Editorial: The Printers’ Strike. (1911)

Editorial from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past few weeks the equanimity of London Printingdom has been disturbed by a strike of some magnitude on the question of hours. The men have taken action in support of a demand for a 48 hour week, and though at the time of writing the strike is not at an end, it looks very much as if the employees will succeed in obtaining the demand they put forward as a compromise: 50 hours immediately, and a future consideration of the 48 hours question.

Now the attitude of the orthodox Press toward this strike is full of significance. Silence can be more eloquent than speech, and their silence carries an important testimony as to the reality of the class struggle to those that have ears to hear. But of more significance than this, and of infinitely greater importance, is the attitude taken up by the men’s leaders, and reflected in the organ of the movement, the Daily Herald.

We have said that silence can be more eloquent than speech. This paper which the printers have founded to be their mouthpiece in the struggle, no less than the silence of the men’s leaders, is further evidence of that.

The dumb capitalist Press by its very silence proclaims in thunder tones the class struggle, while the quiet tongues of the strike leaders, and the still columns of their organ are vehement charges of treachery and cowardice against those who do know the true position, and a pathetic index of the ignorance of those who do not.

In every quarrel between masters and men, we take up the position that, as between masters and men, the latter can never be wrong. But in the matter of their conduct of the fight, we have seldom found a British trade union in the right—and the present strike affords no welcome exception.

Granted, in the first place, that workingmen must, however little it may affect their class position, struggle continuously to secure the best price and conditions for their labour-power, granted also that at the moment trade unions may be the most effective means to that end, still the vital thing has not been said.

After all, where does trade union effort land the workers ? After each “famous victory,” after the most famous victory that any trade unionist, as such, and under the affliction of the most violent form of palpitation of that imagination, ever dared dream of, where do the victors stand ? They may have held their own ; they may have recovered a little of what was their own. “Simply that, and nothing more.”

This much is confessed by the men’s leaders when they admit that they have been driven to the present action by the great increase of unemployment consequent upon the advance of machinery and the general speeding-up that has taken place in all branches of the printing trade. For if that is so, it is an admission that all they can hope for from victory is the regaining of some of the ground lost of recent years.

Of course, as far as the men’s action goes it is sound enough. Everyone who has anything to sell must fight for the best terms—that is a presupposed condition of the competitive market—and those who have only their labour-power to sell are no exception. But if after each battle the workers have only regained something of what they have lost, or let us even say all that they have lost; if each succeeding conflict is to find and leave them in the same state of mental torpor, with, the same paralyzing faith in the union and the strike as their economic salvation, and no outlook beyond a stronger position as sellers of labour-power, then indeed Hope may sit down by the wayside and turn her eyes backward over the way we have come—for there is nothing to gladden them in the way we are going.

For, think ! These men demanded a reduction of 4½ hours per week, and the limitations of their union are shown by their compromising, in the midst of a “winning fight,” for a 2½ hours reduction. That is less than 5 per cent. of the week’s hours. Those who know anything of the printing trade do not need to be told that this 5 per cent. reduction does not anything like counterbalance the increased output per head which has taken place in the decade or so that has slipped away since the last reduction of hours. The speeding-up and the development of, machinery in all departments have been astounding, and new processes are discovered almost daily.

In the composing department there are the Linotype and other machines, for which it is claimed that the output per man is six times that of the hand compositor. In the machine room speed has been enormously increased, and in addition mechanical contrivances are pushing the workers aside. In the case of cylinder machines, first the “flyers” got rid of the taker-off, now automatic feeders make the layer-on a superfluity. With regard to platen machines the same tale is to tell—first self-delivery, now self-feed. In newspaper production, you give the Hoe Double Octuple press half a ton of ink and a few miles of paper, and it will deliver to you 192,000 8-page papers, folded, per hour.

Magazines and the like are trimmed on all three sides simultaneously at a fearsome rate ; in the stereoing department equal strides have been made ; the process block has banished the old pictorial wood engraver so that not one of his kind now practises in this country. Even the artist and designer, who was wont to comport himself with a leisurely dignity, as one whom mechanical contrivances could not touch, has been brought to a chastened frame of mind by the camera, and may be seen plying the air-brash like a man in a mighty hurry.

In face of all this who will dare to assert that trade unionism, in winning a 5 percent. reduction in a decade, has maintained the workers’ position ? At the very moment of the strike there enters the market a new composing machine of improved form at £200 less cost ! Meanwhile the older machine develops new capabilities which enable it to eat its way into the jobbing offices. And one City firm has in position on one of its printing machines, at present under cover, lock, and key, an American automatic feeder that is going to strike consternation into the hearts of the men.

In the past this development has cheapened production and increased demand. It has given us the halfpenny morning paper—which we all read nowadays—and extended the use of advertising matter. Else had the effect of machinery been even more severely felt. But there are limits in this direction, for few of us can read two papers at once, and it is not wise to count on the abnormal increase of the cross-eyed, even to keep trade unionists in work.

And it must not be lost sight of that it is the machine the workers have to compete with. Machinery is adopted because it is cheaper; hence the very fact that this shortening of hours raises the cost of labour-power must give a fillip to the development of machinery. There is a circle of profitableness to every grade of machinery. On the fringe of that circle stand the doubters, who hesitate to adopt it. But raise the cost of labour-power and they are decided—the circle takes on a larger circumference, and the advance of machinery tumbles men out into the streets to starve.

While this in no way lessens the fact that the workers (it applies to all trades) must continually struggle against the encroachments of the masters, it shows them that the struggle is a hopeless one, and that they must look elsewhere for the true remedy for their troubles. There are among their leaders men who know this—why do they not say so ? There are among those producing their daily newspaper, men who are well aware that Socialism alone is the only hope—why, then, is no mention of the fact made ?

One reason is this—the constituencies are not ripe yet to return Socialists to Parliament, and should enlightened trade unionists demand that their officials run as Socialists, they would surely lose place and pelf.

Printers, when you have won your strike your advantage will immediately begin to slip from your hands. Socialism is the only remedy for working-class ills. We earnestly invitc you, therefore, to study Socialism.

50 Years Ago: Stop being fooled! (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Stop being fooled!

The world is large, and individually workers are small and at present united under no cause beneficial to themselves. Because of his ignorance and feeling of inferiority the worker considers the affairs of state and the understanding of politics for too complicated for his inadequate brain to comprehend. So he trusts the course of his life to others – namely the government – and remains employed, exploited and ruled.

It is difficult to have to realise that the worker himself can suffer the horrors of the capitalist system without being even conscious of being exploited. He reads the national newspapers and is bemused with such meaningless boastings as “Why is the Daily Express the paper for the people? – because it represents the heart and soul of the people it serves.” (31/12/51). Come, workers, let’s stop being so naïve. Let’s get down to realising the fact that the ‘nation’ these newspapers serve is nothing more than the British capitalist class, and that they are part of the medium by which capitalists continue to fog your brains and sense of reason with such empty phrases as ‘national prestige,’ and ‘duty and honour first.’

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952, the first by P. R. Lawrence]

 

The Printers Object to an Article

An article that should have appeared in this issue entitled “The King Is Dead” has had to be withdrawn. The compositors’ chapel at our printers objected to the article, and it was too late to carry the matter further without holding up publication of the issue.

The article dealt with the general question of kingship from an historical point of view, and only had two incidental references to King George VI in his capacity as king.

