The Passing Show: TV trash (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

TV trash

How often do you wash your hair? How often do you have a bath? If someone (other than perhaps your doctor) asked you those questions, you'd probably tell him to mind his own business. Such matters are considered personal enough not to discuss them generally in public.

However, that’s in the everyday run of affairs. But if there was money in it, you might well swallow your pride and tell the questioner what he wanted to know. And if the exercise were repeated often enough and lucratively enough, it’s possible you would forget you were ever annoyed and would even offer other personal but just as worthless titbits, such as the number of times you blow your nose in a day. I could go further, but I won’t.

Why am I mentioning this? It's just that one Friday evening a few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to sit through one hour of concentrated rubbish put out by I.T.V. under the title Ready, Steady, Go! As far as I could tell, it was a collection of pop groups and “ singers ” bleating, moaning, groaning and grimacing to the accompaniment of twanging guitars and the shouts of hysterical teenagers; Usually they merely mime to a background recording, but this time it was a “live” show, and having seen samples of both now, I’d say the more objectionable by a short head.

With Keith Fordyce as the compere trying hard to sound wildly enthusiastic over the nerve racking extremes of sixty minutes sheer row, and his assistant Cathy McGowan, calling everything “ fab ” and “gear”, the high spot—or punch line if you prefer—came when the Rolling Stones appeared and their Mike Jagger answered puerile questions about his bathing and washing habits. At the end of the programme, such was the frenzy of his audience, that he was saved from being devoured only by the intervention of some strong arm men, no doubt retained for the occasion.

It would be stupid of course to blame television as such for trash like this—just as logical as blaming weapons for the outbreak of war. It would be putting the cart before the horse. Like so many things in this world, T.V. has a vast potential for benefiting mankind, but is twisted and debased to suit the needs of a profit making system of society. And this applies just as much to the staid old B.B.C. as it does to the cruder and brassier I.T.V. So if there is a vast teenage demand for Beatles, Animals, Jerks, Kinks, Pretty Boys and Rolling Stones, then T.V. has to sink to the occasion. No matter if some of the characters look like Rowton House rejects; their records sell, don’t they? In their millions?

Indeed they do, and while that sort of condition obtains, all sorts of people will swallow whatever pride they may once have had, in the frantic race for the fast buck. A survey a few years back pointed out the size of the teenage market, running into hundreds of millions of pounds a year, something which certainly didn’t exist before the war. So no wonder we have manufacturers sitting up and taking notice, making things specially for the “teenage character” and changing the styles at a bewildering speed to maintain the myth of teenage exclusiveness, trying to keep the youngsters sufficiently obsessed with themselves to bolster sales.

Gramophone records are no exception to this rule. Generally the pop recordings are of poor quality, and not intended to last. Teenage restlessness in the demand for “new” numbers and boredom with the old. will be encouraged by the disc companies. It’s good for turnover and sales, but reduces the level of performance to an all time low with each new group or record to appear. Hence the spectacle of Ready, Steady, Go, Jukebox Jury and others.

The tragedy of it all is that teenagers are so unaware of all this. They really do believe that they are “different" from the rest of us and that the current hullabaloo is merely a recognition of this at last. In fact their wage status in society guarantees their “sameness” with everyone else and places similar restrictions upon them. They are being taken for a long and bumpy ride with a rubbish tip at the end of it.

Doctors' dilemma

Not so long ago there was no National Health Service in Britain. You just had to scrape the money together to pay the doctor if you were unfortunate enough to need his services. And of course, a stay in hospital meant hospital bills, although how many workers managed to pay them is another matter.

The family doctor was often held in awe and reverence—a pillar of respectability, financially very comfortable and independent. That was obviously the impression that East End slum dwellers gained, perhaps because the doctor always wore a clean shirt and looked smartly turned out. They did not realise just how great a struggle some medicos had to get by. but the going must have been tough at times, particularly in the depressed areas. A. J. Cronin gives us a glimpse of this in some of his novels.

Well, whatever delusions we may have had about the G.P.’s status before the war, there is certainly no room for them now. Most of his “ independence ” was swept away when the postwar health service was set up, and doctors in general can be seen now for what they are—and always were—working men and women. True, their income on average is still much higher than many other workers, but what of that? There have always been differing grades of training and pay under capitalism and here is an example. Their training is years long and their working hours atrocious. A Guardian article of March 9th for example told of resident hospital doctors often working a hundred hours and more a week.

And just like other workers, the doctors have to battle with their employers (the government) over wages and conditions, which is really what all the rumpus was about a few weeks back. The British Medical Association—the doctors' “trade union"—threatened to withdraw its members from the health service if the government's pay offer was not improved. This was not a strike, it was claimed, although just what other name it could be given was not stated. However, the government seems to have climbed down and granted some at least of the doctors’ demands. For them, however, the lesson of organisation has been a long time in the learning. The assiduously cultivated image of medicine being a calling rather than a job, with its practitioners’ sole aim to serve their patients, will be equally long a-dying; and this presents them with a dilemma.

To retain the all-important public support for their cause, the old picture is of help, but it can act as a double-edged weapon. The government has been quick to realise this and use it to the full in its negotiations with the B.M.A. As so many other workers have found, it is the strike or the very real threat of it, which gets things moving if they can be moved at all. And then bang goes public sympathy.

In the event, the medicos took the only course open to them and risked public hostility. Strikes are a constant feature of capitalist society—they are part of the fight which goes on all the time. And people usually get hurt in a fight, not just the direct participants but onlookers as well. It is one of the regrettable facts of capitalist life. End capitalism and you end the fight—for doctors as well as for the rest of us.

Eddie Critichfield

Music Review: Tainted Lives (2022)

Album Review from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Happiness Not Included by Soft Cell (BMG, 2022)

Soft Cell began their career when punk’s angry energy was being channelled into then-new musical styles, such as the synth-based sound which has accompanied their songs of suburban angst. Since the band’s peak of popularity in the early ’80s, Marc Almond and Dave Ball have reunited for an album every couple of decades, now with Happiness Not Included. As its title suggests, their slant on society and its mood is even more jaded than before, although not without optimism.

