100 Years of Reforms (1945)

From the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are indebted to “The Economist” December 30th, 1944, for the opportunity we are taking of quoting, somewhat more fully than is customary with quotations. The article which appeared in the above issue was called “Condition of the People.” We feel the editor of this shilling weekly (beyond the reading range of the average worker), will not begrudge us the liberty we are taking of so freely quoting from its columns. Our plea, in justification, being to draw attention to their review, their comments.

Now for the quotations with our few brief comments by the way.

“A hundred years ago a young and ardent revolutionary, Friedrich Engels, wrote a book on ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.’ In the closing days of this year, it seems appropriate to attempt a review, however sketchy, of working class conditions in 1944…..

Indeed, to draw any detailed comparison between conditions in 1844 and 1944 would be a waste of time, since there can be no comparison between two incomparables. When Engels wrote his book the total population of the British Isles was less than 20 millions. People lived and worked under primitive barbarous conditions, herded together like cattle in their tenements, they were illiterate, half starved, filthy and diseased. The only relaxations were liquor, horse play and sex. Typhus and the yellow fever spread through the infested dwellings, but the toll of life was no matter because workers were plentiful and cheap.

“. . . . The infantile mortality rate was as high as 155 per thousand . . the average expectation of life in the labouring class in Liverpool was only 15 years. Not for nothing were the 1840’s known as the hungry forties. . . . There are still dark satanic mills in Lancashire and the West Riding. London still has its East End, Glasgow its Gorbals, and Manchester its Ancoats.”

Just one comment may be made here : —

Despite the amenities of life which the more fortunate workers of our day were able, before the war, to experience compared with a hundred years ago, the war years, notwithstanding their fuller employment and purchasing potentialities, find the workers, nevertheless thwarted in a variety of ways, from enjoying a higher standard of living. A few obvious factors may be mentioned; the rationing and coupon system (restricting purchases to bare necessities), black marketing racketeers, which the Government are incapable of controlling, theirs being an unconventional way of buying and selling, with the profit motive the one and only objective —i.e., Capitalism. The “black market” therefore, rules on the luxury or “extra comforts” line.

On top of all this is the aggravated misery of average home life occasioned by the bomb, black out, plus overcrowding which housing shortage causes.

Astutely, the ruling class have also fostered, on a gigantic scale, “national savings,” thereby encouraging the workers to “deny for the sweet by and by.”

The “Economist” continues : —

“But whatever the improvement in health and nutrition, the problem of the rich and the poor, the inequalities of wealth have not been eliminated. Disraeli’s ‘Two Nations,’ still exist. The most recent estimate of the distribution of property, that of Mr. H. Campion, shows that in 1936, out of a total of 16-17 thousand millions of private property …. approximately 85 per cent. was held by 1.8 million persons, or 7 per cent. of the total adult population. Moreover, three quarters of the adult population possessed less than £100 worth of property and 1.5 per cent. of the adult population had property of £10,000 and over. These estimates show that whatever levelling up at the bottom may have taken place and however the relative share of the middle classes in property may have increased, the property structure of Society has not altered fundamentally. (italics ours).

“Mr. R. Titmuss in his “Birth, Poverty and Wealth,” showed that before the War, the infant mortality rate among middle and professional classes was 33 per 1,000 live births, compared with 77 among unskilled labourers.. The class divisions are even sharper in Education. The calculation that only 2 per cent. of the population go to public schools, yet 57 per cent. of the members of Parliament come from the public schools is a striking illustration of the existence of privilege.”

The “Economist” quoting from “Birth, Poverty and Wealth” ibid :—”unsatisfactory sites of homes and villages, insufficient supplies of water, unsatisfactory provision for drainage, grossly inadequate provision for the removal of refuse, widespread absence of decent sanitary conveniences, the persistence of the unspeakably filthy privy midden in many of the mining areas, gross overcrowding and huddling the sexes together in the congested industrial towns and villages, occupation of one roomed houses by large families, groups of lightless and unventilated houses in the older burghs clotted masses of slums in the great cities.”

As the “Economist” says, “the above is not a passage from Engels, it is an extract from the report of a ‘Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland in 1917’ quoted in the 1944 report of the Scottish. Housing advisory Council, with the comment that: ‘these evils have been only slightly mitigated by housebuilding between the two wars.’

“. . . . 40,500 houses in Scotland still have no independent water closets and no sanitary conveniences of any kind. Conditions in Scottish mining areas, according to the recent report on the Scottish coalfields ‘can only be described as deplorable.’ The facts disclosed by the evacuation survey ‘Our Towns’ in 1943 can only be understood against the demoralising background of slum conditions. Public opinion was understandably appalled at the descriptions, unemotionally related by trained social workers, of the dirty and verminous children ridden with scabies and other skin diseases, with disgusting sleeping and feeding habits, of the negligence and fecklessness of their parents. It showed how ignorance and folly were exploited by all kinds of money lenders, clothing clubs, insurance touts, quack doctors and vendors of patent medicines …. they belong to the ‘submerged tenth’ the ranks of the unemployables and the ‘irreducible minimum.’”

