Pomp, Pageantry and Privilege (1953)

From the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The coronation on June 2nd of a young woman by the name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of Windsor, as Queen of Great Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations, is an event which, it is safe to say, has received more publicity and been the subject of more propaganda than any other peace-time occurrence of the last fifty years. Since the death of her father, the Queen has been publicised to such an extent that there can hardly be a literate person in the whole world who is not aware of the forthcoming event.

For the first time millions of people will, as it were, be inside the Abbey witnessing the ceremonial, the religious service, and the rest of the mumbo jumbo with which a Monarch is crowned. They will be there by virtue of Television, and wireless which will relate every detail of the ritual. Every organ of propaganda has been geared to the event; schools, Churches, newspapers have given it every attention all with the design to make us feel that we are part of the coronation and that we shall all be the better for it.

There can be no doubt that the organisation will prove itself efficient. The collection of notabilities from every corner of the world; the display of heraldic symbols; the presence of dignitaries with such titles as Gold Stick, Bluemantle, and Rouge Dragon will provide a magnificent spectacle beside which the productions of Hollywood will pale into insignificance. We may be sure that the belted Earls, the Dukes and Marquesses, the Society ladies, the Dowagers, the Duchesses and so forth will appear dressed in their full regalia, their diamonds sparkling, and their coronets adding lustre to the occasion.

But when the cheering has died away; when the inevitable dustcarts which follow coronations as well as Lord Mayor’s Shows appear to clear the debris; when the “captains and the kings” have departed, what will remain? When the sightseers stands have been demolished; when the red carpets have been taken up; when the diadems and the crowns and the rest of the regalia have been returned for safe keeping to the Tower of London, what then?

If the historians and the publicists, the journalists and broadcasters are to be believed, Coronation day is to usher in a new period of glory and prosperity for this country. They assure us that whenever a Queen had ruled this land it has flowed with milk and honey, and its influence spread all over the earth. They cite the days of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria as evidence for their claims, yet even the most superficial examination of those two periods will show that they are either ignorant fools or deliberate liars who by promising us the fictional glories of the past, hope to blind us to the grim, sordid realities of the present.

The Elizabethan Era

What are these glories of the first Elizabethan age? It is true that then was laid the foundations of the British Empire and British mastery of the seas. It is true that British merchantmen sailed all over the world trading goods and bringing back to these shores unimaginable wealth. Colonies were established in America; pirates, cut-throats and swashbucklers flourished, prospered and were honoured by the Virgin Queen. Those not brave enough to fight the Spaniards indulged in trading in the human flesh of the African coast. Many fortunes were made in those days and it is interesting to note that some of the congregation at Westminster Abbey are there because their ancestors in the days of Queen Elizabeth were successful freebooters. But while all these things are true and while the rich and ruthless became ever more wealthy, the majority of the people of England had no share in that prosperity. For them there was work and poverty and starvation. For them the privilege of fighting to preserve the wealth of their Feudal Lords. (Strange how history repeats itself!) All the viciousness of the Elizabethan era is now glossed over with a tawdry coating of journalistic paint. But a writer of the period shows in a few words the hollowness of the claim that England as a whole was prosperous in the days of Queen Elizabeth:-

“The poor lie in the street upon pallets of straw, and well if they have that too, or else in the mire and dirt as commonly it is seen, having neither house to put in their heads, covering to keep them from cold, nor yet to hide their shame withal, penny to buy them sustenance, nor anything else, but are suffered to die in the streets like dogs or beasts, without mercy or shame showed to them at all.

“Truly, brother, if I had not seen it, I would scarcely credit that like the Turkish cruelty had been used in all the world.” (Philip Stubbs; The Anatomie of Abuses).

The truth is that in all ages and at all times in written history, prosperity has always been for the rich, never for the labourers, the “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

The Victorian Era

If we have demolished, as is the case, the claims made about the days of Good Queen Bess, what of the age of Victoria? The Industrial Revolution had already taken place. Railways had been introduced and England had become the workshop of the world. No other country could compete in the manufacture of goods, and the world’s markets were the preserve of British industrialists. Huge fortunes were built up and their possessors bought themselves titles forming a new aristocracy to replace the fast-dying old. At such a time then, surely the poor and oppressed were better off? Work there was in plenty for they were forced to toil sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Surely, therefore, the workers were amply rewarded for their toil? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Men, women and children slaved in the factories, their pay a miserable pittance, their homes hovels, their food cheap and adulterated. Epidemics, when they came, killed them off like flies. The child labourers became stunted and old before their time. There was no lack of priest or Bishop to condone this cruelty in the name of God. They praised the manufacturers for keeping children at work so that evil thoughts would not invade their otherwise idle hours.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, India became the “most precious jewel in the Imperial crown”; the Suez Canal came under British control, and yet a poet of that time could still write of Child Labour:-

“‘How long’, they say, ‘how long, O cruel nation

Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart–

Stiffle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?”

(“The Cry of the Children”, E. B. Browning)

And if a poet’s word is not considered evidence we can refer to many factual reports given by Government Inspectors, reformers and others. In a book published just before Queen Victoria came to the throne, and dealing with conditions which prevailed well into the Victorian era, the author, J. Fielden (“The Curse of the Factory System”) wrote:–

“Cruelties of the most heart rending were practised upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who were thus consigned to the charge of master manufacturers; they . . . were harassed to the brink of death by excess labour . . . they were in many cases starved to the bone while flogged to their work . . .

“The beautiful and romantic valleys of Derbyshire . . . secluded from the public eye, became the dismal solitudes of torture and of many a murder. The profits of manufacturers were enormous; but this only whetted the appetite it should have satisfied.” (Fielden did not know his capitalists!)

So much for the “prosperity” of the Victorian era, that age of ruthless exploitation when the wealth and power of the ruling class was literally built on the blood and life of the workers.

The Coronation and its Meaning

Not content with telling us that the Coronation will usher in this new period of glory and prosperity, we are told that it will be a dedication and a consecration. Bishops have prated on the holiness of the occasion, politicians, with their ability to seize every opportunity, have tried to fill us with patriotism, and the whole collection of lick-spittles, ink-slingers and columnists of Fleet Street have combined to convince us of the promising life which lies ahead.

What is this dedication and to whom in this day consecrated? Prayers for the safe keeping of her Majesty will be offered up to God; and all over the country, if the Archbishop’s suggestion is followed, people will join the choir at Westminster in singing “All people that on earth do dwell”. And in that sense perhaps it will be a day of dedication. But behind the facade of prayer and patriotism there are other interests involved which makes the Coronation a day of dedication to Mammon.

The late King’s body was scarcely cold in its grave, when every junk manufacturer in the Kingdom rushed to produce enormous quantities of shoddy souvenirs. Not one avenue for making money has been neglected. Even the “Gentry” tumbled over themselves to cash in on this “day of consecration”. They have advertised their homes to let at fabulous rentals, from which even American millionaires have recoiled. Hotels and boarding houses, restaurants and nightclubs have put up their charges, and anybody with window-space to let on the route of the procession has been courted, bribed and enriched.

Nothing has been overlooked in this money-making jamboree called the coronation. The Star fashion expert tells us:–

“If you’re fired with a desire to be patriotic through and through, so you can be . . . right down to your corsets. Berlei are showing—as the star item of their new summer collection—a strapless one-piece controlette in elastic net and nylon voile in a choice of red, white or royal blue”.

