The Passing Show: The Same Everywhere (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Same Everywhere

The Balance of Payments. Four words which have meant a headache for every British government for umpteen years. “Our” gold and dollar reserves are too low. “Our” imports are too high. “We” are paying ourselves more than “we” are earning. “We” are heavily in debt. And so the moans go on and on. So much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a peculiarly British situation, almost as if the rest of the world was flowing with milk and honey for the average inhabitant. Well, let’s take a look at it.

First of all, if you’re thinking that high exports and a favourable balance of trade mean that we could all sit back and relax, a little bit of history reading will do much to dispel that notion. Indeed, at a time when Britain was just about the most powerful nation in the world, ruling the waves militarily and commercially, working people lived under the most shocking conditions. But come a little more up-to-date if you like, and remember that only a few years ago West Germany had a gigantic balance of trade surplus (“embarrassingly large” one commentator once called it), yet her workers had to struggle just as hard for improvements in wages and conditions, and there have been some really bitter strikes there in recent times.

And today? The German capitalists have been getting jittery about the state of their economy. According to Chancellor Erhard, wages have been rising too fast (it’s always too fast—never too slow), since 1963 by 8½ per cent, while productivity has gone up by only four per cent. He has not been slow to threaten Wilson-like measures: —

. . .  we still have things under control. However, if we let them drift, then the same will have to happen to us, that is, a wages freeze, a prices freeze, a considerable rise in the cost of living, indeed even partial balance of payments control. (Guardian, 6/8/66)

It has been favourite with some people to recommend that British workers take a leaf out of their German brothers' book and work as hard. Doesn’t seem to have made much difference, does it? The cry for them, as for us, is still “work harder and pull your belts in!”

Just to show you that capitalism’s problems are similar, wherever you go, let us take another example, this time from one of the “poorer” countries—a rising power since the end of the war. India. There the government has published its fourth five-year plan, envisaging some £10,000 millions investment; yet even if it comes to fruition, the planners admit it will mean:—

. . . every Indian will have a bare two metres more of cloth each year, and three ounces more of food each day.

Not much to write home about? Ah, but even this miserable achievement has a backhanded slap to accompany it.

A massive export drive, if necessary by curbing consumption at home, and Additional taxation . . . are considered essential. (Guardian, 30/8/66)

This, by the way, is one of the countries figuring prominently in the Oxfam appeals, and there is no doubt about the poverty, squalor and starvation of many millions of its inhabitants. But developing Indian capitalism is interested in this only incidentally. Its prime concern is the sale of its goods on the world market. And if this means that the Indian workers have to make do with even less than they get now, the government and employers will not shed many tears—except a few crocodile ones.

Want to be a Postman?

There is a delightfully colourful set of brochures which you can get from any post office, listing the delights of a career with the G.P.O. Read it, and discover that when you work as a postman you “enjoy” such perks as “ a safe job” and “a steady wage”, to say nothing of “an easy mind” and “a friendly atmosphere”. Just think, at 23 and over, you can earn the princely sum of £15 11 s. a week, basic, if you work within four miles radius of Charing Cross, and the opportunity to work overtime.

Perhaps like me, you have your doubts about the adequacy of such a wage, especially if you have a wife and children to think about. But, of course, you can’t expect the Post Office to introduce such a discordant note into their literature, which reads like a song of self-praise from beginning to end. In fact, if everything in the postman’s garden is so lovely, why you may ask, does the G.P.O. have to try so hard to entice you into it with such garish and elaborately printed leaflets?

The answer lies not so much in what has been said as in what has been left out. Shift work in all weathers, for example. And the fact that even the present miserable rate of £15 11s. a week has been won only after a determined strike two or three years ago—the first in the Post Office for more than, half a century. The G.P.O. leaflet is typical of much of the stuff you will find in the Situations Vacant column of any newspaper. No employer, particularly in times of labour shortage, is going to lead off with a list of snags. They will become obvious only when you start working for him. Then, in the manner of Orwell “interesting” becomes “boring” and you find that those “gd. wages and conds” are not really enough after all.

But that’s the outcome of a wages system. No matter what honeyed words your employer uses, your wages are always a problem to him, and to you, too.

Thoughts on Crime

But not very deep ones. I’m afraid, from the Evening Standard leader writer of August 24. He was no doubt prompted by the recent outbreaks of violent crime, and gently chided Lord Butler and the present Home Secretary, Mr. Jenkins, for their “bafflement over the causes of crime in an affluent society”. Yet for all the contribution to our knowledge in this particular editorial, the writer might just as well have left his pen in his pocket.

He makes some sweeping and quite unsupported assertions in his attempts to cover this pressing problem in about 10 column inches, and ends up just as much without a real answer as when he started. “Man is a basically aggressive and pugnacious animal,” he writes, but gives no evidence for this, or for his quite startling suggestion that the object of wars, military training, etc., is to provide a safety valve for the pent-up feelings of bored youngsters.

This editorial caught my eye for its complete refusal to ask one simple question—why? If young people are bored, what is the reason, especially in a rapidly changing world? Isn’t the prospect of a lifetime of wage work enough to make anyone bored? And what do people fight about anyway? This is the question the writer should have begun by asking, but never did. We agree with him that poverty is not the cause of crime, though it may aggravate the situation at times. People fight and knock each other about for very material reasons, when you get down to the bottom of things. Over private property, in fact.

The outbreak of violence is just one aspect of the general competitive struggle which affects each one of us throughout his life. We are all jockeying for economic elbow room, and on the international field, this throws whole nations against each other in massive armed conflict. That, by The Evening Standard’s criteria, should be classified as the biggest and most violent crime of all, involving wholesale murder and robbery, yet the editorial never touched it. A crime, apparently, is a crime when it does not have the blessing of your own ruling class. Rob and murder on their behalf, and you might even get a medal for it. Under any other circumstances, a nice long stretch behind bars.

Gaspers

"The Treasury has received several hundred pounds in cash contributions from members of the public since the Prime Minister announced his measures to deal with the economic crisis.”

(Guardian, 12/8/66)

"I won't retire—I wouldn’t know what to do all day.” (Mr. H. Jennings, winner of over £92,000 in Vernons Pools. Daily Mail Advert, 18/8/66)

‘The pressure of events is remorselessly leading towards a major war, while efforts to reverse that trend are lagging disastrously behind.” (U Thant’s statement to the United Nations, 1/9/66)

“The government spent £3,600,000 in assisting the Potato Marketing Board to take potatoes off the market and push up prices for the remainder last year . . .

(Daily Telegraph, 26/8/66)

Eddie Critchfield

Bill (1961)

A Short Story from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bill was born a little before the turn of the century— "Same year as Charlie Chaplin ", he would claim, as though in some vague, sad way he wished to identify himself with that symbol of the universal underdog. Orphaned very young, he eventually entered a naval training school, then, as sailor and musician, travelled the wide world for the better part of twenty years.

All the so-called virtues were inherent in Bill. He was healthy, honest, kind, dutiful, diligent and humble. "Life” to him was a clear cut issue of service to one's betters, obedience to and unquestioning faith in "authority". Of such stuff is capitalism made, and Bill was the last to question the justice or sanity of the social system.

Having survived the first world war-to-end-wars he chose civilian life and by the early twenties had settled in a London suburb to raise a small family. Trained to worship at the shrine of service and security he became a post office worker. He had served his king and country; he would now serve his neighbours in the role of conscientious workman.