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952]

Economic laws in operation. (1911)

From the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Economic laws are as exacting as any other laws, and if violated they enforced penalties.”

So said Mr. Meredith Whittaker at the conference between masters and men during the printers’ strike, over which he presided last January.

The forty-eight hour week proposal was, of course, tha main subject discussed. The men’s argument was that a reduction of hours must of necessity lessen unemployment, but Mr. Whittaker took quite another view. By the process of, as he termed it, “dipping into” official figures on the subject, he appeared to give incontrovertible proof that the reduction of printers’ hours in the past had hardly effected such a highly desirable result.

“We contest the assertion,” Mr. Whittaker said, “that the shortening of hours reduces the number of unemployed. You secured in 1901 a reduction of 1½ hours per week, nearly 3 percent. the average ; and you sought this largely—you pressed for it—because you said you would solve the unemployment question within your own area or your own society. You got a reduction of hours equivalent to 3 per cent. If the same amount of work had been done it would have necessitated the employment of 3 per cent. more of your members. What was the effect ? The average unemployment in the London Society of Compositors for the five years before 1901 was 2.8 per cent. You were going to wipe that out and have no unemployment in view. You got a reduction in hours, but the panacea did not cure the complaint. It was the wrong medicine. The average for unemployment for the five years after 1901 was 4.4 per cent. When you were working 54 hours your unemployment was 2.58 per cent. The hours were reduced to 52½ and your unemployment percentage leaped up to 4.4.”

The above is an extract from “The Organiser,” issued in May last. The opening statement should be borne in mind by the working class when they are extorted by their leaders to chase airy nothings in the shape of eight hours bills and other capitalist reforms as a remedy for unemployment.

Whenever a reduction of hours takes place either by or against the will of the masters, economic laws sooner or later assert themselves, and the workers are no better off than before. The shortened working time is amply compensated for by the introduction of more efficient machinery and a general all-round “hustle.” Mr. Whittaker said that unemployment is a national question. We go further and say it is international, for wherever the modern industrial system holds sway unemployment exists, and the average condition of the workers of all nations is the same, i.e., they work hard and are poor.

So we have it in plain language from a representative of the master class, that “palliatives” do not tend to abolish unemployment in the least—naturally he did not attempt to show that there could be a remedy.

We Socialists point out the fact that unemployment is inherent in capitalist society, and can only be abolished by abolishing the system of society which gives rise to it. To this end, in spite of the seeming tallness of the order, the working class must organise themselves into a political party conscious of their interest at all times. Then, and then only, will any progress be made. The nucleus of this great party, we say, is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and if you are class-conscious, join it now.

A. J. G.

A Look Round. (1906)

From the August 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Loose phraseology is responsible for much misunderstanding concerning Socialism, and as it is often indulged in by professing Socialists it is small wonder that our opponents also sin.

* * *

Reynolds Newspaper often contains the statement, “A Socialist is one who advocates a more equable division of property, and a better arrangement of the social relations of mankind than one which has hitherto existed.” This could be said of almost all “social reformers” whether anti-Socialist or non-Socialist. They can and do advocate certain schemes with the object of bringing about such a change as is conveyed in be the words quoted, and yet at the same time can and usually are violent antagonists of Socialism.

* * *

I therefore suggest that Reynolds should amend its ways and reply to future querists somewhat as follows: “A Socialist is one who advocates the establishment of 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 interest of the whole community, holding that in present-day Society the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced, is enslaved by the capitalist or master class, who own the land, factories, railways, and other means of living.”

* * *

“A more equable division of property” and “a better arrangement of the social relations of mankind” could be brought about and still the working class could be slaves of the masterclass. Profit sharing, model factories, co-operative societies, land law reform, free maintenance, a minimum wage, could all be adopted and the workers would still be dominated by the master class, still lack that freedom which Socialism alone can bring, because Socialism alone attacks the foundations of Society, and aims at the abolition of that class ownership of the means of life which gives the owning class domination over the working class.

* * *

From Reynolds to Joseph Chamberlain. Speaking at the Savoy Hotel Banquet to the 1900 Club, Joseph Chamberlain exhorted the Unionist Party to “meet Socialism by pointing out how impossible were its methods, and how much better its objects could be secured in other ways. For one thing, they could point out how far fiscal reform would carry them in that direction.”

* * *

H’m, Yes. Imagine any section of the Capitalist Party, whether of the Reynolds or Chamberlain label, helping to secure the object of Socialism, which object I have stated above ! But let the Unionist Party and the Tariff Reformers come on. Let them meet us in public debate, and point out our impossible methods, and how they could bring about the object we have in view by Tariff Reform or by any other item in their program, a program which, as Mr. Balfour has remarked, is “not merely to be distinguished from Socialism, but is the direct opposite and the most effective antidote to Socialism.”

* * *

In opposing Tariff Reform even Sir H. Campbell Bannerman was forced to admit that after 60 years of Free Trade we have 12,000,000 of our population on the verge of hunger. What reformers of all brands have to face is the indisputable fact that all over the world, no matter what political, fiscal, religious or other conditions obtain, the working class is poor and the master class is rich. Is this because there is not sufficient wealth produced to satisfy the needs of all ? No. Is it that the working class is poor because its members do not work long enough or hard enough, or because they drink ? No, for the master class drink and drinking does not them make poor ; they are rich altho’ “they toil not neither do they spin.” The universal poverty of the working class, the fact that the producers of wealth lack the necessaries and comforts of life, is due to the ownership of the wealth-producing instruments by the master class, which ownership enables them to control the disposition of the wealth produced by the working class.

* * *

The Woolwich Pioneer reports a meeting held under the auspices of the local I.L.P., at which Mr. H. S. Wishart presided and Mr. Moore Bell delivered the address. In his opening remarks Mr. Bell stated he did not see that there should be any conflict between Labour and Liberalism, because Liberalism should mean the uplifting of the working classes, justice to the workers, fair play, and a fair distribution of wealth amongst the workers who produced it. The Labour Party stood for these and therefore there should be no conflict.

* * *

In view of the compacts made by I.L.P. candidates with Liberals at the recent General Election one is not surprised at such a speech by an I.L.P. lecturer. But a protest must be entered against members of such a Party as the I.L.P. calling themselves Socialists, whilst declaring that there should be no conflict between Liberalism and Labour. And as the Labour Party stand for the same things as Liberalism, where is the necessity for the separate existence of the “Labour” Party. Let them dissemble and join the Liberals.

* * *

It may be objected that the speaker did not say that there is no difference but that there should be none. But this was either loose phraseology on his part or ignorance of Liberalism. In either case it proves his unfitness to instruct the working class.

* * *

We have to consider not what Liberalism, in the opinion of Mr. Moore Bell, should be, but what it is. Like every other phase of capitalist politics, it stands for the domination of the master class over the working class. Its philosophy and that of the Socialist are as wide asunder as the poles. The one assumes, not only now, but for as long at any rate as its exponents will live, the existence of a subject class and a dominant class, and its efforts are directed to maintaining and entrenching the dominant class in its position. Now and again, as the exigencies of the political machine demand, it makes “concessions.” But all the time it has one object and one alone in view, the strengthening of its position and the side-tracking of the working class out of the path that The Socialist Party urges it to follow.

* * *

On the other hand the philosophy of the Socialist finds expression in the belief that the working class, in the order of social evolution, will achieve its freedom from the domination of the master class, and is the last class to be emancipated. It holds that this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself, and not of the middle-class place hunters and rejected Liberal candidates who abound in the I.L.P., and it has therefore nothing in common with Liberalism or any other capitalist “ism.” It is up against them all, all the time.

