end.

The interest of the working class is not to be ruled, but to shake from their backs those social parasites who keep them poor and insult them by talking twaddle and endeavouring to prove what is obviously untrue, that these tinkering reforms and proposals are introduced “in the interests of the masses.”

Twel.

Voice From The Back: Prisoners of want (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoners of want

“One hundred thousand pensioners in old people’s homes are living on allowances of as little as £10 a week. Most are not even receiving the £16 weekly payment to which they are entitled, according to new research. The revelation that legions of old people live on less than many prison inmates will greatly embarrass Ministers, who have boasted of tackling pensioners’ poverty. “We were shocked when we discovered this,” said Lorna Easterbrook, who carried out the study for Help The Aged. “There’s a huge sense of humiliation among these old people. Some are getting £10 of their due allowances, but others are getting just £3 or £4 a week after relatives or homes make deductions.” Observer, 20 January.

The Observer journalist’s view that the Labour government ministers will be “greatly embarrassed” is probably wide of the mark. Nothing could embarrass these vile supporters of capitalism. Fellow workers, this could be your future inside capitalism. If you live beyond your ability to produce surplus value for the blood-sucking capitalist class. A bed pan and a tenner a week.

No cause for celebration

Twenty years ago a British Prime Minister told the Sun, and other slimy tabloid newspapers to “Rejoice” at the victory of the British capitalist class against the Argentine capitalist class. No mention was made at that time about the loss of working class life. We have no figures about the deaths of Argentine workers, but twenty years on, we have some about British workers. 255 British servicemen were killed, but even more awful since that madness, 264 British servicemen, who were involved have committed suicide. (Figures from the Guardian, 19 January.) Excuse us if we don’t rejoice, Thatcher, at the deaths of members of our class in the defence of your system. There are many orphans and widows of the working class today in both Argentine and Britain whose tears make joy impossible.

They like it, My Lord

“A Trade Union Congress report out today estimates that four million people, 16 percent of the workforce, work more than 48 hours a week, the limit set by the 1998 (European Union) directive. Men work the longest weeks with one in four clocking up more than 48 hours; one in ten working 55 hours; and one in 25 working more than 60 hours . . . John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, said: “Britain’s long-hour culture is a national disgrace. It leads to stress, ill-health and family strains.” Times, 4 February. Not everybody would agree with the TUC, though. John Crickland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI offers a defence of the long hours. “Workers want the right to make their own decisions about extra working hours. Managerial workers often work longer hours because they want to.” This defence is rather similar to the Fox Hunting Lobby’s – “The fox enjoys the hunt.”

Science and the profit motive

Inside socialist society the pursuit of knowledge will be free to all. There will be no restrictions on scientific investigation. This is impossible inside capitalism, with its copyright laws and its profit motive. Sir John Sulston, one of the leading researchers in the Human Genome Project has shown how powerful the profit motive is in science-based commerce. “We can’t possibly prohibit discovery. But on the other hand to imagine that we should always exploit, especially if it makes extra money, is insane. I think most reasonable people, including those who run companies, would agree. The trouble is, once people get into a company boardroom, they have no other choice. They have shareholders. I am afraid you have to leave your principles at the door of the boardroom”, he says.” Guardian, 2 February.

Blair, bombast and bombs

At the Labour Party conference last year Tony Blair said: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world”. Poverty, corruption, famine and war, he thundered like an Old Testament prophet, must be tackled. It went down big with the delegates. It is the sort of thing the Labour Party adore – talking about social problems in sanctimonious moral tones, and then doing nothing about it. But this time they were doing something about it – they were making it worse! “The government was facing condemnation from protesters against the arms trade last night after new figures revealed that the value of arms sales to Africa will more than quadruple by next year . . . High levels of spending on arms are seen as one of the main causes of poverty in Africa. A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that in 1999 African nations received £52 million worth of arms in deals with British firms. That figure rose to £125.5m in 2000 and is set to top £200m next year.” Observer, 3 February.

Post-combat syndrome

A report in the British Medical Journal claimed that post-conflict symptoms had been suffered long before the Gulf War and stretched back as far as the 1889 Boer War. “They concluded: “Post-combat syndromes have arisen in all major wars over the past century, and we can predict that will continue to appear after future conflicts” . . . The researchers said the best way to tackle the illnesses, which have cost subsequent governments considerable sums in financial assistance, was to better understand their characteristics.” Herald, 8 February. Surely, a much better way to deal with the problem is to abolish capitalism, the cause of modern warfare. No conflict = no post-conflict syndrome. You don’t need to be a trained medical researcher to work that one out.

 

All mad together (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the television screens they are smooth and assured. They smile with confident, frank eyes; if occasionally they show emotion they never lose their dignity. For these men are the politicians, who like to think that they are in control. Or they are the planners, who dream that organisation will solve everything.

The impression they like to make is that, although it is always so much better to have them in charge, Capitalism is anyway a sane and ordered set-up in which everything works pretty well. There may be one or two little problems here and there, but generally, they think, everything works out for the best. The men at the top know what they are doing, the world turns nicely on its axis and all the madmen are in the lunatic asylums. What could be better?