This then is the “holy” character of Coronation day, a day on which the money-makers will give their workers a day off on full pay. While they count their money they will join in the singing of the incantations at Westminster Abbey. And indeed they will have something to sing about for it is estimated that over twenty million pounds will accrue as a result of this “day of consecration”. Is it not strange how holiness is so often linked with the “things of this world”?

A People’s Coronation

Efforts have been made by means of propaganda to imbue this Coronation with a democratic flavour. For the first time, at least that is what we have been told, the people are to take part in this event. But again this claim is hollow. The only part that the “people” will have is to stand in the streets and at their windows, or crouch before their TV sets cheering the procession of as great a collection of parasites as have ever been seen together before.

Not a dignitary involved but is a wealthy banker, landowner, Field Marshal or Major-General. There will be Black rods, and Gold sticks, and Knights Pursuivants in profusion. Most of them directors of large Banking or Insurance Companies. Many of them huge land-owners who are no more representative of the people than is the Queen herself, a by no means poverty-stricken personage. Surrounded as she is by these wealthy courtiers and nurtured in Palaces with a background of wealth and splendour she is cushioned off from the ordinary cares that beset the people who will stand and cheer her as she passes through the streets.

We have no personal quarrel with the Queen. As occupant of the Throne of Great Britain she has no power. The monarchy has become a mere facade of authority, a rubber stamp signature at the bottom of State documents. The Queen’s whole life is regulated by strictly-defined rules and a standard of behaviour is expected which would make even the humblest of us protest.

Surrounded at the Abbey by Bankers, landowners, Labour leaders and a “few representatives” of the Trade Unions her Majesty will perform her part, we have no doubt, with grace, charm and dexterity, and the Archbishop will intone at the right time and in the right places. The choirboys will contribute their “Vivats”, and the people whose coronation we are told this is, will stand outside and cheer. Thus it has always been; the people on the outside looking in, wearing clothes which cost less than one button of the gorgeous raiment that they have made and which they are allowed to see only at a distance. This is all the people will receive or can expect from this “People’s” coronation.

The ceremony to be performed on June 2nd has no meaning for us. It is of no consequence who sits on the throne, which flag or Royal Standard flies over Buckingham Palace; or whether her titles are Elizabeth II or I. We are not concerned with all the flummery and mediaeval mumbo-jumbo with which the event is to be celebrated. Nothing will have changed. The private ownership of the means of life will continue with all its consequences. The threat of war, the general insecurity will not be abated one jot or tittle by this glorified circus. Not one of the claims made for this event will be fulfilled as far as the workers are concerned. The promises and allurements of a brilliant future will be forgotten almost as soon as the procession has disappeared from sight.

In the Psalms, some of which will be read during the service there is a phrase which we commend:–

“Oh, put not your trust in Princes, nor in any child of man . . .”

adding only the counsel to trust to yourselves, to your experience, to your knowledge to build a better Society in which all mankind will live in freedom, peace and security.

“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

A. S.

Greasy Pole: It’s Nice to Have Friends (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Saudi, helping the police with their enquiries can mean systematic torture in a room described by a British man roped in in 2001 as having “…years’ worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean”.

As a TV spectacle it was some way behind Coronation Street’s Sarah Platt and Jason Grimshaw navigating their way through a chaotic, unpromising wedding. The other soap opera, at Buckingham Palace, had a cast of hundreds, rather more expensively dressed than our Sarah and Jason and making their way to the banquet through a corridor of bowing flunkeys. At their head the Queen strode as grimly as if she was flouncing out of (or should that be into?) a session with a top society photographer. Prince Philip’s face hinted that he might have been reviewing his stock of undiplomatic racist quips. And there was the king of Saudi Arabia otherwise known as The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah Bin Abdul Azaz Al Saud, whose very presence reveals a lot about that country – for example the fact that he is one of his father’s 37 sons.

About Saudi Arabia more later. Of more pressing interest about the guests at that banquet to welcome the 82 year old dictator of that brutal, oil rich country was Gordon Brown parading rigidly encased in white tie and tails, perhaps trying to hide his embarrassment in submerged conversation with a wide-eyed, scuttling Lord Chancellor Jack Straw, similarly garbed. What did they find to talk about, so intently? Was it the fact that Brown always made a point of refusing to get himself up in the manner demanded by the etiquette of such occasions – like the London Lord Mayor’s Mansion House banquet? Brown’s stand on this matter – he once let it be known it was all to do with principle – would cause not a few crimson robes to rustle and not a few chains of office to jangle, in disapproval. His going back on what he called principle was an indication that this was an event far more important than any gathering of over-fed, over-rich City grandees slapping each others’ backs and their own comfortable stomachs.

Oil

Saudi Arabia means oil, which also means the attention, and wherever possible the intrusion, of capitalism’s great economic and military powers. Crucially, Saudi oil lies close to the surface, which enables it to be extracted faster and cheaper. The first concession to get at the black, vital stuff was granted to a British company in 1933; another, to the American firm Standard Oil Company, in 1934. Symbolically, the company’s name was changed in 1944 to ARAMCO – Arabian American Oil Company – and as larger reserves were found other companies came in with capital investment, effectively exerting a stranglehold on the country. Predictably, other American companies were commissioned by ARAMCO to develop the country’s infrastructure – the giant Bechtel imported their mammoth plant to lay down roads, ports, power plants and the schools and hospitals to support them. TWA provided a passenger air service, the Ford Foundation advised (which may not be exactly the correct word for what they provided) on administration; and the US Army Engineers set up a TV and broadcasting service and helped develop Saudi Arabia’s “defence” industry. The first great oil boom in the early 1950s dramatically altered the country from a bleak, infertile slab of the Middle East, enabling royals who, for all their exalted status, had been able to do little better than live on local dates and milk from camels, to swan around the flesh pots of the Mediterranean in their gleaming yachts and to practically take root in the casinos. This was a startlingly abrupt change, overwhelmingly to the benefit of the ruling families; at a recent air show in Dubai a billionaire Saudi prince ordered a personal luxury version of the Airbus 380 which, with a few essential extras, will set him back somewhere in the region of two hundred and thirty million pounds.

Common Values

At the banquet in Buckingham Palace the Queen took the opportunity to inform the Saudi royal about her esteem for his country and the comfort she takes from the close ties between Saudi and Britain: “It is a great pleasure to welcome King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to London once more….We have shared values that stem from two great religious traditions…we must continue to work together to promote common values…” Harping on the same happy theme was Kim Howells, who during the 1960s was a left wing student firebrand, then official in the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984 strike and is now Labour MP for Pontypridd and Foreign Office Minister. Howells is famous for speaking his mind no matter what the consequences; for example as Minister of Culture he felt free to lash out at the Turner Prize candidates as “cold, mechanical, conceptual bull”. He is also on record as describing the royal family as “all a bit bonkers” but this did not prevent him agreeing with the Queen about Saudi Arabia as he rhapsodised about those same “shared values” .

We have not yet been told by either the Queen or Howells what they meant by the phrase .Was it the fact that Saudi Arabian women are treated as rather lower than second class, forbidden to go out unless with a male under pain of being beaten up by the uniformed thugs of the chillingly titled Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice? Perhaps they hope that Britain copies the penal system in Saudi, where helping the police with their enquiries can mean systematic torture in a room described by a British man roped in in 2001 as having “…years’ worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean”. Or the extravagant use of the death penalty for, among other offenders, actively gay people or anyone having extra-marital sex. According to Amnesty International there have been 124 executions so far this year. These have been mostly by beheading and sometimes in public; an official executioner has set the grisly scene by assuring everyone that he keeps his sword razor sharp and that his children learn to grow up into good Saudis by helping him clean it. “People” he tells us proudly “are amazed at how fast it can separate the head from the body”.

