Editorial: The strikes in France (1953)

Editorial from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The strike movement which began on 5th August among Post Office workers and quickly spread to transport, gas, electricity and many other state and private undertakings and involved at its height some three or four million workers was still in progress a fortnight later; though by that time some workers had returned to work because their strikes had been deliberately limited to one or two days, and others had been reported as drifting back. As a movement to demonstrate workers' solidarity and to bring pressure to bear on the government and the employers it was complete and highly efficient. As was remarked by one observer, the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, “rarely has any strike movement in France, planned and announced in advance, been so successful ” (Manchester Guardian, 8/8/53).

The spark that set off the Post Office strike was a report that the Government’s “emergency” economy measures included reductions of Post Office staff and extending the age of retirement on pension. It was later denied that the Government had ever intended to make the later retirement compulsory but a possible explanation is that they were preparing the way and only the unanimous demonstration of resistance by the strikers made them repudiate it. The reason why the strike was enthusiastically joined by millions of other workers demanding higher wages was that the workers in general were finding their low standard of living being further reduced by rising prices. Mr. Douglas Jay, in the Daily Herald (13/8/53) estimated that “the average wage-earner in France today if he is single, gets a wage not much above two-thirds of what the British wage-earner gets." It is only through the higher rate of family allowances in France that the worker, if he has a wife and three children, has an income about equal to that of workers in Britain. Mr. Jay also pointed out that under French rent acts rents are exceedingly low—he goes so far as to claim that "the British worker’s family on the average spends eight times as much on rent as the French.”

But he went on to say:—

“However, these cheap rents—which the new decrees are to raise—are not much consolation to the French worker. It is partly just because food prices are so high that he has little to spare for anything else." (Italics, Mr. Jay’s).

Although Mr. Jay draws attention to these facts he fails to see how hollow they make the social reforms of the “Welfare State” which he and the French Labour leaders so blindly support. Unless the workers use their only industrial weapon, the strike, to fight for higher wages; low rents and social insurance benefits merely operate to enable employers to pay a low money wage. This is further borne out by Nora Beloff, writing from Paris to the “Observer” (16th August, 1953) on the condition of French workers.

"An official publication has revealed that they enjoy an even smaller proportion of the national revenue today than before the war: the substantial rise in social benefits has been more than offset by the severe drop in real wages. The Civil Service is proportionately worse off than am employees of private business."

So much for the alleged benefits of the “Welfare State” and of being employed by the Government.

The strikes themselves have had some very interesting features. It has been customary in Western Europe, including Great Britain, for Governments and some trade union officials to see in every strike the hand of the Communists; but the French Postal strike was started not by the Communist Union but by the anti-communist French Post Office Workers’ Union belonging to the “Labour Force” trade union federation. They took the initiative first in the Post Office and then in other industries, and the Communist Trade Union Federation (C.G.T.) and the Christian Trade Union Federation later joined in. It happens that the “Labour Force” Union is stronger than the Communist and Christian Unions among Post Office workers, though the C.G.T. claims in all 2,000,000 members as against about 800,000 in the “Labour Force” Federation and the same number in the Christian Federation. As the Times remarked (7/8/53) “ No Communist interference seems to have been needed to start the trouble.”

But though the excuse of Communist “plotting” could not be used this did not prevent the French Government from threatening to use all measures to smash the strikes, including the movement of tanks into Paris (News Chronicle 18/8/53).

The French Prime Minister when he ordered the movement of tanks might have recalled the outcry three months ago when Russian tanks in Eastern Germany were used to overawe German strikers; but the Western Governments' reaction then was very different. They approved the strike and made horrified protests about the tanks, and with their approval the American Government has been distributing millions of food parcels to the hungry East German workers. But this time it is the French tanks not Russian, and there has been no offer by Western Governments of food parcels for the hungry French workers. The Daily Worker (11/8/53) seized on this and denounced British and other unions in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions for their decision to give money to help the East German workers while not doing the same for the workers of France and Italy. But the Communists are actually taking up a still worse attitude. Some British unions have agreed to give financial help to the French workers, while the Communists, instead of helping the strikers against the Communist Government of Eastern Germany pretend that they were not strikes but “American-inspired riots.”