What, indeed? For sure, the workers go along with this. They, too, think that Capitalism is the best social organisation we have or are likely to deserve. Whatever worries or criticisms they may have about income tax or rising rents or redundancies, the workers think the world is organised as well as it can be—and whenever they get the chance they vote that way.

Now just how much sanity is there in the world? How much, for example, for the old people who long ago perhaps were themselves bemused by the puffs in favour of Capitalism? We all know that growing old can be one of the fiercest problems of our lives, meaning that we lose our jobs and sometimes our homes and our friends. For the morbidly inclined the prospect of poverty in old age can loom over his youth like a bank of storm clouds on a summer’s day. So the old ones have been a matter for the attention of many governments, for a long time. Hardly an election passes without the contesting parties all struggling to get their protective legislative arms around the pensioners. The Tories pull out figures to show that they have done better than the Labour Party on pensions. Labour cries that the Tories don’t really care for the old dears of the working class and anyway arc a lot of skinflints. Wistfully the Liberals and others wait with their promises to do better than both Labour and Tory put together.

Anybody could be excused for assuming that the pensioners had gained some material benefit from this anxiety to do so well by them. What are the facts? Early this year Codicote Press published a book on the subject—The Economic Circumstances of Old People, by Dorothy Cole and John Utting. Did the authors find the subjects of their inquiry living in prosperous ease? They did not. Were they doing alright then, contented, getting by? Wrong again. They estimated, in fact, that nearly two and a half million old people are living close to the state which the national assistance standards regard as poverty.

These standards are based on cold figures of cost of living indexes and so on, but we can guess what living on the poverty line means for a pensioner. It means a cold room in the winter. It means dining off dry bread and an Oxo cube in hot water. It means broken shoes and tattered clothes. These people live like this only because they are too old to tap out the profits for an employer. Their destitution defies the tinkering of the planners and the politicians. In terms of sanity and human welfare it is a scandal.

Young workers also get a taste of what Capitalist sanity and order means. At the end of this month the Government are expected to announce that the pay pause is at an end and that it will be succeeded by some other attempt at holding down wages, under a different snappy name. Ever since the end of the last war, when it became apparent that workers were strongly placed to press for higher pay, governments have been scheming and appealing to keep wages in check. Sometimes they have done this openly, as in Cripps’ freeze and Selwyn Lloyd’s pause. Sometimes they have done it in a roundabout way—by the 1949 devaluation of the pound, for example. So far they have not openly defied the big trade unions and forced a show down battle with them; perhaps that is in the future. But whatever method they have used, the theme has been constant—wages must be pegged down.

Yet who can be blamed for wanting more pay? Perhaps some workers believed the wartime propaganda which was intended to convince them that victory over Germany and Japan would bring, among other things, prosperity for them. Perhaps some of them think that as the post war productivity drive has succeeded to the point of destroying many of the world’s sellers’ markets, they can now start cashing in on the promises made to them when the Government only wanted them to work harder.

To workers, prosperity usually means sky high wages. But no sooner do they try to get them than the government intervenes, shaking its head and telling them that their wages are too high, that they are too prosperous. This must surprise shop assistants and farm workers and railwaymen and many others who earn hardly enough to keep themselves ticking over. It might interest and amuse other workers. For there is very little that is sane and organised about government wages policy. It is like a great game of snakes and ladders in which, for the wage-earners, there are too many snakes for comfort.

Then there is the curious case of British Railways. One of the theories behind nationalisation was that organisations like the railways could be run in the interests of the Capitalist class as a whole only it they were State controlled. Lord Chandos, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, has given the industrialists’ views on nationalisation. They want cheap and plentiful supplies and services, even if a nationalised concern must be run at a loss to supply them. But there has recently been considerable restlessness at the big deficits which the railways in this country have run up. Now there is a demand, pioneered by papers like The Economist, that British Railways ceases to operate as a service to Capitalism generally, cuts almost everything, but its profitable services and then picks the bones out of the rest. (Nobody has yet suggested that the Government suspend the interest commitments of British Transport Commission, which last year turned a working loss of £55 million into a deficit of £100 million).

Let us make it clear that, although its unprofitable railways may be a sore point to the Capitalists, no worker need worry whether his employer is doing well or not. But it is pertinent to consider the dilemma of Capitalism’s experts and planners. What sort of nationalised railways do they want? Do they even know what they want? And if they do know, can they get it?

This sort of disorder is not confined to Capitalism in England. Across the Atlantic, President Kennedy has let himself be seen sipping a glass of milk and has declared that in future no meal at the White House will be without it. Milk, he said, is delicious, nutritious and not at all radioactive. The reason for this publicity campaign is plain to see. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations have subsidised milk production and have supported the prices of milk products like butter and cheese. This has encouraged the American farmer to produce vast quantities of milk at the same time as consumption has fallen drastically. This has created a—dread word—surplus of milk which the President is doing his best to reduce by persuading people to drink as much of it as possible.

This all sounds fairly reasonable until we remember that milk is a food that can keep children alive and well—and that while the United States government is trying to pour the stall down unwilling American throats there are 650 million hungry children in the world who could put it to better use. Of course, Washington has its own reasons for not sending the milk where it is needed; they talk about budgets and farm prices and taxpayers. What it amounts to is that, even in cases of human survival, Capitalism often cannot deliver the goods where they are needed. Which does not make Capitalism seem a very sensible way of running things.