The “Economist” concludes on a note of appeal to authority, the Government, to be progressive in a policy of social reform. The “Economist” puts it like this, to quote again from their article : —

“‘Progress’ said Herbert Spencer, ‘is not an accident? It is, or should be, conscious policy, and that policy should be directed towards raising the level of the lowest paid. . . . The year 1945 which should bring the end of the War, will provide an unparalleled opportunity for progress towards these aims . . . reforms in education, health, housing and social insurance . . . family allowances. . . . Whatsoever Government is returned to power it will be committed to this programme of social reform.”

Concluding and summing up the “Economist” says :—

“But to say that there has been progress since 1844 is not enough, the question is whether the advances in social conditions have been commensurate with technical and scientific progress of the nations productive capacity, and the answer, on all the evidence can only be in the negative.” (italics ours).

The above quotations should be a reminder to the working class in their political struggle for emancipation from Capitalist exploitation. A hundred years of reforms, in which Conservative, Liberal and Labour have played their part in advocating, not forgetting the “revolutionary” reforms of the Communist Party.

The Socialist Party again reminds the working class that so long as the means of life remain the private property of the capitalist ruling class, they must remain enslaved to that class. It is the function of the defenders of private property to advocate and institute reforms, thereby prolonging the privilege of the capitalist and their apologetic professional political decoys. Likewise, it is equally necessary for the working class party, the Socialist Party, to be uncompromisingly hostile to, and independent of all other political parties. Because we are convinced of this truth, we are confident, that the workers will join with us in the task we have in hand. That task is the establishment of Socialism—the common ownership of the means of production and distribution—a revolutionary objective, to avert which capitalism will offer every reform under the sun. For such reasons the Socialist Party need not waste time in their advocacy.

Billy Iles

Review—”Our Towns—A Close-up” (1943)

Book Review from the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Within two weeks of the evacuation scheme being put into operation at the beginning of the war, the habits and general behaviour of the evacuees had been reported in both national and local press and had been discussed in Parliament. Charges were made against the evacuees that many were irresponsible, dirty and generally slovenly in their habits; that they “over-indulged in alcohol,” smoked too much, and spent their money “wrongly” in many other ways. One of the results of the publicity was an investigation by the Hygiene Committee of the Women’s Group on Public Welfare into these charges, and an examination by them of the conditions of life of thousands of town dwellers. They published their findings in a study, “Our Towns—A Close-up” (Oxford University Press, 5s.), and in the introductory comment : “This book is a thinly disguised report” ; exactly, a report of bitter poverty,

To obtain a knowledge of the social conditions prevailing prior to the war, they studied reports of local authorities, works by Titmuss, Sir John Boyd-Orr and others, and also interviewed witnesses such as Health Visitors, Teachers, and Local Government Servants. The information presented here in a most compact and useful form gives a deplorable picture of the conditions then prevalent. The authors made an examination of the complaints against the background of poverty and bad living conditions that many evacuees endured. They also submit recommendations as measures likely to help in the solution of the problems.

We shall not spend much time dealing with the charge of “wrong spending” on drink, tobacco and different forms of money clubs. Should the workers spend nothing on these things they would still be poor; in fact, the expression “wrong spending” applied to the workers comes within the category of a bad joke. It is shown that in 1937, “one-third of her (Britain’s) families had breadwinners earning less than £2 10s. a week” (page 111).

One of the main charges was that of bad feeding habits and a failure to choose the most nutritious foods. Here the authors give sufficient evidence to show the close connection between malnutrition, illness and poverty. An extract from the Report of the Medical Officer, City of Birmingham, 1938, is given. He stated that:

“During the year 1938, 43,507 children were examined at routine inspections at the schools and their nutritional state was classified as follows :

A (excellent nutrition)……………..   2.3%

B (normal nutrition)………………   86.9%

C (slightly sub-normal nutrition)….    9.4%

D (bad nutrition)……………………..1.4%

—(Page 117).”

While poverty is regarded as the major cause of bad nutrition, it is later suggested in this Report that there are other factors equally important underlying malnutrition as a whole. The facts from the Annual Report, 1933, of Dr. Spence, Medical Officer for Newcastle-on-Tyne, indicate however that the basis of malnutrition and illness is poverty. The facts require no emphasis—they appear on page 35 : —

“In a comparison between a group of children from one to five years of age from the city’s poorest streets and a group of similar age from families of the professional class:

124 children of the professional class had had : Pneumonia 2; Pleurisy 1; Chronic and recurrent cough 2; Measles 6.

