Greasy Pole: Plain Words (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody in their right mind – that is to say nobody who has an inkling of how this social system operates –would have been impressed by the assurances that the Bain enquiry into the firefighters’ pay claim was really “independent”. (There are a number of words in this article in inverted commas. This may irritate some readers, much as it does the writer. The purpose is to encourage scepticism about the use of such words.) As a start, let us assert that the whole concept of “independence” is false, just as the popular idea of a “fair” wage, a “deserved” pay rise are false. These are delusions resting on the assumption that wages are fixed by how useful the wage earners’ work is and that somewhere and somehow out there there is a wage which is “fair” because it exactly reflects that usefulness, or how strenuous someone’s work is and how it compares to other, similar, jobs. There is no way that any enquiry, no matter how “independent”, could make any sense of this, no way it could untangle such a mish-mash of delusions.

So they don’t try. Enquiries into wage claims have a number of other uses. Firstly they are often a ruse by which employers and governments representing the employing class to postpone the time for a decision, allowing them to strengthen their defences. When the firefighters called their first, two-day, strike they were denounced by ministers from Tony Blair downwards for acting with unreasonable haste when they should have waited for the Bain report in the confidence that it would be “fair” to them because it was “independent”. The firefighters were right to be sceptical because what Bain had been set to do was to lay down the case for a lower pay rise while the Fire Service was “modernised” – in other words while it co-operated in cutting its work force.

Firefighters and Bankers

There was much anger during the strike because of the feeling that the firefighters’ pay did not properly reflect their “worth”. In fact this anger, although it was supportive of the strikers, was misplaced. Wages do not rely on the worth of what a person does. If they were measured in that way firefighters and nurses and sewage workers, instead of bankers, currency dealers and royals, would be turning up for work in Rolls Royces. The only way to make sense of this apparent anomaly is to recognise that all wages are essentially determined, at any one time, by the relationship between the forces of supply of, and demand for, the labour power of the workers concerned. If the demand for nurses’ working ability outstrips the supply of it (always providing that the nurses assert their bargaining power) their wages will rise. If the opposite applies there will be a downward influence on their wages.

This reality is often used to justify companies offering big money to their higher management. “We have to do this,” runs the argument, “in order to attract people of the right calibre to run this great company of ours.” And it is used when MPs are debating whether to accept a proposal (from another, but rather different, “fair” and “independent” enquiry) to give themselves the kind of rise firefighters can only dream about, to attract highly qualified and capable people away from industry, commerce or the law or wherever to govern this great country of ours. This was how it was put by Robin Cook, Leader of the Commons, on 5 July 2002 when the Members were discussing (it was hardly a debate) the suggestion that they award themselves a 42 per cent rise:

“I do not think we impress the public if we set too low a value on our own worth . . . if we believe our work here is important we should not shrink from putting a proper value on it.”

This was not the kind of argument which the government would allow for the firefighters. And it was not how Bain saw the situation:

“Even allowing for the risks and dangers of the service, firefighters compare well with similar jobs in the public and private sectors . . .When holidays, pension arrangements and job security are taken into account, they are even better placed. This is borne out by the recruitment and retention figures, which show large numbers of applicants for each Fire service vacancy, even during a period of steady economic growth.”

In other words, the firefighters’ claim was undermined because the supply of their labour power outstrips the demand for it.

Candidates

There is, however, a contradiction here, which goes some way to illustrate the implacable way in which the wage labour economy of capitalism works and the cynicism of the system’s rulers. Because if there is one job in which there is a surplus of supply over demand, it is that of an MP. To begin with there is the matter of the number of candidates standing for each seat; lots of competition there. In the 2001 general election it was a rare constituency which had less than five on the list. Seven or eight was not unusual. There is no record of any heckler suggesting that, as there was such competition in the matter of aspirant MPs, whoever won the seat should take a cut in wages. Then there is the fact that, at least in the bigger parties, there had often been a fierce struggle to get the nomination in the first place, with a large number of runners whittled down to a short list.

This process was illustrated in the case of Ted Heath, who after the 1945 election scratched around from one seat to another in Kent before he was adopted for Bexley. The Tories in Ashford rejected him because he would not agree to give up his command of a Territorial Army regiment and to refuse the offer of a ministerial job in a future government. (The successful candidate later told him that he lost the vote because he turned up for his crucial interview on a Saturday morning improperly dressed, in a dark blue suit and a stiff collar. Heath grumpily recalled that he did not then possess either article.) At Rochester and Chatham they said they wanted an MP who would make it into the Cabinet and “I am afraid,” said the Tory chairman, “that we do not think that you will ever hold an office of any kind.” At Sevenoaks it was rather simpler; Heath turned up late and made a bad speech.

Heseltine and Clark

Michael Heseltine had to show willing by contesting some safe Labour seats – Gower and Coventry North – before he got the chance of a safe seat at Tavistock. Even then the decision hung in the balance because he upset the straighter-laced Tavistock Tories when a men’s fashion magazine he owned – Town – featured that month an Ursula Andress lookalike on its cover. After he had won the nomination he heard from some women that they had voted for him because they liked his wife’s hat. When Tavistock disappeared under the knife of the Boundary Commission in 1970 he failed to get the nod at Mid Oxfordshire, where he was not even short–listed and then Mid Sussex before the Tories of Henley took him – and perhaps his wife’s hats – to their bosoms.

The odious Alan Clark tried to get himself selected from the late 1960s, trawling through what he called “a Litany of constituency names” in his notebook before he succeeded in Plymouth Sutton. This success required his attendance at a cocktail party with his wife – sorely tried, ever supportive as Tory wives are supposed to be. Let us hope they let him off lightly in the subsequent question-and-answer session for it must have been a grave affront to the conceit of that callous, arrogant man who seemed to despise and hate a considerable mass of the human race including – especially including – those in his own party. “That shower” was how he described the Tories at Ashchurch. “Imprisoned . . . by their own guilt” was how he saw the local party executive at Langstone. For the Tories in Plymouth Sutton he reserved some special venom: “Total shits . . . no purpose in life other than to bicker and back bite – degrade everything above a certain level of mediocrity.”

