Editorial: What difference is there? (1963)

Editorial from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour governments aren’t what they used to be. They no-longer send chills of horror down the spines of the rich, the near-rich, and workers with a few pounds in the savings bank. It was not always so.

Forty years ago when, for the first time a Labour government took over in Britain, there was quite a lot of fear and panic in the air, even though Ramsay MacDonald went to great pains to give his cabinet an image of respectability by appointing a number of peers. In particular by making one of them, Lord Chelmsford, who had no Labour Party associations, First Lord of the Admiralty so that those who feared the worst could at least feel that the Navy was not in dangerous hands. That Government lasted for about nine months.

The Norwegian Labour Government which came into office in 1928 was less circumspect about its power to inspire fear. Instead of putting the Navy into the hands of a conservative it announced its intention to disarm altogether and threatened other things horrifying to the propertied class. There was a sharp financial crisis and out they went after a fortnight. After a few years mellowing they were back again, with no panic, and continued in government with hardly a break for twenty eight years; only to resign now after narrowly escaping defeat on a Parliamentary vote of ‘no confidence’.

What is significant about the changeover from a Labour to a Conservative government in Norway is the general comment of political observers that it will make little or no difference. The Guardian’s comment was typical.

“Political observers,” it said, predict that the new government “will make few changes in domestic or foreign policy”. When the Norwegian Labour Party took over in 1928 it promised to put the interests of the workers first and to introduce what it called Socialism. Now the voters in Norway know that capitalism will carry on in much the same way whichever party is in power.

It is the same here. No one with any knowledge of the present political situation thinks that a Labour Party victory at the next election would be followed by drastic social changes. If such a thing were possible it would mean that the differences between the Labour Party and the Conservatives are deep and vital, whereas in fact the publicity men in both organisations have a hard time finding differences that look big enough to fight an election.

As fears of Labour government have receded, there is more scope for conservatives and others to air their views on problems of taxation and government, without being obsessed with their old apprehensions of ruin and revolution. So Mr. Harold Wincott, writing in the Financial Times last July, was urging his readers to consider what to them must have seemed a novel proposition. The great problem of the ‘nation’ (meaning of course, British capitalism) is, he argued that of halting and reversing the enormous increase of government expenditure that has taken place during this century. This, for him, is so much the greatest problem that he could write: —”I am …. sure that until a solution to it is found no government of whatever party, or under whatever leadership, will achieve more than temporary success.”

From that point Mr. Wincott’s reasoning goes thus:— A Labour government is likely to go on increasing the size of government expenditure; the Tories are better suited—in the long run—to tackle the twin jobs of getting economy and efficiency, but at present the Tory government is quite unable to think about it let alone do it; so the best solution would be a Labour government in office and the Tories in opposition where they could think about the great task of reducing the amount of the capitalist’s income sucked away to run the Administration. And he adds: —

“It seems that the real, long-term interests of Britain would best be served in part if the Tories lost the next election and. going into opposition, gave themselves the time to solve the outstanding problems of our age.”

That was Mr. Wincott in the Financial Times in July. Two months later the Editor of the Sunday Times (1st. September) started another hare. He would have agreed with Mr. Wincott that a Labour electorial victory was not particularly alarming, nor even a successful Labour government. What he fears is a Labour government which proves a failure:

“This would indeed be an alarming situation, since it would mean that both parties had failed in the same way at once. … If the Labour Party first wins and then fails, that would produce a crises of confidence not in the Government, but in ‘government itself.”

It could be summed up by saying that the Sunday Times is not afraid of a Labour Government because it would hardly be distinguishable from a Tory one. A year, or perhaps two years, after a Labour victory the electors may discover “that nothing really new has happened, that the Labour Party has no answers which the Conservatives did not have, that it has only some other and less energetic Ministers and a younger and perhaps more energetic leader”.

The Sunday Times and Mr. Wincott see the problem rather differently. While the latter appears to put the major emphasis on cutting down expenditure, the Sunday Times editor takes the line that administrative methods are hopelessly out-of-date and that top priority should be given to that problem. “Reform of the system of government is the essential preliminary to all other reforms”.

Of course the fears and hopes of those two gentlemen do not exhaust the possibilities, nor do the policies or lack of policies of the major political parties. If a realisation that there is little to choose between Labour and Tory Government turns workers’ thoughts to a realisation that there is a deeper problem, concerned with social structure and class relationship, they may be the readier to come our way and work for Socialism.

News in Review: Crime (1963)

The News in Review column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

AT HOME

Crime

The continued search for the Cheddington mail robbers, enlivened by some startlingly intimate newspaper reports of the details of the crime (one paper said that the master mind is a miser who lives in Brighton) once again highlighted the fact that the working class are always on the lookout for an easy way out of the joys of their social situation.

The discovery of some of the money in hiking country around Dorking set off a Sunday afternoon equivalent of the Pools, as crowds of people combed woods and fields for what they hoped was going to be a lucky find. There was no lack of discussion about what they would all do if they came across some of the loot. Stick to it? Turn it in and claim the reward? On one thing, everyone seemed agreed. If such a piece of luck came their way, they would use it for all they were worth to help themselves get out of the working class.

Now this puts something of a perspective upon the remarks of Dr. John Mays, Lecturer in Social Science at Liverpool University, who said this about the cause of crime to a Howard League conference at Nottingham: “When they see people enjoying a better standard of living they ask why they should not have it. That leads to some of them to snatch and grab for themselves.”

Anyone who expects a Lecturer in Social Science to come up with conclusive answers to the problems which his researches uncover, may have dreamed of Dr. Mays pointing out that most crime exists only because capitalism exists. If capitalism were abolished, this crime would simply fade away into history. But the Doctor came as near to this as anyone could reasonably expect: “The nation’s business is to make a good life available for a greater number of people.”

And that is just what capitalism is failing to do. The crime figures are only one aspect of this monstrous, vital fact.

Lord Nuffield

While we are on the subject of rich men, we should comment on the death of one who became famous not just for what he owned but also for what he had given away. Capitalism, which is based upon the exploitation of the masses by the few, hypocritically teaches us to respect the man who gives away his money. Provided, that is, it is all done in a way of which capitalism can approve. Such a man was Lord Nuffield, whose bequests to charities and the like were variously estimated at his death at between sixteen and forty million pounds.

The press flew into action when their hero died, with long obituaries telling us how generous he was, how grateful we should be for his open-handedness, how sad it was that he should go the way of all flesh. None of them, in the thousands of words they spewed out, asked, the obvious question.

Where did the millions which Nuffiekl gave away come from, in the first place?

And, equally, none of them gave the only tenable answer:

From the exploitation of the workers in his factories.

Diet on the dole

Evidence of what the good life means to many people has come from County Durham, where the West Hartlepools Council has devised a diet to feed a family of four or five pounds a week. West Hartlepools has three thousand people out of work at the moment and, if the economic portents are being read correctly, can expect a lot more as the winter draws on. It is also the place, as we recorded last month, where Cerebos Ltd. panned to dump a hundred tons of meat and fish paste into the sea because they are changing the shapes of their jars.

There were no reports of the West Hartlepoals unemployed, nor of their long suffering wives, protesting at the insult which has been added to their injury. There were only photographs of patient, if bemused, housewives at the demonstration of the diet. It has not, apparently, occurred to anyone that there is something insulting in supporting a social system which cannot secure even a meagre livelihood for its productive members, and then lecturing them, when times are hard, on the techniques of living on short rations.

Are the working class too buffeted, too loaded with the degradations and the insults of capitalism to care? Perhaps they are. On the very same week as the diet was being demonstrated in West Hartlepools the Sunday Telegraph reported that Minister of Labour Mr. John Hare would soon be able to wrestle with the problem of the unemployed in a new home in Holland Park. He, poor fellow, has been driven from his former home in Sussex Place, Regents Park, by an expiring lease. Never mind. The new Hare home, after one or two alterations, will be worth over £100,000. Mr. Hare is married to a sister of “immensely rich” Lord Cowdray.