In fact, wherever we turn there is evidence which makes Capitalism seem the silliest of systems. That is why its politicians—the men who must run, defend and justify Capitalism—sometimes say the silliest things. Yet Capitalism has an inner sanity. Man started the thing off in his attempts to deal with the problems which were worrying him about a couple of hundred years ago. But we should not let it rest there. We still have problems to worry us. And we still have a way of solving them.

Ivan

Indignity of the old age pension (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let there be no delusions about the purpose of old age pensions. They are not designed primarily to benefit the pensioners. A case in point is the first national pension scheme ever, in this country. The motive behind that scheme, whatever nonsense the politicians talked about it, was to find a cheaper way of keeping the old geezers going than sending them to the workhouse. Since then, the pension has been increased many times, but it is still inadequate to keep an old person in any sort of comfort. Hence the fact that millions of pensioners have to resort to National Assistance.

The basic pension for a single person is £3.7.6. a week. In London a furnished room costs a minimum of about £2.10.0. a week, which leaves very little for heating, cooking, beer, tobacco, clothes and food. Perhaps economies are possible; very little heat would be needed to cook the paltry amount of food which could be bought on that budget. Yet this is what Sir Alec Douglas Home referred to as “sharing in prosperity.” Truly, someone is prosperous, but it is not the worn out workers who make up the army of old age pensioners.

But, say the defenders of the Welfare State, there is always National Assistance. The N.A.B. considers that a single person needs £3.16.0. a week for needs other than rent. It is of course difficult to find out what allowance the Board makes for a pensioner’s rent, but so far as one can judge from published correspondence, is has been about £2.10.0. for a single person and £4.10.0. for a married couple. This, obviously, is acceptable to a pensioner, but it represents something far from prosperity, or even moderate security.

The scheme is bedevilled by complications and anomalies. For example, if pensioners live in a council house or flat, they are deemed to be paying a reduced rent, and their National Assistance reduced accordingly. They are investigated by the council and by the N.A.B.—the council want their rent, the Board want to keep their payments as low as they can. However delicately the investigations are carried out, the pensioners’ dignity is bruised; many of them, indeed, refuse to apply to the N.A.B. for that reason.

After a lot of cogitation the late Tory government introduced a “graduated” pension scheme. This was supposed to be a wonderful improvement. When the fanfares died away, it was apparent that the new scheme meant that a slightly higher pension would be paid, after higher contributions from workers and employers.

One thing which came to light later on, when the Labour government were proposing to increase pensions, was that, under certain conditions, the pensioners stood to lose under the graduated scheme. When the Labour government’s Bill was being debated, the Conservatives introduced an amendment to increase the weekly payments to those who worked after they were sixty-five. Referring to the existing scales,

“Lt. Cdr. Maydon (C. Wells) former parliamentary secretary, Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, said that if a single man deferred his retirement for the full five years, the State would be better off by £1,385. The man would have to live until he was 95 years old before he broke even” (Daily Telegraph, 4.12.64).

It is, we need hardly say, not curious that the Tories did not draw attention to this point when they originally introduced the Graduated scheme.

The amendment which Lt. Cdr. Maydon was supporting was rejected by the Labour government, in their familiar pose of the Pensioners’ Friend, on the grounds that they are engaged in a general review of all social security provisions. They now propose to increase the basic pension to £4.0.0. for a single person and £6.10.0. for a married couple. These new scales will come into force at the end of March. The Assistance payments are also increased, by 12.6d. and £1.1.0. respectively.

These modest rises amount to the Labour Government’s redemption of their election promises. The postponement of the higher payments until March 19th., while the rise in MP’s pay was backdated, aroused some misgivings among Labour MP’s, but the official answer at the time was that the amount of extra clerical work involved prevented any earlier increases. Then Mr. George Brown, Minister of Economic Affairs, let one of his many cats out of one of his many bags. Speaking at the Labour Conference at Brighton, he admitted that it was the economic ministers, Mr. Callaghan and himself, who had advised against earlier payment. “We simply” he said, “in this situation, could not do more than we have done.”

At this stage, we cannot foresee what will result from the present Review. But one thing is certain. The pensioners have nothing to hope for from the Labour Party, which upheld the Means Test when they were in office in the Thirties and which kept the pensioners worse off, when they were in power after the war, than did the subsequent Conservative governments.

As long as capitalism lasts, old people are going to suffer the indignities and deprivations which are inseparable from them today. Capitalism is interested in its workers only so long as they are a source of profit when they grow old they become just another Social Problem. But somehow they must be kept, so the State levies a contribution, from both the workers and their employers, to finance the payment of pensions later on. The basic concern is to keep capitalism running. Pensions are a side issue, full of the anomalies of what were the Ten Shilling widows, the disabled hanging on to life with their feeble fingertips, the embarrassments of National Assistance.

Yet the pensioners have a hope. They cannot, like their younger fellow workers, strike to improve their conditions. But there are six million of them and that is an awful lot of votes. That is why they are wooed and promised the Earth, by Labour and Tory Parties alike. At the moment, young and old are deceived by the promises. But they could use their vote, in unity, to set up the world of freedom and dignity, for human beings throughout their lives.