Modernising

It is not only in the matter of failing to accept that their wages should be set by the forces of supply and demand that MPs fail to keep to the standards they try to set down for the rest of us. Nick Raynsford, the minister responsible for the Fire Service, is a man who has outraged some of his former admirers who never thought him capable of the breathtaking cynicism he displayed in his transformation into an ardent Blairite. He was notably brutal and overbearing in his verbal assaults on the firefighters. A recurring theme of his comments was what he saw as the FBU’s refusal to move to “more streamlined, focussed and flexible” working arrangements. Coming from an MP, that was a bit rich. The House of Commons cannot move to its business, which is supposed to be so vital to the interests of us all, without the security of a load of archaic symbolism and rituals – like bowing to the Speaker, going in procession to the House of Lords after someone in knee britches called Black Rod has knocked three times on the door of the chamber – or perhaps he is called Black Door and knocks on three rods – unable to do anything unless the Mace is in its place on the table, never using each other’s names because they must address people they know to be ruthless scoundrels as “Honourable Members”, never calling anyone a liar because they can only refer to “misleading the House”. For outdated practises the FBU has nothing on Parliament.

We can stumble around this maze of apparent contradictions, blind alleys and deceit (which is what wage negotiations often do) for a long time when the matter is essentially simple. This social system depends on wage labour – on the exploitation of one class by the other. The “worth” of what we work at, what we produce or organise, is simply not in the equation of how much we are paid. Neither are “justice” or “fairness”. These are concepts introduced to cloud over the basic fact that capitalism exists in the interests of only the ruling class and that obscure language is too often used to that end.

Ivan

Party News: Livingston By-Election (2005)

Party News from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood a candidate in the Livingston by-election, in central Scotland, on 29 September, caused by the death of former "ethical" Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. As it took place while this issue was at the printers we are unable to report the result, but details of the campaign as it progressed and its outcome can be found on the by-election blog at http://realsocialism.blogspot.com

World View: In whose interests? (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In late January, Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary and master of Orwellian double-speak, made another keynote speech, devoid this time of any reference to “ethical dimensions” to foreign policy and instead focused on the advancing of “British values” of freedom and democracy around the world in the “national interest”.

Although he made references to “common interests”, “international interests”, and “national identity”, as well as the token allusion to democracy and diplomacy, it was the rehashing of the term “national interest” that sickened all but the brainwashed.

Cook speaks of national interest as politicians have for the past century, as if it were something tangible, something that can be seen, something unquestionable. It is indeed a much bandied about term—and many are prepared to take it for granted—but what does it mean?

Well, for one thing, it’s not something the lay person ponders too much. After all, if the politicians think something is in our interests then it must be just that. They know best and if we didn’t trust them we wouldn’t have voted for them. This is, in fact, the kind of mind-set politicians count upon before they can come out with such drivel.

That politicians continue to use terms like national interest is evidence that they premise their speeches on the assumption that the average person on the street is an imbecile. Moreover, the term is so designed, and used, as to distort our perception of reality. From the cradle to the grave we are discouraged from asking significant and searching questions, the type that might embarrass our betters and superiors. We are nurtured to mistrust our own ideas, to respect the views of the clergy, teachers, parents, politicians, the royals and all manner of counsellors and advisers. Little wonder, then, that so many injustices prevail and that so many can speak in defence of the government line, unwittingly acquiescing in their own exploitation, all in the national interest. But this is how it is. So many are prepared to accept that the government embodies the people’s interests.

The national interest conjures up an image that we are all one happy family, all pulling and working together for the good of all, that we all have something to be proud of, to defend and to benefit from. It suggests an absence of strife and antagonism and that the real enemy is “out there”. We’re meant to feel good about the national interest, secure in the knowledge that the well informed are thinking on our behalf. It harks back to the “bulldog spirit” of the blitz years, when even the king and queen seemed half decent because they had been bombed (“Gawd bless ’em all, Guv.”).

In reality, the national interest is anything the master class and their executive, the Blairs and Chiracs and Clintons of this world, deem it to be at any given time, or rather anything that helps perpetuate their ideology and keeps them in power; anything that can undermine the potential for political action geared towards real change. The national interest is the paternalistic jargon of a profit-hungry elite, trying to rationalise in our eyes the lengths they will go to accrue more profits at our expense. It is used by politicians largely to secure support for a course of action they are finding difficult to promote. It is designed to block serious discussion of an issue—who’ll argue against the national interest?—and to marginalise opponents, thus stifling deeper understanding of issues.

Thus, the national interest is a Labour government contemplating the selling of arms to Indonesia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, the mobilisation of a Western coalition of 750,000 soldiers to tackle a third-world army of farmers in the Middle East. It is a government campaign urging us to shop our neighbours to the state’s protectors. It is an army of police wading into a picket line, truncheons swinging. It is the appointment of drug tsars and the teaching of the benefits of marriage to schoolchildren. The national interest is the Russian army in Chechnya, the USA in Vietnam, Israel’s airforce bombing Lebanon, and Uganda supporting Congolese rebels.

One thing is clear, while all the above can be pushed as national interests, none are in the interests of the working class. The interests of the majority—or the working class—are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist, class. True, we all have basic needs and desires. whichever class we belong to, but talk about shared interests in a two class society is nonsense. The capitalist class have one real interest—and let them deny it—to maximise their investment and to accrue more profit. How many people get hurt and trod on in the process is of no consequence. Neither is much consideration given to environmental concerns. The working class, on the other hand, own little more than our ability to labour, an ability we sell to the master class. Our interest under capitalism becomes getting the best price for our labour power. Indeed such is the onus on us to sell our labour power at as a high a price as possible that its consequences dominate every aspect of our lives.

It has to be remembered that the master class depend on our complacency for their continued survival. Our silence, our willingness to accept everything they say without question, is the victory they celebrate every day. Our job should therefore be to doubt and question everything they say. If we stand for nothing we fall for anything. For we do have interests. As a globally exploited class, denied so many of the benefits of civilisation in a world of potential abundance, it is in our interests, our real class interests, to help put a stop to their insane system, not just for the future of humanity, but for the future of our planet.

Our real class interests lie in establishing a global system of society, devoid of borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion, money, wages or salaries, a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to its fullest potential and the benefit of all.

John Bissett

The Moral Craze (1998)

From the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A miserable moral anxiety is in the air. The self-righteous are on the march. Wrong. Right. Good. Evil. Simplistic moral certainties blast from the megaphones of the media, as the high priests of Capital cast their judgements upon everything but the lousy system of class exploitation that keeps the vicars, the rabbis, the mullahs and assorted other bullies in business.

From presidential blow jobs to ex-murderers signing book deals, an obsession with the trivia of individual transgressions serves as a soap opera distraction from the pervasive atrocities of the system. How much easier it is to incite crowds of under-educated, aimless, embittered kids to riot in Bristol because a sex offender released from prison is sitting in a police cell thinking deranged thoughts than to attend to the malignant rationality of a social system which condemns millions of children to the fatal abuse of starving in a world of plenty.