Not that Bill thought all this out. As a propertyless member of society he was a "natural" prole; the kind of prole that any Blimp would give his left arm for (almost). But I digress . . .  If, then, the social system has anything to offer its perfect proles one would assume Bill's rake-off worthy of attention—certainly worthy of Bill. He worked hard, pinched nothing, acknowledged his "station", doffed his hat to the vicar, was faithful to his wife and suffered children—his own and everyone els's—with immeasurable patience.

Who better deserved the milk and honey of a world that sets so much store upon the worthy life? Here. I'm afraid, is the point at which, dear reader, you are in for a shock.

You see, with all his merits Bill was, nevertheless, a wage slave. Briefly, it amounts to this; that all the nice things he said and thought and did had a strictly cash value which, though renewed from Friday to Friday, left him not one wit nearer security or luxury. He earned 30s.. £2, £2 10s., £3 10s. a week, the figure rising as the years rolled on, but only in relation to the comparable rise in his cost of living. The only permanent factor in Bill's economy was his inability to provide more than the minimum food, clothing and shelter for his family, an annual trip to the sea. with presents for the kids at Christmas and birthdays thrown in for good measure. True he squandered good money on ten fags a day. a weekly flutter on the Pools and a pint or two at the local on Sunday mornings. I leave it to you to judge of his extravagance.

Meanwhile his family grew up. H:s son came of age in a different generation with a different outlook. He did, in fact, challenge the status quo and put his findings to his father in no uncertain terms. Discussions played merry hell with the sanctuary of Bill’s apathy, but to no avail. Bill either wouldn't or couldn't see the point—or. more precisely, the pointlessness.

With typical humility Bill swallowed his pride when the second world war-to-end-wars blew up and his son contracted out of it. Discussions continued, mostly in letters or during their infrequent meetings when his son visited home while doing land work in various parts of the country.

Eventually a flying bomb blotted out a life’s work for Bill. His son. summoned by telegram, found him picking at the charred and shattered remains of his paltry goods and chattels. Between sobs he posed a question—not for himself nor merely for his family, but for his

kind . . .

"Why did this happen to us, son? Why, why, why?"

Bill began to die from the day the bomb fell. His hair changed colour overnight, humour drained from his personality. He was a man dedicated to his search for an answer to that anguished—Why? Three years later he was pensioned off as a worker. For five months more he "languished" on fifty bob a week, then died. The surgeon said he was riddled with cancer. His estate totalled £47.

Before the end he came very close lo his son's way of thinking. They talked—no longer frittering time in argument—about capitalism, war, poverty, ugliness. man's inhumanity to man and the way to resolve these social ills through Socialism. It could be said that Bill had to learn the hard way. but he learned in the end.

One might be tempted to dismiss Bill as a relic of the past, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are millions of Bills in the world today, all destined to receive the same treatment until they challenge and overthrow the system that mocks their every virtue as "good" human beings.

And Bill was a good 'un. I ought to know—he was my father.

A. K.

A day in the life of a Royal Mail worker (2022)

A Short Story from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

4.00am. Had to get up an hour earlier this morning. Car failed its MOT and can’t afford repair costs. Will have to cycle to work instead.

4.30am. Just enough time for tea and toast.

5.00am. Set off for work. Strong wind and rain slowing me down.

6.15am. Arrived at work 15 minutes late. Drenched! Manager not happy. Told I have to work through my tea break to make up time. Arsehole!!

10.00am. Really busy morning. Clothes almost dry now. Gasping for a cuppa.

12.30pm. At last. Time for lunch. Can’t afford snack van today. Not due to get paid until end of month. Packet of crisps and nice hot cuppa. Still hungry.

2.30pm. Regular shift finished, but staying on for a couple of hours overtime. Bills, bills, bills.

4.30pm. Extra 2 hours at time and third. Help pay towards car repairs.

6.00pm. Home at last. Note from Shirley on table …“Dinner in fridge …. cheese sandwich and cup-a-soup … don’t overfill the kettle Joe”.

7.00pm. Fell asleep. Absolutely dead-beat.

8.00pm. Fancied a hot bath, but too expensive. Quick shower instead. Watched TV for an hour. Can’t remember what was on.

9.00pm. Early night. Up sharpish again tomorrow.

Zzzzzzz.

Next day, 5.00am … About to set off for work again. Bike has a flat tyre. Totally deflated. Getting too old for all this shit!

PE

The postal workers’ strike (2007)

From the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

A postal worker reflects on the recent series of strikes.

The Royal Mail kept changing the goal posts. What originally started about a pay rise and impending redundancy plans, then involved the fight over pension entitlements and the right to retire at 60 years of age, became, for the Royal Mail mandarins, a campaign to end what they described as “Spanish practices”  – a racist epithet that is insulting to the many hundreds of Spanish who work in Royal Mail – and a demand for total flexibility at work.

What just was the “employers agenda”, to use a term from the last big postal dispute and eventual agreement of the mid-90s which was supposedly the “way forward” for the business? Was there a hidden motive behind the intransigence of  Leighton and Crozier that provoked the strike? It is not as if the CWU hasn’t a history of compromise or reached deals that often favour management over its own members interests to protect the industry’s viability. We have always got to try and look at the bigger picture, which only the bosses and government have the blueprint of, and see beyond the fragmentary glimpses of their real objectives through the fog of battle.

For the worker, it is the money they take home and the amount of work that they must do to earn it that is foremost in their mind, and – let’s not hide from the reality – it is to get the most for doing the least. However, for management, it is the entire opposite. They endeavour to extract the most work out of its workforce at the most minimum of cost. The inevitable class struggle, in other words.

This was the postal dispute, a conflict between worker and boss. And it was management who were the aggressor in the dispute, with:

• Executive action on their pension proposal cuts
• Executive action through the imposition of later starting times
• Executive action through the imposition of network changes
• Executive action through the ending of Sunday Collections
• Executive action against Engineers, the net effect of which will mean a reduction of 10% of posts.
• Executive action through the cessation of Employee Share of Savings Scheme (ESOS).

Postal workers. who had withdrawn their labour, offered to return to work for an increase in pay and more talks over working procedures, but the managers initially refused this offer. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business told the workers to accept the management’s terms, while the High Court has  ruled one week’s planned strike unlawful.

The Union wanted the issue of pensions removed from the pay deal as it is a Group-wide issue, not just for the postal grades. Royal Mail wanted union support to roll out new technology programme. The CWU said they would agree on the basis that there is a share for workers of any savings made. On a later start, the union said they would accept the principle but that each office should be able to maintain earlier starts if arrival patterns justify it. Isn’t that flexibility? Certainly not the Luddite response against modernisation that Royal Mail’s PR message endeavour to convey to the general public. It was on this basis that a settlement was negotiated.

What about the question of whether Royal Mail and/or the government possess a secret plan? With a union keen to broker a deal, as they have always done before, but with a management that kept switching the issues it may not be too paranoid of postal workers to believe that such a plan exists. Nor are they the only ones.

“…the DTI, the department responsible for this huge national asset [Royal Mail] , has officials deployed full-time looking at alternative forms of ownership. Regular talks have been held with investment bankers, Royal Mail executives and Richard Gillingwater, head of the Shareholder Executive, which looks after the state’s business interests… officials from the DTI have also held deeply hush-hush meetings with Royal Mail executives that have reached the point of discussing the detail of potential changes in ownership, not just the theory…” (Mail on Sunday, 22 August 2004).

A partial flotation of Royal Mail would raise anything between £4 billion and £6 billion if a buyer could be found – a buyer who would like to inherit a low cost and compliant work force with a new more limited pension fund liability – a business with a defeated trade union and demoralised membership.