* * *

The Aston Strike, the strike of workers employed at Dunlops, has collapsed, all having returned to work whom the Company would take back. The men were members of Will Thorne’s Gas Workers’ Union, but, pleading a technical offence on the part of the Strikers, the Union refused to support them. But, of course, Mr. Thorne, M.P., J.P., is now a capitalist law enforcer as well as law maker, and, naturally, is a stickler for the “law.”

* * *

Some three years ago, R. P. Houston & Co. started a line of steamers from Liverpool to Hamburg and another from Leith in order to compel the Union Castle Company to reduce freights. Houstons have now joined the Trust and, as a consequence, there has been a material all-round increase in general cargo freights.

* * *

During the past quarter the income of the London Society of Compositors, exclusive of balance brought forward, amounted to the sum of £8,865 19s. 7d., and the expenditure to £9,353 0s. 9½d. The balance in hand on April 1st was £703 0s. 11d. and on July 1st £225 19s. 8½d.

J. Kay

Notes and Comments. (1906)

From the July 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHY THE LABOUR PARTY IS A FAILURE.

THE PRINTING TRADES DISPUTE.

ASQUITH’S WHITEWASHERS.

Mr. Frank Smith has passed from the Salvation Army to the Labour Movement and from the Labour Movement to the Salvation Army until one hardly knows where he is at any given time. At present he appears to be in the Labour movement as the secretary of a side-tracking, self-appointed Committee, who advise the unemployed to deputise and to beg of their masters to recognise the “right” of their slaves to work, instead of pointing out that they, the slaves, should organise to end their slavery and establish their right to live. In this connection he has a bone to pick with the “Labour” Party in the House of Commons.

* * *

He complains that the “Labour” members are permitting, without protest, the Liberal Cabinet to fool with the unemployed question, and wonders what it is “that is sapping the fight out of the majority of the Labour members?” “What is it,” he asks, “that appears to be turning the lions into lambs ?” He suggests that they are forgetting that they are still agitators, with a wider platform and a greater opportunity to push the war into the camps of the enemy, and are attempting the role of “statesmen,” and adds that they will lose their way and get side-tracked, for the politicians can beat them at the game of bluff every time.

* * *

The Executive of Mr. Smith’s Committee includes G. N. Barnes, M.P., J. Keir Hardie, M.P., and J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P. Has Mr. Smith discussed the matter with his Executive or does the Committee merely consist of Mr. Smith, and the pretence of an Executive merely part of a “game of bluff” which Mr. Smith, as well as his “Labour” Party friends, play so well ?

* * *

Now why should the “Labour” M.P’s be expected to “put up a real fight in the House”? They were not elected to put up a fight. Men who will throw over their principles of independence in order to secure votes, as did so many of the few Labour members who ever professed any, are not going to make a fight against the very men with whom they made compacts at the General Election.

* * *

Take Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, for example. He made a compact with the Liberals of Leicester, because he was more anxious to get to the House of Commons than to fight the enemies of the working class. At the meeting at the Temperance Hall, Leicester, held on January 5th, where he was adopted, he expressed himself in hearty sympathy with the proposals of the government, as voiced by Sir H. Campbell Bannerman in his Albert Hall speech, and asked the working men of Leicester to use both votes in order that Mr. Broadhurst and himself might be returned. He explained that “both the L.R.C. and the Trades Council had declared against ‘plumping’ in order that every member might utilise both his votes to return two Progressives, and so promote the more urgently needed industrial reforms.” And the speech which he delivered after the poll was declared, quoted in our March issue, amply proves that he was returned to support the capitalist Liberal Government, not to put up a fight against it.

* * *

Then there is Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., who is also supposed to be one of the “independent” Labour M.P’s. There has hardly been a Liberal function of any importance since the General Election that Mr. Crooks has not attended. In April, for instance, he and his wife were present at a back-scratching banquet at the Trocadero, which included “some of the best known names in Liberal politics.” The Lord Chancellor presided, Dr. Macnamara and Mr. H. C. Lea, M.P., were the head cooks and bottle washers, John Burns and Lord Monkswell spoke, and Mr. James Stuart and Sir H. Campbell Bannerman sent their congratulations by letter. The speeches mainly concerned the “great Radical victory,” and many were the references to “the dark days from which Liberalism had just emerged.” Does any sane person expect that Mr. Crooks is going to “put up a real fight” against the exploiters whose hospitality he is so willing to accept ?

* * *

Of course, at this function Mr. Crooks did not preach about the evils of drinking, smoking and gambling. That he reserves for the class to which he once belonged. It is part of the decoy-duck game he is playing for the capitalists.

* * *

Then we have Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., now made a Justice of the Peace for the Borough of West Ham, in which capacity he will be called upon to punish those victims of the capitalist system who have offended against capitalist laws, passed to protect capitalist property and capitalist institutions. Mr. Thorne is a member of the S.D.F., who, no doubt, will claim that a “revolutionary Social Democrat” can serve the working class and at the same time serve in the capacity of a tool of the capitalist class. There is now no real difference between Burns and Thorne, excepting that Burns is well paid for his job and Thorne is one of the great unpaid.

* * *

I am here reminded of the words of Wilhelm Liebknecht: “A Socialist who goes into a bourgeois government, either goes over to the enemy or else puts himself in the power of the enemy. … He may claim to be a Socialist, but he is no longer such. He may be convinced of his own sincerity, but in that case he has not comprehended the nature of the class struggle—does not understand that the class struggle is the basis of Socialism.”

* * *

Before elected persons can put up a real fight they must be elected to do so, they must have a guiding principle and a definite policy. They must know what they want and how they must go to work to get it. And above all, they must have the knowledge that behind their actions lies the full strength of the electors who voted for them and the non-electors who also helped to return them. They must clear their minds of the fallacy that place necessarily means power for those claiming to represent the working class. That power can only come when the working class understand their position, and will return men as rebels. “No compromise” must be the watchword, and as the “Labour” M.P’s have not been returned as rebels, as they do not endeavour to enlighten the working class as to their position of wage slaves, as they merely hanker after reforms in a mild and quite respectable manner, they are useless to the working class, and therefore are, as they must be, a failure.

* * *

The dispute in the London Printing Trade has, apparently, only ended as far as the Compositors are concerned, and it is quite evident that in ending it the Compositors were guilty of two false moves—one in not recognising that the matter affected all the workers in the industry, and therefore that all should have been considered and consulted before any agreement was entered into, and another in falling so easily into the trap laid for them by the astute newspaper proprietors, who in future will form a separate employers’ organisation, apart from the Master Printers’ Association. If the Compositors were in a position to exact terms from the masters, they should have insisted that the cause of one employer should be considered the cause of all, that all the employers should join one and the same masters’ association, and thus action against one would have been action against all. The policy of the working class is to get all its enemies, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, into one body in front of it.

* * *

A great and enthusiastic throng gathered together at the National Liberal Club on Friday,June 16th to meet the members of the Government and to make merry over the Liberal victory. As might be expected, the Social Democratic Federation was represented—by Mr. A. E. Fletcher.