The appeal of looking backwards is the subject of songs Polaroid, Nostalgia Machine and opener Happy Happy Happy about sci-fi’s off-kilter past dreams of the future (‘a better life with little strife, and very little meaning’). The album’s title track is a call to snap out of other stagnant ways of thinking (‘Every opinion is seen as offensive. That’s why we’re always on the defensive’, ‘Times have moved and shifting sands. The future’s in another lunatic’s hands’), and is more directly political than the other songs.

The theme of living in an alienating world is found throughout Soft Cell’s work, especially Happiness Not Included. Being hardened or numbed by life runs through tracks such as Heart Like Chernobyl, I’m Not A Friend Of God and, most effectively, Tranquiliser, one of the band’s kitchen sink dramas. This treads similar ground to 1981’s Bedsitter, although the escape from a lonely, hollow existence isn’t in a nightlife to ‘kid myself I’m having fun’ as in the earlier song, but now with taking downers so ‘I feel nothing at all’. Other tracks are more positive about finding a way out of a rut, such as Bruises On All My Illusions, Purple Zone (a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys) and closing track New Eden. The album also avoids being too depressing by its lyrics not always taking themselves seriously (‘I feel like North Korea in the winter’, ‘It’s all the fault of the media and all the fear they feed ya’) and upbeat arrangements, particularly on Nostalgia Machine and Purple Zone. While Happiness Not Included isn’t a concept album, its songs hang together as a commentary on how people can react to these uneasy times. The result is probably Soft Cell’s best album since their first, and hopefully it won’t be another twenty years until their next.

Mike Foster

Odds and Ends: What They Said (1957)

The Odds and Ends column from the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

What They Said

Looking through old pamphlets and journals can be quite an interesting pastime. For example, the Communist Review for April, 1953, wherein Harry Pollitt refers to “ Comrade Beria,” Andrew Rothstein writes of Beria as “Stalin’s old comrade-in-arms ” and John Eaton tells us that Stalin “through a period of three decades showed himself to be the greatest economist of our times,” and that he was “. . . the most profound, most creative thinker of our time in the science of political economy . . ." etc.

Unfortunately, for the Communist Party, it now appears that Stalin was a terrorist who murdered Russian Army officers, and who “made serious mistakes in connection with agricultural policy . . .” (Harry Pollitt, Daily Worker, 24/3/56). And Beria turned out to be an agent of British Imperialism after all! All this must be very hard even for Communists to swallow. But, then, if one puts faith in leaders what can one expect?

The Socialist—who knows what he wants, and how to get it—needs no leaders to think for him: he thinks for himself. There can be no Stalins, Berias—or Kruschevs in the Socialist movement

Communist Party Opposes Strikes

It is believed by many that the Communists always advocate and support strikes; that the Communist Party consistently support the workers in their struggles for higher wages and better working conditions. But this is not so. During the last war (after Germany attacked Russia) the Communists opposed all attempts by workers to improve their wages or conditions.

In a pamphlet by W. Wainwright entitled Clear Out Hitler's Agents, published by the Communist Party, he writes:—

 “ Again they [‘left wing’ opponents of the Communist Party] use the trick of waving a red flag. They talk about the boss’ profit. They try to take the heart out of the work. ’Why slave when you are only piling up money for the boss?” they say.

“They want you to go slow, not to give your best work, to be misled by their talk of strikes and the boss' profits into sabotaging our troops and the Red Army.” (Page 9.)

And in March, 1944, the South Wales miners came out on strike. Although the Communist paper, The Daily Worker, admitted that the miners “have a powerful case ” it told them to “go back to work.” (11/3/44).

The Communist Party is not a working-class party, it is. in fact, a not very successful mouthpiece for the Soviet Government in this country.

Has Socialism Failed?

In the 1951 General Election the Conservative candidate in North Battersea was one Ian Percival, and in his Election News he wrote:—

“Britain has tried Socialism, and it has failed. At home it has meant shortages, rising prices, high taxation, and one financial crisis after another. Abroad it hat meant a lowering of our prestige, and therefore a weakening of our influences for peace."

Of course, Socialism has not failed. It has not been tried. During the period that Mr. Percival writes of Britain was ruled by a Labour Government—and the system was a Capitalist one; not Socialist. It is Capitalism that has failed—failed to solve the problems of war poverty and crises. And it is only Socialism that can solve these problems. Labour Government has nothing in common with Socialism.

Wives or Automobiles—or Both

Middle East potentates used to collect scores of wives for their harems—some still do; but it appears that civilization (and oil companies) are coming to the desert King Saud of Saudi-Arabia has ordered more than 60 Cadillac cars. The King's order will only cost a mere £357,140 or so. Some of the cars will be fitted with jewelled cigarette-lighters. Some will be air-conditioned; some will have one-way window glass, so that the passengers can see without being seen. And others have armour-plate and special machine gun mountings. . . .

Who says that kings are not useful to the community? Do they not provide work for automobile workers? And are not 60 cars more useful to a King than 60 wives—or are they?

Rock, Everybody, Rock

At the time of writing Bill Haley and his Comets have arrived triumphantly in Britain; his latest film, “Don’t Knock the Rock,” is being shown on the circuits and the Rock ’n’ Roll craze seems to be at its zenith. Scores of Bill Haley Concerts are being held up and down the country; and some newspapers, particularly the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, are giving more space to Bill Haley than to Prince Charles, Princess Grace or Jayne Mansfield’s vital statistics—for the time being.

Still, it’s all good fun. The “cats” are happy; the newspapers are happy with their new gimmick; and Bill Haley and his backers and agents should be happy “coining the loot.” For is not Rock ’n* Roll the greatest money-maker that “Pop” music has produced in a couple of decades?

So while it lasts . . . Rock, everybody, rock!!

God's Own Country!

“Baby Doll: Elia Kazan film, bated on a typical Tennessee Williams play about sex, seen against a brutal background of an illiterate, run-down colour-conscious community in the Southern United States. The characters are mostly brutal, ignorant and animal and the story is about a mentally arrested girl, her repressed husband and the Sicilian who seduces her for revenge.”—(What's On In London, 25/1/57.)

Peter E. Newell

Observations: Pop goes Norman (1986)

The Observations Column from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pop goes Norman

The British Record industry Awards (BBC 1, 10 February) consisted of the usual vacuous ego-tripping and facetious speeches from such useful members of society as the pop group Tears for Fears. The recipients of the awards were the same kind of safe, tedious performers as last year, and the year before, and so on. Phil Collins, the Eurythmics, Huey Lewis and the News, Bruce Springsteen — the list of commercially successful and artistically irrelevant "stars" is endless. Of course, there was the patronising "special award" to Bob Geldof and Live Aid but in general these awards showed that Nothing Had Changed. (Although, in the spirit of tokenism for which the BBC is famous, we even had a Best Classical Recording award.)