Perhaps the unemployed in the Hartlepools do not read the Sunday Telegraph. Nor, perhaps, its sister paper the Daily Telegraph, which told us a few days later about some of the people who will never have to worry about their food budget because to all intents and purposes, they own, among other things, Scotland (which after all is not very far from County Durham). Here are just a few of the owners:

The Duke of Buccleuch, 500,000 acres.

The Duke of Sutherland. 250,000 acres.

Cameron of Lochiel, 150,000 acres.

Col. David Greig, 90,000 acres.

The Scientists

Answers were hard to find, too, at this year’s meeting of the British Association. All sorts of problems are aired at this annual orgy of scientific speechifying but, apart from technical matters, it is virtually impossible to find, among the thousands of words, a hint of the solution to society’s ailments. The scientists can pose the question very nicely, usually with a mass of supporting evidence. But the answer? That is a different matter.

Here, for example, is Professor C. F. Carter, Vice Chancellor of Lancaster University, worrying about the problem of economic growth:

“Britain is showing increasing signs of tiredness not only in government but in the Civil Service and in some parts of industry, and it badly needs the energy of a fresh generation . . . Britain could have a five per cent growth rate if people worked harder and longer but people would not work hard to create material wealth unless it was considered desirable and respectable to enjoy the fruits of their labour.”

And here is the Professor’s solution to the problem he has stated:

“The economic system must be organised with reasonable efficiency and honesty. The vigour of new ideas must not be suffocated by a dead weight of orthodoxy and the energy of the young must not be frustrated by the power of the old.”

It is difficult to believe that Professor Carter—and perhaps some of his audience—are unaware of the fact that there is nothing new about his suggestion. They must surely have noticed that, whether young people or old are in charge of capitalism, the anomalies, the frustrations and the inhumanities of the system remain untouched. There is, further, nothing especially unorthodox in suggesting that the younger element be given their chance. Nor anything especially hopeful or inspiring. Is this the best that the scientists can offer us? Apparently so.

The tragedy about scientists, in fact, is that they never seem able to hit on the real solution to capitalism’s problems. With all their training—some of it training in how to think straight, how to assess evidence and to reach a defensible conclusion—they never seem to grasp one of the most obvious facts of present day society. Very, very few of them ever consider the idea that there may be something in the basic nature of capitalism which is always going to prevent it from settling its own difficulties.

Scientists, in other words, are just as ready as any of the great unscientific mass outside their conference hall to support capitalism, with all its anomalies and illogicalities. They turn not a hair at helping to make the devilish devices with which rival nations fight their wars. They are always on hand to look into, and to try to control, any of capitalism’s problems. This year’s British Association learned that Professor R. V. Jones, professor of natural philosophy at Aberdeen University, will soon be joining the Ministry of Defence to advise on scientific matters. To advise, in other words, on the scientific aspects of the war effort of British capitalism. Professor Jones himself said that it was “a little unfortunate ” that the news of his appointment had leaked out at a meeting of the Association. It is even more unfortunate for the human race that long training and extensive knowledge should be diverted into the modern war machines instead of being applied to the benefit of society.

ABROAD

Civil Rights March

The Civil Rights demonstration in Washington was, in terms of its numbers alone, massively successful. But it was no more than that.

The Negroes in the United States, just like all other oppressed racial groups everywhere else, are discriminated against because of the false ideas of those who do the discriminating. In some ways, capitalism needs an ignorant working class—and these are the very people who will try to explain away the system’s shortcomings by venting their spleen on the Jew, or the Negro or some other Minority group. At times, a government will actually foster such ideas—in wartime, for example, it helps to have a working class who think that the other side is inherently bestial and possesses inferior fighting abilities.

This kind of ignorance cannot be cleared out by demonstrations, however massive they may be. Capitalism thrives on ignorance of one sort or another; the only people who are immune to racial theories are those who have realised that the private property system is not in their interests and who work for its abolition.

South Africa & Nyasaland

Not only race theories, but race lunacy, in South Africa, where the dour censorship of the Nationalist government often makes them look foolish. The latest victim of the Pretoria blue pencil is the Peter Sellers film Heavens Above, which is in trouble in the Republic because it shows, among other scenes, the white vicar taking tea with his Negro churchwarden, the same churchwarden at the font at the christening of a white baby, helping the vicar off with his coat, and so on.

It is tempting to say: “How stupid can you get?” and to leave it at that. But, of course, the vicious race oppression in South Africa deserves more comment. For that is the country where racial theories are actually holding back the very advance of capitalist society, where the economically powerful industrialists find that their hopes are so often frustrated by the Nationalist government’s primitive ideas and fears of black revolution. In some ways, it is a deeply frightening spectacle. The immediate outlook for South Africa is not happy. It is dark with the promise of savage conflict, with little hope for humanity and reason in it.

It is small relief to turn from lunatic South Africa to some of the countries where the Negro nationalists have come to power. Ghana, as we all know, is a classic example of an intolerant government. Everybody can remember the self destructive anarchy of the early days of independence in the Belgian Congo. In other parts of Africa, too, the erstwhile fighters for independence have shown that, when they are in power, their followers would be wise to forget the more purple passages in the speeches they made in the old days of struggle.

Dr. Banda, who suffered imprisonment for his advocacy of independence for Nyasaland, is a man who must be trying to do a lot of forgetting. In his case, the usual strictures upon the people of the country to work harder, to serve diligently the cause of Nyasaland’s aspirant capitalist class and to become, in other words, meek, respectable citizens, has been accompanied by an attempt to impose a degree of public adulation which is as ridiculous as any of the antics of the censors in Pretoria.

When he is out and about, Dr. Banda likes to have the road to himself. That is why the Nyasaland Legislative Assembly has recently been debating a Bill which will compel motorists and cyclists to pull up at the side of the road when Banda’s convoy approaches. Is this not ludicrously reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin with his globe and his microphones in The Great Dictator? There is only one comment which fills the bill. We shall give way to the temptation which earlier we resisted. How stupid can you get?

BUSINESS

Whistling in the dark

One of the lively minds who, the ads. tell us, write The Guardian, has found something in the world of business to be cheerful about. “Optimism,” said the papers City column on August 27th, “Is in the air . . . most people appear to take the view that the way lies reasonably clear ahead for the next six months at least.”

In some sections of industry and commerce, this is at least partly true. The shipbuilders report a brighter outlook, estimating that by the end of this year their orders will be over the million ton mark, compared to 610,000 tons for last year. The Guardian’s conclusion, as we might have expected, was that this is all due to the measures in last April’s Budget and to the other financial juggling which the government has since tried, such as the £60 million loan scheme for the shipbuilding industry.

But there is another side to the picture. Other industries are not doing so well. On the same day—indeed, on the same page—-as The Guardian was carolling its optimism abroad, it reported that The Metal Box Company is worried about the lack of orders and finds that the tax “incentives” have had little effect upon its markets, Still on the same page, Rael Brook, the shirt company which rose so dramatically a few years ago, was also said to be on harder times; its current dividend has taken a cut by half, mainly as a result of an unsuccessful venture into the production of trousers. Among the other firms which are suffering from a pronounced lack of optimism are Metal Industries (predicting lower profits for this year) and John Brown, the shipbuilders (profits expected to be “clearly not … as great for the next two years”).

Only a few days later The Guardian sobered its cheerfulness with the news that the long forecast upsurge in consumer spending has not come to pass and that the retail sale figures for July were well short of the hopes which had been held out for them. And July, let us not forget, was the month when the tax adjustments of the last Budget were supposed to be flooding the working class with excessive spending power. The Guardian hesitated not at turning the necessary somersault:

“This is sad news for the optimists— including Mr. Maudling—who have been scanning the figures eagerly each month for signs of the genuine recovery that they felt was on the way.”