* * *

Mr. W. P. Byles has taken upon himself the whitewashing of Asquith, who, he claims, was in no way responsible for the murder of the Featherstone Miners. Against Mr. Byles’ opinion we have Asquith’s own avowal, previously quoted in these columns. It was made at Glasgow on the l7th October, 1893, and he said :—”In his character as Secretary of State for the Home Department, it had been his duty to take executive action in more than one of those cases for the maintenance of the law and for the prevention of disorder, and he accepted the full responsibility for everything that had been done.”

* * *

Of course, whatever Asquith’s whitewashers may say, Asquith is bound to take the responsibility. If he repudiated it, it would be tantamount to admitting that the Imperial troops could be ordered to murder in cold blood the Imperial workers, at the instance of a local capitalist, without the consent of the Executive Government. It is too much to expect a member of the Executive Government to plead that the Government does not control the Executive’s forces, and therefore Asquith takes the full responsibility. And glories in it, gloats over it, smiles in grim satisfaction at the thought that his class had so crushed the workers as to make it possible, without a protest, either from the workers outside or from the “Labour” Members who were then inside the House. They did not “put up a real fight” then, any more than the present “Labour” members will over questions which really concern the working class.

J. Kay

The Land of the Free! (1906)

From the February 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dispatch from Dayton, 0., reports that 300 employees of the National Cash Register Co. were discharged because they failed to attend a meeting to listen to addresses on the labour situation by the company officials. The meeting was called by the company because of its decision to refuse the demands of the Typographical union for an eight-hour day. This is the concern which advertises itself as the “model employer of labor,” because it furnishes bath towels, pocket-handkerchiefs and hair curlers to its employes. In return for these kindnesses the company exacts complete obedience from its slaves, as shown above. This only makes clear again that the capitalists will grant everything (even higher wages sometimes), but freedom to the workers, for with freedom will come an end of exploitation. The capitalists are dictators because they own the tools with which the workers must earn a livelihood. When the workers own the tools the despotism of capitalism will cease, and only then.

Labor (St. Louis).

Letters: Stalinist? (2009)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stalinist?

Dear Editors

Truth is (August Socialist Standard) that we paid our staff more than our competitors in the newspapers and even included BUPA. The unions, when we were negotiating, said we could go on with the BUPA, but mustn’t mention it. Never quite understood what they stood for when their officials drove off in Jaguar XJS’, etc.

As far as the ‘sharecropping’ goes, there is a shortage of allotments in the area and we were trying to free up some of our land near the hotel to fill that local gap. It was a win-win situation.

Nothing more – but if it’s a move against the workers of the world…then fine. I think the reason socialism continually fails is because the greed of the political and bureaucratic classes and their lack of efficiency and vision is a stronger deterrent to the common man than the greed of bankers, lawyers and the rest of those who dip their snouts in the working man’s taxpayer trough. We can at least get rid of these guys eventually, because that’s how capitalism works. And working man is mostly middle-class now, anyway.

For socialism read Stalinism. Read subjugation. Read gulags and firing squads and torture of your own people. Oh happy days.

Eddy Shah (by email)

Reply:

Just because we use the words “capitalism”, “socialism”, and “exploitation” doesn’t mean that we therefore supported Stalin’s Russia. We didn’t (and we didn’t support Lenin’s Russia either). There was exploitation there too under a system of state capitalism. It was never socialist. We’d have thought that an employer who wanted to run his business without trade union interference could more justly be likened to Stalinism. After all, there were no trade unions in the USSR either – Editors.

Corruption

Dear Editors

It’s hardly “political rocket science” to understand the decay and corruption that lies at the heart of New Labour as affirmed by yet another dismal by-election defeat for Labour in Norwich North.

Throughout the coverage of this by-election some mainstream political commentators lampooned former Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson (whose resignation sparked this contest) as a maverick left wing politician, thus implying there was some justification for the New Labour “star chamber” to deselect him over the second home allowance scandal.

Maybe if there actually were more left-wing MP’s or prospective parliamentary candidates selected democratically by their local parties and who are periodically adjudged by their local party members on how they stand up for the basic principles their party stands for, then not only would these commentators have had something politically tangible to commentate about but more essentially the new Tory MP Chloe Smith might have had to face a genuine political contest based on policies and ideology rather than personalities and scandals.

Whilst this by-election campaign enticed Tory leader David Cameron to visit Norwich North on six occasions and to predictably hail his victor as a “rising star”, her victory was in fact, as indeed all Tory poll successes are, wholly attributable to the failed free market economic policies of New Labour which are the normal mainstay of the Tory Party itself. Apart from Tory core voters who’d vote Tory under any circumstance, the fact that many floating voters in Norwich North voted Tory during a recession underlines how utterly skewed British political attitudes and opinions have become due to this bipartisan political climate that deludes millions of apathetic voters into thinking that they have a legitimate choice.

Yet in essence Dr Gibson is no maverick and he certainly wasn’t a radical left wing MP. What proved too much for New Labour’s “star chamber” is that he, along with a handful of other Labour backbenchers on occasions, was mildly critical of New Labour’s right-wing free market agenda. Because the majority of Labour MP’s today just poodle along passively from day to day far more concerned about their careers and expenses rather than the wellbeing of society in general, then the likes of Dr Gibson are labelled mavericks, hence easily held up as scapegoats for the MP expense scandal.

At least Dr Gibson was right to resign immediately if only to expose how the treatment meted out to him exposes how the New Labour leadership has undermined internal Labour Party democracy all along and how, barring a miracle it’s going to result in a future Tory government. The real question however is why these very same commentators within the alleged free press and media totally ignored the fact that the behaviour of Dr Gibson, albeit an alleged ‘lefty’ who should have never have accepted the second home allowance in the first place, was relatively quite trivial in comparison with the behaviour of Chancellor Alistair Darling or employment minister Tony McNulty. A greasy pole indeed!

Nick Vinehill, 

Snettisham, Norfolk

Reply: 

Of course it wouldn’t make any difference if all Labour and Tory MPs were honest and democratically selected. They still wouldn’t be able to make the capitalist system work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers – Editors.

Letter: Unemployment and the Printing Trades. (1929)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

We print below a letter from a correspondent, together with our reply :—

S. Hackney, E.9. 

22/9/29.

To Editor Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

Upon perusal of the Socialist Party’s pamphlet “Socialism,” I am prompted to write of an aspect regarding machine production and its effect on the economic relationship of the working-class. Firstly, I will draw attention to page 3, where will be found workers in practically every trade, profession, and so forth, addressing, as a body, to the working-class the object of Socialism. And amongst them is instanced printers (my italics).

On page 19 I find a reference to the linotype machine and its economic results upon the compositors. In brief, without giving the full quota­tion, this wonderful machine has displaced men; made them unemployed, but not, I will venture to say, unemployable.

Permit me to give the facts. In 1899, the Daily Mail was the first firm to instal these machines. They were then producing an 8-page news-sheet. The staff of compositors was some­ thing like fifty. Since then the paper has developed from an 8-page to a 16-page production. Remembering, too, that the linotype sets text matter only, who other than the displaced compositors does the advertisements which monopolises more of the paper than the material composed by the linotype. This position is representative of all firms who installed the machine.

Next, in 1899, when the linotype was introduced in England from America, the membership of the London Society of Compositors was 11,415, so, according to the line of thought given in “Socialism,” by now—1929—the membership should be numerically smaller. But the opposite is the case, and we find the membership of the Society stronger—14,690, to be precise, and the months of May, June and July found only an average of 16 members unemployed on the figures for those three months. How then can you reconcile these facts with that propounded in the pamphlet ?