As socialists, we shed no tears that this state-owned company may become privatised. Only those like Lenin who believed socialism, as he put in State and Revolution, means to “To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service” after the example of Bismarck’s Germany, remain under the misconception that it matters.

Regardless of ownership, the necessity for postal workers to organise within their industry and resist the attacks of their employers will continue and to which socialists will offer their support and solidarity , whether it is against the likes of Leighton and Crozier, appointees of the State, or against some rival mail company take-over, or a possible future Private Equity buy-out baron. The class war will only cease when capitalism and the wages system ends.

ALJO

Greasy Pole: Postman’s knock? (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Devotees of conspiracy theories could be excused for descrying some determined backroom manoeuvring to ensure so swift a climb up the Greasy Pole”

The next time a flood of junk mail and red-printed bills comes through the front door do not, as it were, wish you could kill the messenger. Be aware that the friendly local postie may one day be Prime Minister of Great Britain or, even more distressingly, Leader of the Labour Party. Such an event may be heartening to anyone who is sustained by a conviction that this is a great land of opportunity and that capitalism is the finest arrangement of affairs as it allows anyone, no matter how humble their origins, to rise by their own abilities up to the highest  points in society where they can look down on those whose mail they once delivered.

For example there is Alan Johnson, whose mother died when he was 12, four years after his father had abandoned the family. It looked as if he would be placed in a children’s home but his sister, although only 15, persuaded their social worker that she could care for both of them. Living where the Westway flyover now belches noise and fumes, Johnson went to a local grammar school where he did not get his name onto the varnished honours board; in fact he says the school were “glad to see the back” of him. He took a job as a shelf-filler at Tescos but a problem about his lunch break put an end to that; he already had a child so he moved to Slough, to work as a postman. That led to him being elected as a local trade union official.

A long time after life in a council house under the Westway and then in John Betjeman’s favourite Buckinghamshire town he won a seat in the House of Commons. A few minor ministerial jobs developed into a place in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education. At this year’s Labour Party conference, among the pushing and shoving, the arm twisting and back stabbing, Johnson was spoken of as a challenger for the Leadership but he seemed to lose his appetite for the job – in spite of setting up websites with names like Johnson4leader.com.

Conspiracy?

Devotees of conspiracy theories could be excused for descrying some determined backroom manoeuvring to ensure so swift a climb up the Greasy Pole. Johnson’s constituency – Hull East and Hessle – was previously held by Stuart Randall, who had started out as an apprentice electrician before blossoming into a computer expert – which did not prevent a parliamentary journalist describing him as “nondescript”. Randall resigned from the Commons in 1997, allowing Johnson to take over a rock solid  Labour majority and Randall to be shuffled off to the House of Lords.

Then there was the matter of Johnson’s promotion in September 2004 to his first Cabinet job, as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (where he could start work on harassing Incapacity Benefit claimants back to work). The previous occupant of this job was Andrew Smith, who obligingly decided that he needed to spend more time with his family and with his constituency of Oxford East.

Perhaps he was alarmed by the slashing of his 2001 majority of over 10,000 votes down to 963 in 2005. And perhaps Johnson’s promotion in Smith’s place was not unconnected with the fact that, before he got into Parliament, he had been the only member of Labour’s NEC to support the new Leader Blair in his determination to get rid of Clause Four.

Tuition Fees

Like many New Labour leaders, Johnson shows some embarrassment about his past, about those carefree days in opposition when a budding politician could say almost anything, join almost any organisation, provided it seemed radical and exciting. Interviewed in the Observer Magazine (17 September), he insisted that “the first thing about me is I was never a Trot, or a semi-Trot. I was never, ever a Trot.” But he did not then go on to admit that he was once a branch official in the Communist Party.

Of course he has put all that nonsense behind him now that he is in the serious business of  government. His record of support for Blair is unblemished – so pure that when he was the Minister of State for Further and Higher Education under Charles Clarke he played what Tony Blair later described as “a vital role in the successful introduction of variable tuition fees during the last parliament”.

This mannered praise refers to the fierce battle the government had to endure before they were able to bludgeon the measure through Parliament. In that conflict Johnson’s smooth negotiating talents were crucial alongside Clarke’s belligerence. It was, Johnson said, “. . . a charm offensive. I was the charm and Clarke was offensive”.

This joke may not have gone down well with students and their families who struggle through the time at university and then emerge with the right to wear an academic gown and to pay off a substantial debt. Johnson offers this as justification for his attitude: “If I thought it was going to damage working-class kids, I wouldn’t have backed it”.

Another way of putting this feebly circular case would be to argue that the very fact he had backed the tuition fees must mean that they did not damage anyone; it is a style often used by Tony Blair to justify indefensible actions such as the war in Iraq. In any case Johnson’s attitude is rather at variance with his account of how his daughter was treated by the education system. In an area which still had grammar schools she failed her 11 Plus and was placed in a comprehensive school: “She was very bright but, well, probably life chances were lost then…So am I bitter about selection? Yes. I’ve seen what it does to kids”. But he does not seem to be “bitter” about his support for the proposals to set up “trust” schools which, however words are twisted and whatever promises are made, are intended to operate selection policies which can cost the pupils “life chances”.

Claptrap

On other issues Johnson has solidly supported the government – on ID cards, the war in Iraq, foundation hospitals, the “anti-terrorism” laws. And there will be many more examples, as he strives to promote his career through expressed loyalty to the government.

When he was appointed Secretary of State for Education, the postie who delivers the mail to his office brought a long letter from Blair which set out the tasks ahead of him: “…build on our unprecedented record of economic achievement…ensure the long term security and prosperity of our country and its people…deliver real improvements for ordinary hard working families and to underline our Government’s commitment to social justice through policies to expand opportunity and tackle the most deep seated causes of social exclusion”. At the very end of the letter Blair slips a bit of reality into the clap trap: “Your plans will, of course, need to be set against the background of lower growth in funding than in recent  years”.

One symptom of that reality is that there are 60,000 children in care in this country who are, according to Johnson, treated “appallingly”. This is after nine years of a Labour government presiding over the crises and failures of capitalism.

How does the ex-postie, with all his talents for smoothing over uncomfortable facts, explain that away?

Ivan

Letter: "Does the Socialist Party applaud the Scottish postal workers? . . . (2001)"

Letter to the Editors from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Considering myself a socialist postal worker, I wish to direct your readers’ attention to an aspect of a recent mail strike.

Re-acting to the Post Office’s “slap across the wrist” disciplining of a manager, guilty of sexually harassing a 16-year-old postwoman, the entire Glasgow mail ground to a halt as postal workers came out on wildcat strikes.

Now, what struck me, as a socialist, was the sense of solidarity that has developed, after many years’ experience of industrial action, amongst postal workers. As is the custom, regardless of whether official or unofficial, all mail from Glasgow was blacked, a tactic to foil any Royal Mail attempt to move mail around the country to isolate and defeat a strike-bound office. It is illegal secondary action under the statutes, but the Post Office rarely challenges the refusal to handle blacked mail. On this occasion, however, and no doubt, as a result of their success in forcing through the “way forward” productivity deal, Royal Mail tried to divert letters to Edinburgh who subsequently went out on strike too.

Once again, postal workers have demonstrated the strength of industrial solidarity and expressed a spirit, nobly cited by Anton Pannekoek in Workers’ Councils:

“Direct action means action of the workers themselves without the intermediary of trade union officers…The first and most important task is to propaganda to expand the strike…Capitalists know or feel this quite well and so the only inducement to concessions is the fear that the strike might spread universally…”

Also in his “Ethics And Socialism” article:

“The workers could not be made to understand what wrong they had committed by stopping work for a day in support of a group of workers at war with their employers. The bourgeois journalists argued along these lines:…to go on strike for others through solidarity! (sheer madness, indeed…).”