Now if this makes it seem as if The Guardian does not know its own mind on the subject of the business of British capitalism, we do not have to look very far for the reason : “Just why consumers generally are still holding off from spending more freely is anyone’s guess.”‘ (Sept. 3rd) and: “But no one can say for sure what sort of time lag we must expect before the next investment boom gets under way.” (August 27th).

The point is that the men in the Treasury—and those who write clever articles about them in the newspaper—claim that they can do better than guess about the economy. They should be sure about investment booms. It is illogical, to put it mildly, to support capitalism in one breath and in the next to admit that it is an uncontrollable system of guesses and uncertainties. And, in these circumstances, it is even worse to take up talk about “optimism” when we know that capitalism’s anarchies can abruptly and ruthlessly make a mockery of the most confident of whistling in the dark.

BEA's hidden profits

British European Airways has announced that it has cut its previous year’s loss from £1.5 million to £265,000. At the same time, BEA pointed out how generous a deal its shareholders have got from the nationalised industry. The loss was reached after—and not before, as is the case with private industry—BEA had paid out £3,081,521 in interest on capital. In other words, BEA’s actual profit last year was £2,816,220. Which shows up for the nonsense it is the talk about a nationalised industry being an automatic money loser.

BEA’s profit came, just like any other, from the work of the people whom it employs. Pilots and air hostesses, and the ground crews with their baseball caps, may seem glamorous beings to their earthbound fellows. Yet they are all exploited because that is what capitalism sees is done to all its workers, on land, sea and in the air.

It is, incidentally, worth noting the order in which BEA, in sound, traditional capitalist manner, put human welfare and its own commercial interests. At the Press Conference to introduce the Corporation’s report, chairman Lord Douglas of Kirtleside was asked for his views on the Noise Abatement Society’s proposal to reduce the offensiveness of London Airport by moving it to Foulness Island in the Thames Estuary.

Lord Douglas is famous for not mincing his words.

“Bloody crazy,” he replied.

Finance and Industry: Flurry in the chicken coop (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Flurry in the chicken coop

 “I had three conversations with Mr. Kennedy, and each time he brought up “the subject of poultry. Is he a President or is he a chicken farmer?”

Thus Dr. Adenauer, the German chancellor, rather scathingly, about the American preoccupation with chickens. So preoccupied, in fact, that the U.S. Government announced a few days afterwards that they were prepared, if necessary, to do economic battle with the whole of the Common Market to establish their right to continue exporting broilers to Germany.

Second thoughts have taken over since then and U.S. official remarks have become much less belligerent. Some unkind critics have remarked that the thaw set in immediately members of the Six began to point out that they imported three times as much from the U.S. as the U.S. imported from them and that if there was going to be a trade war it wouldn’t be the Six who would come out worst.

But why such a fuss in the first place over a cut in, of all things, chicken imports? A cut which in any case only amounted to about $46 million, 4 per cent. of total American broiler production, and a fleabite in total exports? As usual, a small upset is only the first symptom of much more serious trouble.

What the U.S. Government is really afraid of is that the restriction on broiler imports is but a prelude to bigger cuts later on. The Common Market countries in fact import about $1,200 million of agricultural products a year from the U.S., including S370 millions of cereals. “Where will the next cuts fall?” is the American worry.

The whole disturbance, of course, is yet a further reflection of the present crisis in agriculture affecting many parts of the world, the Common Market in particular. Among the Six, France is determined to make herself the chief food provider —at the expense of the United States. At the same time, Germany must come to terms sooner or later with its high cost farmers; it can’t go on protecting them with high tariff walls unless it is prepared to see retaliation against its industrial products. And the German capitalists see the red light and are already beginning to squeal.

Only a couple of months have passed since we said that we were going to hear a lot about agriculture in the months to come. It may be the poor relation of present-day capitalism, but it is going to cause lots of trouble to the better-off members of the family before they decide what to do with it. They may end up by palming it off with a regular allowance, small, of course; or marry it off into a richer circle and make it one of themselves, big and efficient. Many of them, of course, would probably like to have it put quietly away—quite an impossibility, however, since capitalists appreciate their food even more than most.

But, by the way things are going, they will need to make a decision one way or the other before very long.

Together again

When the Allies got to work on German industry after the war, they made a brave show of doing something about the Krupps, the Thyssens, and the other steel barons. Their huge empires were broken up as “politically dangerous concentrations of political power” : never again were they to come together to threaten the peace of Europe.

The table published elsewhere on this page shows how successful all these wonderful aspirations were.

At the same time in Japan the Americans were busy dismantling the huge Mitsubishi trust. Never again was this powerful economic empire to overshadow Japanese policy and help push the country into aggressive war.

Now the three units into which the original group was broken up have just been put together again into Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. The new company will become Japan’s biggest shipbuilder and one of the biggest producers of railway rolling stock, cars, industrial machinery, and aircraft. Only Hitachi, again mentioned in our “top twenty” table, will have a larger turnover. With 77,000 workers Mitsubishi will have the biggest labour force in Japan.

Yet another example of the intrinsic drive for capitalism’s units to get bigger and bigger in spite even of difficulties deliberately put in the way.

The top twenty

Earlier this year (in our February issue) we published details of the top twenty British firms. Now Fortune, the American finance magazine, has compiled a list in its August issue of the top two hundred firms in the whole of the world, excluding the U.S. itself.

It is obviously too much for us to reproduce the full list, but readers may be interested to see the names of the top twenty. The list relates order of precedence to sales; there would be some changes in the order if net assets or net profits had been taken as the criterion. But the main pattern is here, nevertheless.

             Company Nationality Total Sales $ million

1 Royal Dutch/Shell Neth’ds/Britain 6,022

2 Unilever Britain/Neth’ds 4,136

3 National Coal Board Britain 2.490

4 B.P. Britain 2,011

5 Nestlé Switzerland 1,829

6 I.C.I. Britain 1,621

7 Volkswagen Germany 1,596

8 Philips Netherlands 1,529

9 Siemens Germany 1,350

10 Fiat Italy 1,262

11 Daimler-Benz Germany 1,176

12 Krupp Germany 1,040

13 Thyssen-Hutte Germany 1,029

14 Bayer Germany 1,004

15 Rhone-Poulenc France 992

16 Hitachi Japan 955

17 Hawker-Siddley Britain 915

18 Mannesmann Germany 915

19 British American Tobacco Britain 882

20 British Motor Corp Britain 871

An analysis of all the two hundred firms shows that 54 of them were British or had British connections; 36 were German; 31 were Japanese; and 27 were French. More than anything else, perhaps, it shows how Japan has risen to the top rank of the modern capitalist powers.

Stan Hampson

Report from South Africa (1963)

Book Review from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Will Still be Moved: reports from South Africa. Edited by Marion Friedman. (Arthur Baker, 24s.).

Dr Verwoerd claims that his policy of apartheid is aimed, not at subjugating the Negro and Coloured Peoples of the Republic (who constitute the vast majority of its population), but that the Bantustan developments he plans is for “separate but equal development along the lines most suited to them.” It is doubtful whether even he and his Ministers still believe this—if they ever did—with the glaring evidence to the contrary which comes to light every day. He himself, when Minister of Bantu Affairs, explaining his Government’s policy on African education said: “There is no place for him (the African) . . . above the level of certain forms of labour.”

The case histories in this book were chosen to show in how many different ways this glaring untruth is constantly being demonstrated.