The explanation is simple. Take another industry. Consequent on the development of the tooth-brush industry, we find the wage-standard is low. With the result of intensive machine production the markets, at periods, get over­ stocked. That is the cause, Stock ! Stock ! ! Stock ! ! ! But not so in Print. There is no stock in that industry. And that, in my opinion, is the farcical aspect or position I regard for the Socialist Party to take as an example the linotype machine. Other than that point, of course, I am in full agreement.

Yours fraternally, 

Tom.

Reply.

Our correspondent has read the Socialist Party’s pamphlet “Socialism,” and notes that in reference to the compo­sition of the organization, printers, amongst others, are enumerated (page 3). Printers, whether they be linotype or mono­type operators, or hand compositors, or machine managers, and so forth, are all members of the working class. Conse­quently there are in the ranks of the S.P.G.B. men and women of diverse occu­pations who have joined together in an endeavour to propagate the gospel of Socialism.

He is in difficulties about page 19, wherein the introduction of a linotype machine into a printing office is given as an illustra­tion of how hand-labour may be displaced by the machine. Let us quote the passage as it appears in the pamphlet:—

“This wonderful appliance, though a great labour-saver, is profitable only to a certain circle of printers—those who have a considerable amount of book or newspaper work. But many are considering the pros and cons of its adoption. A very little will decide. An extra monthly magazine—or, perhaps, putting in a machine, by saving two or three men’s room, will avoid an expensive removal to larger premises.

Now suppose wages rise, immediately the doubters are decided. They adopt the machine and each machine throws three or four composi­tors into the street.“

It is, indeed, difficult to understand the reasoning of our correspondent, for, while he writes to take exception to the passage quoted above, the significant admission of our correctness creeps in when he says, ” but not, I will venture to say, unemployable.” (Closing words of his second paragraph.) Again, later on, he asks, “who other than the displaced compositors does the advertisements ?”

Our critic then goes on to give what he considers to be the facts. He says :

“In 1899 the Daily Mail was the first firm to instal these machines. They were then producing an eight-page news-sheet. The staff of compositors was something like fifty. Since then the paper has developed from an eight-page to a sixteen-page production. Remembering, too, that the linotype sets text matter only, who, other than the displaced compositors does the advertisements, which monopolise more of the paper than the material composed by the linotype. This position is representative of all firms who installed the machine.”

We would suggest to our correspondent that before he starts “distributing” the “facts,” he should take the trouble to verify them. The Daily Mail was first published on May 1st, 1896. (See “Mystery of the Daily Mail,” page 100; or “Everyman Encyclopaedia.”) Also an agreement for machine composition was signed between representatives of the London Newspapers and Master Printers and the London Society of Compositors in July, 1896.

The facts would have been more informa­tive had they been more definite. For instance, “something like fifty” for the number of compositors employed when the production was an eight-page one, and no mention at all of those required for the sixteen-page edition does not help towards an intelligent understanding of the situation. Our critic goes on to ask, “who, other than the displaced compositor does the advertisements which monopolise more of the paper than the material composed by the linotype?” Of course, some of the displaced compositors may get a look in on the advertisements, seeing that the paper is now, on his own showing, twice its former size ; and the tendency has for a long time past been for newspapers to develop more and more into an advertising medium.

This is where our critic misunderstands our point. We do not deny that an industry can expand and even expand faster when labour is eliminated by machines. The essential point is that more work is done by relatively fewer workers. An instance of this may be taken from the Census of Production figures published in the Board of Trade Journal (21st April, 1927). Dealing with the “Printing and Publication of Newspapers and Periodicals,” it is stated :

Net output per head,      1907 … £190

        ''         ''                   1924 … £546

Persons employed,         1907 … 43,644

       ''         ''                    1924 … 56,837

Be it noted that this increase is much greater than the increase in prices between 1907 and 1924.

Because our correspondent fails to grasp these points he wants to know how we reconcile our statement with regard to the displacement of hand labour by machines when the membership of the London Society of Compositors in 1899 was 11,415 and is now 14,690?

The next statement in his letter, which says that “the months of May, June and July found only an average of sixteen members unemployed,” is incorrect. Let us take the figures as given in the London Typographical Journal:—

May 4   May 11   May 18   May 25

    25          55            92          118 

June 1   June 8     June 15    June 22   June 29

  155         151            171          147        147 

July 6    July 13    July 20     July 27 

   169         205          230         228

If our questioner will take the trouble to work these figures out, he will discover that the average for the thirteen weeks is 145 !

Again, notice should be taken that the compositors have extraordinarily good super­annuation benefits which, combined with the Contributory Pension Act, has a tendency to remove from the labour market a proportion of seekers after work. Dealing with the unemployment figures for the years 1921-1928, the Annual Report, 1928, of the L.S.C. states :—”Members do not need to be reminded that this substantial reduction has been brought about by the operation of the scheme of superannuation combined with the policy of restriction of membership.” Now this restriction of entrants and the limitation of apprentices all helps to swell the general army of unemployed.

We consider it unnecessary to follow our critic at length to the tooth-brush industry. Suffice it to say that here again he is in error in imagining that in the realm of print there is no stock. Evidently he has never heard or seen such things as receipt books, rent books, registers, to mention but a few that come to mind at once, that can be obtained for the asking.

S.W.T.

Letter: All middle class now? (2009)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Eddie Shah was the subject of a Cooking the Books column in the August 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard and, presumably, a copy of the article had fallen into his hands.

All middle class now?

Dear Editors

 

 It must be difficult not to write about stereotypes, but I was never against unions – just the way they operated in a modern democracy. I just felt instead of calling a strike at every opportunity to flex their muscles – which is the headbanger approach – the funds they had should’ve been used for re-training redundant workers, helping other workers set up cooperatives when companies had failed, create savings for workers and their families injured in accidents, etc; and so on. What really pissed me off was that the union bosses during our dispute – and I since discovered in nearly all other disputes – went on paying themselves handsome salaries and driving their big modern ‘I’m not a union official, I’m an executive’ cars whilst they waltzed around between meetings as their members froze on the picket line.

 It’s all bullshit created on the back of the working class’ aspirations. Truth is we are a middle class society now, as we were becoming during my dispute, but it paid the power brokers at the top of the Labour movement and the trades unions to keep the old class war going so that they could retain their power bases and their trappings of success.

 So I object to being told I was an employer who wanted to run my business without trade union interference. In our case, when the trade union tries to control who you can and can’t employ, that’s the day that people stop running businesses and get out – which would be great for a wealth creating nation, I think not.

 The freedom you have to write your periodical without fear of imprisonment, censorship and even death, is something hard fought for by a capitalist society, or by writers in a suppressed state who fight for the freedom of a democratic state. There are times journalists shouldn’t forget that. A free press is the only watchdog of those who would govern us in both a democratic and an authoritarian state.

 The trouble with socialism is that it has its head buried in the satanic mills of a hundred years ago. It needs enlightening. It needs a new vision, not a descent into the madness of a suppressed anarchy that never had a chance of catering to a world of technology and freedom of the mass as well as the individual. There are no new visions, yet the world is crying out for them.

Eddy Shah

PS. I presume your writing your stuff on technology we introduced during the dispute. Or are you clacking over an old Underwood typewriter and cursing every time the keys stick? Just think, you could’ve achieved that if the unions had won in 1982. Welcome to the world of the middle class.