RAMO

SPGB Snippets: Flats and ghosts (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

February 11, 2026

The i paper (5 February) ran a story about a 70-year-old man who is living in a house with five others, the only way he can survive on his pension. Far more people over 65 now share homes than a decade ago.

Also many properties advertised on flat-sharing sites have no living room, as turning a lounge into a bedroom means more income for the landlord, so the tenants each live and sleep in just one room. Yet there are many ‘ghost homes’ in Britain, expensive new flats that remain empty because few people can afford to buy them.

This is the reality when housing is for profit, not to meet human need.

So, this is Social Security (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

"During the last 50 years a comprehensive scheme of national insurance has been gradually developed to become the central feature of our system of social security.” These were the words of the then Minister of Pensions and National Insurance Richard Wood, in a forward to a government booklet: Everybody’s Guide To National Insurance, May, 1964. If this statement does anything at all, it underlines capitalism’s continuing, indeed developing, need for all sorts of compulsory insurance provisions for its working population.

We have come a long way since the days of Lloyd George and his five shilling pension proposals, and the very limited dole and "panel” medicine of the inter-war years. To even these comparatively modest measures, there were always the objectors who thought “the country could not afford it,” but it was Lloyd George himself who shoved his opponents contemptuously aside with the observation that paying a pension was cheaper than maintaining old people in work-houses. And this has been the sort of criterion which has guided the reformers ever since; despite the professed humanitarianism of the Labour Party, their spokesman Jim Griffiths was under no illusion about the aims of national insurance when he commended his sweeping post-war proposals to the Commons on February 6, 1946:

The loss to the Nation caused by preventive illness alone is appalling, for it has been estimated at £300 millions a year, equal to 3/5ths of the cost of the scheme in its initial year. To those who fear we cannot afford this scheme, I would advise them to ask themselves if we can afford to go on without it. 

Under this National Insurance Bill, a wide range of “benefits” was enacted based to a large extent on the old Beveridge proposals, and estimated to cost some £452 millions in 1949 and £496 millions in 1955. Contributions were to range from 2/2d. to 4/7d. a week from workers, and their employers were to make weekly contributions ranging from l/9d. to 3/10d. per employee. There was also to be a grant from the Exchequer, and all of this money was to be pooled in the National Insurance Fund, to which would be charged the costs of benefits and administration.

This arrangement has remained largely unaltered over the years, but it is nonsense to suggest, as some Labourites and others were doing then, that the scheme would abolish poverty. Prime Minister Attlee claimed in a Commons speech (February 7, 1946) that “the Bill would help to maintain the high standard of purchasing power among the masses of the people.” But just take a look at some of the benefit rates then, and see if you agree with him: — 

Unemployment or sickness               26/-per week (£2 married couple)

Pension  . . .   . . .                             26/-per week (£2 married couple)

100 per cent Disability Pay                45/-per week 

Nat. Assistance (ordinary) . . .            50/-per week

    for man and wife (begun 1948)      65/- per week

Incidentally, an interesting and pertinent comment is made on the scheme by M. Penelope Hall in her book The Social Services of Modern England. She says:

One drastic modification in the Beveridge Plan was made at the start. Benefits have never been paid at subsistence level. Beveridge regarded this modification to his scheme as disastrous. 

In the 20 years since 1946, government cost estimates have been sadly put out by continuously rising prices and increases in the cost of living, so that various amending Acts have had to be passed, stepping up the benefits and the contribution rates. By 1959, for example, unemployment, sickness and pension rates all stood at 50/- per week single, while National Assistance was at 76/- (normal) and 96/- (special) for a man and wife. This was the year, you may recall, that the Tories were pointing with pride to their achievements in this field, ignoring such uncomfortable facts as 1¾ million people having to apply for National Assistance—about 1.4 millions of them old age pensioners.

But even the Conservatives, jubilant at their 1959 election victory, could not pretend that provisions were adequate, even by the miserable standards that capitalist politicians set, and not long after that their graduated pensions scheme was introduced, which meant larger contributions from those earning over £9 a week, to secure proportional payment in addition to a flat-rate pension. Under such an arrangement, you would get an extra sixpence a week added to your flat-rate pension for every £7 10s. paid in, and when you consider the piffling extent of these changes, you might wonder what all the song and dance was about. Certainly there was nothing from the workers’ point of view, although from the Government’s angle the new scheme gave the pension system some flexibility, and so no doubt was intended to keep down the extra cost.

The whole question of National Insurance was tossed about by the main parties at the 1964 election, and it was becoming apparent anyway that an overhaul was due in the system of payments and contributions. For example, while there was not the heavy and persistent unemployment of the twenties and thirties, there was the question of “labour mobility” and the tiding over of unemployed workers when retraining for new jobs, following the decline of some of the older industries. So the Labour Government’s measures now include compulsory compensation payments to any worker made redundant after a minimum of two years at the same job.