In fact it would probably be difficult to find anyone to take seriously that nonsense about “shared values”. What connects the ruling elites of Britain and Saudi Arabia is much harsher – the fact that so much of the world’s oil is under Saudi control (one estimate puts it as high as 25 percent] and the existence of a mouthwateringly massive export market, including one for billions of pounds worth of armaments, all nourished through an artery of bribery. This is yet another example of human debasement driven by capitalism’s profit motive justifying untold lies, cruelty, corruption, murder. It can also persuade Gordon Brown to dress up for an evening out with a pitiless international gangster.

Ivan

Letter: Riches and poverty (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riches and poverty

One wonders what the inmates of London’s poorest streets find in common with the occupants of power in Buckingham Palace, for it was the humblest of homes that had the largest flags. Bunting hung from the houses that have been witness to cries of hungry families or the young and old in need of warmth. The monarchy never saw fit to look after the simplest needs of the working class outside its everyday use on the labour-profit market, or in war to fight under its flag for so-called freedom. The only freedom they (the state) cares about is its own safeguards—big business under the puppet system plus the old three party political collaborators. At the Guildhall we saw them feast luxuriously side by side with murderers from the Commonwealth, yet the very same wanted |to keep Amin out.

The Church of England are all part and parcel of this pomp for the Queen is its head. It has much in common with its stable-companion the Catholic dictatorship. The great wealth of the rich has only been built on deeds of plunder, piracy and wholesale murder and the wage-slave-profit market.

Until the real people cast their eyes and minds on the true and rightful road of Socialism, where all the everyday needs of life—food, light and heat, and a decent home free from the price and rent label for ever in a classless society dedicated to the welfare and health of all the people: this will be the highest law in the land. No longer will the evils of the money market be with us. That’s right, no banks, no profit-mongers, the end of the big business supermarkets. The network of landlords (private and state) will be an evil of the past—homes, like all building, will be for the use of the people not profit.

Once the abolition of money comes about, only then can you plan a rich and carefree future.

R. Bloomfield,

London SW8.

Between the Lines: Queen of the Scroungers (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Queen of the Scroungers

The BBC's shock revelation that the Queen is a human being with an almost real voice, after decades of giving the appearance of a mindless stuffed dummy impersonating a parasitical insect, was compulsive viewing. Elizabeth R (BBC1, 6 February, 8pm) followed this unelected Head of State for a year in her useless life. It was quite evident that forty years in the job had turned the woman quite barmy, unable to perceive social reality except as a prepared theatrical performance. Her idiotic advisers, recruited from the dregs of aristocratic idleness, always stand up in her presence and call her mam. She is never criticised and is consciously treated with sycophantic worship by her oafish followers.

In one scene she was shown with Kenneth Baker and Neil Kinnock who competed to each give the greater impression that they were indistinguishable from her corgis. The only passion shown by this pointless being in the whole recorded year was once when she was watching her horse come fourth in a race and once when she was entertaining the Reagans on her Royal yacht in Florida. The horse was not interviewed and had no chance to explain why it came fourth, but Reagan was given every opportunity to show that he had a lower IQ than the horse and a remarkably similar enjoyment of luxurious living to any Royal low-life.

In the exchange between Liz and Ron (in which we assume that she thought that he was Margaret Thatcher and he thought she was Oliver North) the Queen declared that, in her opinion, all of the "democracies" (i.e. nations like Britain where governments are elected but Heads of State aren't) are going broke. This was a perceptive remark. We assume that R Liz has been quietly studying Marxian crisis-theory between periods of scholarly examination of The Sporting Life. She then went on to say that countries are going broke because they spend too much on welfare and there are too many people who have grown used to grabbing all they can get. This from the biggest state scrounger in Britain!

So, do socialists plan to abolish the Queen? Why bother when we have a much more ambitious abolition in mind: the removal of the entire capitalist class as a group of legalised scroungers who live off the backs of the wealth-producing majority.

Powerful Sisters

If parasites like the Queen give women a bad name, the superb Channel Four documentary about the Amazon Sisters (3 February, 11 pm) showed the strength of those Brazilian women whose lives are being ruined by the coming of industrial capitalism to the rainforests where they have lived for generations.

These women were not out to ask humbly for this or that reform. They would demean themselves before no monarchical goddess who must be called mam. They were opposed to the coming of wage slavery. They spoke and sang with refreshing directness and passion about their hatred of what the profit system is doing to ruin their lives and the ecology of the area they inhabit — an area which is larger in size than Europe. These women, without formal education or political theories, were able to articulate the antagonism between the power of property and profit and the strength which comes from seeking to retain your humanity without having to sell it on the market.

The Amazonian women will lose their struggle against forces backed by billions of dollars. But their struggle will be won as soon as their fellow workers, in other lands and situations, all realise that it is as wage slaves that we are denied the freedom to control our lives and have access to the goods of the Earth. Watching these women was as refreshingly vital as watching the Queen was tediously depressing.

A Führer for France?

BBC's Assignment (4 February, 7.45pm) was a profile of the French racist leader of the fast-growing Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The man himself is a wild personality, not unlike a Breton Ian Paisley. He is playing on the fears within France that the recession is getting worse (unemployment is at 10 percent) and Arab immigrants are to be blamed for taking away French jobs.

Le Pen is undoubtedly on the rise, as are racist parties in Germany and Eastern Europe. Indeed, it is quite possible that Le Pen could become the next French President; the Front's results in this month's provincial elections will indicate how likely that is. In response to Le Pen the other leading politicians, eager for state power, are trying to outdo him in racist rhetoric. Chirac and Giscard are making speeches which could quite well have been spewed out by Enoch Powell in Britain in the 1960s, and Mitterand's bogus Socialist Party is passing laws to prevent immigrants from having rights in France.

Fifty years ago France was occupied by the Nazis. The first time it was tragedy and Le Pen is rehearsing the farce. Meanwhile, we are quite sure that, if elected, a state banquet for Führer Le Pen will be hosted by Elizabeth R. After all, the first thing that her uncle, Edward VIII, did when he abdicated was to fly to Berlin and pay his respects to his political mentor, Adolf Hitler.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Capital’s Coronation (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since we may not, without dire consequences to the life of the Socialist Standard, record our view on what has been called “the greatest show ever,” we may at least refer readers to what our late and lamented comrade Jacomb wrote on the occasion of the crowning of George Wettin as King George V. (See Socialist Standard for June 1911.)

Those to whom it may seem remarkable that in spite of 10 years of devastating war there should be such a tremendous increase of wealth as illustrated by the present show, should bear in mind that with production and consumption of war material at top scale and speed profits and fortunes for factory owners and shareholders who formed this vast congregation of titled gentlemen and bejewelled ladies, were correspondingly big and easily capable of defraying whatever cost participation in the show involved.

And what have those who produced this vast wealth and fought for king and country in the past great and glorious wars to end war, what improvement in their material position have they to show in these 30 years of peace and 10 years of war?

If in writing on the show in June, 1911, our late comrade Jacomb referred among other thing to

“. . . the bestowing of a meal upon thousands of little children whom hunger makes glad to accept even such a trifle from hands so heavy-laden with wealth that they cannot feel the weight of the charitable grains they scatter, . . .”

here is what a London daily paper reported in connection with the 1953 show:-

“At East Grinstead the children who go to the Coronation party will, after they have had their tea, be stamped on the wrist with indelible ink. This will prevent them from getting more than their share of the refreshments.”