Reply:

We too are critical of the knights of the round table at the TUC’s Congress House but from a working-class point of view. Unions should be run by their members and officials should not have big salaries, big houses and big cars as many do. We say “working class” deliberately as, for us, this is composed of anyone obliged to get a living by going out and trying to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer. This of course applies to most of the so-called “middle class”, as many of them are discovering the hard way as they lose their jobs or see their final salary pension scheme closing. And it is capitalism that forces workers to resist new technologies as a way of trying to protect their livelihoods. If we had socialism nobody would be put in this position. – Editors.

Editorial: The Printing Dispute (1959)

Editorial from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the ordinary trade union point of view of a struggle to enforce more pay and shorter hours, the printers' strike seems to have been well conceived and executed and well timed.

The claim was for a 10 per cent. increase of pay and a reduction of 3½ hours, from 43½ to 40. After lengthy negotiations the employers offered 2½ per cent. and 1 hour, but tied up the offer with a long list of demands for the reorganisation of the industry to increase production. The Unions rejected this offer and rejected also the employers manoeuvre of trying to get them to take the claim to arbitration. Having taken a ballot of their members the printing unions came out on strike on June 17th, over 100,000 men and women being involved. The dispute affected the Newspaper Society and the British Federation of Master Printers, but not the Newspaper Proprietors' Association or the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, so while the Provincial newspapers, the magazines and periodicals and general printers were brought to a standstill the national and Sunday papers and London evening papers carried on, as did a certain number of firms which accepted the Unions' demands. A second dispute affecting printing ink threatened to stop the other papers, but this was avoided.

The timing was favourable for the workers because trade was recovering from the depression, unemployment was falling and the imminence of a general election made the employers, the Government and the big political parties worried lest a long-drawn out strike should hold up the very big volume of literature of various kinds needed for the election.

In the third week of the strike, discussions started under the chairmanship of Lord Birkett. Towards the end of July, at our time of going to press, the employers made an improved offer, of 3½ per cent. increase of pay, and a reduction of 1½ hours. The unions rejected this. They considered that the substantial concessions they were prepared to make to make to increase productivity justified more than 3½ per cent. on pay and at least an undertaking of a further reduction of hours at a later date. Settlement was then Expected at 4½ per cent. proposed by Lord Birkett.

The Sanctimonious “Guardian”

The dispute produced several surprising, diverting and instructive incidents. As was to be expected the Manchester Guardian led the Press in its sanctimonious comment of June 13th, laying down the usual employers' line that everyone believes in the right of the workers to strike so long as they never exercise the right:

The right to strike is a fundamental human freedom, but its exercise ought to be justified by some great cause. There is no great cause in the printing dispute—it is a piece of market bargaining over money.

Can anyone remember the Manchester Guardian ever supporting a strike (except a strike of foreign workers)? The Guardian editor’s further remark was equally hypocritical.

In the nineteenth century, when Britain had few industrial rivals, and when the main domestic industries had well-hedged fields to themselves, a strike or lock-out did not matter much, except in terms of personal suffering.

If some diligent student were to study the Guardian’s attitude to strikes in the nineteenth century, we do not doubt that he would find that the Guardian always managed to find overwhelming reasons for condemning those strikers too.

Lord Sourgrapes

It might have been expected that the newspapers that continued to be published would have solidly defended the employers, though Labour Party supporters doubtless hoped that their two mouthpieces, the official Daily Herald and the unofficial Daily Mirror, would line up with the workers against the employers. It turned out otherwise and some of the liveliest abuse during the strike was to be found in a fierce battle between the Daily Express and the other two. Beaverbrook’s Daily Express roundly accused the big magazine combines of having precipitated an unnecessary strike by their "tough and unaccommodating attitude," and said (4th July) that the provincial newspapers were the “victims of the tycoons of the magazine trade. They are paying a heavy price for their association with these richer more powerful and more belligerent allies." The biggest printing union, NATSOPA, promptly endorsed the charge. The Mirror and. Odhams (the latter owns the People and the Herald) are the “magazine tycoons" referred to, and they angrily denied the accusation. The Mirror of July 6th, in a slashing leader headed “ Lord Sourgrapes—and the drop of poison," explained that Beaverbrook has no magazines except “a couple of inconspicuous comics," called it a “smear campaign,” and passed the buck to the smaller printing firms and smaller newspapers who feared that the Unions' demands would put them out of business. The People (July 5th) blamed the Unions for not having let the claim go to arbitration in the first place. The Herald itself tried to ride both horses. It held that the men have a good case for their original demands, but that the employers “think they have a good case for insisting on increased productivity as a condition of any wage rise" (June 19th). It tried to escape its dilemma by blaming the Government for not immediately setting up a court of inquiry, which, of course, the Unions did not want, anyway.

The “Principle” of Shorter Hours

A weakness of the trade union position (to be found in many other industries as well) is the ambiguous attitude to shorter hours. Mr. Willis, one of the Union leaders and Chairman of the T.U.C., declared at the conference of the Miners' Union that the printers were striking “in support of the principle for which every trade unionist would fight, the shorter week." (News Chronicle, July 8th.) But what are the facts? Though the standard hours are now about four less than in 1938 the actual hours worked in industry are no lower than they were then. The claims for shorter hours have turned into claims for more overtime pay. In 1946 printing hours were reduced by 1½ to 43½, but within a few years the actual average hours of male workers in the paper and printing trade were higher than they were before, and in 1957 were 47 a week.

Confusion about Arbitration and Impartiality

The trade unions are in a muddle about arbitration. The printing unions consistently opposed it on the ground that it would not be “impartial,” but later in the dispute they were asking that Lord Monckton be invited—though he declined the invitation—to preside over the negotiations “to advise, guide and control” the discussions, but not to have power to be final arbiter. Lord Monckton was for four years Tory Minister of Labour (described by the General Secretary of the railwaymen in 1955 as “a very able friend of the N.U.R.! ”) and is now chairman of the Midland Bank, which refuse; to recognise the union of bank employees! Arbitration is established by the Government to settle industrial disputes and it cannot be impartial in the sense of deciding the merits of a case on some abstract principle of humanity. No such principles are laid down for the present court or the one abolished last year. The job of the arbitrators is to find a basis on which the workers can be persuaded to carry on working and the employers can keep in business—with, as an inescapable background, the continuation of Capitalism.

To illustrate the general confusion in the trade union movement it has only to be recalled that last year the T.U.C. and many trade union leaders were deriding the Government for abolishing the arbitration tribunal, which other unions declare they will not have anyway. The Daily Herald then (October 24h, 1958) called it a move to help the employers by abolishing the “referee to see fair play.”

And in the present dispute Mr. Willis, in the matter of strike pickets, was calling on the Government to observe “strict impartiality” (Times, June 26th), as if a government committed to keeping Capitalism going (as all governments must be that take on the administration of Capitalism) could “impartially” stand aside and not defend the property rights of the propertied class.

The International Aspect

The fact is that the trade union movement still broadly accepts Capitalism though prepared to strike against the Capitalists. This was clearly shown by the attitude of the printing unions. They belong to the printing workers Trade Union International, the International Graphical Federation, and some at least of the continental unions acceded to the request that they should advise their members not to do “black” work sent abroad during the strike. But in the middle of the strike NATSOPA released a plan it had drawn up suggesting a deal between the British unions and the British employers. If the latter would concede the demands on hours and wages, in return the unions would cooperate on a joint productivity council: “ The essence of the plan is that the prosperous big groups with stable and profitable home markets will help the small and medium printers, and particularly the printing concerns working on export printing. The plan should make British printers highly competitive in markets abroad.” (News Chronicle, June 23rd, 1959.)