We know what the Moors’ murderers did. We know where they are. We know that Evil is getting its due reward. And how easy it is to sit in perpetual anger, demonising their villainy. We are told their names and their crimes are repeated with regularity in a frenzy of tabloid outrage, as if these were the sole disrupters of an otherwise tranquil society. We do not see published the names of those decision-makers in the World Bank whose determination to cut aid here and finance dictators there has led to millions dwelling in poverty and perishing needlessly. There are no scowling mugshots of those men in suits from the IMF who enrich themselves upon the corpses of those who cannot be milked for profit. Where are the lurid tabloid accounts of the sordid merchants of death who jet from nation to nation attending arms fairs, exchanging millions of dollars for the latest weapons of murder, the most sophisticated torture equipment, the means of creating hell on earth? For such callous inhumanity they will be medalled, given knighthoods, made richer than the most violent of gangsters could hope to become. It is a highly selective morality that capitalism embraces.

Jack Straw, the man who shopped his own son to the police for possessing dope, appears in front of every camera that will recognise him. He is in a denouncing mood. He has been taking lessons from Michael Howard. He is Disgusted of New Labour, ready to write to his MP and demand that something is done when it occurs to him–I am an MP, so I can pursue my philistine rage in the name of justice. So the tabloid rags, with their naked models and naked lies, provide space for the Straw man to denounce the child killer who was paid money for helping to write a book about what, as a deranged child, had made her kill. Thatcher demands $25,000 a time to appear before worshipping Americans with her kiss-and-tell Falklands memories. The murdered conscript crew of the Belgrano is conveniently unmentioned either by Thatcher or the tabloid bog rolls. But Straw is not denouncing Thatcher. Neither is Blair. They are out to pick on an old woman who has written a book regretting that she had once committed a hideous offence. Is it the money that they begrudge her? Or the fact that she has dared to confuse the simplicity of witch-hunting by expressing remorse?

Sickening hypocrisy

How convenient these moral distractions are for those with an indefensible system to sustain. So, Robin Cook insists that he did not know–or forgot–or wasn’t as bad as the Tories had been if he did indeed know–that arms were being sold to mercenaries in Sierra Leone, even though international law forbade it. Call in the broadsheet detectives who will piece by piece, in the manner of a bad Agatha Christie novel, seek to unravel the story. There is a rather bigger story they will ignore, of course. Who are the regimes to which Mr Cook is quite happy and legally free to sell weapons of mass destruction? When last did the Foreign Office publish a list of those companies in Britain which make profits from selling torture equipment to dictators? And how big are those profits? And what precisely has happened to those upon whom they have been used? Can we expect a statement about that, Mr Cook? Perhaps the tortured and the bombed should be informed that these

British weapons have been sold in the name of an “ethical foreign policy”. A further twist of the knife. But Cook can rest easy in his bed, for the journalists are much more concerned about who he shares it with than how many lives he helps to ruin as head of one of the biggest arms-exporting nations in the world. Now, that’s what the public need to know: Was Robin Cook unfaithful to his wife? Will he be unfaithful to his new wife? And was Bill Clinton the innocent victim of a crazed young girl’s fantasy or was she the victim of a dirty old man’s fantasy? And what about OJ Simpson–and George Michael–and Michael Jackson–and on and on until a frenzy or moral anxiety scares everyone into trusting no-one, particularly themselves. Because when the majority are frightened and unconfident they trust the nearest bully who will tell them that his mob can keep the streets safe.

Law and Order.

We have always known that Labour and Tories support the same system. The current fashion for shocked or amused realisation that Blair is to Major what Major was to Blair is no postmodern irony–just what socialists have been saying for decades. But can even the most hardened of scientific socialists be permitted just the merest morsel of surprise at the ease with which New Labour has taken to its very heart–or, more probably, its Christian soul–the indecently unforgiving, excessively punitive, uncouthly scapegoating rhetoric which seeks to monopolise virtue as a state asset while condoning every crime of capitalism as if it has nothing at all to do with them? The fine-tuned skills of sickening hypocrisy have exceeded all negative expectations.

The worst of this obsession with personal moral transgressions is its failure to see anti-social behaviour as anything but inner weakness: an inherent flaw. So the fault must be purged–isolated–tormented–anything but understood. And this is the right way for capitalism to respond. Because the alternative would be to go beyond the tabloid simplicities of crime and punishment and seek the cause of what makes killers kill and sex offenders offend and muggers mug. There is the Saudi Arabian response–of which New Labour’s toughness is a cowardly imitation–which refuses to ask questions. And if you cut off the hands of enough shoplifters and whip enough adulterers it will not be too long before the message is driven home and only the most persistent offenders need to be tortured, killed or incarcerated. Elegantly simple. The more complicated alternative of seeking causes is not that difficult. Most child sex abusers were themselves victims of child sex abuse. Most muggers are from families that are poor and uneducated rather than affluent and privileged. Many rapists have immersed themselves in commercially packaged porn, appealing to their disempowered craving for respect and power, before they rape women. In short, the behaviour of those we least like arises from specific social relationships. We cannot ignore or approve of the relationships and then indulge in orgies of moral indignation because they produce inevitable social effects.

Steve Coleman

Greasy Pole: Tories lying low? (1998)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Tory Party moves in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform. Well that bit about performing wonders may explain how they are moving at the present—which is mysterious indeed. We refer to the fact that, just over a year since Tony Blair moved into Number Ten, the Conservative Party seems bent on convincing everyone that they are in a condition rather like those persistent comas which often affect the victims of serious accidents. They are almost immobile. They make hardly a sound. Anxious friends gather round, wondering whether it is true yet to switch off the beeping life-support machine.

While it is true that William Hague is active and noisy, often outsmarting Blair in the puerile exchanges of Prime Minister’s Questions (which sends the sparsely occupied benches behind him into raptures) the same cannot be said for the rest of the Tory Shadow ministers. For example the career of Robin Cook at the Foreign Office has so far been a succession of crises—without counting those on his domestic scene. A most recent of these has been the arms-to-Sierra Leone affair, which threatened to implicate him over the breaches of a United Nations embargo on sending weapons to that unhappy country. But through all his difficulties it seems that Cook has been able to rely on his opposite number not to make things more difficulty by behaving like—well, his opposite number.

For those who don’t know it—and there must be many—Cook is shadowed by Michael Howard, who used to be a Home Secretary who would bring the House down at Tory Conferences with his promises to have half the population in prison and the other half keeping them there. Howard made a name for himself as a political bruiser (as Jack Straw once found out, to his obvious discomfort) and he was expected to give Cook a very, very rough ride. When he did speak on the issue it was not with his customary ruthlessness.

Mary Bell

Then there is the case of the man Howard savaged in the Commons. Jack Straw looks and sounds like a person oppressed by visions of marauding teenagers out late at night, washing the windscreens of strangers’ cars when they should be at home doing their homework. Straw’s quick-fire populist responses to every vote-worthy incident in the lad-and-order filed makes the knee-jerk reactions for which Thatcher’s Home Secretaries were notorious look positively elephantine. Consider, for example, his desperate attempts to cash in on the tabloid frenzy over the Gita Sereny book about Mary Bell. There is no question that Mary Bell did an awful thing—although how awful it was in comparison to the mass murder in wars which the Labour Party so eagerly supports is another question. It was probably an unwise move by the author, to pay Mary Bell for being interviewed for the book—although how this should be worse than the arms industry making profits by supplying dictatorships in places like Indonesia is something to ponder on.

But these were side issues. The gutter press, ignoring the fact that some of them had made large offers to Mary Bell for her story, saw a wonderful opportunity to create the kind of self-righteous panic which helps them sell so many copies. Faced with a surge of mob hysteria demanding all manner of irrelevant, illegal or impractical things, Straw might have taken a stand, instead he acted in what we suppose must be called his character and posed as the mob’s friend in High Places.

After 1945

The Shadow Home Secretary is Brian Mawhinney, who during his time as Tory Party chairman had plenty of practice in the business of reconstructing reality and seizing every opportunity to make a party point. Naively, it might have been expected that Mawhinney would have wanted to expose Straw’s disgraceful behaviour, if only to make a few people wonder whether there was more to him than a dishonest party hack. But from Mawhinney there was no comment worth so much as a mention in the media. Perhaps he was submissively contemplating his own boredom, which is rumoured to be responsible for Hague’s intention to ditch him at the coming reshuffle.

Stephen Dorrell, who was a minister in the last government and who may yet become Conservative leader, had recently said that his party is deliberately keeping silent because the voters simply don’t want to hear from them for a couple of years. Dorrell says that was how the Tories behaved after their defeat in 1945 but that hardly fits the facts. As in 1997, in 1945 the Conservative were damaged by a reputation for cynicism and complacency. They were held responsible for the inter-war slumps and for collusion with Nazi Germany, which led to the outbreak of war. But their reaction to electoral defeat was anything but despairing. Under the chairmanship of Woolton they at once set about reorganising their party.

One effect of this was to turf out many of the vacuous buffoons who rarely spoke in, or even attended, the Commons but who had won the nomination for a safe Tory seat by contributing handsomely to the local party’s funds. It was among these Honourable members that the Nazis had their most enthusiastic supporters. Another effect was the production of a series of policy statements—like the Industrial Charter, which was approved at the 1947 Tory Conference, described by its originator R. A. Butler in his memoirs as

” . . . an assurance that, in the interests of efficiency, full employment and social security, modern Conservatism would maintain strong central guidance over the operation of the economy.”

Election winners

And there was the emergence of the Tory Party, out from the genteel exchanges of coffee mornings and whist drives into the crude robustness of the outdoor meeting. This was quite a shock to them, not to mention to their audiences but it was all intended to prove that the party had changed; it had taken the lesson of the defeat to heart and it was now a party which cared and listened and acted. A people’s party in fact—and where have we heard that before?

Whatever the reason for the Conservatives being now so quiescent it would be very unwise to write them off as an electoral force, as so many did in 1945. They are among the world’s most expert election winners, which was why Blair and his acolytes decided that Labour’s best chance of being elected was to become as much like the Tories as possible. For the Conservatives there is an obvious danger in keeping so far below the parapet: stay there too long and the voters will grow up believing that Tony Blair has always ruled over us and always will—which will be neither mysterious nor wonderful.

Ivan

. . . and the food's not too good, either (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent outbreaks of salmonella and listeriosis have focussed attention on the rising incidence of food poisoning in Britain in the last few years. There have also been outbreaks of food poisoning from other organisms; campylobacter has increased threefold and rotavirus has increased fivefold in the last eight years. Both of these organisms cause diarrhoea and vomiting, and the increase is probably due to “changes in agricultural practice or changes in the commercial preparation of food" (The Independent, 23 January 1989). These changes are the result of trying to make maximum profits regardless of the risk to consumers' health.

Salmonella

The Communicable Disease Report compiled by the Public Health Laboratory stated that there were 24,123 cases of salmonella enteriditis poisoning in 1988 and 12,533 cases of salmonella enteriditis phage type 4. Salmonella infections have doubled in the last two years and 80 to 90 per cent are found to be associated with chickens and eggs (Ibid.). It is significant that this dossier is not available to the public because the state in its role as facilitator of capital regards commercial secrecy as more important than providing the public with the knowledge to avoid the risks associated with food poisoning.

It was Edwina Currie's claim that most of the egg industry was infected with salmonella that alerted the public, and led to her losing her Junior Health Minister's post for offending the powerful agricultural lobby. Further evidence of the government’s concern to protect the egg industry's profits rather than public health was demonstrated by the much publicised leaked document received by Robin Cook, Labour Party health spokesman, which showed that representatives from the Department of Health had met with the egg producers and agreed not to issue a notice that “salmonella-poisoning at two hospitals appeared to have been caused by raw eggs. It was generally better if the announcement came from the company or trade body concerned" (Morning Star, 10 February 1989).

The use of antibiotics to help animals gain weight has resulted from the European Economic Community's ban on the use of hormones in meat, since 1 January 1988, because of the risk to human health. Previously, hormones fed to cattle increased profits by putting up to an extra 100 pounds of weight on a carcass. It is thought that antibiotics also help animals to gain weight, possibly by eliminating sub-clinical infections which prevent them from gaining their optimal weight (Self Health, 20 September 1988). But the widespread use of antibiotics has led to the evolution of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, and a study by two doctors at the US Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that, compared with ordinary strains of salmonella, the death toll was 21 times higher in people infected, with resistant strains of salmonella.

A fund of £19 million was set aside by the British government to compensate the egg industry for loss of sales even though the sharp increase in salmonella poisoning has been caused by a blatant disregard for consumers' health in the way that poultry has been reared.

In fact egg sales fell by 10 to 15 per cent and only £482,000 compensation has been claimed by the egg industry (The Grocer, 21 January 1989). Of course there are no plans to compensate the relatives of those who have died or the thousands of people who have been made ill as a result of eating contaminated eggs.

Ironically, in these days when increasing numbers of people are more health-conscious of what they eat, free range eggs are more likely to cause salmonella infections according to Bill Reilly, chairman of the public health committee of the British Veterinary Association:

The big advantage of the battery system is that the egg is laid on the wire ann rolls away immediately. A free range hen may lay the egg anywhere, and faecal contamination is more likely. (British Medical Journal, 28 January 1989 )

Listeria

Listeriosis, although less common than salmonella, with 683 reported cases since 1986 and 39 deaths in 1986 and 1987 is potentially more dangerous and, because of the continuing increase in “cook-chill” methods of preparing food, likely to be seen more frequently in the future.

Listeriosis takes between five days and five weeks to develop and it is difficult to trace the source of infection. The symptoms of the disease can resemble influenza, and listeriosis may not be suspected. The disease is particularly associated with miscarriages and stillbirths, and may also cause meningitis and septicaemia in the elderly.

A study carried out by Richard Lacey, professor of clinical microbiology at Leeds University found that a quarter of a test sample of cook-chill meals bought from leading supermarkets contained the bacteria (The Grocer, 14 January 1989). But. in addition to the health risk to the public, there has been an increasing use of cook-chill methods in hospitals since its introduction in the National Health Service in 1980 and there are now 157,000 meals a day produced by 40 centres.

Hospital cooking

Birmingham's Dudley Road Hospital has one of the largest cook-chill operations in the NHS with £1.8 million purpose built food production centre (Nursing Times, 18 January 1989). The introduction of this centre led to the workforce being reduced by one-third as it took over the work previously carried out by 14 kitchen: an attractive proposition for a government intent on reducing NHS costs and creating the potential for commercial use in the future.

The centralisation of hospital catering and the construction of large district general hospitals during the last two decades has caused problems in delivering cooked food to hospital patients. The Institution of Environmental Health Officers' (Hospital and Therapeutic Kitchens Inspection Guidelines and Reporting Format, 1988, states:

The movement of prepared food within hospitals, often over considerable distances. can create many problems with temperature control. In order to be safe the internal temperature of any heated trolley or container should be raised to a minimum of 75 degrees Centigrade before any food is loaded. Food must never be allowed to fall below a temperature of 63 degrees Centigrade.

These guidelines, sensible though they may seem, are almost impossible to carry out, especially in the winter months in hospitals on large sites where food trolleys have to be transported outside to be delivered to separate ward blocks. And even when food is successfully kept hot, the prolonged "hot-holding" to which it is subjected impairs its nutritional value.

It is not surprising that some of the worst outbreaks of food poisoning during the last twenty years occurred in hospitals. It is an indictment of the quality of hospital food that some institutions looking after long-stay patients have had to provide vitamin supplements — especially vitamin C — to remedy the sub-clinical deficiencies caused by an institutional diet.

The majority of cases of food poisoning are not reported but non-attendance at work because of “diarrhoea and vomiting" has become more common in recent years. There has also been an unexplained increase in septicaemia in the elderly. The government's response has been to play down the risks and when this strategy failed John MacGregor, Minister of Agriculture, announced that there would be tough measures taken to ensure that food production is strictly monitored. But plans to extend cook-chill regulations, to make food storage safer in shops, have been suspended for 18 months because of differences between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Health.

Profits before food safety

The government has announced cuts of £25 million in research grants which will lead to 2,000 redundancies in scientific posts and severely restrict future research into food poisoning. Although the government expects the food industry to conduct its own research it is unlikely that it would benefit the consumer: experience in the drug industry has shown that research has been solely to make larger profits and is frequently against the consumer's interests.

There is undoubtedly dissatisfaction with the role the Ministry of Agriculture has played in its responsibility for food safety. However, calls to make the Ministry of Health responsible instead will only marginally improve matters because the state's function is to ensure the smooth running of capitalism and not the well-being of workers unless production is threatened.

In theory there are laws to protect the consumer, but when Sunblest bakeries were recently fined £200 plus £50 costs for selling a mouldy cake it was revealed that they'd had 146 previous convictions since 1983 (The Messenger, 20 January 1989). It is also possible to buy reject and out of date food for less than half price at London markets (Today, 20 February 1989).

In recent weeks mercury has been found in Sainsbury's butter; mineral oils, used to glaze children's sweets, have been found to cause liver damage: and tea bags, milk cartons and coffee filters have been contaminated with dioxin which can cause genetic defects and liver damage. Additionally, despite the efforts of pressure groups the number of additives used in food continues to rise. The basic problem is that food, like any other commodity, is produced solely for profit. Only the abolition of capitalism can ensure that it is completely safe for people to eat.

Carl Pinel

Sting in the Tail: Unity is Strength (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unity is Strength

We have all seen the ad. on TV in which demure Asian air hostesses pour champagne for businessmen on a Cathay Pacific flight.

This idyllic scene has been interrupted because those very same hostesses are on strike. Cathay, like every other airline in a dog-eat-dog industry, want to cut costs and have demanded that cabin attendants also perform more menial tasks.

Although the union made "significant concessions” this wasn't enough for Cathay's macho management which said it would discipline strike activists.

Now other trade unions in Hong Kong are backing the strike because: 

   "If Cathay Pacific is allowed to go ahead and dismiss people who are taking strike action, it could set a dangerous precedent for any other trade union", said Lee Chukyan, leader of the Confederation of Trade Unions.

The Guardian 26 January 

It's good to see trade unionists looking beyond their own narrow, sectional interest by giving mutual aid, but they must eventually realise that their real interest lies in helping to establish socialism rather than forever fighting their employers.

Perfect Timing

Another example of sound trade union action has been seen on Clydeside where the workers in Yarrow's shipyard have come out on strike over pay and against their union's wishes.

But what is sound about striking during a recession? The fact is that during the boom years orders for the naval ships which Yarrow's builds were scarce, so instead of making gains the workers had little option but to let management walk all over them.

Now, despite the recession, the yard's order book is full until 1997 so the workers are taking the opportunity to get some of their own back. As the yard convener said on Scottish Television on 5 February - "It's our turn now".

All too often workers hit the street when they haven't a hope of winning, but here their timing — and their chance of success — is much, much better.

True Confessions

We haven’t looked at Tribune, "Labour's Independent Weekly”, for some time because it is so boring but the issue for 8 January was very interesting.

For example, Robin Cook confesses that Labour's membership is down to "around 250,000 and declining". This is after a national recruiting drive, so mugs are obviously harder to come by these days.

But the juiciest item was the editorial’s confession about the quality of the debate now raging in Labour's ranks over which way the party should go — 

  It is impossible to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the columnists who are crowing about Labour's intellectual bankruptcy are absolutely right.

Could any Tory rag have been more damning than that? Must make a note to read Tribune more often.

Mods and Trads

That battle between Labour’s "modernisers" and "traditionalists” is really hotting up.

Clare Short MP is a trad and has made a bitter attack on the mods. She thinks their obsession with changing Labour’s image means — 

  People no longer know what Labour stands for. Many feel they cannot trust a party that appears to have dumped everything it used to believe in, and seems not to have a way forward that is different from the mess the Tories have created.

Tribune 15 January 

Of course when Labour dumped nationalisation it lost whatever distinct policy it ever had, but what is Clare Short's "way forward"7 Only the usual left-wing ideas for improving British capitalism's performance.

She wants "an industrial strategy based on . . . Japan's success in fostering long-term investment in the economy", "cuts in defence spending to restore our industrial base", etc.

And what will the workers get out of all this? "the chance to work and train and a right to decent pensions", "real equality of opportunity” for women, and so on. Can you see stuff like this having them storming the polls to vote Labour?

Merchant of Death

With the demise of the Bolshevik dictatorship and the break up of its empire Western politicians talked glowingly about a "new world order”. We were promised such goodies as a "peace dividend".

Unfortunately capitalism doesn't work that way. The hostilities in the Gulf, "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia, conflict in Palestine. It is business as usual.

Mr Major may have talked about a "peace dividend" but he has delivered a much more welcome dividend to the share holders of British Aerospace. A staggering £4-£5 billion order for bombers for Saudi Arabia.

The outcry about arms sales to Iraq seems to have subsided and anyway as a spokesman for British capitalism "nice Mr Major” must ensure that the highest sales possible come into British coffers. Profit today and to hell with the death and destruction that may follow tomorrow. It was ever thus. Whether its "nice Mr Major” or "the iron lady" Thatcher business always comes first.

Another Leak

To the Editor,

The Daily Wail,

Sir, are you aware of the many lunatics at large today? For example, those loonies who insist there is a worldwide conspiracy to install John Major as controller of the planet.

These maniacs are everywhere. There is David Icke, none of whose fearful predictions for 1992 came true, thank God, and those South Koreans who abandoned their homes, jobs and even families because they thought the world would end last November.

And I recall the Americans who some years ago fled up a mountain to escape Armageddon or some such. Still up there I shouldn’t wonder.

All this is bad enough but now I have learned of the Socialist Party. They apparently believe that society as we know it cannot last forever; that at some future date there will be no place for rulers, employers, the military or even money and everyone will actually co-operate with one another!

You, Sir, may agree with me that, compared to this Socialist Party, all the others I have mentioned are as sane as you or I.

Disgusted, 

Tunbridge Wells

More dirty work – in the Atlantic (2006)

From the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Between 1965 and 1972, the British government expelled, deported or forced out the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands, and particularly Diego Garcia, known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was because it had signed a “defence” agreement with the United States, leasing the islands to the US for an intelligence, military, and naval base and, later, a nuclear and fuelling depot for long-range bombers. The BIOT is located strategically in the centre of the Indian Ocean, so controlling it provides power and influence in the whole of Southern Asia and much of the Middle East. (See “Dirty Work in the Indian Ocean”, Socialist Standard, May 1998.)

History may never actually repeat itself exactly, but the present situation on the island of Ascension, midway between Africa and South America in the Atlantic Ocean, is very similar. In 1956, the British government leased to the United States Wakefield Airfield, now a top-secret base on Ascension. According to the Observer (12.02.06), it is one of the Pentagon’s most important military communications hubs; and is also used for troop deployments. Cable & Wireless and the BBC also have facilities on the island. Furthermore, Ascension is 1,000 miles off the oil-rich coast of West Africa.

About 1,100 people live on Ascension Island, some indigenous, many of them from St. Helena 750 miles to the south, and most of them British citizens. According to the Observer of the same date, after the Human Rights Act was adopted by the British government in 1998, the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, published a White Paper with the aim of bringing democracy to the island, as well as establishing a right of permanent abode, and full property rights, for all residents. Previously, although many of the islanders were born there, they were, and still are, only allowed to remain as long as they have jobs.

In 1999, the British government pledged that this would change. Following Ascension’s first general election in 2002, a local council was formed which went on to create a national park on the extinct volcano in the centre of the island. There was a plan to encourage eco-tourism to take advantage of the unique plant and seabird species, first discovered by Charles Darwin in 1844. Many of the islanders bought shops and other small businesses. But it was all to no avail.

In January this year, the Foreign Office minister, one Lord Triesman, wrote to the Islanders informing them that the government had changed its plans, and that “they would not have a right of abode or right of tenure”. They would be thrown out if necessary. Says the Observer:

  The Foreign Office is accused of covering up the true reason for its change in heart. Many blame the Pentagon for pressuring Britain. They believe the US wants to expand its military operations on the island and objected to plans to increase tourism. Washington does not want its activities to be subject to unwanted scrutiny. The west African coast has become of increasing strategic interest to the US, with discoveries of oil that have turned countries such as Equatorial Guinea into wealthy trading partners.

And Lord Triesman, who has allegedly bowed to the Pentagon’s wishes, or dictates? He is better known as David Triesman who, as a sociology student at the University of Essex in the summer term of 1968, was suspended, but was later reinstated following a student occupation of the university. And who wrote an essay, “The CIA and Student Politics”, in a Penguin Special book, Student Power, Problems, Diagnosis, Action, in which he exposed the CIA for financing and largely controlling the International Student conference and British NUS, adding: “The generation developing in this country will not want to pay mere lip service to the international struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racism; it will be in conflict with capitalism as the parent of these enemies.”

It would seem that the good Lord Triesman has since changed his mind regarding American Imperialism, the CIA and capitalism.

Peter E. Newell

Make A Difference (2001)

From the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Does anybody really still believe that either Labour or the Conservatives can make any difference? Is there any point in choosing between them?

Well he would say that—or something like that—wouldn’t he. His audience were not to know that what Blair meant was that his government would be so hostile to outdated dogma and ideology that they would simply carry on where the Tories had left off. For example soon after the election John Major buttonholed Jack Straw to ask why New Labour were sticking to the Tory spending plans which Kenneth Clarke, Major’s Chancellor, had described as “eye-wateringly tight”. Had the Tories been re-elected, said Major, they would never have stuck by them.

In fact Labour won that election on a minority vote—44 percent to the Conservatives 31 percent, the Liberal Democrats 17 percent and the others 7 percent. As the next election draws near, the Labour election experts are resisting any tendency to over-confidence. “This time,” said one of them recently, “we cannot afford a quiet campaign or for Hague to be ignored. The size of our majority will depend on a high turn out”. It is almost traditional among party agents and activists to assume that the lower the total vote the worse it is for Labour. So if the weather on polling day is bad, or if there has been a particularly stressful episode of Coronation Street, or if it’s football on the box—the Tories can be expected to do relatively better; they might even win some seats which they would otherwise have lost. It seems as if the very people who are supposed to benefit the most from Labour selflessly building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land can be put off from voting for it by a shower of rain or Deirdre Rashid’s latest emotional spasm or the spectacle of some millionaires kicking a football at a net.

It does not need a degree in psychology to work out that voters stay away from the poll through apathy but it does seem to need some political awareness to appreciate that a prime cause of apathy is the similarity between contesting parties which suggests that there is no point in choosing between them. This sometimes worries the parties themselves to such an extent that they feel obliged to try to highlight what they hope we will agree are fundamental differences between them. Before the last election Portillo tried to convince us that there is such a thing as a genuine Labour/Tory debate by talking about the “clear blue water” separating them. More recently Blair’s speechwriters thought he should speak out against the “forces of conservatism” (by which he did not mean just the Tory Party).

Thatcher

The Labour Party—or at least the few members who have bothered to find out about their party’s disreputable history—should be haunted by memories of 1931, when their leaders finally conceded that as their policies were so similar to those of Stanley Baldwin’s Conservatives they might as well go the whole hog and form a government together. Apart from anything else this deprived Labour of some charismatic and well-known leaders like Macdonald and Thomas and replaced them with the lachrymose George Lansbury and later the reserved, colourless Clement Attlee—who, when he became Prime Minister in 1945, showed that he was anything but mousy and compliant. One effect of the events of 1931 was to sustain the idea that Labour was actually engaged in a fight with the Tories, who were basically different. That illusion kept a lot of party members going, through the worst defeat of their history. What is the situation now?

Blair came to power at a time when Thatcher had gained a reputation for being a kind of mad woman in the tower. Thatcherism was a new swearword for a supposed policy of deliberately creating unemployment through destroying swathes of a once powerful manufacturing industry, with the effect of grinding down the poorest in society while cracking down on anyone who tried to keep their head above water through offending against the system’s property laws. If all this got too much for the voters to stomach, their doubts could be diverted by a jingoist stimulant like the war in the Falklands. Capitalism is always ugly but that was a a time when it was grotesquely so.

So how did Blair signal that all that was at an end? Well as soon as he could spare time from organising a few necessities like Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation to the party he forgot all he had ever said about Thatcher laying waste to British jobs and industry and popped round to get some advice from her on the best way to run British capitalism. In her turn Thatcher made it clear that she preferred Blair to her successor John Major, who had disappointed a lot of Tories as a flaccid nonentity. This opinion was not just a passing aberration by someone driven out of her mind by all those years of being the most powerful person in Britain, hobnobbing with—and bullying when she could get away with it—other heads of state. Before the election Blair had so impressed Viscount Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, with his intention to “reform” the welfare state that the Tory press baron swung his newspaper into support for New Labour on the grounds that they were the “new Conservatives”. And Alistair McAlpine, who was Thatcher’s Party Treasurer and remains one of her keenest admirers, praised Blair as “…a damn sight more Conservative than John Major…a Thatcherite… a man of principle…quite princely.” (McAlpine was accustomed to speak his mind. He once described Major as “hanging about like a pair of curtains”).

Single Parents

Blair’s government did not come to deserve such praise from such exalted quarters by planning to revolutionise society so that social relationships were adjusted through a re-distribution of wealth. In October 1997 Peter Mandelson, then in charge at the Department of Industry, assured a meeting of executives from computer firms that New Labour was “. . . intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. What he did not say was that they were equally relaxed about other people getting stinking poor. One of their earliest ventures was to cut the benefit of single parents—a particularly depressed and pressurised group. As most of these are females some of the more odious Labour MPs felt justified in attacking the essential immorality of unmarried women who got pregnant to jump the council housing queue while they claimed benefit to pay for their cigarettes and Bacardis. One of these MPs—Frank Field, who had risen through the poverty lobby to become Member for Birkenhead and Minister for Welfare Reform—said that “There are no single mums in Birkenhead. They all have a boy friend somewhere”. The legislation for reducing the benefits of single parents was first introduced by the Tories, when it was denounced as a typical example of the cruelties of Thatcherism. Peter Lilley was the minister concerned; he was exultant at New Labour’s open support for the cause of punishing the poor and stood in the Commons directing Labour MPs into the correct lobby to vote for the cuts.

McAlpine does not admire all of Labour’s luminaries and one who escapes his embrace is Jack Straw, an exception to the tradition of Labour Home Secretaries such as Roy Jenkins, who liked to see themselves as “radical” and “liberal”. In the intensity of hatred he has aroused in the lobbies of penal reform and civil liberties Straw has exceded his immediate Tory predecessor, Michael Howard. “I couldn’t stand Michael Howard,” said McAlpine, “so imagine what I feel about Straw”. He was referring to the Home Secretary’s intention to abolish the law of double jeopardy, to allow people to be tried again for an offence for which they have already been tried and acquitted. As we go to press Straw has not revealed how many more times he wants a person to be tried or if it will go on and on until they are convicted but when he does decide it will no doubt be with an eye to the fact that while he has been at the Home Office the prison population has reached over 65,000. This trend will probably be accentuated by another of Straw’s plans, to erode the right to opt for trial by a jury at a Crown Court, where there is a better chance of acquittal than before magistrates.

Education

Straw is a former President of the National Union of Students, who may have learned at university that he should get his hair cut and smooth his image if he was to climb the greasy pole into Parliament and a top government job. On the way up he said a few things which might now embarrass a less sensitive and ambitious man. For example his denunciation of private prisons as immoral. In fact there was always more than an element of the bogus about the opposition to private prisons, which ignored the dreadful conditions existing in state prisons. The Chief Inspector of Prisons recently condemned Brixton and Wandsworth as appalling and inhumane, he said that Winson Green in Birmingham is even worse than Brixton and that Young Offender Institutions like Feltham in Middlesex and Brinsford in Wolverhampton are “corrosive”. Could private institutions, it is fair to ask, be any worse? But in those heady days in opposition Straw’s ambition was urgent enough to override facts.

Another New Labour front bencher stubbornly trying to put his past behind him is Minister of Education David Blunkett, who was once thought to be the teachers’ friend but turned out to be their scourge. There was a time when Blunkett could denounce Tory education plans for callously undermining the future of the children. Now he spends his days thinking up new ways of weeding out and punishing any teacher who fails to come up to standard in defiance of the kind of deprivation and alienation to be found in the slums of the inner city or rural deserts. His demands that teaching conforms to centrally conceived and imposed standards of achievement has damaging effects on teachers and sometimes disastrous results for the pupils. This kind of pressure was supposed to have been wiped out by the advent of the comprehensive school—once a cherished principle of the Labour Party but now due to be abolished, sneered at as “bog standard” by self-appointed education expert Alistair Campbell, who also happens to be Blair’s public relations man. Campbell is extremely adept at handling a few stroppy hacks but he might be a bit bog standard himself if he were faced with teaching a classroom of young toughies from the local estate. Blunkett plans to introduce an openly selective system—the same system that was eventually rejected as responsible for blighting so many young lives.

Ethics

Another Minister whose performance in opposition persuaded a lot of people that he would make a difference is Robin Cook, who reluctantly accepted the job of Foreign Secretary and quickly began to rave about an “ethical” foreign policy without telling us that the ethics would involve him cheerily shaking hands with the murderous dictator of Indonesia, President Suharto, or Blair hailing as a “fellow moderniser” a butcher like the Chinese premier Zhu Rongji and the ex-KGB operative who is now Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying on the blood bath in Chechnya. These were examples of how capitalism fashions the “ethics” of foreign policy. The arms industry in Britain sells about £5 billion worth of its products each year to Indonesia. China and Russia are important trading partners. Beside that, of what concern are thousands of people imprisoned or murdered for their opinions or slaughtered in a war? In any case it took Cook only a few months to modify his ambitions over an “ethical” foreign policy. “Compromise, “ he announced on a BBC radio programme in January 1998, “is inevitable to foreign policy. That is real life”. That declaration can be understood properly only by someone who is alive to what “compromise” and “real life” mean in the context of capitalist society and the lowly place it gives to human lives and welfare compared to the profit-demanding priorities of the ruling class.

It is little wonder if the voting working class have difficulty in separating Labour from the Tories. The solution is to understand that the parties are united in their principles to maintain capitalism and all that that entails. In March 1972 Roy Jenkins, who had been Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer so should have known what he was talking about, observed life in this country:

   In spite of half a century of effort, our society—and still more our world—is still disfigured by gross unfairness . . . The poor are still poor. Property speculators—and others—are as relatively rich as were those with an accepted position at the top of the social structure.

Almost thirty years later, Jenkins’s successors in the Labour Party tell us that about a third of the children in this country live in what Blair has called “frightening” deprivation. And New Labour, with their big majority and their clutch of government ministers trying to forget the indiscretions of their left wing youth while they grow daily more and more like the Tories they once professed to despise, promise that in twenty years’ time they will have got around to abolishing child poverty. Does anyone really believe them? Does anyone really believe that it is worth choosing between Labour and the Tories? Does anyone really believe that to cast a vote for either of these parties will make a difference?

Ivan

Sting in the Tail: Pecking Order (1992)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the December 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pecking Order

The scene is the African veldt: hungry vultures circle over a carcass but they are robbed of their meal by some other predators.

Nature in the raw? No, this is capitalism in the raw because those predators were not wild animals; they were humans. The Guardian (29 October) explains:

. . . the eco-sensitive in Johannesburg have been leaving carcasses on the veldt in a bid to save the vultures from famine. They have put an electric fence round one of these "vulture restaurants" in Bophuthatswana to stop the starving people in the homeland getting at the food.

There is a way to end such human degradation and it doesn't involve Bob Geldof, Telethons, or sending a fiver to Oxfam.

Silly Billy

Comedian Billy Connolly has consigned "socialism to the scrapheap. He told Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show (ITV 4 October) that "Socialism is wrong. It must be if all those people in Eastern Europe have rejected it".

Obviously Connolly has been under the impression that what existed in the state-capitalist dictatorships was socialism! No doubt he got this idea from the "communists" he knew in his days as a folk-singer.

One of Connolly's past concert tours was entitled "Rebel Without A Clue": we couldn't have put it better ourselves.

Sensible Sinead

It is not often that you get pop singers talking much sense about politics so it is a real pleasure to record what Sinead O'Connor had to say about money.

My biggest aim is to persuade the world to get rid of money, the root of all evil. If everyone agreed to do it at the same time, it could happen. Won't most people be better off pursuing happiness rather than material assets.

The Sun (23 October)

The more current that idea becomes the easier it is for socialists to spread the ideas of socialism. The only logical alternative to capitalism's money madness is socialism where all production will be solely for need.

Told Ya So!

How John Major must sigh for the heady days when he replaced that nasty old Mrs. Thatcher at number 10.

Remember how his popularity had the stricken Tories soaring in the opinion polls? Everyone, we were told, liked this smiling, unassuming, decent chap.

Alas two years on and his name is mud. From singing his praises the press cannot rubbish him enough (the Sun even calls him a turnip) and he is rated the most unpopular Prime Minister ever.

But this column saw it coming! In January 1991 at the height of Major's love-in with the voters Scorpion pointed out that all leaders of governments must make decisions about the running of capitalism, decisions which will inevitably alienate many voters and

This is why every Prime Minister (Tory and Labour) and the voters have, for a while, a honeymoon followed by a cooling off and eventual divorce. This is what happened to Mrs Thatcher and sooner or later John Major's turn will come.

Marks & Spencer

Work hard - your firm will prosper and you will prosper. That is the accepted wisdom that we are constantly being fed by the media. Well, what do you make of this item?

Marks & Spencer, the Rolls-Royce of Britain's high street stores, is purring through the recession with profits up almost 20 per cent. The St Michael label returned profits of £257 million on higher sales of £2.24 billion with the winning combination of selling expensive food and not quite so expensive clothes.
The losers in the battle against recession were 300 staff made redundant at M & S headquarters last year.

The Times (29 October)

Left Wing Stunts

"Major and Lamont must go" is the Socialist Workers Party's latest stunt. Their declared aim is to "kick the Tories out" but the sacking of Major and Lamont will not achieve this as they would merely be replaced by other Tory luminaries. In any case, mid-term leadership changes ALWAYS restore Tory fortunes - witness the last one.

The SWP's real aim is to get a Labour government in. Their argument is that of course Labour will fail; many workers will see this and turn to the SWP.

Both of these aims are hopelessly doomed. A change of leader would, as history shows, leave the Tories more firmly in the saddle while Labour's inevitable failure would, as history also shows, simply pave the way for yet another Tory government.

Our recent readers survey revealed that some readers think we devote too much space to leftwing parties: sorry, but the above surely demonstrates the genuine need to expose their hare-brained and misleading antics.

Hypocrisy

As Robin Cook, and other Labour Party frontbenchers, try to expose the government's sale of arms to Iraq during a so-called ban. It is worthwhile recalling Labour's position when they formed the government.

While the government attaches the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market.

Denis Healey in the House of Commons (25 January 1966)