The case of Nelson Langa gives a brief insight into the terrible conditions obtaining in farm jails, where “convicted” Negroes are “sold” to European farmers to work in conditions of abject slavery. The fact that, in the majority of cases, they have never been in front of a magistrate, much less convicted, has no relevance to the treatment they receive. In a rounding up of “unemployed Africans who were roaming the streets,” Nelson Langa was taken, in spite of the fact that at the time he was wearing the badge of the municipal authority which employed him as a street cleaner and was actually carrying his broom. On the other hand, he was not carrying his pass for which, on conviction, the maximum penalty is a £1 fine. However, the small formality of charging him was dispensed with and with many others he was put on a lorry and “sold” to a farmer in the Bethal district. After long enquiries, his brother found out what had happened and, with the aid of a lawyer, managed to get him released. There was, of course, no question of compensation yet Mr. Langa was “lucky” in having his freedom restored, in most cases family and friends never find out what has happened to their breadwinner or whether, in fact, he is still alive.

Patrick Duncan, a White editor, now a prohibited person and living in England, said in his address to the magistrate when charged with contravening the emergency regulations:

“. . . How else can one explain the cruel cancellation of the African school-feeding scheme, while White children continue to be fed by the State? How else can one explain the mean attempt to abridge and constrict, by administrative action, the pension scheme for non-Whites which this government inherited from its predecessors? How else can one explain the present intention of this government to institute family allowances—for Whites only?”

Later in his speech he enumerated some of the unjust legislation, which shows up any claims for “separate but equal developments” for what they are; the Group Areas Act, the Separate Amenities Act (separate and unequal facilities), Urban Areas Act which, with its “influx control” splits up families, the Land Act of 1913 under which 85 per cent. of the surface of the land in South Africa is closed to ownership to 66 per cent. of the population; the feudal pass law, under the misleading title of Abolition of Passes Act, the Job Reservation Law, Bantu Authorities Act, the Bantu Education Act.

The case of Nelson Mandela, the “Black Pimpernel” received quite a lot of publicity outside South Africa. It is from his speech in his own defence against a charge of “inciting people to strike”—it is illegal for African or Coloured workers to strike—as well as leaving the country without a valid travel document, that the title of this book is taken. He concluded with the words:

“. . . rest assured that, when my sentence has been completed, I will still be moved, as men are always moved by their consciences; I will still be moved by my dislike of the race discrimination against my people when I come out from serving my sentence, to take up again, as best I can, the struggle for the removal of those injustices, until they are finally abolished once and for all.”

As explained in the Acknowledgements, the editor’s comments and the introduction, the purpose of this book is twofold; to give voice to the voiceless in South Africa, and to raise funds to aid them in their fight. Although of course, the book is banned in South Africa, the hope is expressed that “one day (it will) be read where if most matters . . . and that this evidence of folly, injustice and irrationality will provoke action even from those who are not directly its victims.”

There is certainly plenty of evidence on all these indictments and many others. This small volume can, obviously, cover only a very few of the many cases of injustice and persecution over the last decade, and this review can only mention one or two of these. How one section of people can treat another in such inhuman ways, seems incredible at first sight. However, Chief Albert Luthuli, in his address when presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, put his finger on the explanation when he said:

“There is nothing new in South Africa’s apartheid ideas, but South Africa is unique in this: the ideas not only survive in our modern age, but are stubbornly defended, extended and bolstered by legislation at the time when, in the major part of the world they are now largely historical and are either being shamefacedly hidden behind concealing formulations, or are being steadily scrapped . . . These ideas survive in South Africa because those who sponsor them profit by them . . . They are the moral whitewash for the conditions which exist . . .” (our emphasis).

It is quite obvious that, whether by peaceful means, or—as seems more likely now—through civil strife and violence— one day in the not too distant future, the vast Negro and Coloured majority will achieve their objects. But, although many of the inhuman and impossible conditions imposed on them, now will have disappeared, they will still be faced with the problems and troubles which beset workers in a capitalist society. When they have achieved a way of life on a par with that of their fellow workers, both White and Black throughout the world, they will be able to listen to and accept the case for Socialism and join with us in the struggle to establish it.

Eva Goodman 

TUC: Wages and planning (1963)

From the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the delegates at the TUC last month discussed wages and planning they managed to get into quite a deal of confusion.

They voted by a huge majority for a General Council report Economic Development & Planning though it contains references to wage restraint, but also voted (by a small majority) against “any form of wage restraint,” after the mover Mr. Ted Hill had indicated that it did not really mean what it said but only meant under a Tory government.

The confusion of some of the speeches is in fact even greater than the Press reports indicate. There was Mr. Hill who declared that his organisation, having had experience, ”cannot trust any Tory government with our wage packets”. Linked up with his declaration about not accepting any form of wage restraint, it presents the picture of Mr. Hill believing in two absurdities: firstly the absurdity of some non-Tory government which has as its aim supporting the workers against the employers on any wage claim they choose to make, and secondly, the equally absurd belief that provided a union rejects wage restraint it can get what it wants without restraint.

The truth is that all governments everywhere resist general upward ‘pressures for higher real wage levels, and when Mr. Hill makes an exception of a Labour Government he has it quite wrong. It just happens that in the post-war years under Labour Government, wage rates were falling behind the cost of living but since then they have moved ahead, a change in which increased willingness to strike has obviously played some part.

Mr. Richard Crossman, Labour M.P, frankly admitted, after the Labour Government had gone from office, that British workers could probably have got more if they had been as ready to strike as workers in America, and when Mr. Hill talks about no wage restraint what he really means is that trade unions must not give up the strike weapon. To that extent he is of course on sound ground, and it explains his reluctance and that of many other TUC delegates to accept the belief that planning by the National Economic Development Council can be a substitute for the strike weapon. But to put this in terms of being for or against “restraint” is quite beside the point, for if the Council’s plans in fact worked as they hope wage levels would be far less “restrained” than they have ever been.

The Council’s plan for expansion envisaged a rise of real wages of somewhere in the region of 3½ per cent a year. The Prime Minister speaking at Cardiff on April 5th put it in definite terms: “If we combine growth policy with incomes policy, the nation as a whole can have a 3½ per cent. growth in real income per head”.

No union, not Mr. Hill’s or any other, has been able to get a 3½ per cent, rise of real wages. (3½ per cent. a year above whatever is needed to cover increased prices), either under Tory or Labour Government: not 3½ per cent or anything like it. In the period since January 1956 average wage rates have gone up by 33 per cent but the retail price index has risen by 25 per cent, so that the rise in real terms has been about 6 per cent in seven and a half years, less than 1 per cent a year.

What then is really at issue for the workers is not whether the National Economic Development Council, or the Prime Minister, or the leader of the Labour Party holds out prospects of an annual 3½ per cent. rise of real wages they are all prepared to promise this—but whether they or anyone else are in a position to plan such a development into certain existence, and whether working class interest is served in that direction at all.

For, taking the last point first, there should be no doubt or ambiguity about what the TUC is accepting, whether with planning or without. They are accepting the world of capitalism and looking at the problem of the ability of British capitalism to survive and expand in a capitalist world.

The TUC report recognises for example the “frightening prospects of potential overproduction” in world markets, and of “competitive expenditure on armaments in the industrial countries where a quarter of the human race lives, and increasing misery for the other three quarter’s of the world’s population”. The Socialist’s reaction to this is to urge the replacement of world capitalism by world Socialism, ending both capitalism and class society; the TUC’s reaction is to consider how to regulate the trade and aid relationships between the countries of the capitalist world and at the same time secure a working arrangement for planning between the classes at home.

This latter idea is not new: always there have been people urging co-operation for increased production between employers and employed. But always the harsh realities of capitalism keep breaking in: markets getting overstocked and the employers who wanted more production now wanting to stop production; and passivity on the part of the workers being taken advantage of to increase exploitation and profits. No one—and this includes governments as well as employers can regulate world markets so that the normal expansions and contractions of capitalist industry and trade do not take place.

One last point that should be considered is the hope held out of a possible 4 per cent annual increase of production. By past standards this is a big increase, but in relation to the potentialities of Socialism it is insignificant.

Capitalism, irrespective of the political hue of the government, cannot seriously tackle the job of increasing the production of useful things sufficiently to meet all human needs. It cannot escape the consequences of its own class and competitive nature, shewing themselves in armaments, wars, class conflict, strikes and so on.