So the unions, while fighting the employers, are quite prepared to collaborate with them to capture foreign markets—where, of course, they will clash with foreign printers who. again with the collaboration of the workers, will be resisting the invasion and trying to counter attack. This, of course, makes nonsense of the object of the printers' trade union international: “To safeguard the economic, occupational and general interests of graphical workers in all countries and to promote their solidarity.” (Our italics.)

In the nineteenth century Socialist critics of the trade union movement used to ridicule the illogicality of workers fighting the employers in the industrial field and electing the same people to Parliament and supporting them nationally. The present outlook of the trade unions shows that they have still a long way to go before they realise that the workers’ interest demands real international working class solidarity against the employers—and for Socialism.

Cooking the Books: Sharing with Shah (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eddie Shah? Wasn’t he the capitalist who in 1982 tried to break the print unions and provoked a bitter industrial dispute that lasted seven months and which he eventually won thanks to invoking Thatcher’s newly-introduced anti-union laws? Indeed, he is. He has now found another way to exploit the labour of other people:

“The former newspaper owner Eddie Shah is inviting the public to grow vegetables on his land – but demanding that they hand over 60 per cent of their produce. Mr Shah has offered to give over two acres of his estate to be used by gardeners. Most of their vegetables would then be served in his restaurants” (Times, 30 June).

This is not quite a return to feudalism where serfs were obliged to work so many days on the estate of the lord of the manor. It’s the same principle though, and corresponds to one way in which in some countries those who worked the land were exploited in the sense of being deprived of a part of the fruits of their labour. “Sharecropping”, as it was known, was for instance the system that replaced chattel slavery in the American South after the North won the Civil War. The “free” Negroes were still exploited, but by this new method.

 Whereas under the wages system exploitation is hidden, under sharecropping (as well as under serfdom and chattel slavery) it is obvious. The producers directly surrender a part of what they produce to somebody else.

 It was the same when Shah was a newspaper owner, but not so obvious, because it was then done through money and not in kind. Shah paid his journalists, printers and other workers a wage for the use of their working skills (what Marx called their “labour power”) for an agreed period. The amount of money they received corresponded more or less (probably less as he employed non-union labour) to the monetary value of the working skills they sold him. This appears to be a fair transaction. The workers have something to sell; they sell its use for a contracted period; and get paid its value (what it cost to produce, i.e. the costs of the necessities and minor luxuries needed to reproduce it on a weekly or a monthly basis). And that appears to be it.

 But it isn’t. The amount of labour-time required to reproduce a worker’s labour-power for, say, a month (i.e. to produce what he or she needs to consume in a month) is not the same as the value of what a worker can produce in a month. Not at all. In fact it is considerably less. For instance, it might only take 12 days labour-time to produce a worker’s monthly needs. But that doesn’t mean that workers can stop after working only 12 days. They will have contracted to work for the whole month and this they must do. So, they have to work a further 18 days, free, for their employer. This unpaid labour is the source of the employer’s profits and is in fact why the employer employed the worker in the first place. It is as if the worker only kept 40 percent of what they produced. Just as under Shah’s revived sharecropping scheme.

 But Shah needs to be careful. Sharecroppers can organise just as wage and salary workers can. In fact they did organise in America in the 1920s and 1930s. And by asking for 60 percent he is already fixing a higher rate of exploitation than the ex-slaveowners did in the post-slavery South. They only took 50 percent.

The Newspaper Industry (1967)

From the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Fleet Street is a jungle”. That is not the most original and penetrating comment ever made by Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the International Publishing Corporation, from the safety of whose mighty ramparts he could boast “I shall survive”. Which is more than can be said of the one national daily paper, one London evening, four national Sundays and over one hundred local papers which have perished in the jungle since the war.

Perhaps the most famous of these were the News Chronicle and The Star, which collapsed overnight in October 1960. There was a great deal of fuss over this, but the fate of the two papers was inescapable. Although they both had a circulation of over a million, during the last nine months of their lives they showed a combined loss of £300,000. In typical style, the Daily Mirror composed the most pointed of their many epitaphs: “A commercial failure is a commercial failure. However sad. However regretful.”

There have been no comparable deaths in Fleet Street since then but this is not to say that all the papers are bursting with health. A recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) fore, cast that four national newspapers will close by 1970; five dailies and two Sundays are making losses amounting to several million pounds a year. What the Manchester Guardian said ten years ago is still true:

Between the upper and the nether millstones of limited revenue and rising costs some units of the industry are being ground into oblivion.

Today, one of these units is The Guardian itself, which is losing around £1 million a year and which last December warned the printing unions that production costs had to be cut by a quarter by the end of the year.

Just as in other industries, production costs are a persistent worry to the newspaper managements. In evidence to the 1961 Royal Commission on the Press, the Daily Mirror said that its total variable costs had increased 4.2 times between 1937 and 1960, and fixed costs 2.2 times.

In this situation, wages are bound to be under the microscope; in Fleet Street they have always tended to be above average, although none of the printing workers is yet able to employ quite as many servants as some of the shareholders:

When the EIU reported last January, it pointed a disapproving finger at Fleet Street’s wages and commented that the industry “. . . is almost unique in the degree to which control of labour is in the hands of the unions.” The printing unions might well take this as a back-handed compliment to the efficiency with which they have done their job—which was, after all, what the EIU was supposed to be looking for.

Apart from their efforts to hold down production costs and wages, the newspapers are locked in a battle with each other, for circulation and advertisements. The losers of the battle find themselves in a descending spiral; a low circulation, or a high circulation in the wrong places, does not attract revenue from advertisements. This usually means cuts in quality (one of the troubles of the News Chronicle was that it could not afford to run as many pages as its rivals), which mean lower circulation and therefore less advertisements . . .

For the winners the spiral works in the opposite direction; with the exception of The Times, the cost of advertising in a national newspaper is tied to its circulation:

Advertising revenue is, and has been for some time, vital to a newspaper’s survival; without it it simply could not make ends meet. The Daily Express told a PEP enquiry in 1955 (Balance Sheet of the Press) that 39 per cent of its revenue came from advertisements; the EIU found some "quality" daillies getting 70 or 80 per cent of their incomes from the  same source and the “populars” about 40 per cent.

To attract the advertisements, the papers must themselves advertise, in campaigns aimed at industry’s sales directors. The Daily Telegraph says that on Fridays, when its colour supplement comes out, circulation goes up to 1,450,858—“. . . at just the right time for the peak weekend spending period.” (The whole idea, in fact, behind the colour supplements was to attract advertisers—as is obvious from the most casual glance through them.) Then there is “. . . the advertising medium that sells best” (News of the World, circulation 6,184,000) and “The Religious Weekly With National Appeal” (Methodist Recorder, circulation 69,568.)

The accepted formula for survival in Fleet Street’s jungle is size and diversification. Two giants out-top the rest—the International Publishing Corporation (IPC) and the Thomson Organisation. Both have big investments in newspapers and publishing overseas and in commercial television. Both received EIU's admiration for being “operated as a commercial business” (Daily Mirror) and “profit orientated” (Sunday Times).