Does the Socialist Party applaud the Scottish postal workers, as I do?

Alan Johnstone, 

Livingston

Reply: 

Yes, even if we don’t share Pannekoek’s view that unofficial, wildcat strikes are always best. As far as we are concerned, any strike to improve conditions or stop them getting worse, official or unofficial, legal or illegal, is all right as long as it is democratically decided and run by those involved. Full-time trade union officials should be the servants of their members, not their bosses as is so often the case today – Editors.

Editorial: The Post Office Workers and the Trade Disputes Act (1943)

Editorial from the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time these words are in print the question of the affiliation of the Post Office Workers’ Union to the Trades Union Congress will probably have been settled temporarily—by being shelved; but the consequences of the campaign will not end there. The Post Office workers have done good work by bringing the issue to the fore, and have made it certain that the whole question of the 1927 Trade Disputes Act will be a live issue after the war, even if, in the meantime, the Government makes or promises to make some concession over the single issue of the affiliation of lower grade Civil Service unions to the T.U.C.

The 1927 Act was ostensibly introduced because in 1920 some millions of workers came out on strike to help the miners. Actually its causes went much further back than that. The employing class were badly frightened by what happened in 1926, but some at least of them realised that that spontaneous demonstration was a symptom of a slow change that was taking place in the outlook of the workers. The workers were gradually becoming more conscious of the fact that as a class, irrespective of occupation, they have a common interest, to be expressed politically as well as industrially, against the employing class. Mr. Churchill, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, put it as follows :

“The development of trade unionism, particularly in the present century and particularly in the last decade, has produced a very great change in the situation. We have seen the trade unions become great political factors, actively engaged in party politics, in endeavouring to secure the return to Parliament or to office of one particular set of politicians, and to oppose the interests of the others.” (Quoted in Parliamentary Report May 30, 1927, col. 55.)

The 1927 Act sought to hinder or undo this development by making any strike (or lock-out) illegal “if it has any object other than or in addition to the furtherance of a trade dispute within the trade or industry in which the strikers are engaged, and is a strike designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community.”

The Act curtailed the legal right of picketing, made it necessary for trade unionists to give individual consent, in writing, before contributions to the political fund could be collected from them, forbad Local Authorities to make compulsory Union membership a condition of employment, and forbad Civil Service Unions to have outside trade union or political affiliations or to have political objects.

While the employing class and their instrument, the Tory Party, may be induced to make some concession to Civil Service Unions, they will do so with understandable reluctance. They know quite well that to concede something now on one clause of the Act will only be followed by demands for concessions on other clauses, and if they have to give way on the whole Act, that will be a definite set-back for them. Actually Civil Service unions in this country are more restricted than in the U.S.A. or the British Dominions. Generally speaking, the unions there can and do affiliate with outside trade unions, support political parties and affiliate with the International Postal Workers’ trade union movement, so that the Tories cannot argue that concession to the Civil Service unions is impracticable in itself.

The Sanctity of the Law

The campaign has had its interesting features. For 16 years the Civil Service Unions and the T.U.C. have protested against the 1927 Act, but nobody took any notice. All they got from the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain early in the war was a sort of promise that if they behaved themselves the matter might be considered after victory. Then the Post Office workers decided to carry on in defiance of the law. With startling suddenness the Press and the politicians woke up and broke into an almost unanimous chorus of protest. “Perhaps there is a case for changing the law,” they said— though they had usually been silent about it hitherto—”but no Government can ignore, or act under, a threat of law-breaking. This is Fascism, not democracy.”

(It may be remarked here that the Post Office workers did not take the only possible line. They could have tried quietly encroaching on the Act on the assumption that the Government, being fully occupied with the war, might ignore it.)

The Government, which includes three Labour Members, Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison, then issued a pompous warning to Post Office workers that if they persisted they would cease to be eligible for employment as established (i.e., permanent and pensionable) Civil Servants.

This talk about democracy and law-breaking sounds rather unconvincing in the light of certain facts. First, it is worth remembering that it was in 1927, when the Act was passed, that Mr. Churchill was praising Italian Fascism, and leading Fascist newspapers were returning the compliment by claiming that the Act was on Fascist lines. It should also be recalled that some of the leading members of the 1927 Tory Government had themselves in the past been active preachers and organisers of defiance against the Government. Lord Birkenhead and Sir William Joynson-Hicks were among those responsible for the 1927 Act, who had distinguished themselves by backing the Ulster preparations for rebellion (with German arms) against the Liberal Government of 1912-14 on the issue of Irish Home Rule. It was Lord Birkenhead who had said (January 22, 1912, at Liverpool) : “There is no length to which Ulster will not be entitled to go—however desperate or unconstitutional—in carrying the quarrel,” and again (at Ballyclare on September 20, 1913), “we shall stand side by side with you, refusing to recognise any law, and prepared with you to risk the collapse of the whole body politic to prevent this monstrous crime.”

The above quotations are taken from a leaflet issued by the Labour Party and T.U.C. in 1927. At that time Mr. Ernest Bevin was even talking of defying the law himself. In a speech at a Trade Union Conference called to oppose the 1927 Bill he touched on the possibility of members of his Union being ordered by the Courts to work with blacklegs, and said, “I am afraid that all the illegality and all the decisions would not influence us very much.”

Just as the poachers of 1912 turned into gamekeepers in 1927, so it seems that Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison have had their heads turned in 1943. The curious feature about this is that Mr. Attlee long ago knew and wrote about what happens in such a situation as the present one. His present plea is that he and the other Labour members are in the Government to fight foreign Fascism and must stand by the Government and see the law is enforced. In 1937, in “The Labour Party in Perspective,” he discussed what the Labour Party ought to do about coalitions to fight Fascism, and strongly urged that the Labour Party ought not to support Capitalist Governments. This is what he wrote :

“There are those who, realising the danger of menace of the Fascist Powers, tend to take up an attitude of supporting a Capitalist Government at home as the least of two evils. They tend to under-estimate the reality of the struggle between Capitalism and Socialism, and to magnify the differences between democratic Capitalist States and Fascist States. The danger of this attitude is that in fighting foreign Fascism they may encourage the subtle introduction of Fascism at home. (Labour Party in Perspective, p. 220.)

When the Labour members entered the Government in 1940, Mr. Attlee gave as one of the reasons, “To maintain the unity of the nation.” It should by now be apparent to Mr. Attlee that by taking on joint responsibility with Tories and Liberals for running Capitalism at war he has put himself in the position of directly opposing a. demand made by the Trade Unions and hitherto supported by himself. In other words, he is dividing himself from the trade union movement in the name of “national unity.” Thus does the reality of the class struggle break through. All of which points unmistakeably to the acute struggles which will up on the home front after the war ends, when the capitalist politicians—now stridently calling for liberty in foreign parts—will return to the old job of keeping the workers in subjection at home. Even members of the Labour Party who favoured the entry of their leaders into the National Government in 1940 may wonder why they did not have the foresight to insist beforehand on explicit concessions from the Tories, including legislation to amend the 1927 Act.

One lesson the incident drives home once more is the certainty that those who control the political machinery, the Government, can withstand and suppress efforts by trade unions or others to force their hand. The road to emancipation for the workers lies through gaining control of the political machinery.

Editorial: Trade Unions in Wartime—and After (1943)

Editorial from the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Judged by membership figures, war, with its busy factories, absence of unemployment, and rising prices, is a good time for trade unions. Total membership increased from 6 millions in 1938 to 7 millions at the end of 1941. The current total will he about 8 millions, of whom 1½ millions are women. Thus the British trade union movement touches again the peak membership reached in 1920, but lost in the depression years that followed. These are imposing figures, though it should be remembered that huge areas of industry are still little touched by organisation, as can be seen from a comparison with the much larger number of men and women insured under the Unemployment scheme. Insured workers totalled over 14 millions before the war, and the number of workers in employment has been increased since the war broke out, in spite of the millions withdrawn for the armed forces

Comparison with the position at the time of the last world war brings out a number of changes. One of these is the growing concentration of trade union membership in a small number of large unions—a development forced on by the concentration of capitalist industry. In 1913, when membership was 4 millions, the number of separate unions was 1,269. Now, with twice the membership, the number of unions has fallen to 983. These figures, however, do not bring out the full extent to which concentration has gone on, for over half the total membership is now to be found in just over a dozen unions, each of which has a membership of 100,000 or more. These include the Transport and General Workers’ Union with about 1,000,000, and several unions with upwards of 500,000. Over 6 million trade unionists are in the 50 unions which have a membership of 25,000 or more. This concentration, which was hastened by the last war, may go further still with such developments as the decision of the Amalgamated Engineering Union to recruit women and the tentative movements towards amalgamation of separate unions on the railways and in retail distributive and other industries. “Big unionism,” however, has not fulfilled all the high hopes of those who sponsored it, and the fear is often expressed that the, race for big membership has been accompanied by a slackening of zeal in the struggle against the employers. This fear has been increased by the close war-time association of the unions with the employers, and of the Trades Union Congress with the Government. The danger has been voiced that the trade unions may become permanently imbued with the idea of collaboration, so that they degenerate into little more than subsidiary organs of capitalist industry and of the Government. This reading of the situation fails to take account of evidence that, although the workers are more or less ready to accept collaboration now, they will strongly react against it when the war is over, if not before. It assumes that the workers can be permanently persuaded to ignore the stark reality of the class struggle based on the fact of capitalist ownership and control, and swallow the illusion of class unity. Sir Stafford Cripps may now address the workers on the Joint Production Committees as “comrades,” but this will soon be forgotten when the struggle resumes its normal intensity in the scramble for markers and profits after the war. In spite of all the official hopes of industrial peace, backed up by the powers of the Government under the various Orders imposing industrial conscription and banning strikes, the number of trade disputes increased from 875 in 1938 to 940 in 1939, 922 in 1940, 1,251 in 1941, and 1,281 in 1942. The number of disputes is actually larger than in the last war, though the number of workers involved, and the number of days lost, are smaller—due to the fact that “the great majority of the stoppages affected only individual establishments and were of short duration” (Ministry of Labour Gazette, January, 1943). In spite of the elaborate arrangements to secure the reference of disputes to arbitration, there is ample evidence that trade unionists have not accepted the defeatist view that they can afford to renounce what is in the last resort their main if not their sole weapon, the strike.

In a different direction, the decision of the Post Office Workers to ignore the 1927 Trade Union Act, which forbids their affiliation to Trades Councils and the Trades Union Congress, may be regarded as a sign of a widespread, if at present obscured, determination among trade unionists to retain their independence after the war.

Cooking the Books: Structural imbalance (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Morning Britain (ITV 28 June) pitted Dave Ward, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union against Matthew Lesh of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Ward correctly identified Lesh as representing the bosses, the IEA being a free-marketeer thinktank funded by big business.

Lesh argued that a large increase in wages would lead to Royal Mail becoming uncompetitive and losing business to other parcel delivery firms paying lower wages. He also claimed that ‘there’s not enough profit margin for a 10 percent pay rise for all workers’.

He is right about capitalism running on profits but going concerns always have enough profit to pay something if workers are in a good bargaining position. When negotiating, unions take into account whether an employer can pay. They are not so stupid as to insist on a claim that would bankrupt an employer with the result that their members lose their jobs.

Trade union negotiations take place within a system where businesses have to make a profit and this places a limit on what unions can achieve for their members. Ward recognised this, saying that there was a ‘fundamental flaw in the system’ within which unions had to operate, a ‘deep structural imbalance of power and wealth’, a ‘structural problem of how the economy is run, how businesses operate that have got to change’.

This would seem to be an oblique reference to capitalism which is based on the owners of the places where wealth is produced and services provided being in a powerful position vis-à-vis the rest of the population. It means that the non-owners can only get a living by selling their labour-power to some employer. Employers hold the whip hand; their employees have to settle on terms which allow businesses to operate at a profit.

Although Ward said ‘it is time to challenge some of the fundamentals of how the economy operates’ and called for ‘a new deal for working people, a new social settlement in the UK’, he was rather vague about what this would involve. The only thing he mentioned on the programme was fixing a maximum ratio between the pay of those at the top of a business and that of the workers, to which Lesh responded by making the (valid) point that, although the bosses were paid high salaries, they weren’t high enough to be used to pay much of a wage increase to those they employed.

In an article in the Morning Star (18 June) Ward was more forthcoming. Criticising the Labour Party for having ‘completely failed to set out any coherent vision to end inequality and division – and build real solidarity amongst working class people’, he called on the unions to get together with ‘local community organisations’ to demand ‘new democratic models of public ownership to deliver better housing, health care, social care, education and transport.’

These are not improvements that unions have the power to deliver. Governments can’t deliver them either, as the failure of reformist governments everywhere has shown. They have all ended up giving priority to profit-making and coming into conflict with workers and their unions. Capitalism is a profit-making system that simply cannot be run in the interest of wage-workers. ‘How businesses operate’ cannot be changed within it.

The only way to end the ‘structural imbalance of power and wealth’ within which unions – and reformist governments – have to operate is to make the means of wealth production the common property of the whole of society. Then production can be re-oriented to directly meeting people’s needs. If Ward had advocated socialism – as a trade unionist who was a socialist would have done – he could have wiped the floor with Lesh. Instead it was a stalemate with Ward having no answer to Lesh’s point about businesses having to be allowed to make a profit.

Civil Service Pay (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of years quite a number of Royal Commissions and Committees of Inquiry have made recommendations about civil service pay and the principles by which it should be fixed. The last was the Civil Service Royal Commission of 1953-1955, which laid down guidance for fixing the pay of Post Office workers and other civil servants on the basis of “fair comparison” with the pay of outside workers doing comparable work. Several civil service unions have already voiced disappointment with the results of “fair comparison." They were expecting more than they have got, probably because they were counting on rates of pay as high as the top rates in outside occupations. The Royal Commission quite definitely rejected that relationship: civil service pay, they said, should be neither the highest nor the lowest for a particular job, but should be somewhere round the middle level. No government or committee of inquiry has ever accepted the principle that the 'Government should pay more “to set an example.”

Simultaneously with arguments about civil service pay and the pay of workers on the railways and in other nationalised industries, the Labour Party is arguing with itself about nationalisation, but nobody now thinks of linking up the two questions of civil service pay and nationalisation, as was the practice when nationalisation was first being advocated as a principle by political parties. In those days it was common for the Fabians and others to claim for national and municipal undertakings that their workers would be better paid than workers in private industry. In the Fabian Essays (1889) two of the writers, Annie Besant and Bernard Shaw, proposed a minimum wage for workers in municipal undertakings, high enough to be attractive to workers elsewhere. Annie Besant thought it would be “higher than any wage which could be paid by the private employer. Hence competition to enter the communal service, and a constant pressure on the Communal Councils to enlarge their undertakings.’' (p. 165.) The view was held by the early Fabians and other supporters of government industries, that these industries would be more efficient and could therefore afford to pay higher wages than their less efficient competitors.