The real tragedy of the trade union movement in France and in the world generally is that most trade unionists allow themselves to be diverted from single minded concentration on working class unity because of their attachment to nationalism and to support of one or other forms of Government of Capitalism. Except for a brief spell after the first world war and again after the second world war the international trade union movement, which before 1914 was a single organisation paying at least lip-service to international working-class unity, has been divided into bitterly hostile camps, the W.F.T.U. supporting Russian State Capitalism, and the I.C.F.T.U. supporting Western capitalism; not to mention the Christian and Independent groups maintaining isolation.

One hopeful aspect of the strikes in France was the way in which workers in the three rival groups (Labour Force, Communist and Christian) came out on strike together, temporarily forgetting their rivalries. This, and the fact that the strikes in Eastern Germany have demonstrated the workers’ defiance of the Communist dictatorship there may give reason to hope for some future movement towards world working class unity.

In the meantime the divisions in the French trade union movement endangered the strikes. It is of great importance, especially in a more or less general strike, that there should be common action not only to come out on strike but to go back as a united body. It is equally important that such strikes should not be allowed to drag on until, under pressure of starvation, workers begin to drift back one by one. This danger was heightened in France by the efforts of some of the leaders of the three main groups to outmanoeuvre and discredit each other in the conduct of the strike and by the parallel tactics of the Government and the employers to play one off against the other.

A Socialist Survey. (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. F. Townsend Martin, a wealthy member of American society, and a brother of Mr. Bradley Martin, the multi-millionaire, has written a book entitled : “The Passing of the Idle Rich,” in which he says : “I know society, I was born in it and have lived in it all my life both here and in the capitals of Europe.” Further on he tells us that:

“Somewhere there is something wrong. I speak as a rich man. I speak as a representative of the class of which I write and to which, in particular I address myself. We can no longer blind ourselves with idle phrases or drug our consciences with the outworn boast that the working man of America is to-day the highest-paid artizan in the world. We know those lying figures well. Many a time I myself in personal argument, have shown that the American workman receives from one and a half to three times as much as his English cousin at the same trade ; but we know now that it means nothing. . . .

We are learning, too, that what we give our workers is wages we take back from them in the higher cost of necessities, in food, in clothing, in medicine, in insurance—in a hundred devious ways, all with one tendency—to keep the living margin down.”

“O most learned judge,” there is something wrong, and the only curious factor in the above is its source. The determined stand made, for a time, by the workers of different parts of the world, has forced upon the notice of others besides our worthy American, the fact that while the great mass of the working class are prepared to suffer in silence, there is yet a little spirit remaining which may burst into a blaze at some inconvenient moment, to the detriment of that superstructure of society which gives to the “idle rich” so good a living for so little exertion.

                                                                            * * *

Dr. Gore, late Bishop of Birmingham, in a letter to the “clergy and laity” of that city, informs us that “the profound sense of unrest and dissatisfaction among the workers” is genuine.

“We are not justified,” he says, “in tolerating the conditions of life and labour under which the vast mass of our population is living. We have no right to say that these conditions are not remediable. Preventible lack of equipment among the young, and later the insecurity of employment and inadequacy of remuneration, and consequent destitution and semi-starvation among so many of our people, ought to inspire in all Christians a profound and passionate determination to devote themselves to the reform of our industrial system.”

That eminently respectable organ, the “Pall Mall Gazette,” tells us that

“Unrest among large bodies of men is not scientifically explained by ascribing it all to the depravity or agitators, and in the case of the railwaymen, as we have repeatedly affirmed, there are deeper causes in the general economic condition of the country which it is futile to ignore. British working men would not surrender themselves to the irrational and discreditable impulses which have had such free play during the last few weeks, unless there were forces at work to throw them off their balance, and those forces can easily be discerned in the rise of prices and the consequent fall in ‘real’ wages.”

and if the testimony of the “democratic” “Star” can add weight to that of so respectable a witness, it tells us (20.9.11) that we have certain facts to face.