In the government’s social security arrangements, it is interesting that they have retained essentially unchanged the graduated pension scheme of which they had been so scornful when the Tories introduced it. In addition, there is the “Earnings-Related Short-Term Benefits Scheme” which just means that there will be a flat-rate sickness and unemployment benefit of £4 a week minimum, plus further payments, depending on your average weekly earnings between £9 and £30 a week. Here again we see the pressure of present-day conditions in the government’s attempts to offload at least some of the burden of the rising cost of benefits from the central Exchequer. Quite clearly also, the 1946 scales and payment methods no longer suffice to keep workers ticking over in sickness or between jobs, and once more the modern emphasis is on “flexibility”. It could be that this is something we shall see more of in the future, what with the growth of new industries and the decline of the old, to say nothing of plain old-fashioned unemployment because of trade crises.

And what other changes have there been recently? Oh yes, the old Ministry of Pensions and Njational Insurance has been replaced by the brand new “Ministry of Social Security” (surely a contradiction in terms) with responsibility for all the schemes which were formerly administered separately, such as National Assistance. These particular payments will be known as “supplementary benefits” and are a fitting reminder of the way in which reformers' plans can misfire. In 1953, Lord Beveridge admitted that he and the experts had originally expected National Assistance payments to be on a small scale only and to gradually diminish. But, in fact, the very opposite has' happened, and the government has resigned itself to the fact by allowing for increased rates of benefit when the new arrangements start in the autumn.

What all these measures add up to is merely the organisation of 1966 poverty by 1966 methods, and the usual attempts to maintain the workforce at the appropriate standards of health and efficiency to keep capitalism’s production and profits going. It has been the irritating habit of Labourites to claim that these Acts bring dignity to workers’ lives, but their very existence is an indication of the essential indignity of working class life. And despite the increasing intricacy of state insurance and widening of its scope, there are many who stay stubbornly poor even by “Supplementary Benefits” standards. Like the 15,000 families admitted by Assistance Board Chairman Lord Runcorn to be “living on assistance at the moment, at an income well below their needs, because allowances are based on the best estimate that can be made of a man’s future earnings.” Or like “those whose take-home pay is less than they need by assistance standards, although in full employment.”

Eddie Critchfield

News in Review: Verwoerd—hypocrites at work (1966)

The News in Review column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Verwoerd—hypocrites at work

Anyone who had been able to forecast the assassination of Dr. Verwoerd would also have had no difficulty in imagining the comments of world statesmen.

These comments, in their many tones, were all determined by the international interests of the countries whose leaders were making them.

It was also predictable that there would be widespread condemnation of the use of violence, and that many world leaders would say the use of force can solve no problems.

President Johnson, for example, said the assassination was “a stroke of violence that shakes the sensibilities of men who believe in law and order”. It was clear that the President was grimly forgetting some inconvenient facts.

During the last war the Allied leaders did not condemn the violence of the attempts on Hitler's life; they did not say then that assassination is a primitive and savage act.

The United States is now keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Vietnam—much to the outrage of the sensibilities of many Americans who also believe in law and order—in an attempt to prove that their kind of violence works.

This is typical. Cyprus and Algeria are only two recent examples of the results of politicians stubbornly believing that violence can be useful.

Capitalism, in fact, is a social system which uses force constantly and which can never attempt to solve its disputes in any other way.

Hypocrisy is an art which politicians must learn to master. There is no more apt occasion to employ what they have learned than when one of their number dies.

Perhaps, when Verwoerd died, they were all secretly agreeing with Malta's Borg Olivier. “Let us hope,” he said, “That it does not happen to us”.

U Thant exposes UNO

Few things have more cruelly exposed the futility of that international white elephant, the United Nations Organisation, than the possible standing down of its Secretary-General U Thant.

UNO was once supposed to be the answer to war, because the major world powers would all be members, because every country would bring its disputes to be settled at the Assembly and because the Organisation would have at its disposal an international armed force which would police any trouble spots.

It did not take long to break down this image.

U Thant complained that UNO has not yet ". . . achieved universality of membership”—meaning that the United States, as part of its struggle with China, vetoes that country’s attempts to join.

He condemned the fact that the Vietnam war is an example of ". . . relying on force and military means. . .” as if there has ever been any sign of a capitalist power carrying on a struggle in any other way.

Over Vietnam, the United States pretends that UNO does not exist. This is not the first time this has happened. In many cases when a country’s interests have been threatened, and it has not been sure of the formality of UNO support, is has simply ignored the so-called peace-keeping Organisation.

Russia has done this several times. Britain did it over Suez and the Americans went into Korea before UNO had had a chance to consider the matter. (There was never any pretence that, if UNO had voted against America over Korea, the troops would have been withdrawn.)

UNO was founded on the idea that capitalism’s problems can be settled around a table and that the trouble in the past was that the big powers had not tried hard enough to do this.

A fatuous notion, which has been exposed again and again. Now UNO’s secretary has himself spoken up, and revealed that he too realises the Organisation is trying to do the impossible.

Confusion on the left

It is obvious that those trade union leaders who back the wages freeze are not acting in the interests of their members. But even those who oppose the freeze are hopelessly confused when it comes to politics. This was well shown at a meeting on September 1 organised by five of the unions opposing the freeze.