Emil Davies, chairman of the Railway Nationalisation Society, in his book The Case for Nationalisation (1920, page 176) instanced the higher pay some of the telephone staffs received when the Government took over the telephone service from the private company in 1912. And in another book The State in Business (1920 edition, page 192), he claimed as a general proposition that “the moment the State or Municipality takes over a service or undertaking the conditions of the workers are immediately improved."

He confessed that this was perhaps less true of this country than other countries and in fact there is little to support the belief that the Government and the local authorities in this country have ever worked on the principle of paying above the rate required to give them the numbers of recruits they wanted.

From lime to time civil service pay has got out of line and steps have been taken to correct this. In 1923, after a big fall of the cost of living and of wage rates in industry had left civil service pay rather higher than the authorities considered necessary, the Anderson Committee, recommended reductions in addition to the automatic fall of pay under a cost of living bonus scheme. The special reductions were not then made because a general election intervened and the first Labour government came into office.

In 1957 the opposite situation had developed and Mr. Marples, Conservative Postmaster-General, was able to announce big increases of postal, telegraph and telephone charges totalling £42 million a year under cover of having to bring Post Office wages up to the level of outside wages. Now that most Labour Party opinion seems lo have accepted that there will be little extension of nationalisation the prospect of civil servants ever getting a Labour Government to apply the principle of giving civil servants more than “fair comparison" with average pay outside can be put very low indeed. Imagine the Labour Party still further hampering itself in an election by pledging itself that civil servants would he paid more than other workers!

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

The following was in a separate box attached to the article:

“Only when industry and transport etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or State Capitalism is not the solution to the problem."

Socialism or Nationalisation (1/-)

Capitalism in the Post Office. (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Industrial Court has issued its long-awaited award on the wages of post office workers. The Unions asked for considerable increases, and the Postmaster-General opposed this claim with a demand for a general decrease for new entrants. The award of the Court gives certain small increases at the maxima of the scales applicable to certain grades, introduces decreases in several grades at ages about 18 and 19, and leaves other grades unchanged. As the increases awarded are at the maxima, most of the staff will not be affected immediately. In some grades, telephonists, for instance, most of the women will have left the service before they reach the age at which the raised maximum becomes applicable. The nett addition to the wages bill of the Post Office will be probably between £400,000 and £500,000 (including cost of living bonus), in a “full year” (i.e., when the new maximum rates are being paid to the normal proportion of the staff).

Spread over some 150,000 men and women, this amounts to an average of something under 2s. a week. What is of particular interest to us, as opponents of nationalisation, is the frank admission of the Court that wages in State services are based on conditions in outside industry.

“. . the broad principle which should be followed in determining the rates of wages of Post Office Servants, is that of the maintenance of a fair relativity as between their wages and those in outside industries as a whole.”—(Decision of Industrial Court No. 1325, July, 1927, p. 11.)

Here we have the kernel of the case against nationalisation from the workers’ point of view. The wages and conditions of State employees are governed by the conditions of the labour market in general. They, like other workers, live by the sale of their labour power. They are paid, not the value of their work, but the cost of maintaining them and their families as efficient wealth producers. They are exploited just as other wage earners are. During the past 14 years the Post Office has made a profit of nearly £52,000,000, a direct contribution to the employing class in that the taxation burden which they alone ultimately bear has been reduced by this amount over the period. To nationalise all services would merely reduce all workers to the condition of being still further limited in their power to struggle for better conditions, and would not affect the amount of the income received by the employing class. As the workers find, to their cost, it is harder to fight the State than it is to fight private employers. So hard is it that no civil service union even dare contemplate strikes as part of its programme.

Nationalisation is merely the strengthening and concentration of Capitalism. The interests of all workers, civil servants and non-civil servants, will be served by unqualified opposition to nationalisation as to other forms of Capitalism. Socialism alone is the remedy for our class.

Postman.

Post-War Reconstruction (1941)

From the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

ONLY SOCIALISM CAN PROVIDE THE FOUNDATION

The dislocation caused in people’s lives by this war has set many of them devising plans for making the world a better place to live in when hostilities have ended. Ideas thus generated find expression in schemes for remedying the outstanding evils of which the majority of people are victims—unemployment, insecurity, poverty, war.

The Socialist claims, and proves, that these evils cannot be remedied within the framework of the existing social order. Nothing less than social revolution offers a sound basis for post-war social reconstruction. The abolition of private ownership of the means and instruments of production and distribution, the end of the wages system, the production of wealth solely for use instead of for profit—this, and nothing else, will provide the foundation for the construction of the social system that we so urgently desire. Any planning for “a brave new world” that does not include these fundamental changes is doomed to bring disappointment to those who hope to experience substantial improvements.

Unemployment presents a problem that has occupied the attention of social reformers for years. A multitude of schemes have been applied—and failed to check the tendency for unemployment figures to rise. There is no cure for unemployment short of its abolition, and this can be achieved by abolishing employers, employed, and unemployed alike.

Ownership of land, machinery, factories, mines, railways, road transport, sea transport, etc., places some men in the privileged position of employing others. Non-ownership and, in consequence, the necessity to live by selling their physical and mental energies, makes other men seek employment. Socialism, by placing the means of wealth production under the democratic ownership and control of the whole of the community will ensure that everyone contributes to the common effort without entering into contract with his fellows on the basis of economic privilege.

Economic insecurity is bred of capitalism. Men are related to one another in a capitalist world, not as individuals, but as commodity owners. The buying and selling of commodities, including the workers’ energies, is the essence of this system. Buying and selling gives rise to competition, competition breeds struggle, and in the struggle no man can claim to be absolutely secure; any adverse turn of the struggle may reduce him to the ranks of the most poverty stricken.

Given common ownership of the means of production and distribution, the wealth produced by the common effort will be accessible to all. Modern scientific methods of production ensure that there shall be plenty and none need be short of the essentials and comforts of life. With the social store available to everyone according to their needs, the dependence of wives on their husbands, of children on their fathers, of the sick and aged on charity, of men on their ability to hold down a job, will vanish. Each will enjoy the security afforded by all.

Poverty is the lot of the working class in present-day society. From poverty spring the many subsidiary evils to which a lot of the would-be post-war-re-constructors direct their main attention. Poor housing and unemployment are only problems for the poor. Ill-health and crime are largely the result of poverty. The most glaring contradiction of capitalism is the abject poverty that exists beside the super-abundance of wealth. In any effort to reconstruct society after the war it will not be sufficient to attempt to alleviate poverty, it must end. Socialism alone shows the way.

If the wages system is retained after the war, then poverty will be retained, for the two are inseparable.

Man’s ability to work we call his “labour-power,” and wages are the price he gets when he sells it to an employer. This labour-power is a commodity, produced to be sold, and the orice it fetches is determined, as is the price of all commodities, by agencies outside the individual owner’s control. Price is the monetary reflection of value, and value is determined by the amount of social effort necessary to replace the commodity. So wages fluctuate around a certain point, the cost of reproducing man’s power to labour. No amount of legislation within capitalism, no philanthropic effort can alter this fundamental economic law. All attempts to remove poverty by price control, minimum wage rates, family allowances, or any form of currency juggling fall to pieces against this “law of wages.”

The end of the wages system will ensure an end of all poverty. Capitalism has shown us the enormous powers of production that man can wield. All such powers have not yet been unleashed. Capitalism has arrived at a stage where it must limit expansion of productive powers in the interest of profit. Socialism will release all pent up forces and enable men to produce wealth in such abundance that a condition of poverty, as we know it to-day, will not be conceivable.