However, this award ceremony was special, because the guest of honour was none other than our old friend Norman Tebbit. The emptiness of the speech he was to make was presaged by Noel Edmonds' blatant appeal to naked emotion when he introduced Tebbit as "a man who has recently returned to public life after a long spell in hospital" — or words to that effect: Tebbit began by saying that he didn't know much about pop music (neither does Noel Edmonds, so he was in good company) and then sallied forth into a series of facts and figures showing that pop music was an extremely high-earning export (and therefore ideologically sound as far as Norm was concerned). He praised its "competitiveness" and the fact that it gives pleasure to so many people and went on to praise Live Aid for "helping people less fortunate than ourselves". An analysis of why they are "less fortunate" was too much to hope for, but the hypocrisy of first praising competition and then shedding crocodile tears for the inevitable results of the competitive system was blatant even for Tebbit.

But the awards only served to confirm what Tebbit said — those who are most easily marketable take the awards. Of course, in this twisted society it makes more sense to waste time and effort marketing the garbled vocals of Bruce Springsteen than to ensure the free distribution of resources which would ensure that disasters like the Ethiopian famine can never be repeated.

Socialism will be a world wide society of free access, in which everyone's needs are met. Then there will be no need for faded pop stars to organise fund-raising concerts; no need for hypocritical politicians to congratulate them for doing so and no need for ceremonies in which the musically illiterate are presented with awards for selling more records than their equally illiterate competitors. Pop music will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold — it will simply not matter whether or not a record is Number One. Maybe music will then give real pleasure rather than a temporary respite from the misery of life under capitalism.

God spot

"Gawd", you mutter, as our Brian, busily buttering up his latest Establishment worthy, rolls over invitingly to have his belly scratched. "What about some genuinely aggressive questioning for a change?" But Scargill's out in the cold these days; Brenda Dean's dangerously popular, and Hughie ("terrible twin") Scanlon s sleeping it off in the Lords alongside Joe (Lord) Gormley. We'll just have to wait until there's a nice juicy striking bus-driver for him to sink his teeth into.

But what's this? Thought for the Day. Aarrgh! Here it comes again! You'll know the sort of thing. Some vicar, attired in the gear of an archangel, arrives at the studio clutching a couple of frying-pans, a brace of walking-sticks. and a chalice of font-water. Like as not he'll be sporting six yards of striped woollen scarf (run up, hell confide unctuously. in celebration of advent) and a crash-helmet. In true evangelical style he's off to Killamey to skid down the Paps while singing the Greater Doxology to the tune of the well-known popular ditty, My Old Man's A Dustman.

“Heavens", observes Master Redhead. "Precisely", murmurs our impassioned divine. You haven't even a free hand to turn the damn thing off as you mop the blood from your lacerated face, or as you scrape the porridge from the kitchen floor. You may remind yourself that, after all, it's only three minutes. But then, it's three minutes every morning. There you are. struggling to interpret the customary BBC Newspeak, fuming, perhaps, at yet another gratuitous assault on yet another group of disaffected trade unionists when — Wham! — you're suffocating in yet another nebulous cloud of sanctimonious codswallop.

They've mugged you again. (This time it's a holy cook who manages to punctuate his pietistic diatribe with entirely disgusting recipes for goatsmeat stew.) But they won't catch you next time — will they?

The great and the good

"I have built many roads and sewers in my time"
(Employment Secretary. Lord Young, on BBC Radio 4. 20 February)

My, my! How about that, then? Of course, Lord Young is not exactly unique in his truly prodigious endeavours, is he? Take the Great Wall of China. You may have heard a broadcasting hack assert (Radio 2, 26 February) that this mighty rampart — all 1500 miles of it — was built by one Shih Hwang-ti. the first of the "universal emperors'. Swiftly on to 5th century Athens BC. Phidias builds the Parthenon. Admittedly, he enjoyed a little help from Ictinus and Callicrates, but it was a brave effort for all that. North-Westward to Rome and the Colosseum. The Emperor Vespasian rolled his sleeves up for this one. Unfortunately he was "summoned by the Gods" before he could complete it — overwork, no doubt — and his successor. Titus, to the cheers of his admiring people, finished the job — all on his own.

But what about the home scene? There have been many instances of selfless hard work and heroic devotion to duty. One in particular springs to mind: the example of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunei built anything and everything bridges, railways, ships, canals . . . One very fine example of his handiwork is his tunnel at Box. on the old Great Western line from London to Bristol. Imagine, if you will, all those spotless navvies and their wenches, sitting round their roaring fires, tankards of foaming porter clutched in their soft white hands, howling encouragement to Isambard as, shovel in one grimy fist, pick in the other, he hacks his way through miles of rock and clay. A heartening sight indeed!

Or — and here you rub your eyes — can it be possible that the nearest Lord Young of Graffham ever got to building sewers was when he presented his aristocratic backside to them?

Mixed Media: The Pet Shop Boys – Love is a Bourgeois Construct (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pet Shop Boys single Love is a Bourgeois Construct was released in September, and it is not too often that Karl Marx gets a mention in a pop song or we hear the word ‘bourgeois’.

The new single is reminiscent of the boys at the  peak of  their popularity and success with their songs about life in capitalism in Thatcher’s Britain such as  Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money). In the new single they sing about  ‘searching for the soul of England, drinking tea like Tony Benn’.

They sing ‘love is a bourgeois construct,  it’s a blatant fallacy’ which is derived from a character saying of love ‘it’s a bourgeois fallacy’ in the 1988 novel Nice Work by David Lodge which is about the relationship between a feminist university lecturer  and an engineering firm manager. The novel  is a  pastiche of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Victorian ‘industrial’ novel of strikes in a cotton town, North and South.

The boys further add that ‘you won’t see me with a bunch of roses promising fidelity, love doesn’t mean a thing to me’. Alexandra Kollontai stated that ‘proletarian ideology cannot accept sexual exclusiveness and all-embracing love’, and that new socialist sexual relations would be ‘purified of all material elements, of all money consideration’.