125 children from the pooreset streets had had : Pneumouia 17 ; Chronic or recurrent bronchitis 32 ; Measles 46 ; Recurrent Diarrhoea 0; Abscesses, septic skin infectious frequent.”

That poverty is the basis of these evils is also clearly indicated in the following statement : —

“The importance of poverty as a root cause is illustrated by a striking table in which Titmuss (‘Poverty and Population,’ pages 304/5) shows that Durham and Northumberland have as compared with all other regions of England, a very low income level, particularly in Durham, where it appears to be the lowest of any county. The highest overcrowding rate. The highest death rate and infantile mortality rate. The highest death rate for children up to 4 years of age, with a heavy excess of death from respiratory diseases.” (Page 103.)

The charges relating to skin diseases and prevalence of lice were also investigated. It is shown that in ten of the large towns 40 per cent. of the poorer child population were infested with head lice. Although the authors are highly critical of many families, even suggesting that it is a matter of indifference to some, they do show that skin diseases and the presence of vermin are “fostered by overcrowding,” and that thousands of working-class families are free from it, “but in the conditions of poverty this is achieved at the cost of unremitting vigilance and toil.”

There is ample evidence to show the insanitary conditions under which people lived, and how these conditions affect the habits of those who have to endure them indefinitely. Extracts are given from an enquiry, “Growing Up in Shoreditch,” published by the Shoreditch Housing Association in 1938. This enquiry into the home circumstances of some 400 Shoreditch L.C.C. schoolchildren showed : “that in 381 cases only the 93 who lived in flats and 11 others had an indoor closet, and in 206 cases out of 390 the closet was shared by a number of families ranging from two to seven. In 22 per cent. of cases the closet was shared by three or more households, and in 5 per cent. by four or more.” (Page 88.) Also facts are given on the bad water supply and poor heating arrangements in many homes. Only 56 per cent. of 365 cases investigated had a private water supply. In 57 cases the supply was shared by three families or more.

These are only a few examples of the environment and conditions of life of thousands of working class families. Many more are given in this work. We have no space to examine in detail the recommendations; they are confined to reforms within capitalism. Margaret Bondfield, in her preface, suggests that there is a need for “a co-ordinated structure of services which leaves no gap,” and states that a weakness of reformist efforts is that: “it is patchwork reform, and so often the pieces do not fit.” We will add—reform is patchwork and can be nothing more. The need for to-day is not a multiplicity of reforms but a social revolution from Capitalism to Socialism. That alone will guarantee ending the horror portrayed in this book.

The work has the merit of giving in a condensed form information that generally speaking is hidden away in local authorities’ reports. Definitely a useful weapon for the Socialist propagandist

Lew Jones

A May Day Address (1960)

From the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hyde Park May 1st 1960

Comrades,

On the occasion of this annual event it is customary to cast a critical glance over the political scene and take stock of the position in which the working class finds itself. The Socialist Party gladly joins in this popular exercise of the day—not that we are going to ask you to vote for any resolutions instructing somebody to go and see the employers' representatives to call attention to some grievance.

We do feel it useful to try and estimate the actual position of the workers today, especially as the popular catch cry of the moment is that “you (meaning the workers) have never had it so good." Before examining the wider field I must frankly say, after watching a few thousands of you march into the Park, that either you are not workers—or you are among the unfortunate ones. If the appearance of the great majority of you, both at this meeting and the others, is any criterion—either you are starving and worried capitalists—or very needy and seedy workers.

Of course, it may well be that more prosperous workers are not attracted to any expression of discontent—albeit as vague and feeble as the Labour Party.

Whatever may be the situation in Hyde Park this afternoon, there is no doubt about the position in the country in general. I can’t, in a large open air meeting, bore you with long lists of quotations, but please do bear with me while I quote just one or two references. I think, if you listen to the facts, you will quickly realise that the prosperity stories we are hearing are only partly true. I might mention that we have heard them all before, about all sorts of places at various times.

They were the tales put about by interested parties in the United States fifty years ago - El Dorado—the golden land. The West Indians have been told this tale about us here in Great Britain. Double wages can be made in Australia—at double prices, this is why so many emigrants (those who can) hurry back home. Then, of course, there is Sweden—the most prosperous (?) working class in Europe. Incidentally, the people of any country lucky enough to escape the main consequences of the war could not  but consider themselves fortunate. Now, may I cite a few facts.

"The number of applications dealt with by the National Assistance Board during 1958 was 2,161,000,” which was so good that there were 8.200 more than in 1957. (Ministry of Labour Gazette, July, 1959.) A further proof of the 1960 British workers’ prosperity was the refusal of a grant to a further 341,000 applicants.