War, that most colossal of all tragedies, must be ended for all time. All post-war reconstructors are agreed upon this. Only Socialism offers a guarantee of a permanently peaceful future.

To-day, wealth is produced for profit; workers receive wages for producing it, and it then passes into the hands of the owners of the means of production. The total value that the workers produce is greater than the amount they receive in wages. The surplus accrues to the owners and becomes divided among all sections of the owning-class, landlords, industrialists and investors. But in the process, in order that the owning-class may enjoy the privilege that ownership implies, the wealth must be sold; it must be converted into money. So out goes the product of the workers’ toil, out into a world-market to compete with similar products produced by similar workers in other countries. And from the ensuing competition follows the struggle for trade routes, for spheres of influence, for control of sources of raw materials, for empires. From this source, also, comes international diplomacy, tariffs, State subsidies, trade agreements, political pacts, military alliances and war.

No amount of tinkering with the effects of a system of production for profit will eliminate this competition. It can be raised from a local plane to a national one by State control, it can be raised from a national plane to a continental one by federal union, but it cannot be eliminated without at the same time eliminating the private property basis of present-day society. To guarantee against further and more disastrous wars Socialism alone offers a way.

Unless the Socialist proposition for the revolutionising of society is accepted, and struggled for, by the majority of the workers after the war, then capitalism will present us with some problems that will have tragic results.

This war is unleashing forces that will sharpen the class conflicts of the future, that will present the administrators of capitalism, no matter who they may be, with a task of such magnitude that they will not be able to trifle with half measures. It is quite possible that, in order to avoid the worst effects of post-war chaos, the State, in this and other countries, will assume control of industry and transport. “Private enterprise” capitalism may give place to “State capitalism,” and support for its measures gained on the claim that it is “Socialism in practice.” The danger lies in the fact that capital, entrenched behind the State, can be even more repressive and more vicious than in its present “democratic” form.

The one way to insure against this is to establish Socialism. For that purpose it is necessary to organise consciously, politically and democratically for the conquest of the machinery of Government in order that this machinery may be converted from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation.

The possibilities of “a brave new world” after the war depend upon the degree of class consciousness that the effects of the war engender in the minds of the workers and their understanding of the role they must play to build such a world. The reformation of capitalism will avail them nought. It is their historic task to abolish the last of the class societies and to establish a classless one. To this end alone they should bend their present and their post-war effort. Their unswervable object must be to establish a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Anything other than that will not be a reconstruction but merely a reshuffle.

W. Waters

(This article was written for the Post Office workers’ journal, London Post, and appeared in the July issue.)

Spooks again (1925)

From the August 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Chairman (name not given) of the recent Annual Conference at Colwyn Bay of the United Postal Workers’ Union, is, we are pleased to observe, not too old to learn. Like ourselves he had noticed the patent emptiness of Mr. Baldwin’s appeal for a truce in industry. Well, one need not he an intellectual giant to see that. How many times is it necessary to repeat, “all great minds think alike.” The Chairman goes one better than that. He is a living exponent of the new truth, “all great men talk alike,” for, by what can only be a coincidence his remarks read like a condensation of our April Article on “Mr. Baldwin’s Utopia.” Whole phrases read exactly the same, and in others, words almost appear to have been transposed or altered. It is remarkable. What a case for the Psychical Research Society. Here is an authentic case of thought-transference extending even to continuous strings of the same words. We are amazed. Of course had the Chairman been actually quoting from the Socialist Standard, he would have had the elementary decency to have said so : that goes without saying. We would not deny elementary decency to any member of the Labour Party. Too often it is their only possession. We would not rob them of their all. No ! It is a clear case of psychic transference. We commend it to Lodge, Doyle, Bradley and Co.

AMEN RA.

Jottings. (1922)

The Jottings Column from the October 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite recently an application was made on behalf of the Secretary for War, at Lambeth County Court, for an ejectment order against James Leach, an ex-soldier, from rooms occupied by him and his family in married men’s quarters.

The following interesting conversation took place in Court :—

Judge Parry asked “Can the court eject a man from barracks?”

Mr. C. Davies (for the application) : “It has always been done.”

Judge Parry : “Are the authorities not capable of turning this man out?”

Mr. C. Davie : “The Secretary for War does not want to use Prussian methods.”

Judge Parry : “He brings to this Court a nasty job which he can do himself.”

Judge Parry made an order by consent for possession in a month, and gave judgement for £6 18s. rent, with costs.—Daily Mail, April 26th, 1922.

What a piece of hypocrisy ! A puzzle !

What is the difference between the “Prussian” methods of ejectment by the Secretary for War and the ejectment order of Judge Parry?

Any reader correctly answering same will be asked to contribute to the £1,000 Fund.

* * *

The first week in September a postal strike was declared in Ireland against a proposed reduction in wages.

The Irish Government showed themselves to be the same as all other capitalist governments when their interests are threatened.

The following was culled from the Evening News, September 11th, 1922 :—

  "Free State troops to-day dispersed strike pickets outside postal offices in Dublin by firing over their heads. This is in accordance with the Government’s announcement that the postal strike, which began at 6 yesterday evening, is illegal and that picketing will be suppressed. The strike is against a proposed ‘cut ‘ in wages.”

The workers in Ireland have the same lesson to learn as the workers of all countries, i.e. : That not until they recognise there is a class-struggle in Society born of the private ownership of the means of life, and that Socialism is their hope, can there be any improvement in their wretched conditions.

* * *

  “Our bitter experience has proved that it is not Germany that is paying. It is the British working man who is paying at this moment. “

This statement, made by J. H. Thomas, M.P., was loudly cheered at the Trade Union Congress at Southport to-day.—Evening News, September 5th, 1922.

How often have readers of the S.S. heard the above statement made from the platforms of the pseudo-socialist parties and met it in their press? By a mere superficial examination of the above, it undoubtedly appears to be correct. But when a thinking worker analyses the assertion, he will quite easily see how unsound J.H.T.’s economics really are. Doubtless, Thomas, like many thousands of workers, think that because the workers are the wealth producers of the world, they must of necessity pay for everything. That only shows “loose” thinking, a failure to understand correctly capitalist wealth production.

* * *

One statement in the election address of the “revolutionary” Mayor of Bethnal Green during the last L.C.C. election was as follows :—

  “We maintain that unemployment is a NATIONAL, and not a local problem, and if returned to the L.C.C. will do all in our power to force the Government to provide work or accept financial responsibility for unemployment. Further, we pledge ourselves to do all in our power to push forward the L.C.C.’s own schemes of. work so as to absorb the unemployed. If you want the opportunity to work : Vote for Valentine and Vaughan.”

Could anyone but a place-hunter spread broadcast such rubbish and still claim to be a Socialist? Sorry, Mr. Printer, he’s a Communist ! Every line in the above statement is sheer bunkum. Quite apart from the fact that unemployment is not a national problem, even if Vaughan and his clique were in the majority on the L.C.C. it would not be possible for them to provide schemes to absorb the unemployed.

Not all the schemes, plans and efforts of all the reformers can remove the canker, of unemployment and its concomitant evils; not until the workers are fully conscious of the fact that the private property basis of society must be swept aside, to make way for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living.