Yet workers who have tried to weigh up the arguments at the TUC about wages and planning should consider the Socialist proposition. What really stands in the way of a classless, warless world in which production is directly and solely for the use of all, except the reluctance of most workers to think it out? Certainly no-one who looks back over a century and a half of looking for wages policies can argue that Socialism is unnecessary because things are in a very good shape as they are. All the evidence points the other way.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Passing Show: H.M.S. Hampshire (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

H.M.S. Hampshire

The beginning of September and H.M.S. Hampshire, guided missile destroyer, lies at anchor just off Torquay. A day or two later, she is joined by several more warships of the home fleet. If you like, you can have a boat trio around the grey monsters and view—at a distance, of course—their wicked death dealing paraphernalia.

These ships have just finished exercises off the South West Coast. They are a timely reminder of the constant development under capitalism of more and more horrifying weapons; for these are just about the last word in modern fighting craft, although they will probably be out of date in a few years’ time. Capitalist politicians may prattle about efforts for peace, disarmament, test ban treaties and the like, but sincerity has never been their strong point. Anyway, sincerity will not remove the conflicting interests of private property which make armaments necessary. So Lord Hailsham signs a treaty in Moscow, and almost in the same breath, the government announces that another warship is to be built—this time an aircraft carrier costing around £50 millions,

Militant Bank Managers

Whatever next! There were enough disdainfully raised eyebrows and tongue cluckings when the teachers struck for one day last year. But now the bank managers, of all people! The Daily Herald of September 7th tells us of the first of a series of weekend strikes by these men and their staffs, employed by the Manchester and Salford Trustee Savings Bank. Apparently it’s a very gentlemanly affair with courteous picketing outside the branches by none other than the managers themselves.

But strip away the niceties of etiquette and what is the strike over? Why, the same old thing, of course—pay and conditions. The bank staffs are pressing for “proper negotiating machinery” and have reached the end of their tether waiting for a move from their employers. “…. even gentlemen get their backs up occasionally,” commented one bank man, bitterly.

It is certainly interesting, this show of militancy among “professional” workers. And at the risk of being called priggish, it does go to support something we have always said. Arbitration courts and joint councils may be all very well up to a point, but it is the strike (or the positive threat of it) which gingers up the negotiations. In fact, it is the only weapon which workers have in their struggle with the employers, although it cannot be used indiscriminately, of course. This hard truth has begun to dawn on some of the bank employees, and they are a living denial of the claim sometimes heard nowadays that the strike weapon is out of date. It will never be out of date as long as we have capitalism.

Auto-intoxication

Roaring and stinking its way merrily across the length and breadth of the land goes the motor car. It pours from the production lines to swell the enormous tide of tinplate on the already overcrowded roads. In attempts to cope with its insatiable appetite, workers’ backyards are sliced in half as motorways are pushed through with ruthless urgency. And up, up, up, mounts the toll of death and injury in its wake. No wonder Dr. Bergen Evans wrote a long and bitter denunciation of it eight years ago in The Spoor of Spooks.

But it is not only Dr. Evans who is concerned at the encroachment of the motor car. Brickbats have been thrown at Transport Minister Marples over his plan for “pedestrian control” experiments in selected areas. “The Marples Matchsticks” it was contemptuously labelled by the Daily Mail, after the illuminated robot who will show you how to walk across the road when the way is clear. Failure to observe the rules may cost you a £20 fine and the Mail is very piqued at the whittling away of pedestrians’ rights which this will involve.

Now the motor car is no longer a luxury. Indeed, it is an essential to many workers in holding down their jobs. More than eight million are on the roads and the number is expected to go on increasing. So the car manufacturers have done nicely out of it, although no one will expect British Railways to be very pleased. Neither will some of the shop owners, who will no doubt echo the Mail’s sentiments, because growing pressure against pedestrians might well discourage sales. This has in fact happened in some of the streets recently restricted to one-way traffic.

There is nothing very straightforward about the traffic problem, because it is surrounded by all sorts of interests tugging all ways, a familiar enough feature under capitalism. It exists, too, against the background of speed and yet more speed. For as any Socialist knows, the time factor is all important in capitalist production and colours all our outlook And when looked at from this angle, Socialism would be worth establishing: only just to let us slow down and take a breather.

Eddie Critchfield

The tragedy of Dresden (1963)

Book Review from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

No need to go and see the latest horror film. You can get all the horror you want if you sit back and read The Destruction of Dresden, by David Irving (Kimber, 36s.). It has taken Mr. Irving three years of patient research to produce these two hundred and fifty pages of cold, blood-curdling facts. It is a ghastly story of scientifically planned and ruthlessly executed death and destruction, rained on a historic German city in February, 1945.

Dresden was not, of course, the first town in the Nazi Reich to feel the weight of the R.A.F. bomber offensive. Such had been the extent of the fires started at Hamburg, for example, that a vast area had become a raging inferno in which nearly fifty thousand people perished. This was the first experiment of the “fire storm”—a phenomenon which was to be repeated at Dresden with devilish refinement and which was, to cause no less than one hundred and thirty-five thousand deaths in that ill-fated Saxon capital.

The decision to inflict a crushing blow of unprecedented size on a selected target was the brain child of Prime Minister Churchill. He had been concerned for some time to impress the Russian government with the terrible might of Allied air power in Europe, although it is doubtful whether this was to assist the rapidly advancing Soviet armies, or as warning and a possible bargaining weapon in case they went too far. There is, after all, some evidence that the Western Allies were already falling out with the Russians.

So the triple blow was mounted by well over two thousand British and American bombers. The choice of Dresden was quite deliberate, although it meant more than nine hours flying for the air crew and its fall to the Russians was imminent. For all practical purposes also, Dresden was undefended, most of the ack-ack guns and fighter planes having been rushed to the front some time before. But crammed with over half a million refugees and with its population swollen to about three times pre-war, here was a juicy and obvious target indeed. Practically the whole weight of the attack was laid on the residential area, and the resulting fires raged for seven days and eight nights.

David Irving’s book is a timely reminder of the essential inhumanity of war, of how it degrades and brutalises all who participate—of whom the bomber crews are only a few. Intimately linked with Allied bombing policy were the macabre experiments conducted by British scientists earlier on. What was the lethal explosive power for humans? How many Germans might we hope to kill per ton of bombs dropped? How many more can we render homeless? Professors Blackett, Lindemann, Zuckerman and others supplied their answers to these grizzly questions. Just listen to Professor Lindemann at the end of March, 1942: —

“Each bomber will in its lifetime drop about forty tons of bombs. If these are dropped on built-up areas, they will make about 4,000 to 8,000 people homeless.”

Nor was Sir Archibald Sinclair the only liar to emerge in a period when deception was raised to a virtue. Many of the bomber crews who pounded Dresden and other places were not aware of the precise nature of their targets until they were actually commencing their bombing runs. In the Dresden affair their briefing officers told a variety of lies to conceal the true nature of the attack. Few of the crews knew of the refugees and prisoners of war there, even though the Allied governments had this information.

The story of the Dresden massacre is a terrible indictment of war. But more than this, it is an indictment of capitalism. For what defence can there be of a society which pits man against himself and turns whole cities into vast crematoria?

Eddie Critchfield

 

Blogger's Note:

In 1963 Irving did not have the notoriety that we know he has today, and this book was initially met with near universal praise. For more background on both Irving and this book, his personal wiki page is worth exploring, and there is also a wiki page dedicated to this book.

50 Years Ago: What is Democracy (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people, when faced with this question, conjure up pictures of the American eagle, and think that democracy is all that that amiable bird symbolises. They imagine that a State run on the lines of the American Republic is a democratic State, that the institutions of such a State are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a State is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a State—the “Rights of Man” (printed, of course, on the reverse side of a “green-back”)—is the democratic philosophy.

All of which ideas are wrong.

The common, meaning of the term “democracy,”—a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people—is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American Republic, and American institutions, and the “Rights of Man.” For supreme power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they arc to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life, all the social products, even all the social intelligence and skill and energy.

There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities—because, forsooth, they have not control of the means and instruments through which the most important of those activities—those directed to the production of the social wealth—are applied.

Notwithstanding, then, the popular conviction to the contrary, existing republics no more enfold democracy than do monarchies. Nor are they nearer to it since they are no nearer to the property condition upon which democracy must be founded.

 

[From the  front page article, 'What is Democracy? A Socialist View. ', by A. E. Jacomb, Socialist Standard, October 1913.]

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In perfect weather, the warmest, sunniest day for many weeks the party held its first meeting in Trafalgar Square. Some had reservations as to the wisdom of such a meeting with our limited resources, but doubts were dispelled emphatically. Hundreds of people were in the well of the square listening to our speakers and many asked questions. Hundreds more were listening through the amplifiers which were at the National Gallery end of the Square. On the plinth of Nelson’s Column our platform was set , gaily decorated with banners (one—a really professional affair, large, bold, colourful—made for the occasion by our comrade Helen Rose).

Party members—old, young, new, long standing—were selling literature and fund collecting. The meeting was excellently conducted with a most attentive audience. Good questions were put to the speakers.

An attractive literature stand was well placed for all to see, and apart from sales members were in attendance to answer queries. A number of enquiries were made. Names and addresses were left for forwarding literature etc.

The collection amounted to £18, literature sales totalled over £13.

The success of the meeting was stimulating beyond measure. Not for a long time have so many members been seen together in such a happy and enthusiastic mood. The Committees and Party officials who were responsible for the arrangements must be well pleased with their work and are to be congratulated on one of the most exhilarating displays of Party propaganda.

This, the first rally of its kind held in London by the Party certainly won’t be the last.

October 5th and 6th (Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday) is the date of the 1963 Delegate Meeting which is being held at Head Office, 52, Clapham High Street, SW4. Monday October 21st at 8 pm Hampstead Town Hall. Please make a note of the date and come along with as many visitors as possible. Fuller details of the meeting elsewhere in this issue.

Glasgow Branch are keeping up their good work. Having rented a Branch room which is available all the week, members are busy decorating it in order that they can make the most of it, especially as they want to be well prepared for the next General Election campaign.

The EC had a gay post card from our comrade Grant (only just now back from America) who said at the time he was just off to the WSP Conference, had had 1½ hours tape recording for radio and had attended the Washington March (where he regretted that for this first time ever he was at a demonstration without Party literature). It is hoped that a full report of his trip will be ready for the next issue of the Socialist Standard.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings: Glasgow and Lewisham (1963)

Party News from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Interesting to note that one of the Glasgow Branch meetings featured a young Vic Vanni speaking on why he left the Labour Party.  I wonder if this was his first official speaking engagement for the SPGB? 

I wrote the following as a blogger's note back in 2018:

"Vic Vanni, prior to joining the SPGB, was the secretary of the Woodside constituency Labour Party. In choosing to leave the Labour Party for the SPGB, he passed up a potential fast tracked path into a career as a Labour Party politician. The secretary of a CLP was a big deal in those days.

. . . Woodside was a parliamentary constituency in Glasgow, Scotland, and the constituency Labour Party in Woodside was known as a left-wing stronghold in the 50s and 60s. Tony Cliff's International Socialists' - forerunners of the British SWP - gained a foothold in Woodside Labour Party Young Socialists (the late Paul Foot was recruited to the IS tradition in Glasgow at this time), and Young Guard newspaper at the time this article was published was a joint initiative by the IS and the RSL - forerunners of the Militant Tendency - who were both practising 'entryism' into the Labour Party." [From here.]

For more background on Vic, his obituary appeared in the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1963)

Party News from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

'W. Walters' - speaking on the General Strike - at the Paddington and Marylebone Branch of the SPGB would have been a typo. That was Bill Waters.

News in Review: Two classes (1963)

The News in Review column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

Two classes

We are still, the government anxiously assured the voters in the recent by-elections, living in the Age of Affluence. Very well. As the Conservatives promise that their new government will bring in a more vital, more prosperous Britain, as the Labour Party bid for our votes with a vision of this country as a vast test-tube, what is the latest from the poverty and riches front?

The Co-operative Permanent Building Society reported that half the people who buy homes through them earn less than twenty pounds a week and that a quarter earn less than sixteen pounds a week. Two-thirds of the houses bought through the Co-op. cost less than £3,000. Anyone who has lowered himself into the perilous pit of working class house ownership will appreciate what these figures mean in terms of size and quality of houses and of struggle to pay off the loan on them. House owners are supposed to be among the most affluent of the working class but the Co-op's report shows that none of them live in a castle and that buying a house relieves nobody of the usual working class battle to get by.

Housing of another sort cropped in one more of those conferences—this time of the National Housing and Town Planning Council. Dr. Eric M. Sigsworth, lecturer in economic history at the University of York, said that there will be three million unfit houses or slums in this country by 1973. Now this is after the promised speed up in slum clearance. Perhaps they would clear more if they slowed down?

Many workers think that the road out of poverty, bad housing and the like, is one of loyal obedience to their employer. Among other firms, the Ford Motor Company have encouraged this idea. They give silver and gold badges to the men who have done long service, and who have kept essential machinery going when there was a strike on. They also give these men certain staff and pension privileges. But Fords are now in the midst of another efficiency drive and what account does that take of loyalty? The drive has meant that four of the gold and silver badge men have been sent back to the factory floor, which means that they have been demoted and that they have lost their privileges. If they did not like the way the company was repaying their long service, the lour men could have accepted dismissal. Which must have caused some hard, rueful, thinking in the loyal heads of Dagenham.

Everything very normal, in other words, for the working class. Nothing changing, either, for their social betters. The will of Sir George Usher, an industrialist who died last October, showed that he was worth over £2 million at the end of his life. Each of his sons inherited over a million pounds which must have come from somebody's hard work, but not theirs.

The Finance Accounts for the United Kingdom 1962-3 showed that it is still a paying business to be a figurehead for British capitalism. Annuities paid to the Royal Family amounted to £166,000 during the year. Not bad for reading out speeches which somebody else has written for you, shaking hands and generally doing as you are told.

Will the household budgets of any readers of the Socialist Standard be affected by the increase in the fees of Eton? Anyway, it is instructive to hear about them and to ask whether every child really has the equal chance in education the politicians are always promising. Eton has gone up to £554 a year. If you can't run to that you can try for Harrow or Winchester (both £498) or Charterhouse (£492). Or there is always the local Council Primary, which costs a little less and has other differences besides.

Getting to know you

It is a common fallacy that a Minister who is familiar with the problems which his department has to deal with is able to solve them that much more easily. And, of course, it gives a boost to people's morale if a Minister appears in their midst, looks at their conditions and clicks his tongue in sympathy. They forget that when he gets back to Whitehall he is so often quite powerless to do anything about the conditions.

So it has come about that successive Ministers of Housing have always made an early tour of the worst of the slums as if looking at them would make the slums go away instead of increasing, as they in fact do. And so it was that Lord Hailsham (as he then was), when he was put in charge of the unemployment problem in the North East, went straight off to tour the area—cloth cap and all. But any personal experience which Hailsham might have gained about the North East was wasted, because Douglas-Home replaced him with Edward Heath.

Now Mr. Heath is supposed to be a very astute man. Did he, then, abandon the pretence about the usefulness of a personal appearance? One of his first appointments was to fly off to the North East to see for himself what unemployed men and their families, and idle shipyards and factories, look like.

Labour and the TSR2

One of the latest babies of British capitalism, proudly wheeled out by its doting parents, is the TSR-2.

This aircraft, it is claimed, can do almost anything by way of airborne destruction. In its ability to perform the most horrifying deeds, in the range of its destructive power, in its diabolical versatility, the TSR-2 is something like a precocious, delinquent child.

These horrors are going to cost something like a couple of million pounds each. Commenting on this, Mr. Denis Healey, the Labour M.P. (who put the cost at £20 million each), asked what this sum represented in terms of schools, hospitals, and so on. This is a common complaint, whenever the amount of money which capitalism spends upon weapons is discussed. Yet what do the Healeys expect? Capitalism has a list of priorities to which it allocates its resources and human comfort is not near the top of it. This was as true under the Labour government which Mr. Healey supported as under the Tory one which he attacks.

Indeed, Mr. Healey showed how small are the differences between his own party and the Tories on the issue of armaments when he went on to say that the TSR-2 is a waste of money, which could better be spent on military helicopters and other transport aircraft and on the Buccaneer, a naval strike ’plane which is already in service.

The best, then, that the Labour Party offers us on the matter of armaments policy is to look after the purse strings more carefully than the Conservatives have done. They will try to make sure that every penny the British ruling class spend on their weapons gets value for money.

And perhaps they will succeed. Perhaps, under Labour, there will be no more Blue Streak fiascos. British capitalism will still have fearfully destructive armaments, the waste of human knowledge and resources will go on, but it will all be presided over by a Labour M mister of Defence who will make sure that it is done at the market price and not a penny over. Does this encourage us to believe the hypocritical Labour claim to stand for peace and progress? It does not.

Abroad

Guiana must wait

It was by something like a slick trick that Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys brought the recent British Guiana constitutional conference, which was supposed to discuss ways of granting the colony independence, to a close.

The British government has rejected the idea of early independence for British Guiana. Instead, another conference will take place after fresh elections next year. The significant thing about the election is that they will be run on a proportional representation scheme which will probably break up the present party groupings. At the last elections the Peoples' Progressive Party, led by Doctor Jagan, got 43 per cent. of the votes, but 60 per cent. of the seats, while the opposition Peoples' National Congress, with 41.5 per cent. of the votes, got just over 36 per cent. of the seats.

This sort of result is common in the direct electoral system which British Guiana, and this country, has worked to. The fact that Mr. Sandys thinks that proportional representation is a good idea for British Guiana does not mean that he is thinking about advocating the same thing for Great Britain. The two big British parties do too well out of the present system for that.

The latest Sandys plan was, bluntly, a tongue-in-the-cheek trick lo impose Whitehall's own wishes upon British Guyana. Dr. Jagan described it as “ dastardly and unprincipled," which is just the expression which other people might have used about the Doctor's own action last year, when he called in British troops to suppress a rising in the colony.

In spite of Jagan's fulminating, the people of British Guiana seemed to have taken the news quietly. It would be good news indeed if this meant that they have come to understand that capitalism is full of diplomatic double-crossing and that in any case the Guianese working people have no more to hope for from independence than they had under British rule.

Sadly, this is unlikely at the present.

Jews in Russia

From the Soviet Union comes more indications of the recent trend there of persecution of the Jews.

The latest example comes in the October 20 edition of Izvestia which reports, and comments, upon the alleged crimes of a number of men but most prominently upon two called Shakerman and Roifman, both of whom are Jews.

These men are accused of embezzlement and bribery, of setting up a profitable racket in the produce of State factories and farms. The full story reminds us of the vast enterprise of Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22; they are said to nave been running a knitwear factory which embezzled machinery and with wool which they had diverted from collective farms. The produce, say the prosecution, was sold on the black market.

Izvestia is furious about these allegations, and raves that the men had amassed thirty million roubles in cash and a hundredweight of gold, diamonds and platinum. The paper has also assumed that the accused are guilty before their trial is complete.

Whether these men are criminals or not, there is mounting evidence of a campaign in Russia to use the Jews as scapegoats to excuse the country’s recent economic difficulties. This is a nasty subterfuge which has often been used in the past. Ignorant workers who are suffering the brunt of capitalism's problems are usually only too ready to blame some racial or religious minority for their troubles.

There need, then, be no surprise that this is happening in Russia. In any case, how is it that economic crimes arc possible in a country which is supposed to be Socialist? How can a country where everyone stands equally offer the chance for a criminal to amass enormous wealth while the rest of the people suffer hunger and other hardships? How can a society where wealth is owned in common have any sort of a market, black or white?

It is impossible to answer these questions, and to explain anti-Semitism in Russia, unless we face the facts. The Soviet Union is not a Socialist country—even supposing that such a thing as Socialism in one country were possible. It is a capitalist country and one where precious little democracy exists at that.

When we have got that straight, every thing else about the USSR falls neatly into place.

Business

Investment, profit, wages

The big mergers in Top Industry continue. Imperial Chemical Industries, who last May put up £10 million with Courtaulds to finance the acquisition of Tootal, have now lashed out another £13 million on Viyella International Ltd. Viyella have interests in spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing.

Viyella were not planning on any big capital investment in the near future but will obviously be able to use ICI’s money. ICI are probably interested in Viyella’s use of synthetic fibres, which now account for about half of its business. Industry is always seeking for ways of safeguarding its interests, but capitalism upsets its plans. Even a giant like ICI is no exception to this.

J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., the teashop firm, is another in the merger field. Its latest venture is in frozen food, the home market for which is estimated to be worth about 72 million a year.

Lyons are tying up their frozen food branch (Frood) with that of Associated Fisheries (Eskimo) and Union International (Fropax). This merger, it is hoped, will result in a combine which will initially command 16 per cent. of the market.

The move is presumably aimed against Unilever’s Birds Eye group, which at present claims two-thirds of the British retail market.

Capitalism is described, by its defenders. as an efficient social system. Yet it would be dillicult for them to find anything efficient or beneficial in the waste of the continual war which rival companies must carry on against each other over the carve up of a market.

The object of it all is, of course, bigger and bigger profits. A company which has succeeded in this past many expectations is Marks and Spencers, which since the war has been transformed from a rather dull chain store group into a bright, hard selling, and very profitable, concern. The very epitome, with its staff welfare schemes and its split second, split penny operation, of a “progressive’’ capitalist company.

The sales of M&S rose to £95.5 millions in the six months up to September this year. This was a record and with the Christmas rush to come, sales are expected to reach £200 million for the year —for the first time in the company’s history. To mark the occasion, shareholders got an extra 1¼ per cent, on their interim dividend.

And what about the people who make these sales, and mergers, and profits, possible? What do they get out of it? The wages of the working class are a constant worry to their employers, for the simple reason that higher wages mean lower profits, and vice versa.

That is why governments are always trying to control wages. Usually this control is described by a smooth phrase which is meant to persuade the workers that their wages are not being held down, and that nobody is trying to do so. Some industrialists, although they recognise their need for wage restraint, think that it should be done more subtly than has been the case in the past. This is what Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board, said on the subject when he spoke at last month’s Annual Conference of the Institute of Directors:

Whether we like it or not, the most sensitive spot in all our industrial relations is the size of Friday’s pay packet. That is why I deplore the continual use since the war of such phrases as "wage restraint,” "wage freeze,” and "pay pause" . . . .

A national productivity drive hasn't a hope of success if it is accompanied by phrases like that.

Their very sound puts a chill down a workman’s spine and they merely create ill-feeling and bitterness between management and men . . . 

Some sort of "guiding light” is essential if we are to rationalise the present chaos of wages settlement.

Inevitably, we must ask whether Lord Robens, when he was an M.P. supporting the 1945-51 Labour government—and later a member of that government—ever expressed so freely his dislike of the term ‘‘wage freeze”. He had plenty of chances too; it was the Labour government which invented it. Presumably, in the days when the Labour government was fighting to check wages, and using every euphemism in the book to do so, Alf Robens preferred to hold his peace.

Blogger's Note:

The aforementioned novel, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard by 'Ivan' (Ralph Critchfield).