(Article by “R”, Socialist Standard, August 1953)

Editorial: Neither monarchy nor republic but socialism (2022)

Editorial from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many UK people will have struggled last month to escape the stadium-volume hullabaloo as the superannuated CEO of The Firm finally hung up her tiara and departed from her pampered life of ‘devoted service’, triggering a long-prepared barrage of nauseating hagiographies, crocodile tears and posturing TV gravitas. At least workers got an extra bank holiday out of it, which helped put the fun back into ‘state funeral’. Meanwhile certain activists, as reported in the Guardian, were keeping a very low profile, for fear of being trolled, cancelled or petrol bombed for the political viewpoint that, for the time being anyway, dared not speak its name: republicanism, the quest for the abolition of the monarchy. And this despite membership applications for Republic getting a sudden big boost, amid breathless speculation that, while Madge’s invincible popularity had stomped good and hard on those pesky anti-royalist weeds, the ascension of the royal Plant Whisperer might have the opposite effect on grass-roots republicanism, and see it shoot up to new and historic Beanstalk heights.

Socialists have a strong aversion to doffing their caps to anyone, especially to someone who thinks they’re superior because their ancestors wore beads in their hair and stole all the common land. We have every sympathy for people who see the monarchy as an absurd and anachronistic feudal cult which fetishises the class system and should have stayed lopped off at the time of the first King Charles. Historians will scratch their heads and wonder how supposedly rational people thought a bejewelled dynastic blow-up doll had any place in an advanced and civilised society. The only problem is, this isn’t an advanced and civilised society, and abolishing the monarchy wouldn’t make it one either. It would merely result in the same capitalist system of brutal class exploitation with some other figurehead at the top, leaving the super-rich class of narcissistic yacht-fanciers entirely free to go about their business of laying waste to the planet.

The monarchy is about as relevant to the lives of working people as Cowes Week or the final rubbish season of Game of Thrones. It may be a relic from the feudal period, but so are umbrellas and Morris Dancing. We say, instead of spending your waking hours trying to get to where you already are, minus a bit of silly made-up ritual, better to devote time to the vastly more important task of promoting the idea that graces the cover and forms the theme of this special issue: what we mean by socialism. Because socialism is all about where humans can go in the future, once we’ve broken the armlock that the money and market system puts us all in. Would there be kings and queens in this socialist future? Absolutely, in historical re-enactments or period film sets, at fancy dress parties, in chess and on the decks of playing cards, and in fairy stories of long ago and far away.

The super-rich . . . (1993)

From the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In April the Sunday Times published its guide to Britain’s super-rich persons. The list comprised the top 400 wealth-owners with assets between them of some £55 billion, roughly equivalent to the amount of revenue that the government will receive from income tax this financial year. It was stressed that the list was based on estimates of minimum wealth and the actual assets of the flush four hundred are probably worth much more.

At the top of the list, not surprisingly, is the Queen, who as head of state is said to be worth some £5 billion, of which at least £450 million is her own personal wealth (this makes a mockery of the paltry sums raised for charity by her and her family in an attempt to justify their parasitic-status).

The survey then goes on to rattle off a roll-call of revenue-reapers (of whom 25 percent possess an aristocratic title), along with the business or industry with which they are mainly associated, until we arrive at the relative paupers at the bottom who have only managed to amass a trifling £20 million each.

The list includes not only the famous and infamous; far from it. As you might expect there are the Richard Bransons, the Dukes, the smattering of pop stars; but the majority of names would be completely unknown to those of us who don't regularly make killings on the stock market or mount the occasional take-over bid for a multi-national corporation. No, most of these super rich supremos wouldn’t even stand out in a crowd, and yet they control huge businesses and properties and yield influence over millions of lives.

Significantly, the top three wealth-owners after the Queen have amassed their fortunes through food production and distribution, proving that selling people something they must have in order to survive is highly lucrative and certainly not sacrosanct in capitalism’s thirst for the divine dollar. Of course, not all fortunes are made through business. Many are acquired through inheritance, kept in the family so to speak, much as workers inherit a life of exploitation and drudgery from their parents. Some 45 percent of those surveyed were born to their riches, and can look forward to obtaining further revenue via rent, interest and profits.

Assets race

In case you've been moved to rush to the sideboard to retrieve your investment portfolio in order to discover just how far you’re lagging behind in the assets race, it should be mentioned that some of our affluent tycoons have fallen on hard times and find themselves not quite so flush of late. For instance, spare a though for the embattled Duke of Westminster, who has seen the value of his assets fall from £3.5 billion to £1.5 billion since the bottom fell out of the property market. The Duke, who owns budget deficit-sized chunks of ultra-cache Mayfair in the heart of London, has also been clobbered by a recently introduced amendment to the leasehold law which means that tenants have the right to buy their freehold after 21 years. Despite this unforeseen "hardship”, the Duke hasn’t been dissuaded from splashing out on a £650,000 executive jet for commuting to London, but one does after all have to keep up appearances. Likewise, further down the table, poor old Cameron Mackintosh, a 46-year impressario, has seen the value of his theatre production company fall from £200 million to £60 million. Mackintosh has apparently not been prone to self-pity however, having paid himself a salary of £8.3 million in 1991.

However, the tale is not all of doom and gloom and some of our entrepreneurs have experienced substantial windfalls during the past year. Take the Sainsbury family (they of local supermarket fame); its members have seen the value of their empire increased by some £1 billion, without them having to lift a finger. Last November, half-year profits were up 19.4 percent to a staggering £391 million. So next

time you pop out to Sainsbury s to pick up a few essentials and find yourself dismayed by the size of the deficit in your pocket afterwards, take comfort in the knowledge that a good deal of the hard-earned cash you have to hand over every week just to cat is further enriching, amongst others, the Sainsbury folk.

Plutocracy

If you think that Britain's richest have rather more than their fair share of a very sumptuous cake, consider the fact that even the Queen ranks only fifth in the worldwide league table. In fact her fortune is dwarfed by that of the world’s wealthiest man. the Sultan of Brunei, whose oil-rich state has provided him with a tidy nest egg of $37 billion (£19 billion).

This tribute to Britain's under-worked and overprivileged plutocracy did not of course lake the form of a denouncement but was more of a celebration of the vast inequalities created by a property society. Despite several pages being devoted to honouring a mere 400 capitalists, who take no direct part in producing goods or services, not a single column inch was given over to the plight of the millions of workers (who actually produce everything) and their struggle to make ends meet week after week. But then producing an article listing the poorest members of society with total assets up to £55 billion would require several volumes and an inordinate degree of monetary exaggeration.

You’d think that by actually publishing this information the Sunday Times would be guilty of incitement to riot, or at least precipitating several angry letters to the editor. Not a bit of it; it’s a remarkable testament to capitalism's power to persuade and influence the majority of the working class that one of the mouth-pieces of the ruling class can openly boast about the inflated fortunes of its leading members without provoking mass outrage and calls for a fairer system of wealth distribution.The fact is of course that most workers actually believe that the current system, while perhaps, not entirely fair, is nevertheless immutable and that there is no viable alternative.

Socialists have no personal grudge against the people described above; when all the affectations and the airs and graces are stripped away they are just ordinary people like everyone else. It is however very important to recognise that it is the economic system known as capitalism which causes such disparity between the haves and the have-nots. It is the job of socialists to campaign for an alternative economic system under which each and everyone can partake of the wealth that this planet can yield and to persuade workers that things can be run differently, that is, not only in the interests of the few. Dare we even imagine a day when a future socialist equivalent of the Sunday Times may produce a special supplement entitled "Revealed: The World’s Wealthy”. More difficult to imagine is how you could fit into such a supplement the name of every person in the world . 