Thomsons own the Sunday Times, the Scotsman, the Western Mail and now, after the Monopolies Commission had given the necessary approval under the Monopolies and Mergers Act, The Times—a takeover which in itself showed up the plight of the newspaper industry. Thomsons also own exhibition companies, a package tour firm and an airline.

IPC, in the words of the Press Council (Report 1966), is the ". . . largest and most comprehensive publishing and communications empire in the world.” It owns the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, The People, The Sun, and something like ninety weekly magazines and 123 which come out less frequently, among them Autocar, Country Life, Everywoman. The weekly total was recently reduced by one when IPC put The Statist, after a long and painfully unprofitable iillness, to sleep.

A long way behind these two groups are Associated Newspapers (Daily Mail, Daily Sketch, Evening News, National Opinion Polls, a stake in Southern Television and in the North Sea explorations) and Beaverbrook Newspapers (Daily Express, Sunday Express, Evening Standard, a share in ATV.) Then there are the smaller, sometimes private, companies like the Daily Telegraph Ltd. and the Manchester Guardian and Evening News Ltd. This was how the three biggest groups made out in 1965:

Correction: It should read 'Profits Before Tax'

For the future, Fleet Street’s barometer is not set fair. The competition from television will not grow any weaker; the decline in advertising revenue will probably continue; production costs will not fall. The big groups have the resources to ride the storm and to put in labour saving equipment; in 1965 Thomsons invested £2.7 million in equipment and a new paper of their’s — the Evening Post in Reading—is composed with a computer. The small groups will be hard pressed to compete with this; their papers are especially vulnerable.

The suggested remedies are not original. The EIU advised an all-out war on costs, saying that in London alone the industry could sack enough workers to save nearly £5 million a year. Lord Thomson wants the unions to cooperate: “We have to learn to use these new tools of our trade, and I hope the efforts to do so will not be hamstrung by restrictive practices . . .” (Fleet Street, the Inside Story of Journalism — Macdonald 1966.)

And of course someone had to suggest the State stepping in like a fairy godmother to save it all. Richard Brightshaw, joint general secretary of SOGAT (one of the printing unions) has “. . . called for a National Printing Corporation, backed with large Government resources, which would . . . take over ’commercial projects and ailing publications’. . .” Lena Jeger, Labour M.P., “. . . is a strong supporter of outright nationalisation.” (Sunday Times, 8/1/67).

Like most of the lamentations about the state of Fleet Street, these are based on the assumption that newspapers are sacred. In fact, they are commodities, like the rest of capitalism’s wealth. When it is applied to other industries, the newspapers always support the principle that if something is unprofitable it should not be produced. If Fleet Street is a jungle, it is capitalism’s profit motive which has made it so. 

Ivan

Murdoch at The Times (1981)

From the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a fact of life under capitalism that the capitalist invests only where there is a prospect of making profit. As Marx put it, from the capitalist standpoint a worker who does not yield a profit to his employer is not a productive worker. Newspapers are no exception; when they continue to show losses, they are closed down. The London Evening News is only the latest of a large number that have disappeared in recent years.

There is, however, a widespread belief that The Times is different. Because it has been in existence since 1785, was for a long time a government mouthpiece, and has a certain reputation for reliability and avoidance of sensationalism, the claim is made that it is a “natural asset" which must be preserved at all costs. The belief has been supported by the fact that at times wealthy newspaper proprietors like Lord Northcliffe and the late Lord Thomson have been prepared to own it for prestige reasons and lose a certain amount of money. So when the present Lord Thomson announced that unless he found a buyer for The Times, the Times Literary Supplement and two educational supplements, he would close them down, the media reported that the nation was stunned and it had to be debated in the House of Commons.

Adulation of The Times is not however shared by some of the rival newspapers. Reporting the House of Commons debate, Andrew Alexander (Daily Mail, 28 July) took a distinctly critical attitude:

MPs on both sides spoke of The Times and the Sunday Times, especially the former, with a mixture of awe, reverence and admiration. Those newspapers play a really tremendous part in British public life, MPs kept stressing until one was finally left wondering how it was that “public life" did not grind to a halt altogether during the eleven months that the two papers were off the street. Actually, of course, MPs were discussing a couple of newspapers of modest distinction, as prone to vulgar error, inaccuracies and unconvincing arguments as much of the rest of Fleet Street, except that when The Times, for example, talks twaddle it does so in polysyllables and charges you 20p for the privilege of reading sophisticated nonsense (as opposed to unsophisticated nonsense available elsewhere for less)!

As was inevitable in the long run, the future of the Times group of publications is being decided on the question of profitability. The Thomson company is reported to have lost £50 million through the eleven months’ strike. It is not that the company could not afford to go on running the newspapers at a loss, but the shareholders have no intention of seeing their profits from oil thrown away on this loss-making branch of their activities.

When publication was resumed it was the expectation, on the employers’ side, that the unions would agree to the introduction of new technology and reductions of staff, which would turn losses into profits. The unions had still not agreed when another strike took place, this time by the journalists. Lord Thomson then announced his deadline; failing the receipt of a satisfactory offer for the whole group (or for the separate journals), together with agreement by the unions to accept big changes, all the journals would cease publication in March.

The Thomson company provisionally accepted an offer by Rupert Murdoch, who owns Australian newspapers as well as the Sun and the News of the World. Objection was raised to this on the ground that it would create an unacceptable monopoly but the government refused to refer it to the Monopolies Commission.

Two other objections were raised regarding Murdoch; that he would not allow his editors independence in matters of policy, and that under his ownership The Times would never be the same again. Conor Cruise O’Brien (Observer and Telegraph) was horrified:

With Murdoch at The Times, the whole ecology of Fleet Street is changed, for the worse. The master of the most disreputable and successful of the “populars” is now to be master also of the principal “qualities".

On the strength of Murdoch’s assurances the unions concerned, both printers’ and journalists’, dropped whatever objections they may have had on these aspects.

From the start Murdoch made it quite clear that his priority is profit he had no intention of taking over the group on any other basis. He demanded that by February 12 the unions had to agree to reductions of staffing ranging from 9 per cent for journalists to 50 per cent in the composing room, with compulsory redundancies if necessary; a wage freeze until October 1982; and printing the supplements outside London. This, of course, was an opening gambit and he cannot have been surprised that the unions’ immediate reaction was to reject the lot.

The other big issue concerns unofficial lightening strikes. Newspapers are particularly vulnerable to such stoppages, which lead not only to loss of income from sales and from advertising, but also to advertisers permanently taking their publicity elsewhere. Murdoch asked for union guarantees of continuous production, with penalty clauses that unofficial strikes would lose their pay immediately and that from the second day other members of the same union would have their pay reduced to basic pay, as also would all printing workers from the third day.

The unions eventually agreed to give guarantees, but without the penalty clauses, and to some redundancies. They are carrying on parallel negotiations with the other national newspapers.

It is not only The Times group that is in difficulties financially. Most sections of the British printing and publicity industry have their problems, partly due to the depression, but also to competition from cheaper production abroad and a feared permanent decline in book sales. Many British companies now get their printing done outside this country. Cassels have given up their general list and the British Printing Corporation, faced with heavy losses and indebtedness to the banks, has come under the control of Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press. In the printing machine industry American and European markets are being invaded by the more modern and efficient products of a Japanese company.

So far the unions have been fairly successful in resisting new processes which mean loss of jobs, but in the long run they cannot escape capitalism’s inexorable law that companies which continue to make losses go out of business.

Edgar Hardcastle