Not seeing Socialism as a practical alternative, the five general secretaries who spoke offered their own solution to the present financial problems of the British capitalist class: cut military spending overseas; impose import controls; launch a productivity campaign and end the status of sterling as a reserve currency. On this last point, loud applause followed a statement of the general secretary of the Association of Scientific Workers in which he said that they did not want “our” currency being a commodity traded in by foreign bankers! Again, Clive Jenkins of ASSET commended De Gaulle’s policy of erecting a fence round France to prevent Americans buying up French industries. “I’d like to see the same here”, he said amidst applause.

This petty patriotism expressing itself as a dislike of international bankers (and America) is a characteristic of the Left, one which clearly distinguishes them from Socialists. Socialists know that patriotism is a delusion as workers have no country.

Jenkins' main charge against the Labour government was that it was incompetent. Wilson was wrong, he said, in claiming to have been blown off course; he had steered right into the eye of a hurricane. “Had the government not heard of Keynes?” he asked, suggesting that since Keynes any government that allowed unemployment to grow must be incompetent

This is another myth of the Left. Governments fail to solve our troubles not because they are incompetent or insincere or irresolute but because they are trying to do the impossible. Our problems just cannot be solved within capitalism. The Left, with their so-called solutions, merely serve to keep alive the myth that capitalism can be made to work in our interests. That is why Socialists oppose them.

Retreat to the Thirties

In some mysterious way, the Labour Party have been able to establish themselves as the party which can control capitalism’s economy.

Perhaps this idea can be traced to the pre-war years, when Labour embraced the Keynesian doctrine which was supposed to have the solution to the sort of slumps which persisted during the Twenties and Thirties.

It was all supposed to be very simple. A slump meant low purchasing power, investment in the doldrums, reduced demand for workers.

The solution was to increase purchasing power by cutting taxation, step up investment with tax incentives and promote a demand for labour by launching out on public works schemes: roads, hospitals and so on.

These so-called remedies are, in fact, quite useless. And perhaps the Labour government have realised it.

At last month’s TUC, Harold Wilson threw out the warning which is an especial favourite with him lately: “. . . one false, careless, regardless step . . . could push the world into conditions not unlike those of the early Thirties”.

If this were true, and the Labour Party were keeping faith in the Keynesian economics they have propounded for so long, the government would now be stimulating investment, cutting taxes, building hospitals and schools as fast as they can.

But, in fact, as we all know, they are doing exactly the opposite.

Does Wilson now think that Keynes' theories are bunk? Has he forgotten all his party ever said about slumps? Does he realise that capitalism is out of control and always has been?

Or does he ponder on another event of the early Thirties? Some people would say there is no need for Wilson actually to leave the Labour Party to imitate Ramsay MacDonald. Others would reserve their judgment.

History repeats itself

The oft repeated phrase “History repeats itself’ is a half truth. It derives from the desire.to put into fewer words the idea that like situations produce like results.

In the latter half of the 18th century the proposal was made that, as wages were so miserably low, they should be supplemented by poor relief.

Eighteen Berkshire justices, including seven clergymen, met at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland near Newbury and set down a minimum scale for workers and their families. This scale was adopted throughout the country and where wages did not provide the minimum it. was built up by payments from the rates.

Historians have not failed to point out that this could only, and did, resultin employers paying the lowest wage possible in the knowledge that their workers would get by on the combined wage and poor relief.

Compare this with the following from the Teddington and Hampton and The Richmond and Twickenham Times of Saturday, August 13, 1966.

This paper quotes from the parish newsletter of the Reverend Emrys Evans, vicar of All Saints’ Church. The Rev. Evans urges

the elderly to take advantage of a part-time employment scheme organised by the Richmond upon Thames Council for Social Service, in which they may work either on a casual basis or a 24-hour week at an hourly rate of l/3d.

He adds that those who have already applied for work have a wide variety of skills, ranging from former book-keepers to shop assistants and that they may still be of real service to the community,

“and at the same time augment your pension”.

Words and deeds

On April 29 the Hampstead Labour Party passed the following resolution by 26 votes to 6:

This Hampstead Labour Party views with alarm the Government’s increasing and continuing support of the American war in Vietnam. It is aware also of the pressure on the Government to make a token military commitment in this war, perhaps in the form of British ‘‘observers” or “advisers".

We therefore wish to state in advance that should the Government yield to such pressure, the Hampstead Labour Party will re-examine its relationship with the national Labour Party and invite other constituency parties to do the same.

On July 25 a Foreign Office spokesman stated that there were four hundred British military engineers in Thailand helping to build a military airport at Loeng Nok Tha (see Financial Times, 26 July). Loeng Nok Tha is in north-east Thailand and it is from this area that three-quarters of the air raids against North Vietnam are launched (see Economist, 3 September). So troops, under the control of the Labour Party government are helping the war effort in Vietnam. They are in fact helping to build an airfield which American planes can use for bombing raids on North Vietnam. If this is not "a token military commitment in this war” what is?

Yet, to date, there has been no news of any breakaway move by the Hampstead Labour Party.

Fifty Years of “Progress”. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Examination of a Capitalist Statement.

Flights of Fancy.