Now about wages, I quote from the Socialist Standard, May issue, a statement by Heathcote Amory, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that weekly wage rates had increased by about 42 per cent, between 1952 and January, 1960, and by about 3½ per cent. between 1958 and January, 1960. In point of fact, real wage rates, i.e., wages geared to the Cost of Living figure—or the things that wages will buy—have increased by 9½ per cent. since 1938, BUT this figure is based on standard weekly rates of industrial workers. If this included clerical and salaried workers it would probably show no increase at all.

A summary of the situation has been made by Professor Titmuss, of the London School of Economics—not a very keen supporter of the S.P.G.B., who says in a pamphlet The Irresponsible Society, that one in every seven in Britain NOW are precariously close to poverty. He puts the total of the poverty line citizens at between seven and eight millions.

Now what about the other side of the picture—the profits of the capitalists? Provisional estimates show that dividends paid by companies in 1959 were about 78 per cent. higher than in 1952 and about 12 per cent. higher than in 1958. According to Mr. Amory ‘‘the balance has been restored.” By this he means that the British workers have almost completely restored the gigantic losses in property destroyed during the war. The workers have presented the capitalists with a new productive outfit—with their own real wages stationary. This is the part of the business which keenly interests Socialists—and only Socialist Economics give the correct way to judge this matter.

The most important thing for workers to realise today is not whether they are drawing £10 or £12 a week now, whereas in 1930 they only drew 15s. 3d. from the Labour Exchange. Decisive for the worker is his position in relation to the capitalist—whether his share of wealth he produces, Wages, has increased compared with the capitalists.

Most of the evidence today shows that while many workers have improved their position—the profits made by many huge capitalist trusts have been all-time records.

These times of comparative prosperity in days of good trade are not new, they were well known to observers liker Marx, who mentioned that they are used by workers to recompense themselves for the bad times. Actually, it is the self-styled “realist” who is so convinced that workers are no longer poor, because they are not howling for work in dole queues, who cannot see the wood for the trees. He it is who, obsessed with the past, judges his own position by 1930, instead of opening his eyes to the facts of 1960.

Undoubtedly we live in a world of great and rapid change—but one thing has not changed, even for the prosperous worker—his dependence on the capitalist for his livelihood, who allows him to live only while his labour keeps the employer in opulence.

Yes, even with his television set and his motor car the worker of today finds himself beset with an array of gnawing problems.

Socialists hold that Capitalism cannot be fundamentally improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems.

When we think of the number of May Day meetings held in the Park today, such as those of the Labour and Communist Parties, of the time and effort involved in chasing Aunt Sallies like Summit meetings or Nationalisation projects, and getting nowhere, we resolve still more strongly to raise aloft the banner of International Socialism.

Who else, but the Socialist Parly of Great Britain, with its fifty years unblemished record of uncompromising independence and opposition to all fakers and reformists is entitled to say today “Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.”

Yes! But to win it, you must break with Reformism!

Horatio.

The Monopoly of Wealth (1967)

From the March 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basis of present-day society is the class monopoly of the means of living, that is, the land, factories, railways and so on. Accumulated wealth is monopolised by a privileged minority. The rest, separated from the means and instruments of labour, are forced to work for those who own them. This inequality, poverty and slavery is capitalism.

In Britain the capitalist class own the means of production through having paper titles such as bonds or shares which are backed by the law and enforced by the state. So that from these titles an estimate of the concentration of wealth ownership can be made. One of the results of the 19th century struggle between the industrial and landed property-owners was Estate Duty, a tax levied on the wealth of those who died. The figures of the collections from this tax are published every year in the report of the Board of Inland Revenue. The various figures in this report, together with mortality rates from the Registrar General, have provided the basic data for all the estimates of the concentration of wealth that have been made over the years.

It so happens that one of the first of such estimates was made at the time the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain was founded. For 1905 Sir Leo Chiozza Money came to this conclusion in his Riches and Poverty:

  About one-seventieth of the population owns more than one-half of the accumulated wealth, public and private, of the United Kingdom.

Money's calculations were no doubt crude by modern statistical standards. Yet every study since has shown a similar inequality, despite the reign of two governments committed to redistribution in favour of the poor—the Liberal of 1906 and the Labour of 1945.

Take a few of the recent estimates: On 8 April 1962 the Economic Editor of the Observer spoke of “this fantastically unequal distribution of wealth”:

   Judging by the latest Inland Revenue estate duty figures, fewer than 200,000 people (about ½ per cent of the adult population) own a quarter of total personal wealth, worth over £50,000 million. Nearly half of this total personal wealth is held by the top 2 per cent owning more than £20,000 each.