“Just as France and Germany, Austria and Spain have got to face them. All over Europe the people are in revolt against the lowness of wages and the dearness of food. It is foolish to imagine that unrest which is caused by permanent and deep-seated economic causes can be allayed by harsh words and stern discipline.

“The Labor problem is a problem of flesh and blood. It is producing riots in France, in Austria, and in Spain. Everywhere the people are in rebellion against the conditions of their existence.”

The “Morning Leader” (same date) says :

“That labor is grossly ill-organised and under-paid ; that the conditions under which great masses of laborers live are a disgrace to our civilisation ; that industrialism, which has opened to the wealthier classes endless sources of pleasure and luxury never dreamt of by their grandfathers, has robbed the worker’s life for the most part even of the little patches of color and brightness it had in slower, easier days, and even where he gets more money has made him pay for it dearly in the drab monotony of his toil—all these things are very well known. No one questions them.”

* * *

The cause of the unrest so candidly admitted is that the wage of the worker does not rise in correspondence to the increased price of necessaries, and the increased cost of production of the worker, who, toiling under high pressure and producing more and more rapidly, requires a greater amount of food, both physical and mental, to maintain him in the requisite condition for the modern wage slave.

To again quote Mr, Martin :

“I cannot go down through the crowded tenement settlement sections of our great cities without having it borne in upon me that we, as a nation, pay a fearful price in human blood and tears for our industrial triumphs. For the grim fact stands out beyond denial that the men who are the workers of the nation, and the women and the children dependent upon them, are not to day given the opportunities that are their proper birthright in free America ; and that, struggle as they will, save as they may, lift their voices in protest as they dare, they cannot obtain from our industrial hierarchy much more than a living wage.”

* * *

When will the workers recognise that they are but merchandise ? When will they see those stubborn facts with which they are faced ? They can but get a bare sufficiency to enable them to produce wealth for the “idle rich,” who, with all their “good intentions,” are impelled by necessity, in order to maintain their supremacy, to keep down wages and to prevent the toiling masses from raising their standard of comfort. In every branch of industry the same effect is being felt: the necessity on the part of the workers to strike and of the masters to resist their demands. That nationalisation is a cure is easily refuted. Mr. Cheesman, Secretary of the Fawcett Association, seen by a representative of the “Daily News,” said :

“The discontent is very general, and arises primarily from the refusal of the Postmaster General to reopen the question of the improvement of the conditions in regard to wages, especially in view of the increased cost of living and the great length of lime that has elapsed since the wages were last adjusted. The National Committee is forced to take action owing to the general discontent, and not from any desire on their part to take advantage of the present unrest in the labour world.”

These men are working in an industry that has been nationalised, and to add force to the argument that conditions there are at least as bad as in any private concern, Mr. Cheesmsn adds :

“The seriousness of the situation i.e. emphasised by the speeding-up that has taken place during recent years in the various departments. Indeed, the conditions in many cases have become almost unbearable, and the great plague of the postal service, consumption, is being replaced by an even greater evil, nervous breakdown.”

So the postman’s reward—bunions and consumption—is increased by the sporting chance of a padded cell as a rest cure.

The “Daily News” (5.9.11) contains “An Interview with a typical Barman,” who, after describing his daily “life” (which is, according to the scribe, a “dismal, soul-destroying round of duty”) says:

“We want to establish a sixty-hour week and one compulsory day’s holiday in seven. We also demand an increase in the rate of pay, since we receive at present about 1½d. per hour for labour.”

* * *

I can fittingly conclude with the final statement of Mr. Martin in the book above mentioned :

“It cannot be for long. The days of the idle rich in America are as a tale that is told. Idleness is doomed as a vocation. We in America are fast moving toward social revolution. Conflicts between labour and capital are assuming the proportions of civil war. The once powerful middle class, which is the safety of every nation, is to day weak, and is every day declining. Soon, politically it will be a memory, and the battle-field will be cleared for conflict. . . . Instead of being the roof and crown of things, the wealthy class in America to-day has sunk to the level of the parasite. The time has come when the producing classes are about to bring it to judgment.”

Let the workers of Great Britain determine that when that day comes they will not be far behind their American cousins.

Twel.

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.)