The Daily Chronicle could scarcely find words to give expression to its admiration of the Blue Book recently published by the Local Government Board, wherein, we are told, the great prosperity of the worker since the introduction of Free Trade, is clearly shown. Wages have risen, prices have fallen, and that great social sore, pauperism, has decreased. In fact, after a perusal of the figures we are almost led to believe that within the next few years all the social evils that now afflict us will have been entirely eliminated, almost, that is, unless we happen to be in possession of further facts and figures.

We are informed by the Daily Chronicle that since 1849 the percentage of paupers to the population has decreased.

Now the total number of persons in receipt of poor relief during the year 1906-7 was 2,076,316. Every day during the year, taking the average, 25.1 per thousand of the population were in receipt of relief. While there has been a decrease since 1850 in the number of outdoor paupers, the number of indoor paupers has almost doubled. When referring to this question the Press were very careful to avoid giving an explanation of the decrease of outdoor pauperism. The cause was fully explained by “F. C. W.” in the issue of March ’06 Socialist Standard, wherein he says

“The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844, but it was not (says the “Encyclopedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administration bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882, made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means. Ashcroft and Preston Thomas say in their work ‘The English Poor Law System’ p. 285, ‘The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied of course by a still more marked decrease of outdoor paupers until recently) is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle. It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.’ ”

The Return to Naked Fact.

There are now many other ways by which the workhouses are being relieved, such as, for instance, the Church Army and Salvation Army Homes, and Dr. Barnado’s Homes (which boast of having 8,000 children always under its care) and the rest of the 1,800 charitable institutions dispensing funds to the amount of ten million pounds per annum.

When the Pauper Inmate Act and the Casual Poor Act had been in operation some time, there was another large increase in pauperism. The “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” issued by the Board of Trade states that

“on every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of poor relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but very slight fluctuation to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number but also relatively to the increase of population.”

If the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission is adopted and the suggested alterations in the Poor Law are enacted, then we shall again be told that pauperism is decreasing, while as a matter of fact the relief of the poor will have been transferred from public institutions to private charity, which we are told can be so developed and organised that out-door relief will become unnecessary.

Turning from the question of pauperism our attention is diverted to “the record of rising wages under Free Trade,” as the Daily Chronicle has it.

Two sides to the story.

Now it is true that there has been an increase in the rate of money wages, but that is no criterion of an actual rise in wages or of an increase in the purchasing power of the wages received. Turning again to the “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” we find that since 1895 (the first year for which comparative tables are given) the increase in the retail prices of the necessaries of life, apart from the increase of house rent, which is by far the most important factor in the expenditure of the workers, has kept pace with the increase in the rate of wages, which is in many cases based upon the price paid per hour. But the same publication informs us that the number of hours worked per week have been greatly reduced, to say nothing of the increase of unemployment. So when we take all the facts into consideration we find instead of an increase in wages we have an absolute decrease.

The Daily News makes a very poor attempt to minimise the extent of the unemployed problem by attributing the great increase during 1908 to the engineering and ship-building disputes, and this in spite of the fact that the Board of Trade and Labour Gazette tells us in every issue, that persons on strike or locked out, sick or superannuated, are excluded from the figures.

The health of the workers is the next subject that confronts us. We are reminded that the number of cases arising from such diseases as enteric fever, diptheria, small-pox, etc., have been greatly reduced, in fact some of them have actually been stamped out. If, then, there has been such a large decrease in this class of disease, we must ask the reason for the alarm of the friendly societies at the “enormous increase in the number of applicants for sick pay.”

Unemployment brings Sickness–

The Evening News of June 3rd asks “Are modern conditions of life undermining the general health of the working people of this country ? Mere warnings of medical men,” it continues, “unsupported by statistics, do not count as evidence, but the testimony of the great friendly societies which are in close and constant touch with the workers is a more weighty matter.”

On this question Mr. J. Luther Green, president of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, says,

“The matter is most serious and is causing the greatest concern to all friendly societies. . . . The causes of the alarming increase in sickness liabilities are probably to be found in the changed industrial conditions, the constancy of the evil of unemployment, the operation of the Compensation Act, and the increased pace and pressure of life. . . Distress arising from unemployment has been especially noticeable during the past year. Cases have come under the notice of the committee where the sickness has been solely the result of unemployment. Distress is followed by privation and health must of necessity be impaired.”

It appears that while the membership of the above society has increased, since 1903, 12½ per cent., the number of claims for sick pay has increased 24 per cent., and the amount paid in sick benefit by over 33 per cent., in spite of the adoption of more stringent methods to eliminate the fraudulent “invalids.”

But the Hearts of Oak is only one of the many benefit societies, so we must take a broader view of the subject. Reviewing the returns of the 14 leading benefit societies we find an almost corresponding increase in sickness, and we agree with the president of the H.O.O. that the great increase is due to insufficient nourishment and the increased pace and pressure on the life of the worker. Every worker knows that the pace and pressure in the factories, workshops and offices is far greater to-day than it was even a few years ago, while the age at which he is thrown upon the industrial scrap-heap, when his vitality and energy have degenerated, is earlier; and so witnesses the record, in the Blue Book, of the great decrease in the number of persons employed over the age of 65.

Employment Wounds and Death.