They sing about ‘flicking through Karl Marx again’ which could be the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels where they write: ‘the bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production’.

They also borrow the melody line of  Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds by Michael Nyman which in turn is based on the ground bass from Henry Purcell’s 1691 opera King Arthur. Nyman’s music was for the 1982 Peter Greenaway film The Draughtsman’s Contract  which was a Lockean conspiracy thriller about class, sex, property and landscape set in the post 1688 bourgeois ‘glorious revolution’. John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government are the philosophical grounding of bourgeois capitalism: ‘master and servant are names as old as history, for a freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive in the contract between them in civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.’ Later Greenaway dissected capitalism in Thatcher’s Britain in his 1989 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

The Pet Shop Boys clearly see the links between capitalism and the ideology of relationships, singing ‘while the bankers all get their bonuses, I’ve given up on the bourgeoisie, like all their aspirations, it’s a fantasy, you made me see reality’.

Steve Clayton

Sting in the Tail: Same Old Story (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same Old Story

Ever since Eastern Europe ditched state capitalism those western "think-tanks", such as the Adam Smith Institute, have rushed to advise the politicians and the emerging capitalist class of each country on how to set up free-market economies.

But the emerging trade unions in these countries need advice too, and officials of one of Estonia's unions have been in Scotland to learn from the TGWU how to negotiate with the employers.

This is very necessary because Estonia's workers never had any negotiating rights with the old "communist" bosses, and according to the union's chairman there is still no legislation in Estonia for collective bargaining:

  Problems were solved often as a form of gentleman's agreement with the managers of the various Industries.

Glasgow Herald (8 October) 

Of course these "problems" are capitalism's inevitable disputes over wages and conditions, and once Estonia's employers get themselves organised and western businesses move in then the workers will learn that although a "gentleman's agreement" is very nice their own unity and resolve is much more reliable.


A Bargain is Struck

David Murray is boss of Murray International Metals and chairman of Glasgow Rangers Football Club.

As well as owning homes in Edinburgh and Jersey and a 143 acre "weekend" estate in the Borders, he has bought a mansion in an exclusive part of Auckland, New Zealand, for "a bargain £1.5 million" (Scottish Sunday Mail 8 September)

Alas, Murray's plan to use the place as a conference centre has been rejected because of opposition from his well-heeled neighbours. Murray's response to this Is "Some people don't seem to want job creation".

This view is typical of all capitalists. Their profit-making schemes, no matter how anti-social, are always justified on the grounds that some workers get a job.

And Murray's view is shared by most workers. When they hear of plans to build a military base, nuclear power station or airport on their doorstep, instead of condemning these as health hazards or eyesores which will lessen their quality of life, they welcome them because "they bring jobs".

So capitalists and most workers are agreed that the former should get the wealth and the latter the chance to produce it.


There is a Santa

Remember when we were kids how we would tell Santa what we wanted him to bring us for Xmas? And remember how seldom Santa delivered?

Kids' stuff, yes, but millions of “grown-ups" still have the childish belief that another Santa in the form of a political party will, once elected, bring them security, well-paid jobs and better housing with good health and education thrown in.

Fellow workers, It should be obvious by now that it is not in the power of political parties to gift you these things. Belief in Santa Is for kids — or even for our masters since you generously make them a present of everything they have.


Pop Shop (1)

Many young workers imagine that pop music is about having fun. They can identify with a pop idol who seems to represent the opposite of their dull work-a-day life.

Alas, it is just another illusion of capitalism. In the Education Guardian (22 October) Robert Leedham quotes one expert on how a pop idol is manufactured.

  "I'd go for a solo girl singer", says Adele Nazedar of Rhythm King records. "They're the easiest to promote. All the pop comics like to have girls on the cover because they sell more copies. You've got to understand that pop is a commodity; people want a decent return on their Investment".

Ashes to Ashes

California's Forest Lawn Cemetery is a very famous bone yard indeed. A million tourists a year tramp round the grounds to rubber neck at the graves of film stars like Clark Gable and Bette Davis. It was the subject of Evelyn Waugh's novel "The Loved One." It is very famous but It seems it may also be very crooked.

A former employee's charges about the business procedures of the cemetery are being investigated by state officials. These charges include — human remains routinely discarded in garbage bags and unburned remains flushed down drains. That there well may be substance to these charges is given credence with the recent discovery of one corpse's ashes being found in a battered cardboard box on a Los Angeles freeway.

In order to make a profit capitalist concerns are always cutting corners and cheapening production, so is it really so surprising that Forest Lawn Cemetery is cutting the cost of destruction to make a few more bucks?


It’s Not Decent

"Decency" is what any politician must have today and John Major has got it.

The Guardian recently told us:

  Mr Major's greatest asset is his visible decency . . . he is a genuine human being. 

Why? Because Major intends "restoring the public services" when that awful Thatcher woman had "ran them into the ground".

Possibly The Guardian has forgotten how during the Thatcher years Major's "decency" always allowed him to support legislation which heaped misery on many people — the "social fund", for example.

Then there's Major's 100% backing for the mass murder committed by the American and British armed forces in Iraq. Where was "decency" there?

Yes, John Mayor is a softly-spoken man who loves cricket and who may well restore public services (especially if there are votes in doing It), but he is also a man who totally supports capitalism with all its inhuman consequences and is happy to preside over it. That's not our idea of "decency". Is it yours?


Forgive Them, Mother

In these days of civil war in Yugoslavia, world hunger, homelessness and all those other unimportant issues it is heartening to see that Tory MPs can identify the burning issues of the day.

In the House of Commons, Ian Taylor (Esher) protested about the use of certain phrases by Church of England parsons.

  He added: "These prayers refer to God as 'Our Mother and Father'. Curates who are themselves confused about bi-sexuallty should not try to confuse the congregations as to whether Jesus was a hermaphrodite."

The Guardian (22 October) 

He urged that offending vicars should be fined £1 each time they used such a phrase. His colleague Michael Allan (Selby) thinks this isn't going far enough. He wants to bring criminal charges!

 "The liturgy of the Church of England is approved by parliament. It would be unlawful to make any unauthorised liturgical change of gender.
  In this respect, I think the restraint of the law Is even more potent than pay restraint"

Pop Shop (2)

In a recent case in the High Court David Levine, who is suing the Dally Mirror for syndication money due him for a story he provided about Boy George and alleged heroin use, claimed that the pop star "threatened to kill him"

Mr Levine's lawyer claimed that his client had given the story to the Dally Mirror because "he had seen what heroin had done to some of his friends and hoped Boy George, whom he knew, would be pulled up sharply if his alleged heroin abuse was exposed In the popular press."