On 15 January 1966 the Economist, using amended investment income figures from the Inland Revenue report, estimated that in 1959-60, fifty-five per cent of personal wealth was owned by 2 per cent of taxpayers, while 88 per cent owned on average just over £100.

On 13 January 1967 the Financial Times wrote of figures showing that in 1960 the top 1 per cent owned 42 per cent of personal wealth (the top five 75 per cent and the top ten 83 per cent), that although there might be some exaggeration “it still remains true that the bulk of the population own very little personal property”.

A more scholarly study for 1945 appeared in the Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics in February 1961. The authors, H. F. Lydall and D. J. Topping, noted that “Personal wealth is very unequally distributed in this country”. They wrote of one of their tables:

   In broad outline these figures suggest that total personal net capital in early 1954 was about £40,000 million. Of this nearly £31,000 million was owned by three million persons possessing over £2,000 each; and the remaining £9,000 million was owned by the other 32 million aged 20 and over. In the top capital group there are 20,000 persons with more than £100,000 each and an average holding of over £250,000; in the bottom group there are 16 million persons with less than £100 each and an average holding of less than £50.

And, of another table:

  These estimates suggest that in 1954 the top one per cent of British adults owned 43 per cent of total net capital and the top 10 per cent 79 per cent.

Comparing their figures with those for previous years, they wrote that “over the past twenty years there has been some reduction in the inequality of personal wealth in Britain”.

Not all who have studied the figures agree with this conclusion. For one of the disadvantages of using the death duty figures is that they miss those who manage to avoid paying them and, over the years, the wealthy have evolved quite sophisticated ways of doing this. J. R. S. Revell, in an address to the British Association in 1960 (discussed in the Socialist Standard of November 1960), mentioned a few: distribution within families and especially the discretionary trust:

   Under that form of property the trustees had the discretion to pay income to any of a specified class of persons and to distribute the capital when they thought fit. When the person who had been receiving the income died, the trustees merely nominated another person from the specified class, and there was no passing of capital which could attract death duties.

R. M. Titmuss, in his Income Distribution and Social Change (1962), studied the supposed trend towards equality of incomes and showed how the Inland Revenue figures were not a reliable guide. Titmuss explained in detail some of the dodges to avoid surtax and estate duty. While pointing out that there were no really accurate and reliable figures he suggested:

  There is more than a hint from a number of studies that income inequality has been increasing since 1949 whilst the ownership of wealth, which is far more highly concentrated in the United Kingdom than in the United States, has probably become still more unequal and, in terms of family ownership, possibly strikingly more unequal in recent years.

Whichever way you look at them, these figures bear out the validity of the first clause of our Declaration of Principles. What, then, do Socialists suggest? In the past we were accused of wanting equal sharing and to divide up amongst the poor the wealth of the rich. This, of course, was a lie. What we do advocate is the social ownership and democratic control of the already socially-operated means of living. Ironically, it is the open defenders of capitalism, the Tories and Liberals, who talk of a “property-owning” or a “share-owning” democracy. Which is as much an illusion as is the Labour promise to redistribute wealth more equally through taxes. All such attempts have failed, and will fail, because the very basis of capitalism — the system they accept —is the concentration of the ownership of the means of living in the hands of a few and the resulting poverty and degradation of the rest.

Adam Buick

“There’s no more in the Kitty” (James Callaghan) (1979)

From the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

So ran the boring refrain of Prime Minister Callaghan’s speeches about this year’s wave of strikes. Apart from the obvious inconsistency (he said there was ‘‘no more money for wage increases of 5 per cent then 8.8 per cent, now 10 per cent” is it true that ‘‘the country” is going broke; that there is “no money” to pay people a living wage?

First, one point must be made clear. The “public” does not pay anybody’s wages. The “public” is mainly the working class, 95 per cent of the population who do not pay wages. They work for wages themselves, and have nothing to pay anybody else with. Ninety nine per cent of all industrial Company shares are held by wealthy investors, i per cent of the population, who are the real wage-payers.

Is it true that this small handful of the population, the owners of wealth, are going broke or doing badly? On the contrary, they never did better.

The country’s top economic researchers all agree that the greatest single concentration of wealth in the world, including the United States, is right here, in Great Britain,

  The fortunes of the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Mellons, and Howard Hughes, are no match for the steady accumulation of the wealth of centuries by the wealthy families of Britain. The Economics of Inequality (A. B. Atkinson).

On Sunday morning. February 11, the Chairman of the Stock Exchange informed the LBC reporter that about £700 million change hands a day there. Seeing that 99 workers out of a hundred have never even seen a Company share, let alone owned one. it is obvious that this is the capitalist class (or the stockbrokers they employ) shuffling the pack for a bit more lolly.

Estimates of the total wealth of the capitalist class are only guesstimates because reliable information is extremely hard to come by.