 'The Settler'

The Passing Show: Never in the right (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Never in the right

Some of our older readers may have lived through the earlier years of this century. Perhaps they can recall the bitter struggles between employers and workers. Strikes and lockouts. Strikes to improve wages and conditions. Strikes very often against lowered wages and deteriorating conditions. One other thing they may also remember is that, whatever a particular strike or lockout was about, the workers were never in the right. They wanted shorter hours? O.K., then, they were lazy. They wanted more pay? O.K., then, they were greedy. If a dispute was in a major industry, such as docks, coal mining or railways, they were irresponsible, led by a bunch of rabble rousers and “holding the nation up to ransom.”

Sometimes the strikes were successful—or partly so. Sometimes, very often in fact, they failed. The struggles of the engineers in the early Twenties, for example, did not prevent pay reductions. Nor did the General Strike of 1926 stop the coal-owners lowering the miners' wages and lengthening their working day. After the collapse of the general strike, the miners fought on for nine bitter months and were beaten to their knees at the end of it. But if the capitalist press of those days was worth believing, the strikers were all in the wrong.

In those days, with a falling market and a large pool of unemployed, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the capitalists would fight tooth and nail against every union demand. The lockout was the weapon they sometimes used. But in the years immediately after the end of the second world war, it was a somewhat different story. Six years of destruction had left a large market to be filled, and with Germany and Japan out of the running for the time being, the call was for an all-out export drive. There was a severe labour shortage, and workers were in a strong position to press for higher wages and conditions.

This time, however, there was another snag—the Labour Government, who appealed for less strikes and plenty of hard work. The production drive was all-important, and to down tools then was a stab in the back for the "workers' government ” and for Britain. And as usual, when workers did come out the government and press were at one in condemning them. The union leaders often listened to the government’s pleas and many of the strikes were “unofficial," one could have been forgiven for sometimes wondering whether the men were fighting the employers or their own leadership. In the latter part of the Labour Government’s term, wage rates were actually lagging behind prices.

What is the position today, some thirteen years and several Tory governments later? Believe it or not, you are still wrong to strike. Now “we” have to keep costs down in a highly competitive market. We have to increase productivity so that there will be more for all, yet we mustn’t ask for more wages to get some of the extra which we have turned out. Higher wages mean higher prices—a lie spread equally by Labour, Liberal and Tory politicians. Always it is the same dreary story. Be patient and accept less today, and you will double your living standards in twenty-five years. Always it is—tomorrow.

In the Labour Government days, it was a “wage freeze.” Under the Tories it has been given the more sophisticated sounding name of “pay pause.” For some time the government has been taking a tough line against wage increases and has been hardening its attitude towards its own employees in this respect. The postmen were the latest victims of such policy and by the time Mr. Bevins had got round to making an offer, their patience was just about exhausted. And nobody can truthfully call the postmen impatient. Their last strike was well over sixty years ago.

What was the reaction of the press this time? For once they could not find a communist-inspired plot. Neither could they call the men greedy, for even by accepted standards their pay rates compared unfavourably with outside industry. Neither were they lazy—an average of thirty hours overtime is worked every week to keep the mail moving. The papers, then, were “ sympathetic,” but still the cry was “ don’t strike.”

Listen, for instance to The Guardian editorial of July 11th:—

  When arbitration is offered in a complex dispute about postal wages. it is hard to claim sanctity for the "right” to delay a nation's mails. . . . What can a woman waiting for a letter from her son do to give postmen more pay?

Or again The Daily Telegraph of July 23rd:

  Yesterday's decision by the executive of the Union of Post Office Workers that a complete strike will be called . . . constitutes a grave challenge . . . not only to the Government but also to the nation. . . . It must be evident by now that his (Mr. Smith's) union is entirely concerned with the best way in which it can sabotage the country’s business, and so hold the country to ransom. Ransom is one thing, and proper wages quite another.

Not one word, you will note, about the delaying tactics of the government, of the offer of yet another “review" to follow the last “enquiry.” Undeniably, it was the positive promise of a strike that forced the pay offer up to six per cent. No wonder The Guardian had to admit: “The plain fact is that the postmen do not trust the Treasury.”

So postmen, you were “wrong” to come out on strike for a day and to threaten an all-out stoppage later on. But you got a pay increase. A good thing you did not heed the mealy mouthings of the newspapers, for you would then have been "right.” but two per cent, worse off.

P.S.--Thc G.P.O. profit last year was £30.7 millions.


What is Progress?

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term as: forward movement, advance, improvement, increase. But progress has also come to have another meaning in the modern world, and it is fashionable to equate it with change—any change.

Under this heading the apologists for capitalism would list the mounting volume of cars on the roads (" one for everybody who wants one” is the government’s bleat), the advent of noisy jet aircraft, and the sprawling of the industrial towns into the once peaceful countryside. They would ignore the increasing noise, dirt and smell, the rush and tear of it all. and the frightful toll of frustration and nervous illness. Anything which kept capitalism moving fast and expanding is, to them, progress.

It is hardly surprising, then, to hear the Belgian industrialist Baron René Boël talk about progress in terms of the profit motive. The Baron is president of the European League for Economic Cooperation, and his words are reminiscent of the views of some of the early capitalist economists. Speaking in Manchester on July 15th, he said:—

  Just as the worker is entitled to payment, so the shareholder is entitled to remuneration for the services he renders both to the enterprise and the economy. An important part of the money he receives . . . is used to finance further economic and technical progress. Profit is today an essential factor in progress since it provides the means of achieving it and measuring it.

There is quite a lot that Baron Boël left out of his assessment, of course. He didn't tell us just what sort of payment the workers are entitled to. His ideas on that would no doubt differ markedly from those of workers. Neither did he go into the harmful effects of the profit motive on the mass of the population. Last but not least, he did not even hint at the ugly black war clouds which gather periodically as a direct result of this “progress.” Had we taxed him with it, he would no doubt have muttered something about “human nature,” or “communist plots ” and left it at that

The words of Baron Boël are only to be expected from a man in his position of social privilege, but he is not alone in his thoughts. Tragically, they are echoed by most workers every day of their lives. Our proposition of a classless, moneyless society is just as much anathema to them as it is to him.


Tory Competition 

Tory propagandists are never tired of telling us how beneficial free competition is. They don’t like state control they say, although they have made little effort to denationalise most of the nationalised industries. “Take the fetters off free enterprise and lower prices will result” is one of their rallying cries. Yet the years of Tory rule have seen considerable price increases.

Are the Tories really in favour of unfettered competition—just like that? Of course, they’re not. The first and foremost task of any British government is to protect and advance the interests of British capitalism. This will certainly mean that they will try to make British industry more competitive on the world market, and generally moan about tariff barriers erected against it by other countries, although at the same time they erect the same sort of barriers at home. This is aimed at keeping the price of foreign goods up so that British goods of the same type are not at a disadvantage in the home market. It is known under the fanciful heading of “establishing stability.”

One industry to suffer against foreign competition has been cotton, and it was only a few years ago that the government was paying out some thirty million pounds to induce some of the less efficient firms to cease production. Now, in a further attempt to deal with the problem, the Cotton Board has produced a plan for a levy on imported cotton goods “which would bring their prices up to an agreed proportion of similar goods of domestic manufacture." This is proposed to replace the existing restrictions, which are due to expire in 1965. Secretary for Industry Mr. Heath is said to have agreed that “some means should be found of establishing stability in the industry”; the Board’s plan has been published at his request.

What Mr. Heath is after is the continued profitable existence of the British cotton industry. If that means paring down the threat from foreign rivals and keeping their prices up, then that is what will be done, it shows also that government interference (“guidance ” they call it) will be used just as much by the Tories as by any other party, if they think the needs of British capitalism justify it. And then their talk of free competition and lowered prices will be quietly forgotten.

Eddie Critchfield