Nick Brunskill

Jubilee Junket (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

To paraphrase a recent radio comedic comment, had Napoleon really wanted to take over Britain, rather than an army all he needed was to offer an extra two days’ bank holiday. Then he would have been welcomed with cheers and bunting.

This satirical response was a none-to-serious explanation for the popular enthusiasm for the present monarch’s platinum jubilee. Indeed, it can be difficult to understand why people who are increasingly struggling against economic challenges should wish to celebrate the present wealthy incumbent of a feudal institution adapted to the political needs of capitalism.

At the recent state opening of Parliament, due to the absence of the queen, the throne was occupied by her crown, an object of monetary value enough to ease the fuel poverty of a huge number of her impoverished subjects. Yet many will have spent some of their sparse and dwindling financial resources on plastic bunting made in China.

As Brexit and the 2019 general election demonstrated, there remains a strong nationalist resonance, a significant bulwark protecting the status quo. There will have been very many who did not deck their homes in red, white and blue, or watch the seemingly endless sycophantic ‘news’ items and kitsch TV programmes, yet still were broadly sympathetic to the event.

The jubilee is an indication of the seemingly Sisyphean task facing socialists arguing that the working class needs to take responsibility for, and actively pursue, abolishing capitalism in favour of a new, true commonwealth. This will be a worldwide society of democratically achieved common ownership of production for need not profit.

It will certainly be a world without leaders, monarchs or otherwise. Those who count themselves republicans will have taken exception to the jubilation, demanding the hereditary monarchy be replaced by an elected president. While superficially this appears more democratic, effectively it changes little.

A cursory glance at countries with presidents is not encouraging. The USA is the self-proclaimed land of the free, but it’s a freedom to live in dire poverty for all too many, with racial divisions and a small financial elite hell bent on preserving their freedom to remain obscenely wealthy.

The ineffective nature of the US presidency when it comes to helping resolve social issues is shown by the continuing slaughter of school children to preserve the free market in assault rifles. The president may weep, but it’s nowhere near the flood of tears shed by grieving parents.

President Putin is as readily seduced by martial ambitions as ever the Tsars were and presides over a country afflicted by poverty, be it of workers not peasants. In France nationalism remains a curse and is no more economically progressive, whatever that might mean, than Britain. The challenge to republicans is to identify one republic that is a significant improvement on British monarchy.

The problem is that a huge effort would be required throughout the UK to convince enough of the electorate to trigger a referendum and then vote for the abolition of the monarchy in favour of a republic. Having achieved that, then nothing would have significantly changed. Capitalism can comfortably continue with a presidential head of state as it does in most of the world. As Belloc suggested, most people will ‘always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse’.

Here lies the nub of the issue. It is not that monarchists are more deluded than republicans, rather it’s the fact the working class has not yet grasped its potential to look or move beyond capitalism. To do so there needs to be an ideological shift to an understanding that leaders, actual or symbolic or both, cannot deliver such a transformation on behalf of the working class. New political forms will have to be developed, transcending present institutions.

This is what is meant by revolution, not barricades and street fighting, the storming of Winter, or any other, palaces. The revolution comes about by men and women democratically making their own future through a radical change in thinking that emerges from an understanding of the material reality of the present. Monarchs and presidents are both barriers that will have to be overcome through a popular understanding of their role in preserving present social, economic and political arrangements.

In any society, the seeds of the future are sown even if the social soil is not so fertile as yet. Many of the jubilee events, street parties, community picnics and the like, were people freely working together cooperatively without any incentive of financial reward, often the opposite, for a common goal. Such examples show that people can and will work without being wage slaves requiring the threat of the lash of poverty.

A street party works because people contribute what they can – sweet, savoury, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, bunting, music and so on. Then people take what they need, even those who didn’t contribute due to their particular circumstances, too elderly for example.

While there are no moments of socialism while capitalism exists – all those elements for the street party will have been commodities produced for the realisation of profit – there is social motivation that gives a glimpse of what is possible.

This is not to suggest in any way that the motivation behind jubilee events was socialist-inspired. However, socialists must be aware that no matter how much they might deplore the overt motivation behind the events, the capitalist state’s ideological reinforcement of its legitimacy, there is nonetheless an underlying if presently unconscious potential.

The jubilee weekend came and went. By Monday the bunting was already starting to look incongruous and, like street party memories, beginning to fade. Capitalism is already reckoning the balance sheet, lost production due to time off set against increased retail sales.

As the present monarch becomes increasingly frail the state will have plans in place for the succession. Should the royal family then prove to be as dysfunctional as its recent history suggests it might be, republicans may get their moment. Then, no doubt, there’ll be an extra bank holiday to mark the inauguration of the new president. More plastic bunting from wherever capitalism has shifted production to by then.

Or, maybe, a different way of doing things altogether…

Dave Alton

Sting in the Tail: An Unmarried Father (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Unmarried Father

The Bishop of Galway once attacked clergymen who had four figure bank accounts as Immoral. And unlike some hypocrites in the Church it seems that the reverend gentleman practised what he preached.

According to press reports this godly man sent £65,340 from his bank account to a Ms Murphy in the USA to assist in the rearing of her son. This was in addition to regular monthly payments he had been making for 15 years. It would seem that when this American kid addressed him as "father” he was doing so in both senses.

Here at least is one catholic that does not use contraception. A man of principle and a glowing example to all his flock.

Unfortunately his Irish parishioners have lost this paragon of virtue. He has moved to South America where with less than a four figure bank account he will minister unto the poor!

Untutored Fathead

Another man of principle the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey has attacked greed and short sightedness among industrialists.

The saintly Archbishop is certainly not of this world when he is reported in The Independent (11 May) as follows:

Dr Carey said the purpose of trade and industry was to benefit humanity, "not to make profits for shareholders . . ."

”Within our own society, our collective commitment to industrial enterprise will remain underpowered if the fruits of success appear to be concentrated too heavily in the pockets of shareholders and senior executives. For example, massive individual pay rises during a recession do not encourage public support for wealth creation."

With falling church attendances the miracle business could be said to be in recession, but this does not deter Carey living in a palace and riding around in a chaffeur driven Roller!

We Are Not Amused

As head of the Church of England, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth must get a little annoyed from time to time by such upstarts as the Archbishop going on about greed.

In the good old days of course, It would have been off to the Tower with him and good riddance. But in these democratic days one has got to keep up the pretence that one actually gives a shit about what these loyal objects say.

The Archbishop was very careful to attack only shareholders, industrialists and senior executives in his sermon. No mention of such obscenities as the Queen reputably the richest person In Britain with an estate of £6,500M or the noble Duke of Westminster with a mere £3,500M.

More Classy Antics

It needs little comment from Scorpion. It should be required reading for any dupe of Major's classless society. We refer to Andrew Rawnsley's account of the State Opening of Parliament in The Guardian of 7 May.

The Lord Chancellor was trying to walk backwards without tripping over the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, animated playing cards were blowing trumpets, Black Rod was getting the door slammed In his face like a Jehovah's Witness . . . the new leader of the House of Lords had landed the trickiest role in the whole ceremonial, that of bearing the Cap of Maintenance. This involves half an hour holding up a pole bearing a purple velvet cap which looks most like a medieval condom...

As Beaumont Herald Extraordinary, Gold Stick In Waiting, The Keeper Of The Gilded Bidet and the rest of the cast of lolanthe did their stuff before an audience of dukes, earls, marquesses and viscounts, Her Majesty outlined her government's plans to create a modern, open and classless society.

Workers Can Fight

For decades West Germany's trade unions have been held up as a shining example to British workers. Instead of going on strike West German unions would simply sit down with the employers and settle matters in a civilised way.

Now that cosy scene is shattered as those same unions are having a show-down with government and business over pay. Postal workers, public sector workers and even the police have struck, with rail and construction workers likely to follow.

The unions complain that their members are being made to pay the cost of German unification.

The liberal weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, concerned that Germany's famed consensus between labour and capital was cracking, accused Kohl of trying to wring money out of the weakest group — workers —rather than fighting rich and powerful lobbies.

The Guardian 25 April

So the "consensus" between workers and employers is over and that nasty old class-struggle, which we were assured was dead and buried in West Germany, has risen from the grave once again.

So Can Bosses

Meanwhile in France the limitation of successful industrial action by workers is being shown once more.

The wages and conditions won by French dockers over the years are under attack and the dockers have come out on strike against a reform proposed by the "socialist” government which would reduce wages and increase hours.

The employers claim that those wages and conditions drive away shipping to cheaper facilities at Antwerp and Rotterdam and have cost 6,000 dockers jobs in the last 10 years.

This is the situation which arises from gains made by workers anywhere. Their success prods capital into finding ways of regaining what it has lost, usually by cutting jobs and introducing new work practices. The workers will, of course, try to improve their lot when circumstances permit.

And so it goes on, this constant struggle in which workers must run fast just to stand still. Political action to replace capitalism by socialism is the way to get off this treadmill.

Editorial: Queen Capital’s jubilee (2022)

Editorial from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism, as we have pointed out many times, is a class-divided society, where there is a capitalist class who own the means of production and derive their wealth from the working class, who own no or little property and are forced to work for a wage or salary. Huge disparities in wealth and income between the two classes are the inevitable outcome. In the UK, the most visible manifestation of this class divide is the royal family, who sit at the apex of the class system. They own large palaces and tracts of land around the country and enjoy luxurious lifestyles, whereas workers live a more frugal existence and have to live in more modest dwellings, in many cases slum housing.

This month the state is holding the queen’s platinum jubilee, celebrating that the monarch has been 70 years on the throne. Showy events, naff TV programmes and local street parties will inevitably be organised. This occasion is an opportunity to reinforce the idea that privilege and hierarchy are part of the natural order of things and to encourage deference among workers towards their superiors. It will also be a festival of nationalism and patriotism, so whether you are a worker struggling on low pay or benefits or you are a billionaire, you can take pride in your great British ‘heritage’.

These celebrations are coming at a time when workers are facing the biggest cost of living crisis for decades. There are royalist supporters who would argue that people need to be cheered up in these hard times. No doubt, a worker who is facing a choice between eating or heating their home will be thrilled to watch some sycophantic arselicker on the television droning on about how wonderful the queen and her family are. The capitalist state has graciously allowed the workers an extra day off from their daily toil. How very generous.

Some opponents of royalty, including some on the left, complain that the royal family leeches off the taxpayers and that they should be made to pay their fair share of tax. This misses the point somewhat as the tax burden falls on the capitalist class, not the working class. The royals derive their wealth and privileges not from any tax advantages but, as with the rest of the capitalist class, from the surplus value created by the working class.

Some groups, like Republic, advocate the replacement of the monarchy with an elected head of state. This would make no material difference to the lives of workers, as the basis of capitalist society, with its pursuit of profit and exploitation of labour, would remain unchanged. We can see this clearly in countries that do have an elected head of state. In France for example, there have been strikes by public sector workers and protests by the gilets jaunes movement and in the USA there has been industrial action among the Walmart workers. In both countries, poverty exists alongside riches, as in the UK.

So the solution is not merely abolishing the royal family, but the economic system upon which their power and privileges are based. A system that exploits and oppresses workers and is responsible for the climate crisis. We argue that the world’s workers need to organise democratically to replace it with socialism, a world of free access and common ownership. Anyway – enjoy your extra day off.

Gaspers (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We are confident we will be able to convince the Ministry of Labour that the productivity will be far in excess of anything we are likely to get from railway management” (N.U.R. Secretary, Sidney Greene, on a bonus agreement with British Rail. 4.4.67).

#    #    #    #

“Her Majesty is quite safe with the Labour Party.” (Emanuel Shinwell, Daily Telegraph report 10.4.67).

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“Just as in the Stage of Leninism one could not be a Marxist if he were not a Leninist, so today one cannot be called a Marxist-Leninist if he does not master the thought of Mao-Tse-Tung." (Italian Journal — quoted in The Marxist).

#    #    #    #

“We have suggested £5 might be a reasonable figure. We know that when elderly people have to go into homes or hospitals it costs a great deal more than £5 a week to keep them”. (Labour M.P. Hamling, on payment to single women with dependent relatives, 13.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“The Government's decision to pay high salaries to the managers of the nationalised steel industry is sensible, and was probably inevitable too”. (Guardian editorial 16.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“There is no way to my mind of identifying the lowest paid” (£15,000 a year P.I.B. Chairman, Aubrey Jones, 16.3.67).

Letter: What about the monarchy? (2021)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

What about the monarchy?

Dear Editors

I have subscribed to your journal to read intelligent alternative opinions as part of a thought-provoking process. I had intended to renew. However, the article on pages 14 and 15 ‘Parasites’ puts me off – it is below the belt as we look forward to H. M. The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Clearly the writer assumes an elected President would be much better. How shallow. Just look back at the conduct of so many past and present. Being elected does not ‘improve the human condition’, often elected by minorities. The Queen’s 70 years of service has been remarkable and should be commemorated.

Councillor G. Wanstall, 

Dover.

Reply:

You have correctly understood that we are not monarchists. We are opposed to monarchy, even a rubber-stamp constitutional one. It can’t and won’t survive into socialism. Obviously.

In the capitalist state known as the ‘United Kingdom’ the monarch is not only the formal ‘Head of State’ but also the focus of the nationalist identity that the capitalist class seek to inculcate into the state’s subjects. With some success, as you are far from alone in your view.

Are the royal family ‘parasites’? The capitalist class think they perform a useful role for them. We don’t see that they do anything useful as far as the rest of us, the excluded non-owning majority, are concerned. They are the head of what’s left of the aristocracy and great landowners in their own right. In any event, calling another human being ‘your majesty’ or ‘your highness’ offends against our democratic sentiments.

However, this does not mean that we see any merit in the British state becoming a republic. That would, as you put it, ‘not improve the human condition’. It wouldn’t make any difference, either way. Capitalism would remain as would the problems it generates for the excluded majority forced to work for wages. The USA and France are long-established republics but the position of the excluded majority is no better there than it is here. Whether the capitalist state you live under is a monarchy or a republic is an irrelevance.

So, you are wrong to conclude that we want the head of the British state to be an elected president instead of a monarch. Our priority is ending the class-divided capitalist system and replacing it with a one based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources by all the people. Neither a monarch nor a president will have any place in such a society.

To tell the truth, we are dreading the 70th anniversary next year of the present monarch ascending to the throne. It will be a festival of British nationalism to which we, as world socialists, are opposed – just as we are to all nationalism, everywhere. – Editors.