This selfless social behaviour would be a little easier to credit if It had not been revealed that he had Initially asked for £40,000 but claimed he agreed on £15,00 plus £6,000 syndication fees.

Between the Lines: Prole Pop (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prole pop

Why do TV producers assume that people who want to watch (and hear) pop/rock music on TV must be dummies who deserve no better than the incoherent idiocies and inanities offered by the likes of Paula Yates (presenter of The Tube. C4. Fridays. 5.30pm)? Since TV pop shows first began in the Sixties with The Six Five Special (including the awful Pete Murray — last seen campaigning for Thatcher in the 1979 election together with a bunch of other has-beens). Ready Steady Go and the atrocious Top Of The Pops, hosted by nauseating Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn, it has always been assumed that those who like "popular" music are fit only for condescension.

Pop. it is felt by those who run TV. is the music of the proles who are too intellectually limited to appreciate the likes of Beethoven. So if you want to see the latest musicians perform on TV the price you must pay is to be treated like a cultural inferior. The Radio One mentality is that if you like workers' music you can't expect serious presentation. If you are a Radio Three, opera on BBC2 type. TV is prepared to treat you with a little dignity. They get Richard Baker to whisper in pompous tones about what led Verdi to write his four-act Rigoletto. Meanwhile, for the proles who watch the bands which most workers buy (Madness sell more records than Verdi's four acts multiplied by twelve) the best we can expect is Steve Wright being patronising or Paula Yates giggling and plugging her old man (Geldof's) Christmas record.

Negative marketing

The US elections for Congress last month were marked by a new campaigning feature: negative advertising. Candidates for Congress can buy space on American TV in order to sell themselves and it has been this soap-powder approach to politics which has characterised US elections for years. In 1986 the advent of negative advertising — used as a tactic by both of the big parties — has meant that candidates' ads are increasingly based not on what a good guy Our Man is. but what a lying, hypocritical, uncaring ponce Their Man is. All over the USA workers have been appealed to on the basis of purely negative messages.

In one sense nothing could be more fitting for capitalism in the tired, intellectually bankrupt condition it has now reached. No more New Deals or Great Men of the People: the only way to persuade workers that Tweedledum is worthier than Tweedledee is by digging up the dirt on Tweedledee. The British need not feel superior; if Kinnock is to oust Thatcher his main hope rests on negative attitudes to her; if Thatcher is to keep Labour out she will need to play on fears of the Labour Left gaining power. Such is the level of capitalist politics that merchants with nothing to sell can only get your votes by claiming that the merchant at the next stall is selling shoddy products. The best to be said for it is that at least with negative advertising politicians tell fewer lies: after all. if they are buying space to explain what a bunch of crooks the others are workers have only to draw the obvious conclusion.

BBC bias

Yes, Norman Tebbit, the BBC is biased. That is why the oldest party in Britain claiming to stand for socialism, and the only one which does, has never been invited to appear on national BBC TV.

It is scandalous for Tebbit and the Tories to attack the BBC for showing viewers the results of the Libyan bombing of civilian workers, in which the British government colluded with the US government in an act of appalling state terrorism. If Tebbit wishes to blame the messenger for delivering the message that is the slippery slope to total state control of the media by the government.

In addition to criticisms over the Libyan reporting Tories have also been attacking the BBC over a Panorama programme (Maggie's Militant Tendency, broadcast on 30 January 1984) which showed the clear links between several known fascists and the Conservative Party. Two of the MPs named in the programme sued the BBC for libel and. after several months, the BBC caved in and dropped its defence. It is highly probable that the BBC was under government pressure to do so. Several points concerning the Panorama programme need to be made:

• It has been alleged that the two Tory MPs who sued for libel are now totally cleared of any fascist connections. That is false. The MPs concerned — Neil Hamilton and George Howarth — denied the Panorama claim that they were members of a neo-fascist group called Tory Action which has infiltrated the Tory Party. What they did not deny at any time were other claims made in the programme: that when Hamilton was at university he advocated "the abolition of parliament and the suppression of the lower classes” (this and all quotes are from a direct transcript obtained from the BBC); that in 1972 he went to the Youth Leaders Congress of the MSI. the Italian Fascist Party, and that when in August 1983 he was on an official parliamentary delegation to Berlin he shocked his hosts by appearing in public and giving a Nazi salute. In the case of Howarth. he hosted a Tory Action reception in the House of Commons in July 1983 — Tory Action is an explicitly racist group led by G.K. Young. ex-Tory candidate for Brent East of whom Young Conservative chairman Philip Pedley said in the programme: “He is a man who seems to see a Communist under every bed and usually a Jewish Communist. He seems to be convinced that unless you are racist you are some sort of traitor . . . ” Howarth's mother was an active NF member for four years, according to NF records.

• Quite aside from the fact that none of the above points were ever denied by Hamilton and Howarth in court, there is the fact that they were not the only Tory MPs said by Panorama to be backed by Tory Action and linked to fascists. The main MP attacked by the programme was Harvey Proctor, described as having "been involved in Tory Action since G.K. Young first set it up". Why did Proctor not sue for libel, considering that the programme explicitly connected him with the National Front and accused him of stirring up racism? Proctor is now under police investigation for homosexual vice crimes — beating male prostitutes — and again he has remained silent. Proctor was not the only MP apart from Hamilton and Howarth named in the programme If the legal victory of Hamilton and Howarth indicates that they were the victims of false allegations (which, in general, they do not seem to have been) the legal inaction of the other MPs might be taken to read that they had no defence to offer.

• The programme made several other highly damaging points, based on indisputable evidence, to show that fascists are operating in the Tory Party. For instance, the programme opened by interviewing Don Moody who had recently been leader of the paramilitary Nazi group. Column Eighty-eight. He had spent thirty years in neo-fascist parties in Britain. He made his office into a shrine to the memory of Adolf Hitler. In 1983 Moody was a Conservative candidate in Cleethorpes. No denial of this evidence has been offered — indeed. Moody was interviewed on the programme, saying that "I think that Adolf Hitler will go down in history with complete and total detachment as the saviour not only of the white man. if you like, but of humankind". Neither has there been any denial of the programme's damning evidence regarding the pressure group run by the neo-fascist historian. David Irving, who claims on the programme to have bought a copy of the membership list of the Federation of Conservative Students for use by his organisation.