With the speeding up of machinery and increasing pressure upon the worker grows the the increase of sickness, insanity and the “accidents” upon the industrial field, the number of the latter in 1907 reaching the enormous total of 160,731, being almost double the figure for 1898. The number of fatal “accidents” rose from 3,810 in 1898 to 4,453 in 1907, and the number of non-fatal accidents increased from 79,633 in the former year to 156,278 in the latter ! a total far in excess of the combined British and Boer casualties in the late South African war.

The increasing development of capitalism renders it far more difficult for the worker to raise himself from the ranks of the wage-slaves until now it has become almost an impossibility even in individual cases.

The increase in unemployment and the longer period the worker is in the labour market, makes life ever more insecure. While in employment he is compelled, where possible, to deprive himself and family of many of the necessaries of life in order to accumulate a little to tide over the ever-expected period of “out-o’-work,” an attempt that more often than not ends in failure. 

In conclusion, then, and taking into consideration all the facts attending the position of the workers, we can safely say that instead of enjoying greater prosperity, their position in society continues on the downward grade, Liberal and Tory reformers notwithstanding. And so their only hope is in the complete change, the Revolution, i.e., Socialism.

H. A. Young

50 Years Ago: Pensions for the Dead — the Liberal Government's Pension Scheme (1958)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Liberal “Old Age” proposal is, then, but a sop to keep the workers quiet—but such a paltry sop. The “Old Age” part is prominent enough, but surely a microscope is needed to discover the pension.

Five shillings a week when you are seventy, should you be so unfortunate as to live as long. A problematic five shillings a week at seventy— that is, of course, if you have been a good boy ; if you haven’t within five years been convicted of vagrancy, desertion, or “serious” crime; if you are not in receipt of poor relief; if your income is not more than ten shillings a week, and so on—while married couples living together are to be punished for their foolishness by having their pensions reduced to 3s. 9d. per head.

Five shillings a week as a bribe to the worker to keep out of the workhouse, where it would cost at least 18s. to keep him. Five shillings a week as a premium on low wages to those few ancient toilers who, by some miracle, are still able to work a little. Such are the promises of the “Workers’ Budget.”

[From the Socialist Standard, June, 1908.]

Editorial: Pensions for the Dead. (1908)

Editorial from the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Liberal mountain has been long in labour, and has nearly been delivered of Old Age Pensions. We say nearly, advisedly; for the Government, with shocking callousness regarding the welfare of its poor, emaciated little mouse, has determined to sever it from the Budget, in which it would be protected from the wicked lords, and to embody it in a separate Bill; thus deliberately and of malice aforethought placing it at the mercy of those whom the Liberals never tire of denouncing as enemies and wreckers of all Liberal measures. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer has pledged himself to this course, and the mouse may yet fail to see the light of day.

Nevertheless, we confess to no anxiety on the matter. We have no desire to claim that our influence is visible in the result. Reforms are the gifts of capitalism, and are only granted to the workers in vain endeavours to stay their advance to power. And we are convinced that to get anything vital to their happiness the working class must take it themselves. To do that the workers must be supreme in the State, and then, of necessity, it becomes a question, not of reform, but of social reconstruction.

The Liberal “Old Age” proposal is, then, but a sop to keep the workers quiet—but such a paltry sop. The “Old Age” part is prominent enough, but surely a microscope is needed to discover the pension.

Five shillings a week when you are seventy, should you be so unfortunate as to live as long. A problematic five shillings a week at seventy— that is, of course, if you have been a good boy ; if you haven’t within five years been convicted of vagrancy, desertion, or “serious” crime; if you are not in receipt of poor relief; if your income is not more than ten shillings a week, and so on—while married couples living together are to be punished for their foolishness by having their pensions reduced to 3/9 per head.

Five shillings a week as a bribe to the worker to keep out of the workhouse, where it would cost at least 18/- to keep him. Five shillings a week as a premium on low wages to those few ancient toilers who, by some miracle, are still able to work a little. Such are the promises of the “Workers’ Budget.”

The pensioners are, indeed, condemned to live—or endeavour to live—upon a total income that in no case can exceed fifteen shillings a week. In the vast majority of cases they must die slowly upon considerably less. Happy Veterans ! Not that they are likely to be numerous. Precautions have been taken to avoid that contingency. Besides, the average working man is scrapped, as a profit producing machine for the capitalist, a score of years before the pension is to bless him. He will thus have a score or more of years in which to purify his body by fasting preparatory to entering the heaven which a generous capitalism is to provide for its worn-out beasts of burden. Truly, the workers have not words wherewith to express their thanks ! Kaiser Wilhelm, having taken the initiative in the conference of the Western European nations in the matter of promoting measures of social reform as an antidote to Socialism, must feel contempt for stingy, shop-keeping, British Liberalism, whose cheeseparing policy, he might say, would ruin all. Social reform in Liberal England limps painfully behind that of despotic Germany, and it is significant of the worth of mere social reform that the German wage-slave is, on the whole, not one whit better off than his British confrere. The enactment of social reform, in fact, cannot keep pace with the progressive crushing of the wage worker under the iron heel of Capital. 

The hardships of British and German workers—of workers the world over—flow from their exploitation, and must continue until this ends. And to the conquest of Society soon or late the workers must bend their Titanic strength, for there is no help but in themselves, and no hope but in Socialism.