I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways, the selection of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the new Tory Prime Minister made political history. What Macmillan called “the usual processes of consultation” will one day be the subject of countless essays, articles and hopeful theses on the techniques of political dealing. In the end, Home’s succession was a surprise to most of the observers who are supposed to be able to forecast such things.

But in one way—a way that will not be mentioned in the histories—Home’s appointment came up as expected. It was certain that whoever got the job would do so in a smokescreen of what can only be called nonsense. There was, in fact, a different sort of nonsense for each of the candidates. Hailsham was said to be tough, colourful, impetuous—just the man to give some stick to Khruschev or, darkly hinted the Labour Party, to press the button in a disastrous moment of irascibility. Butler was smooth, remote, soft on coshboys. And so on.

The nonsense which was put out about Home was influenced by his peculiar circumstances. There was the usual stuff about the new Prime Minister’s amiable manner, about his propensity for chatting with Foreign Office chars, about the way he eats his breakfast porridge. We have grown accustomed to such stuff and have come to assume that it is all meant to prove something.

What was unique about the Home propaganda revolved around the fact that he was the latest of a long line of Scottish noblemen. The first of these was created a peer by James III, although his gratitude at this was not enough to dissuade him from later joining a rebel movement against the king. That particular peer died in 1491 later holders of the title met a grisly end or figured in a long feud with another Border family. The amiability for which the last Lord Home was famous could easily be due to the serene security in which he has always lived and to the curious reasoning by which some aristocratic families convince themselves that they hold their superior situation in life as a favour to the less fortunate masses.

This, as we might have expected, was meat and drink to the Labour propagandists. Just as they were basing their appeal on a drive to modernise and stimulate British capitalism, just as Wilson was telling us that the future lies in a disturbingly scientific Britain, the Tories make themselves appear outdated, obsessed with the old school tie, by electing the inheritor of an ancient Scottish earldom as their leader! How can such a man, demanded Mr. Wilson, know anything about the problems of kids taking the eleven-plus, or of a couple who are paying the mortgage off their house?

How indeed? But then, even if we accept that Home does not know anything about these things, would there be any advantage for us if he did know? The Labour Party have always tried to present an image of themselves as men who have come up the hard way and who are therefore, familiar with working class problems. Today they may pose as the party for young graduates who are bursting to get their hands on a computer and start driving the deadwood out of the boardrooms; not so long ago they were full of ex-miners who talked about getting the bosses off our backs. Yet what happened when the ex-miners came to power? The 1945 Labour government had many men like James Griffiths and Ernest Bevin whose early lives had been of appalling hardship. Did that government run the affairs of British capitalism any more humanely for that? Did they ever shrink from taking measures which, although essential to the interests of the British ruling class, were harmful to the very people whose votes and work had raised them to power? They did not.

The humble beginnings of some of the Labour ministers did not prevent them running British capitalism in the established manner, with all that that means. Indeed, perhaps there were times between 1945 and 1951 when miners, or dockers, or some other group of workers, may have wished that they were being governed by people who did not know so much about their problems—and about their methods of trying to alleviate them.

For all that, Wilson’s thrust at the fourteenth Earl was typically shrewd and may have set the tone for Labour's future attacks on Home. The Tories’ reply was enough to show that they are as concerned as they need be about the aristocratic lineage of their new leader. Heralded by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative machine set out to convince us that Home’s selection proved that a man can become Prime Minister on his own ability, and in spite of the fact that he is an Earl. This, in some peculiar way, is supposed to mean that we are developing a classless society in which all Britons are equal. Home himself made his own version of the point when he commented that the Labour leader is probably the fourteenth Mr. Wilson, which was joyously trumpeted by the Daily Telegraph as the best crack for a long time.

We can see, then, that the elevation of Home has released a flood of nonsense not just about the man himself but about the class to which he belongs and about the class division of society. Class, we know, is something of a dirty word, Every capitalist party strives to assure us that they do not stand for the interests of any one class and that their policies are designed to benefit us all. At the same time they work hard to convince us that their opponents' schemes are class-inspired. The Labour Party damns the Tories as the rich man’s party; the Conservatives sneer that the Labour Party is obsessed with class bigotry. That is not the end of the confusion. Some people think that classes do not exist, others believe that they do exist but they are not sure where the divisions between them begin and end. They talk about lower middle and upper-working class and other, equally meaningless, divisions.

Now the only way to clear up confusion is to present the facts. What, first of all, is a class? It has nothing to do with how much a person may earn, nor the sort of job he does, nor the school he went to. A class is a group of people who are united, whether they admit to it or not, by a common economic interest. This means that in modern capitalist society people are split into two classes, each of them with opposing economic interests. In this situation, it is nonsense to talk of a middle class—a class with “middle” interests somewhere between the two. The two classes which exist today are, on the one hand, those who have to work for a wage for their living and on the other those who can live without having to go out to work. The first of these—the working class have virtually no property in the means of producing wealth and for that reason are forced to rely on their wage to live. They sell their working ability to the other class —who, because they own enough stocks, shares, bonds, and so on, can live very well without having to work. The interests of capitalist and worker are opposed because one is a seller, and the other a buyer, of a commodity—the working ability of the worker.

It is a common fallacy that the gap between the classes is growing daily smaller. Yet there is obviously a pretty big gap between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the working people of Scotland—the miners, the dockers, the clerks, the farm hands and the rest. The evidence, in fact, says that the gap is as large as ever. The Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey for 1962 gives some idea of what it means to be a member of an average working class family. In the year under review, the ‘families which had a weekly income of between £15 and £20 spent an average of £1 14s. 4d. a week on their housing, £5 7s. 10d. on food—and made what the Survey calls a “net loss” of 4s. 4d. on betting. We know, because these figures are pretty general for all of us, that this sort of expenditure does not allow a very opulent life. But that is all that the average member of the working class can afford.

On the other side of the gap it is a very different story. Last September a young heiress lost her life m a sailing accident off the South Coast. Although she was only 21 when she died, she left a net amount of £82,309—which is far more than any worker can ever dream of earning. A classless society? The Earl of Harrington recently put up for auction his family seat, Elvaston Castle, and the 4,500 acre estate that goes with it. This estate includes three villages. This sale, which was worth over a million pounds to the Earl, will not leave him homeless. He owns 5,000 acres and will be going to live in his other place in County Limerick. These are only two glimpses at life on the other side of the gap. We may not exactly know, but we can take a guess, at what that life is like and at the sort of expenditure the people, on that side can afford. It will not be anything like that of the average family under the Ministry of Labour's microscope.

It is obvious on which side Sir Alec is. He is a member of the capitalist class who also happens to lead a government which avowedly stands for capitalism. The Labour Party may not have many leaders to compare with Home's aristocratic background, but this does not alter the fact that they also stand for capitalism. In fact, what matters is not whether the men who run the private property system of society are blue-blooded or bear the blue scars which prove that they once sweated and suffered down a coal mine. Experience has told us that the ex-miner runs capitalism as ruthlessly as any Tory nobleman. The important thing is what each of them stands for.

Capitalism, by its class ownership of the means of living, its inequalities and its privileges, perpetuates the class system. It is hypocrisy for a party to say that they are opposed to class privileges while they stand for the social system which fosters them. And all the capitalist parties are guilty of this. All of them, in whatever accent, pay lip service to human equality. And all of them in fact support the world in which the masses are condemned to the paltry and the shoddy while a small minority own the land we walk over, the things we work with, almost our very lives themselves. This minority live, to put it mildly, very well off the masses. Perhaps, of a night, they offer up an extra prayer—I’m alright, Alec; do your best to keep it that way.

Douglas-Home has no proposals to alter this state of affairs and neither have his Labour and Liberal opponents. If class society is to be brought to an end, the first essential is that the nonsense has to stop. But capitalist parties thrive—indeed they live—on nonsense. If the working class were to see through it all—now that would really make history and Alec would no longer be alright.

Ivan