Running Commentary: Base metal (1989)

The Running Commentary column from the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Base metal

Margaret Thatcher, not to mention her advisers. have worked hard at promoting her image as the Iron Lady of Europe. This means depicting her, not just as determined and strong but also as fair and consistent. For a woman of her mettle, there is a Right side of a question and a Wrong side and the twain shall never be allowed to meet.

[The] obstruction of the Queens proposed visit to Russia? Leaving aside the possibility that her objection was inspired by fear of being upstaged, even by the head of the royal family — so base a motive must be beneath the dignity of an Iron Lady — we are left with the argument that no British monarch should be allowed to visit a totalitarian country like Russia. It was also rumoured that Thatcher thought it improper for a British sovereign to so recognise a regime whose forerunners had done in the Romanovs.

There might be a shred of justification for this stance were it consistent. But no government — including this one — has ever refused contact with a foreign power because of an abhorrent record on human treatment. Anyone who has doubts about this need only look at the recent example of Turkey. This member state of the supposedly democracy-defending alliance of NATO is governed by a brutal dictatorship which is notorious for imprisoning and torturing people whose only offence is to voice opposition to it. Yet Thatcher's voice was not raised against the recent visit here of the Turkish President Evren and she is an avowed admirer of the Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozai: the term she has used to describe herself is an Ozalite.

The issue of whether the queen goes to Moscow — which in any case has now been wiped off the agenda by the Armenian earthquake — is not concerned with human interests. Capitalism has a history of international conflict but no states have ever gone to war because one was a democracy and the other a dictatorship. All states deal with each other over economic, political and strategic advantage, which leads to all manner of disputes and alliances. the common feature of which is a ruthless cynicism. Human welfare does not enter into it, unless it can be used to make propaganda points against the other side.

So let not the Iron Lady deceive us. with her audacious claim to be concerned with fundamental human rights and freedoms. Nor with her claim to be any different from, or better than, the other politicians for their common role is to dabble in the brutal mess of capitalism.

Beyond Ken

Strange events in Brent East, where discontent rumbles about local MP Ken Livingstone, who was better known in his hey day as Red Ken of County Hall. During that time, when he was leader of the GLC. Livingstone showed himself to be a tough and clever political operator and to have some flair as a self-publicist. At any rate he rode out some pretty scurrilous attentions from the gutter press and ended his time at County Hall as something of a local hero, the champion of local democracy against the depredations of the Tory government.

But he has not found life so agreeable in Parliament. It has been reported that he is an outcast there; he himself has said that anyone who enjoys being in Parliament probably needs psychiatric care — which could not have endeared himself to those who are addicted to their status as Hon. Members.

None of this need have gone against Livingstone in his constituency but recently he has put some scathing views on record about the local council, which is about the most famous in the country for the chaos created by its wild-left administration. Brent councillors have worked on the principle that the capitalist system they stand for, and which they persuaded the voters to vote for, does not exist when it suits their purpose. The result has been historic in its embarrassment and confusion. A veteran of local government, Livingstone has not approved; he has compared the Brent Labour Party to Kampuchea under Pol Pot. along with a few other unkind remarks.

So now there is talk in the constituency about de-selecting Red Ken. There is a delicious irony in this, for the left wing in the Labour Party pushed through the constitutional reform of de-selection on the assumption that it would only ever be used to unseat right wingers. That was what happened in Brent East, where Livingstone was appointed candidate after a long and bitter struggle to turf out the old-established sitting MP, Reg Freeson.

De-selection was hailed as a great step forward to a more democratic, more ' socialist'' Labour Party. In reality it was often used as a steam roller to ensure the unquestioning acceptance of one point of view. Livingstone's offence has been to go against this, to act as if he had some independent thoughts. If he pays for this by the loss of his seat, perhaps he will learn something about the futility of single-issue, fragmentary reformism as well as about the cynicism of his party.

Percentage game

"£14 million for Sainsbury chief" said the Observer headline on 6 November. The item told us that 23 UK company directors received in excess of £1 million each last year in salary and dividends. Against David Sainsbury's £14.846,816. Tiny Rowlands only managed £8,095,754 and the last five only managed £1 million, excluding dividends. 1,451 directors had to make do with salaries of just over £100,000.

Three years ago no-one was paid over £1 million and only 338 received in excess of £100,000. How well invested therefore was the cool £4.5 million contributed by major companies to Tory election funds (Observer, 4 December). After all, of those directors in the above list, the £102,000 contributed by Hanson is less than one tenth of Lord Hanson's salary last year of £1,263,000!

Much was made at the time of Thatcher's decision not to take the last increase MPs awarded themselves. However it is less well-known that, while the cost of running her private office has risen from £4.4 million in 1986 to £5.4 million (an increase of ten per cent per annum), the part-time cook who has worked there for seven years is paid the princely sum of £69 a week — that is, £3,588 a year or just about enough to cover the cost of one of the new sets of drapes Thatcher has just had made for her windows. Expressed in the percentages of which Mr. Lawson is so fond, the cook is earning 0.15 per cent of what her employer spends spends on running her office.

Under the headline "Pay; alarm bells ring — wage explosion fear as inflation rises" (Daily Express. 19 November), we are told of Government fears following another rise in the rate of inflation. Last year average wages rose 9.25 per cent, as firms gave their employees a small slice of the increased profits obtained through their efforts. We should all be used to the Chancellor's attempts to "cook" figures (the latest suggestion is to remove mortgage repayments from the Cost of Living Index) but now the Treasury has gone one further. “If the wage rises awarded to workers were taken out of the equation, instead of a rise to 6.25 per cent in inflation in October, the figure would have fallen from 5.2 per cent in September to 5.1 per cent", we are told in that same article. Obviously. therefore, if we take all figures out of the equation a healthy zero would be achieved!

In more serious vein, socialists do not expect anything other than "double speak" from the owners and controllers of wealth production, who threaten us with dire consequences if we ask for even a small part of increased profits, while justifying the ever larger remuneration they allocate themselves as "essential incentives".

Merthyr Vale

One of the latest collieries in South Wales under the threat of British Coal's axe is Merthyr Vale. If it is closed over 500 miners will lose their jobs, adding to those who have been made redundant at the 19 pits which have been shut down since the 1984 strike to save them. Only nine pits now remain of what was once a vital and dominant industry.

If Merthyr Vale closes it will be especially poignant. It was once known as Aberfan-Merthyr: the first part of the name was lopped off after the disaster in the autumn of 1966, when a spoil tip on a mountainside above Aberfan was loosened by torrential rain and came sliding down onto the village, to kill over a hundred people, many of them children in the village school.

It was clear then — as the subsequent official enquiry confirmed — that this was no accident in the sense of it being unpredictable or out of anyone's control. The spoil from the colliery had been dumped up above the village because — as it was the case in many other mines in the area — that was the cheapest way of getting rid of it. (In County Durham it was emptied into the sea, turning the water and the beach black.) The overriding concern for cheap production fostered a complacency which contributed towards the events that morning, for the great mass of dust and slag had not been properly checked for stability. When the rains came there was some alarm about the heap's condition but still nothing was done and as a result the people of Aberfan experienced indescribably terrible deaths.

At the time there was a natural outcry against those whose complacency was seen to have been a factor in the disaster. Among those outraged voices, it was not unknown for miners to put a different point of view. A colliery, they argued, meant jobs; without it the village would decline into the direst poverty. If the price of the jobs — the price of keeping the pit open — was that lives had to be imperilled, which in the case of Aberfan meant building an unstable hill of slag on top of a mountain, then so be it. After all, the coal industry was no stranger to massive tragedies. Better a paid wage slave than one out of work; better the gentler poverty of employment than the destitution of the dole queue.

Well the employers — the Coal Board — have shown what they think of that stoically self-sacrificing attitude. Merthyr Vale will close if it is adjudged to be unprofitable to keep it open, just as it was once thought to be unprofitable to dispose of the pit’s spoil in some way other than dumping it high above the people of the village.

The profit motive which spawns and drives production in this society exploits millions of people, which means that while it impoverishes them it makes them grateful for their poverty. In many cases it murders them, while persuading them that there is no other way to live, or to relate to each other and in the end to die.

Balance sheets exist to show whether a profit or a loss is being made and how big it is. They are not there to settle debts of suffering. The Coal Board, like any other employer who knows their business of exploiting people for profit, works on the same calculating basis as those tragically compliant miners who would accept death as an unavoidable part of their wage slavery.

The fate of Merthyr Vale illustrates what little account are human lives and welfare in this profit-orientated system. Is it too much to hope, that the workers there will remember Aberfan for what it has to teach them about capitalism, to help them better understand its tragedies and the full humiliation of the part they condemn themselves to play in them?

Slings and Arrows: Time off for Apes! (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the May 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time off for Apes!

So often is man's inhumanity commented upon by critics of the present social system, that it becomes a pleasure—if not a duty—to bring to our readers' attention an incident which will show that the milk of human kindness runs warm in the veins of one man and a great man at that!

We all know that during the late war the efforts of every politician and military leader were devoted to finding the quickest, most efficient and. of course, the cheapest method of killing the greatest number of people in the shortest space of time. The Germans developed flying bombs, rockets, and human incinerators. The Allies added atom bombs. During this destruction and loss of life appeared a light “no bigger than a man’s hand," but nevertheless, still offering hope to suffering humanity. Who was the man who thus illuminated the world, who, while making wonderful speeches and organising battle-fronts where thousands lost their lives, still found time to perform an act of mercy ? None other than Mr. Churchill

The story about to be unfolded will touch the hearts and minds of our readers and if there is a dry eye left when this has been read, there must be harder hearts than we thought possible. On the Rock of Gibraltar depends, to some extent, the safe keeping of sea routes and strategic points for the British Commonwealth. Legend has it that if a certain species inhabiting the Rock were to become extinct, British ownership of Gibraltar would come to an end. In 1943, while Mr. Churchill was convalescing in Morocco after a severe illness, news was brought to him of a startling fall in the population of Gibraltar. In spite of his convalescence, Mr. Churchill was not disposed to view the matter with equanimity. In wartime falls of population were to be expected. But our gallant leader was not to be daunted. He went into action immediately. One can only imagine, for history has not yet recorded, the rolling prose, the fine sounding sentences, with which Mr. Churchill addressed himself to the problem. Within a short time and due to his exertions the situation was rapidly transformed, and readers will be relieved to learn that this species is now flourishing again on the Rock of Gibraltar, and Mr. Churchill is personally informed of any "happy event" that occurs there.

It is good to know that our Mr. Churchill, bowed down, as he was, with cares of State, could take time off to save life—even if it was only that of monkeys! 

* * *

Time off for Mourning

When King George VI passed away, and again on the recent death of Queen Mary, journalists, politicians and the like assured us that it would be in line with the wishes of Their Majesties for us to go on working as usual. It is true, however, that in the case of King George we were expected and, indeed, allowed to take two minutes off to stand in silence on the day of the funeral. We cannot complain. No employer likes giving time off and even though Kings and great men pass away life must go on. But all this takes place in capitalist Britain, and that is all one should reasonably expect

In other lands, however, we are told that “Socialism" exists under a label marked “People’s Democracy." In these lands things are vastly different, as they should be, since Socialism is not Capitalism. When a great man passes “over” in Russia or Czechoslovakia, the obsequies and public mourning are on a much vaster scale. The body of the departed “Father," or, if in a smaller “People’s Democracy," “little father," is embalmed so that not only this, but succeeding generations may gaze upon and contemplate the glory that has departed. If in capitalist London the queue to see the lying-in-state stretches for two miles, in the “Land of Socialism” they stretch for ten. If in capitalist Britain the dead ruler is laid to rest and then almost forgotten, in Russia he is embalmed, canonised, and almost turned into a God . . . But this is not all. In the “land of Socialism" poets compose odes of love and praise to the qualities of the dead man, while in Britain Mr. Pollitt tells us that our eyes are “ dimmed with tears,” and Mr. Campbell in the Daily Worker, rebukes the British Press for not observing the decencies expected when the great ones pass into the Great Beyond.

But of all the distinctions that mark off life here from life in the People’s democracies, one stands out most prominent of all. True that when Stalin and later Gottwald died, we were told that they would have wished the workers to go on working. And so far, it would appear to be no different from capitalist Britain. But, and here is the great distinction, in Moscow and in all the villages and towns of Russia and the “people's democracies" from East Germany to China and Mongolia, every worker was allowed to take time off for mourning to the tune of five minutes. How different from those greedy capitalists of the Western world, who only allowed us two minutes. It's almost worth emigrating for.

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Profound thought dept.

“Raise level of honesty and we can smash crime, says Fyfe” (headline, Evening Standard, 14/3/53). Who would ever have thought of it ? Such genius must obviously be preserved and applied in other spheres. For example, “Raise level of health and smash disease, says Health Minister"; "Raise level of bank balance and smash overdraft, says Bank Manager.” The permutations are inexhaustible and no prizes are offered for any submitted to us.

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“Enough, no more!”

Since the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth not a newspaper has been published without some mention of the Queen, her husband, her children and the rest of the Royal Family. Journalists have tripped over each other in their efforts to boost circulation by publishing highly-coloured stories of Royal doings. The articles are written in such obsequiously nauseating terms that one can only turn from them in disgust. No effort is spared to convince everybody that the Queen is the repository of every human virtue, that she smiles, is sad, has dignity and poise, and yet is modern and even advanced. We are told that this will be a new and glorious Elizabethan Era for Great Britain. Playwrights will become Shakespeares, musicians Purcells, and adventurers Drakes or Raleighs.

It would appear, if these scribblers are to be believed, that the Queen has no faults whatsoever. We are not disposed to dispute that assertion. As we are not personally acquainted with Her Majesty we are unable to pass judgment. But now that this publicity is reaching its zenith with the approach of the Coronation, is it too much to ask that it should come to an end ?

So that these Fleet Street hacks may be assured that their message has reached us all we hereby declare that we believe every word they tell us about the Royal Family, that we accept every tale of the indomitable courage with which Her Majesty faces her duties, and that we believe that under the inspiration of the Queen this country will become Glorious again. Having issued that declaration, we hope that these inane drivellings will cease and that journalists will now devote themselves to other and more serious matters, that is, provided always that they are capable of anything other than Society chit-chat

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Threat or Promise?

The Sunday Pictorial (5/4/53) tells us that American scientists are far advanced in experiments which, if successful, will enable men to live for ever. " What could this mean in everyday language?" asks the Pictorial, and proceeds to tell us. “It would mean that outstanding men like Winston Churchill and President Eisenhower could still be conducting affairs on either side of the Atlantic in the year A.D. 2953.” Cripes!

Here at last is what we Socialists have been looking for. Here at last is the short cut to Socialism that we all want. War, poverty, hunger and all the other evils of capitalism do not constitute so telling an indictment as the threat that Eisenhower and Churchill might still be in control in a thousand years' time.

If mankind will not rouse themselves for their own sakes, surely they will hear the cry of generations yet unborn and establish Socialism before it is too late.

S. A.