Most investigators A. B. Atkinson (Sussex) R. Miliband (Leeds) John Westergaard (London) Jack Kencaid (Leeds) are agreed that it is practically impossible to get at the truth. Richard Titmuss (London School of Economics) has produced a book, Income Distribution and Social Change, proving that much of the Government’s “statistics” mainly based on Income Tax returns, are largely rubbish.

The reason for this, as Professor Colin Harbury (The Economics of Inheritance) has reported; it is impossible to catch up with the tricks and fiddles of the slick accountants to under-estimate their clients’ real wealth.

We know that less than ten thousand people own £868 million of Company shares, but the value of land, property, rare wines, Old Masters, furniture, jewellery, yachts, buildings, vintage cars are anybody’s guess, and the economists argue about whether such assets should be assessed at “saleable” or “investment” values.

Wealthy people regularly evade tax by “gifts” and presentations, Trust Funds and Foundations like Nuffield Foundation and Ford Foundation. Also by “Generation Skipping” — bequeathing shares and investments to grandchildren seven years before decease, which is tax exempt.

Various attempts have been made to "guesstimate” the real wealth of the British capitalist class; one is £92 billion—£92,000,000,000—£92 thousand million (A. B. Atkinson) but however near the truth this may be, we can establish what some capitalists own, and how much they spend—on nonsense.

Harry Hyams (Property) £27 millions, John Sainsbury (Retail Trade) £30 millions, Sir John Ellerman (Ships) £150 millions.

Professor Atkinson has pointed out that Ellerman’s pittance would pay British Rail’s total wage bill for four months.

Henry Ford is being sued by his fellow-directors for £25 millions misappropriated.

Eric Miller, before committing suicide, had spent over £3,000 on champagne for Harold Wilson and £2,000,000 on a private plane.

Olga Deterding, the Shell Oil millionairess, left £47 millions.

The reason Callaghan refuses to pay hospital porters and cleaners more than £42 a week is to maintain these blood-suckers in ridiculous luxury.

The P. & O. Line reports their £58,000 world cruises are overbooked. When Claridges hotel kitchen staff were on strike the manageress was asked “whether the lunch service was impeded”. “Oh No! she replied, we are full every day." The “lunch is £33-00, without wine or service

Estate agents in Hampstead report a shortage of “desirable properties of £1 million or over. One changed hands recently for £8½ million.

Each week the News of the World reports the Wills of the Week—the money they left. Here is one week in February:

Mr. A. Wallace ... £1.641.169
Mr. A. Wood       £ 514.263
Mr. M. Greg       £ 514,263

Not very big capitalists these—small fry, compared to the Duke of Westminster’s one and a quarter million a year in rent.

Finally, one has only to watch the displays of vulgar opulence on TV like Callaghan at the Lord Mayor’s banquet at the City Guildhall, where more food is thrown into the pig-bin than would meet the City dustmen’s modest demands.

Callaghan, with his £23,000 a year, has the impudence to tell Trade Unionists that “there is no more money available”.

The Trade Unions should now see the folly of pouring money into Labour Party funds, to support a Labour Government intent on breaking their strikes.

There’s money in the kitty all right;—as Karl Marx pointed out years ago, "it’s not the smallness of the bowl but the workers’ spoons” which prevent them gaining a decent livelihood.

Horatio

Fireside Reflections (1943)

From the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

I drew my chair to the fire and settled down to a quiet perusal of the evening paper, the Glasgow Evening Times (January 2nd 1943). As I read, certain noises impinged upon my ears, "Bang, rat-tat-tat. Boom." Then suddenly, "I've got you." “You're dead," a small body slithered to the floor. It started all over again. "You're a German," “I'm an Aussie." Their baby sister was brought into it. "You're an Italian." Taking cover behind the chairs (pardon, rocks), the battle was quickly in full swing again.

What is this in the paper about Roosevelt on Peace Planning? Nothing about the cause of war. For example, “Men had come to see that the maintenance and safeguarding of peace was the most vital single necessity in the lives of each and all of us. All planning for the future was dependant obviously on peace." There was more that had little informative value, and it finished with : "All kinds of planning for the future—economic, social and so on— was not an awful lot of use if there was going to be another war in 10 or 15 years."

Roosevelt expects this system to continue, and if necessary to protect the peace with armed force. Socialists are in no doubt in their answer—repeatedly they have pointed out that if a sane system of society is to be established, the cause of war must be understood by workers. Time after time in the Socialist Standard has the root cause of wars —the private property institution—been exposed, and so long as that system continues, so long may wars be expected, and when the next one comes along, the children in this one are learning to fight the next.

"Hands up." The Italian was captured, and baby sister had to stick them up.