The Panorama documentary provided an excellent exposure of clear links between Tories, some of them MPs, and fascists. As such it made public information which should be known. That efforts have been made to silence the programme-makers and intimidate the BBC is proof that capitalist politicians do not like the facts about themselves given to the workers.

Steve Coleman

Best years of your life (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

No wonder it's called the silly season. While the scenes at the party conferences purported to be "serious politics", the media events outside the conference halls were what were really meant for public consumption. to show that our leaders are really human.

You know the sort of thing — Neil Kinnock finds a beach to fall over, or maybe Margaret Thatcher chances on the birth of a calf in Scarborough. All in front of the TV cameras. But that's not the end of it. In this, the International Youth Year, youth has suddenly become important to the politicians and their PR officers. This is not because of any particular concern for the health or hopes of the young, but something of far greater importance — their votes.

According to the Observer (1 September 1985). between now and the next general election two and a half million new votes will join the electoral register, bringing the total number of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four up to a decisive five million. That's not all because, as the Observer quotes a leading psephologist, the young are "trendy and more malleable than other voters" and they no longer give automatic support to the Labour Party. The evidence of previous governments has shown that despite the repeated promises from Labour politicians on jobs, peace and poverty, the Labour Party is as powerless to deal with these problems as are the other parties of the profit system.

Many of the young suffer particularly from these problems; from the prospect of a life that capitalism — through the dole queue — dictates will be useless; from nuclear war, the mere threat of which claims some psychological victims among those least used to the brutal truths of the property society; or from the artificial escape of an empty crisp bag and a tube of glue. As if this were not all, from every hoarding and magazine the young are offered Clearasil for their spots, pop stars for their emotions and carefully packaged leaders (in many flavours) to do their thinking for them.

So it's open season on the political field. The hunt is on for that prized species, the gullible young voter. Reared on mindless and unquestioning fodder from the pulpit, the press, or the classroom, they are fair game for any opportunist with a nice smile. The first shot in this massacre was fired by the SDP in the form of their "Youthblitz". According to the Observer, David Owen, who is worried at the effect of his Gang of One style of leadership, has devised a series of speeches and high profile media stunts due to start soon. From the party that delights in meaningless slogans (remember "Caring about the People, Caring about the Costs". "Compassion and Competition", and "Toughness and Tenderness"?) they now plan all this publicity under the title "Have You Got The Guts - To Take Up The SDP Challenge?", which is presumably like the Pepsi Challenge TV advert, except less honest.

On the other side of the Alliance. David Steel is keeping a lower profile, presumably because, with his style of leadership he does not need to worry so much about his image with the youth of the Liberal Party. He listens intently and earnestly to the Young Liberals every year before overruling their annually-successful conference resolutions on "defence". The leader of the Liberal Party, though, is already a pastmaster at the sordid business of capitalist politics, that of getting votes regardless of the basis on which they are given. Not for him the blatant publicity tricks of Owen, nor the degrading scraping after votes on any flimsy pretext. No, when David Steel seeks votes he's artistic — a couple of years ago he rapped on a truly unforgettable disco-funk record called "I Feel Liberal, OK”. But it had about as much chance of getting to number one as he has of getting to Number Ten.

The leader of the Labour Party must have learned something from that, for when he recently entered the pop world (appearing on a video for a Tracey Ullman single), he for once kept his mouth firmly shut. It seemed to work. His popularity rating improved immediately. Tracey Ullman, however, hasn't had a hit since. Another artist prepared to align himself with the Kinnock camp is the rock poet Billy Bragg, who appeared with Neil Kinnock as part of the Labour Party's Jobs and Industry campaign. The task of the Labour leader was to explain how it is that this time the Labour Party in office will create jobs when, in their last term of office, unemployment in fact doubled. Billy Bragg's function was to entertain a few thousand people with just himself and his guitar a relatively easy task, as it turns out, compared with that of Neil Kinnock.

The SDP, for their part, have decided on principle that they don't want to stoop to the depths of the Labour Party and use pop stars in their campaigning. This decision, however, may also have something to do with the fact that no pop group (that would like to continue selling records) is prepared to align themselves with the SDP. For the Tories, who had their bluff called in 1983 and are now vainly trying to fulfil their promises, the best policy is silence; the best argument is no argument. Their efforts will be directed towards keeping the FCS (which spells electoral liability) well out of sight.

Add to all that lot the more mature activities all other parties go in for to attract the vote of adults —such as kissing their babies — and it should be clear that only the Socialist Party is concerned with the workers' vote to the extent of what it represents. In the hands of gullible, misled workers the vote is a waste or worse. But in the hands of politically aware workers who refuse to be diverted by the rhetoric, the promises, or the pop songs of politicians, it is a potent weapon for peaceful, democratic, revolutionary change. To paraphrase Engels, the vote is like a razor-blade in that you can use it for its real function, to shave, or you can cut your throat with it.

The point then is clear. The problems that plague young and old under capitalism, as well as the insulting attempts to trick them out of the power of their votes, will continue only as long as we let it. So next time you turn on the TV to be faced with the sight of Neil Kinnock looking out of place in a Madonna video, or maybe Nigel Lawson breakdancing in the city streets for the benefit of the cameras, don't just think "What pillocks!", but rather. "What's the alternative?"

Brian Gardner

One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, Three O'Clock, Rock . . . (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rock, Around the Clock . . . Yes, Rock n' Roll is the craze—from London to Glasgow, Paris to Berlin, and even Moscow.

Dixieland, New Orleans, Chicago, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Jive, Bop . . . they all come, and go. And now it's Rock 'n' Roll. Teenagers shout, sing and riot wherever the film "Rock Around the Clock" is showing; dance halls hold weekly Rock 'n' Roll nights; records by Bill Haley, the Platters and Elvis Presley, sell by the million, and even the B.B.C. play a few Rock 'n' Roll records. Yes, it's the craze. But why?

Every so often "Pop" music gets a shot in the arm; a new lease of life. In the 'twenties it was the Charleston and Jazz Bands, the 'thirties Swing, Boogie Woogie and Jive; the 'forties the New Orleans revival and Bop. And now  . . . "Rock"!

What then is Rock 'n' Roll? It isn't Jazz or Swing or Boogie. It's just a combination of the three . . . a simple beat, a simple lyric, improvisation, plenty of noise—plus "corn"; all the "gimmicks" in the book. Yes it's a gimmick; musical extroversion of the Nth degree. But it's got a beat. Even the "squares" tap their feet, and "cats" just go wild!

Why do many youngsters go wild over Rock 'n' Roll? Why did many go crazy over Goodman, Basie or Harry James in the 'thirties or the Charleston Chasers in the 'twenties? Why do people mob a movie star or a famous footballer? The reason, I think, is that life for most people is pretty boring, "soul destroying"—particularly for youngsters, teenagers, who have more energy than their elders; who have not yet had the zest for life knocked out of them. After eight or nine hours in an office, shop or factory, the "kids" want to do something; they want to express themselves in some way or another. Life for most of them seems empty, purposeless. Modern Capitalist society with its general insecurity, its wars and its call-ups gives them very little to strive for. And after a day at the office or factory bench, they've just got to let themselves go. They need some kind of escape; some kind of outlet for pent-up energy. The movies, the Dance Halls, the Jazz Clubs, provide them with this "escape", this outlet. The cinema, the Dance Halls and Jazz Clubs, each with its variation on an old theme, or a new gimmick or craze such as "Bop" or "Rock" give these youngsters and teenagers a chance once, twice or more times a week to get away from what are often poor, uncomfortable homes; to sing, dance, stamp their feet and "let their hair down," away from the chief clerk, clerk, the factory foreman—and their parents; to leave their worries, their problems, their frustrations and repressions behind—for a while.

Rock 'n' Roll is a new craze. But a Rock 'n' Roll night at the Palais; a Rock 'n' Roll Jamboree can be fun for a few hours a week, yet after all it's not much of a substitute for a really full and interesting life. And our present society denies that to most young people today.

But, for the time being, at least  . . . "Rock around the Clock."

Peter E. Newell

Mixed Media: Bowie's Piano Man (2015)

Book Review from the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bowie's Piano Man: The Life of Mike Garson by Clifford Slapper is a musical biography of the avant-garde jazz pianist who has worked with David Bowie over the last forty years.

Garson came of age musically in the 1960s when people would 'listen to Bartok, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix all in the same day', and he had his big break in 1965 in Greenwich Village when Elvin Jones, renowned drummer with John Coltrane called on Garson to replace a pianist.  Slapper describes the influences of jazz pianists Cecil Taylor, Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans on the young Garson. Jim Merod concluded that Garson is 'within the circle of genuinely masterful jazz pianists including Bill Evans, Art Tatum and Thelonius Monk.'

Slapper details Garson's work with Bowie beginning with the 1973 album Aladdin Sane, which he expressively describes as 'the arrival of Aladdin Sane was the 1970s equivalent of joining the first passenger jet into space.' The album lyrics describe New York City's urban decay, decadence, drug addiction, violence and death just prior to some catastrophe. Garson's piano parts on Aladdin Sane are exquisitely beautiful cascading notes. Nicholas Pegg wrote that 'Garson's breathtaking jazz/blues inflections forcibly steer away from pure rock'n'roll, creating a vigorous hybrid somewhere between the Stones and Kurt Weill.' The song Time is Brechtian Cabaret, and it is interesting to compare with the cabaret music of Jacques Brel and Weimar Marxists Brecht-Weill. Garson used the old stride piano style from the 1920s which 'sounds like those old-fashioned rinky-tink bar-room pianos.' There are a number of links between Brecht-Weill and Bowie-Garson; Brecht-Weill's Alabama Song was recorded by Bowie in 1978, Bowie had the title role in the 1982 BBC TV dramatisation of Brecht's Baal, and at his father's funeral at his request Garson played Weill's September Song and Brecht-Weill's Mack the Knife.

Garson's sweeping piano runs were a key feature on the songs We are the Dead, 1984, and Big Brother on Bowie's 1974 album Diamond Dogs which was based on George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty Four. The lyrics describe a dystopian post-apocalypse nightmare, and highlight Bowie's political anxieties about leadership, submission to authority and conformist beliefs. Bowie later said it was an 'apocalyptic kind of view of our city life... it just coincided with the first economic disasters in New York.' Allan Tannenbaum's New York in the 70s describes how 'economic stagnation coupled with inflation created a sense of malaise', in 1975 New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy, then AIDS devastated the gay and artistic community (see Larry Kramer's Reports from the Holocaust.)

Garson was a Scientologist in the 1970s but Slapper does not elaborate on Bowie's 1997 Q magazine interview where he says Scientology had caused 'one or two problems', although Garson does say he 'went through a period of being overbearing in his attempts to persuade others to take an interest in his spiritual beliefs.' David Buckley wrote that Garson's ' proselytising efforts had converted both Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey', and D'Agostino in Glam Musik quotes Bowie: 'He tried it on with me a bit until we had a fight about it. He was so po-faced. Very serious guy. We used to call him Garson the Parson.' William S Burroughs believed that Scientology might help where psychoanalysis had failed, and that auditing techniques could do more in ten hours than psychoanalysis could do in ten years but he was 'disgusted by the authoritarian organisation and the stupidly fascistic utterances of L Ron Hubbard. The aim of Scientology, complete freedom from past conditioning, was perverted to become a new form of conditioning. He had hoped to find a method of personal emancipation and had found another Control System. It was like a State, with its own courts and own police' (Literary Outlaw, Ted Morgan)

Garson 'has a lot of faith in humanity and the goodness of human nature', and the need to spread the idea of connecting to something bigger and deeper through an exploration of artistic creation. Garson says 'everybody is innately connected to God, and is God', and 'We are indeed all deeply interconnected' which evokes Jung's 'collective unconscious.' Garson, and Slapper to some extent, appear to have sympathy for the Jungian concept of 'synchronicity.'

Garson's spirituality can find echoes in Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man: 'For Spinoza, Goethe, Hegel, as well as for Marx, man is alive only inasmuch as he is productive, inasmuch as he grasps the world outside of himself in the act of expressing his own specific human powers, and of grasping the world with these powers. In this productive process, man realizes his own essence, which in theological language is nothing other than his return to God.'