I turned the page, and was presented with the problem of "Britain's Dwindling Population." Some questions appeared in the article, such as: ''Why are people no longer having so many children? Is it desirable to concentrate on quality or quantity of population? Can we arrest the decline? " Some conclusions appeared as well.

"Experience seems to show, however, that you cannot bribe people into having children."

"Richard and Kathleen Titmuss, in their remarkable study of the falling birth-rate, emphasise that family allowances have in no country resulted in higher fertility." The fall in the birth-rate of the people (over 2,000,000 of them) who have incomes over £250 per annum is greater than the fall in the rest of the population who have incomes of £250 per annum and less. Again the problem is flirted with—the expectation that in this present system the problem can be solved. Is it not obvious that intelligent workers can see happening to their children's lives what has happened to them in their lives? What monetary inducement can be offered to wage-slaves, who have suffered the consequences of wage-slavery, to introduce new lives to a similar situation? We workers have witnessed the trials, the horrors, the ceaseless struggles to lessen our burdens. Workers tramped the streets looking for work. Marched on London to demonstrate the misery of our lot. Suffered the means test. Ceased work to forcibly present to our masters our grievances. Were regimented into the Army, Navy, and Air Force, into factories, to fight, bleed, toil and sweat for a cessation of hostilities that will eventually be the prelude of more strivings and strainings, horrors and wars. Unless workers democratically and freely discuss and face the problems that confront them, and again make every effort to unite, not to fight the master class, but to abolish the capitalist system—" What was that? ” "Bang," "Boom," the rush of little feet. " Rat-tat-tat-tat." A small body fell again to the floor. "You're dead.” The play may in time turn to reality.

We Socialists claim justly and logically that we have the solution to the workers' problems, and we invite every worker, irrespective of race or colour, to our meetings to discuss their problems, and we hope that every worker will resolve to eliminate his difficulties through Socialist understanding.

F. and D.

Finance and Industry: Trouble in Agriculture (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trouble in Agriculture

One of the big question marks over the Common Market talks has to do with agriculture. British farmers are worried about what might happen to them if Britain is accepted by the Six, and Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are afraid for their exports of wheat, meat, and dairy produce.

British fruit growers and market gardeners see a dire threat to their interests from efficient Dutch production and from cheap Italian output ripened under natural sunshine instead of in heated glasshouses. And if Denmark eventually joins there will also be intensified competition from Danish bacon and butter.

But looming over all of them, British or Common Market, is the shadow of French competition. Only now beginning to rise to its full potentialities, with one half of the total agricultural land of the Six, the most favourable climate for agriculture in Europe, and soil fertility higher than the average, French agriculture threatens them all. With a negligible amount of farm machinery at work on its farms after the war, it is now mechanising rapidly. Tractors and combine harvesters are now replacing animals and men in ever-increasing numbers.

The shadow of surplus

Production has been rising steadily in recent years and the French Government is becoming increasingly concerned about rapidly mounting surpluses of cereals, butter and milk products, and beef, as well as fruit and vegetables. This year there will be a record wheat harvest of 13 million tons (the previous highest was 11½  million tons in 1959) which compares with the present U.K. estimate of 3.3 million tons. The French export surplus is likely to exceed in fact the total U.K. output.

The situation will be eased somewhat since the maize crop has been cut to a quarter of normal by drought. But this year’s results in general have served to re-inforce the warning to the rest of Europe that with every year that passes France will be a more and more dangerous threat—and to the French Government that they are in for bigger and bigger headaches. The French Minister of Agriculture has already announced that “ the fighting aim of 1963 will be the conquest of the external markets.”

The same pattern

As usual under capitalism, this ever increasing production is coming from fewer and fewer workers. Statistics show that, as in most other countries, the population living off the land is falling. The farmers are leaving the land and going into the towns. In France, there are 12 per cent. less people in agriculture than there were six years ago. Just how far this process still has to go is shown by the fact that it still leaves 20 per cent. of the population on the land, compared with 3 per cent. in this country.

There are clearly still great changes to come in French agriculture—and their repercussions are likely to be wide.

More absurdity

The shattering losses made by B.O.A.C. this year (no less than £65 million) reflect once more the crazy capitalist world we live in.

One of the main reasons for these losses has been, we are told, the frantic efforts made by the company to keep up with the constant developments in aircraft. So swift are the changes that planes have to be put on the scrap heap long before they have given their full term of useful life. That nearly all the other major airlines of the world are doing the same thing, and suffering equally crippling losses in the process, only makes the situation more farcical.

The apologist for capitalism will, of course, reply that progress must always be allowed full scope and that the new planes constantly coming forward will be better and safer than their predecessors. Even this is not true. The Press has been full of stories recently about whether safety is not being sacrificed in the bitter struggle among the national airlines. Allegations have been made that the strain of the new and ever more complicated aircraft on their pilots is becoming too intense, that they are being worked more hours than is safe, and that many airfields are just incapable of meeting properly the demands of the new machines.