Garson sees creative artists 'projecting what the future society is supposed to be', and the positive social significance of art and creativity which we see in William Morris's Art, Labour and Socialism.  Slapper writes 'there is plenty of evidence showing how the human brain is capable of great cooperation and collective creativity. Every performance by every orchestra bears testimony to this.'

Bowie's Piano Man is a welcome addition to my bookshelf and sits between the bookends of The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg, and Strange Fascination – David Bowie: The Definitive Story by David Buckley.

Steve Clayton

Bowie's Piano Man can be ordered at the following link. 

Politics of Pop (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Commandments say 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' and half the world is in training to annihilate the other half. Nobody would get me in uniform and off to Aden to kill a lot of people I've never met and have nothing against anyway. I know people say they are against wars and yet they go on fighting them. Millions of marvellous young men are killed and in five minutes everybody seems to have forgotten all about it. War stems from power-mad politicians and patriots."

Except for the final comment, this could be a socialist speaking in Hyde Park. In fact, it is Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones giving his views on war and militarism. On many other questions his ideas come close to the arguments which socialists use. For example, he is outspokenly anti-religious and opposed to marriage. While he does not appear to relate any of this to the class structure of society, he does at least look upon private property as a curse.

"There should be no such thing as private property. Anybody should be able to go where he likes and do what he likes."

Jagger calls himself an anarchist and, like most anarchists, his weak point is his failure to understand how capitalism works. Politicians he claims are "a dead loss" and it is they who are responsible for wars, the legal system and the rest of it.

"Politics, like the legal system, is dominated by old men. Old men who are also bugged by religion."

Socialists would reply that it is not the individuals, such as Wilson, who administer capitalism who are to blame but the system of society itself. Nor would we accept that it is the "old men" who have landed the world in its present mess. Even Jagger must recognise that he is in the minority among young people; most youth are just as ardent supporters of private property as their fathers and grandparents. In fact, one has to look no further than some of the other groups competing on the pop scene to see just how committed they are to capitalism, religious superstitions and all.

Probably the most depressing case is the Beatles. An immensely talented and versatile group, politically they seem be about as wet as they come. One of them, George Harrison, is convinced, like Jagger, that is the "old men" who are the cause of the world's problems.

"I think music is the main interest of the younger people. It doesn't really matter about the older people now because they're finished anyway. There's still going to be years and years of having all these old fools who are governing us are bombing us and doin' all that because, you know, it's always them."

Confronted by this, Harrison's philosophy is to shut his eyes and pretend it isn't there. He sees an individual way out in meditation. Everything in the material world is superficial, he argues; it is only by burrowing deep inside yourself that you can find god and personal fulfilment.

"If you can contact that absolute state you can just tap that amazing source of energy and intelligence. It's there, anyway you've just got to contact it and then it will make whatever you do easier and better. Everything in life works out better because everybody is happier with themselves."

This might be a comforting creed to someone with Harrison's wealth but unemployed workers in Birmingham or hungry peasants in Bengal are likely to be slightly less impressed by the miraculous powers of meditation. The Beatles' spiritual mentor, the so-called Maharishi Mahesh Yog, obviously has a shrewd understanding of this and restricts his missionary efforts to the clientele of the London Hilton and such places. The Maharishi, a sort of latter-day Rasputin with mental powers seem to be in inverse proportion to his impressive title, is at least a magnificent showman. Some his profundities have to be heard to be believed:

"I think ladies meditate comparatively more successfully because the quality of heart is more developed in the ladies than in the men, and therefore the waves of joy are more aroused, and that's why the joy is felt more. The heart is more - a mother's heart is much more much more wavy - more waves, deeper waves rise in mother's heart than in the father's heart. An experience of bliss does need a more capable instrument of emotion."

People who fall for this sort of rot will obviously be taken in by anything and, like Rasputin, the Maharishi seems to have a low opinion of those who provide him with a comfortable living. Interviewed recently in Bremen (West Germany) he was reported to have laughingly remarked that "no matter where I am people will find in me the commodity that they want."

As well as their hatred of the "old men", Jagger and Harrison have another trait in common - their dislike of oppression. Yet there are plenty of pop singers with other ideas - some openly racialist, others advocatíng dictatorship. P. J. Proby, for example, is fond of making half-witted generalisations about negroes - "They're always asking for handouts. They don't have any real dignity." Another singer with totalitarian sympathies is Scott Walker who, like Harold Wilson, has a passion for telling the working class what is wrong with them. According to Walker we have all gone flabby in the West and we ought to have this knocked out of us by a good dose of Stalinism.

"Russians have an unbelievable strength, nothing shakes them. The workers here should have the same opportunities, they should be educated on radio and television. They need a good dose of propaganda and more than anything else they need a form of dictatorship again . . . then we'd be all right again."

The politics of pop are worth looking at not because pop singers are anybody in particular but because most of them are from the working class and, to a certain extent, their ideas are typical of the lines which young workers think along.

One of the most widespread of their illusions is the feeling that the fundamental division in society isbetween young and old, rather than between the working class and the propertied class. Prejudices such as his are just as dangerous as racialism because they obscure the fact that the real conflict in society is between classes - not generations. The gulf which separates a young worker from a young capitalist is immeasurably wider than that which exists between two workers of different ages.

Whatever superficial differences there might be in styles of dress or tastes in music, working men are united as a class by the fact that eachone of us has to sell his labour power to the capitalists. In the same way the capitalist class stand together, whatever generation they might identify themselves with as individuals, because collectively they live off the surplus value which they wring out of the working class. It would be nice to have a few politically conscious pop singers who recognised this but, in the end, it doesn't matter that much. After all it is not a few individuals like George Harrison or Mick Jagger who are going to win the revolution but the millions of working men and women, young and old, who make up the working class.

Let's finish by giving the floor to Jimmy Savile - one of the most successful DJ's in the pop business. Preaching in a church near Halifax just before Christmas he sent up a prayer to capitalism which would have warmed the heart of any Victorian mill owner or steel baron.

"For the first few years, I worked down a coal mine. Now I have hit this 'gold seam' and I say, 'Thank you, Lord, business is good.'"

For the rest of us, who are still working down the mines, or in the factories and offices, how many of us feel like echoing Jimmy's pious gratitude? The only "golden seam" we are ever likely to hit is socialism. And that won't be thanks to any gods but just to our own revolutionary initiative.

John Crump