Tailpiece

We discuss elsewhere Professor Titmuss’s new book exploding the myth of growing economic equality—a subject incidentally to which we have ourselves given attention in recent issues. Samuel Brittan in the Observer (he is Economic Editor) gave a useful review of it recently. But the most interesting few lines of his article were those in which he defined the capitalist class in a paragraph at the end. Here they are:

  The existence of a separate class of people who own the means of production (including land) and are not therefore dependent on their own personal earning power is still the basic characteristic of capitalism. . . .

Our own definition, in fact. True he spoils it all by bringing in Russia later on, but it’s a crumb of enlightenment al! the same.

Stan Hampson

Not what it used to be (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich are always sensitive about the sufferings of the poor; not, of course, to the point of being willing to get off their backs, but at least to the point of being glad to be told from time to time that the poor are not as poor as they used to be and that if any are it is their own fault. Such assurance is a great comfort to the rich. It carried them safely through the miseries of a dozen slumps and made them (and still makes them) genuinely indignant whenever the workers come out on strike, because, as the newspapers always inform them, strikes were justified in the bad old days but not now when everything is so nearly perfect. How are they to know that the newspapers were saying exactly the same in the “bad old days," twenty, forty, a hundred years ago?

About a hundred years ago Marx and others were commenting on the great inequality of income and property between the workers and the property owners. Already the defenders of capitalism were at work suggesting that it used to be even more unequal and that things were improving daily. Ever since then there has been a continuous stream of that kind of propaganda. It was flowing strongly in the depression between the wars, as the following samples show:

  It appears safe to say that the distribution of capital is less unequal than it was before the war. (Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1936). 

  . . . the great re-distribution of wealth and income that has happened in this country since the war. . . . (Times Literary Supplement, 7 March 1936. 

  The gap between rich and poor in this country shows every sign of continuing to grow smaller. (Star, 9 April 1936).

The line has changed since then; not that it has been given up, but the dates have been altered and the great improvement is now supposed to have taken place since 1936. not before. In truth, apart from the continued post-war conditions of very low unemployment (which does not look so secure now) the main features of ownership of capital and division and of national income appear to have altered very little over a long period. Which explains why the stream of propaganda about alleged growing equality gets interrupted from time to time by statistical inquiries showing how little, if any, change there actually has been.

We have just had such an inquiry in Professor Titmuss’ Income Distribution and Social Change (Allen and Unwin, 25s.). He refers to the widespread opinion among politicians and economists that this country had become more a much more equal society than it was before the war and sets out to examine again the statistical material on which this opinion has rested. He makes many criticisms of the material on national income distribution and the way it has been interpreted (and also some criticisms of statistics of ownership of wealth). He holds that the earlier studies may have reached wrong conclusions: there is, he claims, need for a re-examination because the belief in greater equality of income distribution may be seriously in error.

But no matter what Professor Titmuss writes about it, the propaganda claiming that things are better than they were will persist.

Among other reasons, it always suits the political party in power to argue that its policies have had or will have a beneficial effect in the direction of diminishing poverty and it can be taken as certain that there will be an almost universal agreement in the Press and elsewhere not to consider doing anything that matters about the fundamental social issue of the means of production and distribution, land, factories, etc., being owned by a small minority of the population. A case in point is the review of Titmuss' book by Samuel Brittan in the Observer (Sept, 30th, 1962). He recognises, as does Titmuss, that distribution of income cannot be considered apart from the ownership of wealth, and actually remarks that "the whole subject of inequality is largely discussed without hypocrisy. The basic question is the ownership of personal wealth.” Yet this promising opening leads on to the pettifogging and irrelevant proposal that there should be “a moderate and graduated annual tax on personal wealth in the upper incomes.”

Just how this is supposed to alter the basic situation is not explained.

Edgar Hardcastle

Grand Old Dukes of York (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before:

"For the first time, racism is to be written into British law. British citizens are to be excluded because their skins are dark, or their grandfathers foreign . . .  In the past we have voted and worked for the Labour Party. This is the turning point. We cannot see ourselves voting for a party that goes through with this policy". 

— letter to The Times 27 February signed, among others, by Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend.

After:

"Some of your readers might like to know that we have no intention of quitting either the Labour Party or the Labour movement. In reacting to the Government's Bill on the Kenya Asians, we wanted to say that this was a turning point in our attitudes to some of the policies of the present Government. Without changes in policy our allegiance will be in question. But as always we would do what we can to influence discussion about social policy within the Labour movement”.

—letter to Tribune 8 March signed by Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend.