Land reform in Scotland (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament, land reform has been a significant issue. It is widely recognised that there is considerable concentration of land ownership in Scotland. Typically, land reform is an issue in formerly colonised countries, where the occupying power has concentrated land ownership, such as in South Africa and Zimbabwe, to benefit the colonisers and exert control.

The concentration of land in Scotland, through the famous Highland Clearances, was a precursor and a part of the same process, appropriating land for the ruling class and sending people out to colonise other parts of the world.

According to the Scottish Land Commission: 1,252 owners hold 67 percent of privately owned rural land. Of these estates, 87 are estimated to be larger than 10,000 hectares (67 of these are in the Highlands), 667 are 1,000-10,000, and 371 are smaller than 1,000 hectares. There are 5.5 million people in Scotland.

As they note, this is not unusual:

‘Ownership of agricultural land is becoming increasingly concentrated in Europe, with one percent of agricultural businesses controlling 20% of agricultural land in the EU and three percent controlling 50%. Conversely, 80% of agricultural businesses control only 14.5% of agricultural land (European Economic and Social Committee, 2015)’.

Early in the parliament’s existence, the then Labour government passed laws to abolish the last vestiges of feudal land ownership – no longer requiring the payment of feudal duties and creation of outright ownership of land.

The Scottish Parliament took the opportunity to make changes, now it was no longer confronted by the power of landowners in the House of Lords. By 2004, it passed its first Land Reform Act, which included a broader right to roam than in England and Wales, and also introduced community right to buy, where populations up to 10,000 could register a right of refusal on land sales and transfers. This legislation also placed responsibilities on landowners for the management of their property.

The SNP have continued the process by passing further acts in 2015, 2016 and 2025. The 2016 legislation gave Scottish ministers the power to intervene in land sales. Some of this legislation was refinements of the process following human rights cases that upheld the right of private ownership against the provisions of the Land Reform Acts, particularly Salvesen v Riddell.

The 2016 Community Empowerment Act gave communities rights to intervene in disused or neglected land causing harm to communities (including urban properties). The 2025 Act includes a requirement to consider reasonable requests to lease land or convert parts of it into crofting land. This act also requires a plan which will improve biodiversity, adapt to climate change and contribute to net zero.

The large estate owners continue to fight a rearguard action, maintaining that large estates can be run more efficiently and with economies of scale (eg, when a part of the estate has a lean year, they can cross-subsidise from other parts of the estate to continue paying staff for maintenance and other costs).

Campaigners maintain that there is evidence that large estates stifle development, and concentrate power into a few hands:

‘Scotland’s current pattern of landownership frustrates economic development within fragile rural communities. Most of these responses were very general in nature but the overall perception was that because landowners have a very high degree of control over decisions about how land is used, they also have the capacity to either help or hinder economic development. The implication of this is that where local economic development is not regarded as a priority by the landowner, then it will not happen.’

Further, some landowners are perceived as ‘trophy’ owners, holding the land as a status symbol (mostly for shooting); whereas some charities are seen as hindering economic development in the name of conservation. As the land commission notes, ‘This indicates that the issue here is more to do with concentration of power and resources more generally, and that land holdings are acting as an outlet for the exercise of this power rather than its source’.

These frustrations reflect the desire of small-business folk and entrepreneurs who are locked out by their more powerful rivals. Indeed, part of the impetus behind land reform is securing the votes of rural population, including farmers and small-business people. The fact that the legislation is locked in with significant requirements for Scottish ministers to intervene, means that wealth and social connexion may, however, be the real determinant for how much, or how little changes. It will be interesting to see how much this will affect land held by the King in his own right (rather than as Crown land, which itself is managed by Scottish ministers and accounts for 35,000 hectares), such as Balmoral, and if ministers will be willing to impose conditions and lettings on any of his land.

So far, there has been little change in the pattern of land ownership, and sales and transfers of large estates are few and far between. Much as in land reform in many parts of the world, the power and right of property tends to chafe against any attempts to constrain it.

Where land is owned by public bodies, such as ‘Forestry and Land Scotland,’ commercial imperatives still apply, so the logic of capital predominates regardless of titular ownership. It is this logic that will continue to predominate even if the land is parcelled up into smaller lots.

Socialists want to end the private ownership of land and want to see it used rationally to benefit the needs of the whole community. That means, not state ownership or ownership by forestry commissions or trusts, but common ownership and democratic control.

Land being held in common doesn’t mean that people won’t be free to use their initiative to employ the land, but that under properly understood and agreed common and democratic rules, people would be able to co-operate to meet their individual and collective needs without all the layers of complexity and chicanery that come with the private ownership of land.

Pik Smeet

Chrysler and the Cabinet: How the Deal was Done (1976)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Chrysler and the Cabinet: How the Deal was Done. Granada Television, 35p.

This is the transcript of a TV programme shown on 9th February 1976, in which the Cabinet discussions of the Chrysler UK motor company were simulated. The parts of Wilson, Healey, other Ministers and the Chrysler officials were played by political and financial journalists, and the programme was generally thought to have come close to the reality.

The Chrysler Corporation of USA proposed closing down its British subsidiary which had made losses in six of the last nine years, amounting to £60 millions, and was expected to lose another £40 millions in the next year. The Government’s concern was with the unemployment — 25,000 jobs or more — which would be created by the close-down. However, the Government’s newly agreed “industrial strategy” prohibited financing obviously unprofitable companies; at the outset of these discussions the only voice in favour of giving help is that of the Secretary of State for Scotland, where Chrysler is a major employer.

A report from the Central Policy Review Staff (the “Think Tank”) had said the British car industry had already 25 per cent, over-capacity. From the viewpoint of the British Leyland company, which the Government had recently bought for £1,300 millions, Chrysler was an undesired rival; nor, for the same commercial reasons, was there any case for merging Chrysler with Leyland. The loss of jobs was agreed to be a regrettable necessity, summed up thus by Healey’s impersonator: “There’s nothing socialist about preserving existing jobs for their own sake.”

The conclusion was foregone — and yet the Government did undertake to support Chrysler, to the extent of about £145 millions. Why, with everything apparently against it? First, political fear of losing votes, in Scotland particularly. Second, the existence of a Chrysler contract to export to Iran (Healey: “Persia is becoming an increasingly important trading partner with us and the Shah is a touchy fellow.”).

The third reason was not stated explicitly in the TV programme but emerges implicitly from it. This is the inability of governments to manage capitalism even on its own terms. The sapient Ministers talked of “the long term” and “the future”, meaning “if we can keep out of trouble this afternoon perhaps tomorrow’s mail will bring an unforeseen lucky break”. While the discussions with Chrysler went on, attempts were made (fruitlessly) to attract Japanese car manufacturers to Scotland. If unemployment was prevented by the Chrysler deal, how will its transfer to other companies be prevented? What sort of “strategy” is firmly agreed, then has to be abandoned at the first engagement?

This is an interesting booklet, more relevant to what goes on in capitalism than some expensive volumes of retired Ministers’ memoirs.

Letter: Pioneer (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pioneer

The “mystery” of the Party’s first Branch in Scotland, Fraserburgh (Socialist Standard, September) may be solved by the fact that a vigorous campaign was carried on between 1900-1908 in that area. This was the work of James Leatham (1865-1945), by trade a printer but most of his life a speaker and writer on behalf of Socialism. A biography Portrait of a Socialist Pioneer (People’s Press, Aberdeen) has been written by Bob Duncan, a history teacher. Leatham published the first Socialist journal in Scotland The Workers’ Herald. Later he printed and edited the Gateway in Yorkshire as well as Turiff (Scotland).

Leatham belonged to the Social Democratic Federation, I believe. He invited Keir Hardie, anarchist Peter Kropotkin and his hero, William Morris, to speak in Aberdeen where he was born and brought up. Due to his speeches and activities he was sacked with winter coming and a wife and bairn to keep. Later he set up a printer’s business in Aberdeen, where he produced the Workers’ Herald in 1891.

An amazing man indeed!

John Keith (Aberdeen)

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned in the September 1979 article cited above, the Fraserburgh branch of the SPGB was listed in the Socialist Standard from August 1910 until May 1911. There is no James Leatham listed in the early Party membership records, but here is a list of the six members who were recorded as members of the Fraserburgh branch:

• William Anderson
• S. Ford
• William Lawrence
• A. Macdonald
• William Noble
• J. A. Noble

Reported in Hansard (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Slums, like Poverty, are still with us.

Mr. Gibson (Labour, Kennington): ". . . There is no excuse whatever for the slightest complacency, for much remains to be done; in addition, there are slums which need to be pulled down; some of us have already made a start on slum clearance. I always thought that I knew something about slum conditions, but last week, when I went into one of the worst slum areas in London, I was appalled at the conditions existing in one part of Islington. The houses themselves are so sound structurally that medical officers of health are dubious about condemning them, but inside they have been allowed to become festering dens of unhealthy life, with walls falling down, floors cracking, no proper convenience, and no water. There are thousands of houses like these, not only in London but in many other large cities, which must be dealt with. There is, therefore, no call for anyone to imagine that there is not still a great deal to be done in the building of new houses.”

(Housing Debate, 4/7/49.)

* * *

Day to Day Struggle—Matches Front.

Mr. W. Gallagher (Communist, East Fife): “ . . . In this particular matter of matches, as a pipe smoker and as one who uses a very considerable amount of matches, I ask the Economic Secretary to discuss the matter again with the Chancellor and see whether they cannot find some other way of assisting the manufacturers to meet the costs of production rather than by way of making an increase of this kind. I ask him very sincerely to withdraw this proposal.”

(Finance Bill, Proposal to raise price of matches by halfpenny a box. 22/6/49.)

* * *

Members of Nationalised Boards.

Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Civil Aviation (Mr. Lindgren): “… All those who have any responsibility for airline operation are in favour of this Bill; not only that, they ask for it to be given legislative effect at the earliest possible moment. The boards of B.O.A.C. and B.S.A.A. are in favour of the Bill, and those boards are composed of business men—men who prior to coming into association with civil air transport were and in some cases still are associated with successful private enterprise …”

(Airways Corporation Bill, Second Reading, 29/6/49.)

* * *

A Man in an Absolute Muddle

Mr. J. Scollan (Labour, West Renfrew): ". . . The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us about the dollar crisis. What was the panacea that he had to offer for the problem facing us? Was it not the same as was offered in the 1930’s during the depression: reduce costs and increase production? Did not wages go down in the 1930’s? Had not we a lock-out in 1926 for the miners? Were not the miners locked out for weeks on end, until prices were brought down? Did that bring prosperity? It brought misery, poverty and degradation. I am surprised to hear some of the arguments today. What are the Government going to do to see that we can meet France and other countries in fair competition? It does not seem to occur to anyone that we recently decided upon a European bloc and unity. Now we are deciding to go into competition with the very people with whom we were to be united. We are hoping that instead of unemployment being in Scotland, it will be in France. That is the cure. I say to the Secretary of State for Scotland that if Scotland were a free and independent country—I am not pleading Nationalism— it could stand on its own economy in the world blizzard that is likely to hit us.”

(Debate on Scotland [Industry], 7/7/49.)

* * *

A Bouquet for American Capitalism—from a Labourite

Mr. J. Carmichael (Labour, Glasgow, Bridgeton): “. . . My only trouble is the attempt on the part of some people to complain about the interference of American capitalism. Does anybody doubt the fact that whatever Government would have been in, there would have been need of American aid? Our complaint all along has been that America might have been more liberal in her aid, recognising the great economic sacrifices made by this country during the war. They were compelled to intervene. I do not complain about American financial intervention. I welcome it, because today in Scotland we have less unemployment than we had in the bad old days.”

(Debate on Scotland [Industry], 7/7/49.)

* * *

Plain Words from a Tory

Major G. Lloyd (Conservative, East Renfrew): “. . . The solution is to be found in a steady courageous determination to bring down costs of production, to make it easier in a buyers’ market for our industrialists, traders and men of commerce to sell the goods, as a result of which alone they can employ the people . . . People can only be employed if our industrialists can sell goods. If they cannot do that, they cannot employ the people. There is no politics in it. It is a matter of plain economic common-sense.”

(Debate on Scotland [Industry], 7/7/49.)

* * *

A Labour Leader talks Capitalist Economics

Mr. A. Woodburn (Secretary .of State for Scotland): “. . . However, one thing is certain, that the buyers’ market which has obtained since the war is ending. Just as we may have to go without some imports, so other countries may have to do without what we would like to send them. We may have to make both effort and sacrifice to stimulate trade by quality, price and delivery. If then, we are to keep vital trade going, our efforts must be directed to producing goods which the world wants at the prices at which other people are able or ready to pay. We cannot live without imports. This country must trade, or die.”

(Debate on Scotland [Industry], 7/7/49.)

Stan Hampson

Highland Fling (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brown beach and shaggy woods, romantic dells, Eigg on the starboard, Mull astern! and yet, and yet —

Current issues of the People's Journal (proudly claiming largest circulation north of the Forth) contain material sufficient to prevent a too hasty trek of the working class of Peckham and Hoxton to Dingwall, Inverness, or to the fast-dwindling collection of picturesque hovels dignified by the name of “villages.” Social inequality breeds similar social disease everywhere—aristocratic insolence, capitalist greed, working-class poverty.

The local authority for Corpach approached the Crown representative with a view to joint action in abolishing “abominable smells” in Crown “houses.” The Crown Minister, “all ’aughty-like,” promptly put the 'umble Councillors in their right place. “The Crown, and the Crown alone, was responsible for the sanitary condition of the houses in question” (June 12th). (“Sanitary" is not a misprint for “insanitary,” if you please. Mister Editor.) The People's Journal heads the article “Need for New Laws.” The Socialist Party of Great Britain avers the necessity for a New System of Society—Socialism.

A drive for a Highland “New Deal” is afoot. A cry is going up for more harbours, more power-stations. A pretty quarrel between industrial capital and landed gentrydom is a big factor against compounding of this particular pill to cure an economic earthquake . . .  an old tale, the Highlands must be “preserved” (not, of course, for people who live in smelly houses).

An historical reminder, culled from chapter 27 of Marx’s “Capital,” Vol. 1—read this chapter and previous two; there is nothing “difficult” here, the grim facts, absolutely unchallenged, gleaned from sober Blue Books and similar documents. . . . The Duchess of Sutherland evicted, from 1814 to 1820, practically all her tenancy (15,000) to make money on sheep. British soldiers assisted in eviction. One old woman was burnt to death refusing to leave her hut. The evicted tenants tried fish-catching in the fishing fiords and glittering lochs of the coast. But, alack!

The smell of the fish rose to the noses of the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the seashore to Billingsgate. For the second time the Gaels were hunted out.—(p.754, Kerr’s Edition; Everyman, vol. 2, p. 809.)

Fish comes into the picture to-day. Big combines are steadily crushing out smaller enterprise; a frantic cry is going up to keep out Norwegian labour on trawlers; plans are afoot to settle fisherfolk in Vancouver, and a strike is yet unsettled in Campbeltown.

It should be noted that clan land was in primitive times actually “clan” land, common property in the widest sense of the word. The gradual usurpation of common rights of ownership of land by “chiefs” is a world-wide social phenomenon known to all students of works such as Lewis Morgan’s “Ancient Society,” or the more accessible “Origin of the Family,” by Engels, not to mention numerous books by definitely non-Socialist writers. The fact is established. Dog-like devotion—older people who have read Scott in their youth will recall instances— was repaid by expropriation. Roderick Dhu’s contemptuous reference to “fellow-clansmen” as “wretched kerns” was blunter in form, but truer in intent than the sickening patronage and fluffy blah which masks modem approach to the position.

The Macleods had a big gathering in Dunvegan Castle—said castle being anything but common property. “Old-age pensioners and all the crofters of the clan marched up to the castle headed by the clan piper.” The sweet lady, “Flora Macleod of Macleod,” was “overcome with the warmth of the clan spirit.” Burns’

“ There’s some are fou' of love divine. 

There’s some are fou' of brandy” 

seems vaguely apposite here. At any rate, the dwellers in smelly crofts and dear old tartan-clad recipients of outdoor relief were “keenly interested” in seeing the ancient relics of their clan— Cockneys do at least get some opportunity of seeing their relics every day at the London Museum. One of the “relics” deserves “special mention ”: Flora MacDonald’s corset!!

Dingwall Town Council, according to the North Star, gave a “typically Highland welcome” recently to Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth on his return from honeymoon. Replying to an address, the young man recalled negotiations between the Council and the “estate” in connection with a new water-supply. He said he was “glad to think that now Dingwall had a first-class water-supply and that the estate had not suffered through granting this concession ” (March 13th). Is comment necessary? “Concession”!—and a splash heading of the Journal reads “Highlands need help for water supplies.” The situation is described “as little short of alarming.”

“Alarums and Excursions. Enter the Working Class.” Always “ alarums,” whether north or south of Forth for the working class—“excursions,” in the modern sense, sadly lacking, or of the cheap and nasty type.

Socialists (not reform-mongers, whether “charming” Maxtons, “fiery” McGoverns, or tin-pot Gallachers) still stand by “The World for the Workers.” This will include the humble, but highly-necessary water (without “concessions” from anyone).

MacReginald.

Halo, Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Actor Brian Cox: ‘the Bible is one of the worst books ever’ (MailOnline 30 April).

*****

’Right’, said Om. ‘Now…listen. Do you know how gods get power?’ ‘By people believing in them’, said Brutha. ‘Millions of people believe in you’.

‘People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?… But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn’t in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it… Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn’t looking in the same way that Boy Scouts’ Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country’ (Small Gods, Terry Pratchett).

*****

A website going under the name of Islamic Socialism (Marxist Leninist) offers the following oxymoron positing that religion and socialism go hand in hand:

‘We are Islamic Socialists because we are Muslims first and socialists second. Our main beliefs are Allah is one and that Muhammad (PBUH) is his messenger. Second to that is opposition to capitalism. To oppose capitalism is no less than to fight in the cause of Allah… the only answer is an Islamic Socialist society following Sharia. A state for the Muslims that follows in accordance to Sharia and opposes a financial minority growing off the backs of the majority through social revolution and the regulation by a religious vanguard’. Straight from the Lenin playbook, with a twist.

*****

Joe.co.uk. 14 May, carries an article quoting research from an American University which posits that, ‘children raised without religion were “less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian. And more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.”’ More confirmation of the socialist view that religion has a negative effect on humans.

*****

Praise the Lord and pass the loot! Yet another American Evangelist making a very nice living thank you by selling the buy-into-religion-and-win-the-lottery falsehood. He’s correct however that poverty is a misery suffered by many across the world. That, however, is down to the present social system. The solution isn’t to make preachers rich, it’s the abolition of capitalism. ‘Televangelist and prosperity gospel preacher Jesse Duplantis, who has an estimated wealth of twenty million dollars, has called poverty a “curse” and said his wealth – which includes a private jet and a 40,000 square foot mansion – comes from being “blessed” by God’ (The Christian Post, 29 April).

*****

News from the National Secular Society, 21 May, that the 2022 census showed that results from the 2022 Scottish Census found that ‘51.1% of people in Scotland have no religion. In 2011 the figure was 36.7%.’ Slàinte Mhath!

DC

Letter: Edinburgh – then and now (2024)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the late twentieth century I moved from Rome to Edinburgh. It was a spur of the moment life-changing decision. I was worried that, after having loved living in the eternal city and being amazed daily at the beauty surrounding me, I might just be a little disappointed in my new surroundings.

But coming out of Waverley station on a cold bright November morning, my breath was taken away, not just by the cold but by the beauty of what confronted me. To my left was the splendid castle on the hill and looking down away from me the most spectacular skyline I had ever seen. It was a mixture of medieval, Gothic, Georgian splendour arranged in a harmonious descent from the castle to Holyrood – the Royal Mile. In the almost 10 years I was then to spend in Edinburgh I came to know the city intimately. I had no car and every day discovered more architectural beauty. This had truly to be one of the most beautiful cities ever.

In mid-November this year, I visited Edinburgh again for the first time since. I went for the day with my partner to see an art exhibition we had looked forward to for some time. I eagerly described to him the visual pleasure he would enjoy on emerging from the station.

What I found when we did emerge shocked me profoundly. It’s something I found hard to take in. The gardens which divided Princes Street from the Royal Mile had all but disappeared under an avalanche of commercial tat. The view of the castle was practically obliterated by a huge Ferris wheel, a ghastly ‘fun fair’ with all the attendant noise and clatter. And then, my own personal nightmare, a ‘Christmas market’. And so many retail outlets, cafes, bars with all the familiar names. I remembered spending time in what had been a beautiful urban space hand-feeding squirrels.

And then it came to me again, as it so often does, how capitalism will stop at nothing, will, for profit-making reasons, defile and ruin the most beautiful and precious of what makes us rejoice as humans. Yet how much real profit has been gained from this desecration compared to the pleasure and respite this beautiful place gave to residents and visitors to Edinburgh alike? The exhibition was fantastic but my heart was so very sad.

Joy Baszucki

Proper Gander: SSRIs and side effects (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

As many as one in seven people in the UK are prescribed antidepressants. While undoubtedly, medication helps lift many out of a debilitatingly low mood, for others, unexpected and unpleasant side effects have outweighed any benefits. Are My Antidepressants Worth It?, an episode of the documentary series Disclosure (BBC iPlayer) looked at the downsides of the medication, especially among young people in Scotland. Presenter Anton Ferrie and his team spoke with over a hundred people prescribed antidepressants about their experiences, along with doctors and researchers. The programme gave exposure to an important issue but predictably only gave hints of the wider context which explains why the problem has arisen.

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants in the UK – sertraline, fluoxetine and citalopram – all fall under the category of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). As the name suggests, SSRIs impact on serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved with regulating mood, with each type working on the brain in a slightly different way. Doctors therefore need to make sure they prescribe the most appropriate type for each patient’s situation, particularly when the patient is a young person who is still developing. The programme includes a sad example of when the wrong decision has been made: Dylan Stallan was switched from fluoxetine to sertraline after he turned 18, and he ended his life two months later. An increased risk of suicide among young people associated with SSRI use is one of the concerns voiced by, among others, Dr David Healy and Prof Bernadka Dubicka in the documentary. As well as the risk of suicidal thoughts, other side effects of antidepressants can include insomnia, sleepiness, dizziness, headaches, fatigue and sexual problems. Thousands of people have reported the latter persisting even after they have stopped taking SSRIs, enough for the complaint to have its own name: Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. PSSD isn’t recognised as a separate condition by the NHS, though, partly because it’s not understood how much its symptoms (which can be as extreme as a numbing of all sexual feeling) are an after effect of the medication or are due to depression returning.

For some people taking antidepressants, it’s difficult for them to tell whether what they experience is a side effect or not. Rachel Coburn, the producer of the documentary, talked about being prescribed antidepressants for as long as 12 years, since she was 18. She said that she can sometimes be forgetful and is troubled by not knowing whether this is because of the medication or is just how she is. After taking the pills her whole adult life, she wondered ‘what lies beneath the citalopram’. Radio presenter Katie Thistleton asked herself the same question, and struggled through withdrawal symptoms when trying to come off her medication.

As the focus of the programme was on the general lack of awareness of the side effects of antidepressants, it only touched on other aspects of their use. Dr Ben Davis, a GP, made the point that a brief chat with a rushed doctor isn’t the best basis for a decision about long-term medication, especially for an issue as individual and complicated as mental health. An obvious conclusion from this is that the NHS doesn’t have enough funding to employ more GPs, counsellors and other specialists to meet need. A more fundamental issue is why that need is there, and growing. The numbers of people feeling depressed have been increasing over the decades, particularly among children. A study by the Nuffield Foundation published in 2012 (tinyurl.com/kf2xtxk2) found that the proportion of 15 and 16 year olds reporting that they frequently felt anxious or depressed had doubled since the early 1980s, from one in 30 to two in 30 among boys and one in 10 to two in 10 among girls. By 2021, as many as one in six children in England aged six to 16 years had a probable mental health disorder, according to the NHS (tinyurl.com/mr29j8k9). Partly, this rise is because of more awareness and less stigma around mental health issues than in previous decades, so more people now feel able to access help. In this way, the normalisation of mental health issues has had a positive effect, but looked at from another angle, this increased awareness has come about because societal factors are pushing more people into this state of mind. It’s not surprising that depression is a likely reaction to the privations and alienation which come with life in our society, amplified in recent years by the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

And so the big pharmaceutical companies have come to our rescue by manufacturing the SSRIs to meet the expanding need. The way our healthcare system functions buys into the clout enjoyed by profit-hungry organisations like GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. Dr Healy has revealed how drug companies fund research into medicines, creating a bias towards their products which gets disguised by the studies’ academic credentials. The end result is that brands of antidepressants are promoted as the go-to option for busy GPs who realise that a prescription is a more prosaic option than to make a referral to join a lengthy waiting list for counselling. As Katie Thistleton says, antidepressants can be a sticking plaster but they can’t really solve the underlying problem.

Mike Foster

Cheap at the price (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The shooting season which commences on the “Glorious Twelfth” sees high society wending its way northward to the Yorkshire moors or the Scottish Highlands so that they may enjoy the manly pleasures of shooting birds and then eating them to the skirl of the pipes. Accommodation is somewhat limited and in order to meet the demand and render some service for the cause of sport, a Scottish Laird has placed his 150-roomed castle at the disposal of all able to afford £120 per week inclusive. In an interview with the wife of this public-spirited Laird, Reynolds News (10.8.52) reports that “American millionaires, wealthy Hungarians and Danes, a few English noblemen ... and a Chinese . . . have booked at the . . . castle.”

Before the war a member of the aristocracy once delivered himself of the observation that if Hitler and Goering had learned in their youth how to play cricket there would not have been any international tension. Now, Mrs. Farquharson, wife of the Scottish Laird, suggests another remedy. She tells us: "I only wish 1 could get some of the world's politicians up here for a shooting party. Perhaps we could then get some international problems straightened out.” It is good to know that there are still aristocratic minds pondering on the ills which beset our troubled world. But the solution is not so drastic as one might think on first reading. The lady does not mean to get the politicians up to her castle and then shoot them off—a solution which might have some effect. She is merely suggesting that they get together and under the mellowing influence of shooting grouse, drinking whisky, and lunching off cold salmon, settle all their differences. We hope this explanation will settle the idea that the Scottish aristocracy have become direct-actionists. Not only politicians would benefit but everybody else who visits the castle, for she tells us that going out on the moors shooting birds and fishing for salmon gives “them a broader outlook. They can discuss things affecting their countries with perfect ease.” Here is an idea worth following up. Those of us who are interested in discussing the problems of present-day society should hire a castle and "at perfect ease” discuss our problems; perhaps that is the short cut to Socialism we have all been looking for.

Asked by the reporter why she was doing all this, Mrs. Farquharson replied, “We only want people to get the right idea of Scotland.” We sympathise with the lady’s ambition. Let us assume that this and other similar establishments were not available for the sportsmen of all nations, and that the host of “American millionaires, wealthy Hungarians and Danes, a Chinese, etc.,” all arrived in Scotland without any castle to go to. They might then have to find accommodation in an Edinburgh slum or a crofter’s cottage without any electric light or the latest mod. con. They would then get the wrong idea about Scotland. They would return to their native lands thinking that there are slums in Scotland or that there are homes where they themselves would not keep their pet poodles. The lady is absolutely right The only way to get the “right idea of Scotland” is to visit a castle and pay £120 per week. Nobody can be expected to shoot straight after a night in a cottage lit by oil lamps, with outside sanitation, and no Scotch whisky. But starting out from a castle with the skirl of pipes in their ears a real day’s sport is obtainable. It mellows the outlook and enables one to see the world as it really is instead of the pessimistic, soured and distorted view of those who won’t pay £120 per week. Thus when the sportsmen see beaters and servants they will understand that they are working for the love of sport and not because they have to act as flunkeys in order to live. If the children of the servants run bare footed it is because it is healthier for them to do so. If the sportsmen see people eating baked beans on toast, or adulterated turned fish it is because they prefer it to the Scotch salmon, and the chilled wine of the Castle. You see how living in the proper atmosphere gives you the "right idea ”?

"We don’t want it to be thought that we are going to make huge profits,” said the lady. "That would be cheapening the whole thing.” At one hundred and twenty pounds a week we would have thought it would be difficult to achieve that. It all goes to show that essentials are grasped in the Scotch Highlands.

Are working-class people allowed to stay, if they have suddenly come into money, was the next question asked of Mrs. Farquharson, by the reporter. Quick as a flash came the assurance. "We did this sort of thing on a smaller scale last year and all types of people came.” (Italics ours.) Could such thoughtfulness be improved on. Out of consideration for the smaller bank accounts of the "working-class people,” it was all done on a "smaller” scale. That is the final argument that should serve to give her visitors the "right idea,” for she goes on to say "they were people like big manufacturers doing all kinds of interesting work.” In this way she again shows that her present visitors will get the “right idea,” for they will surely think that all workers are “doing all kinds of interesting work,” instead of soul-destroying monotonous labour at the factory bench.

In a recent debate in the House of Lords, on the economic situation. Lord Balfour stated that he was in favour of removing food subsidies so that the increase in prices would teach the workers the “facts of life.” Perhaps the noble lord will take a trip to the castle (he is a banker and can well afford it) and compare notes with Mrs. Farquharson. The results may well be interesting, if not instructive.

One further point must be mentioned before we leave this lady to her castle and her millionaires. We note that there is a Chinese among the guests. Our hearts rejoice that there is no colour bar. Here is another solution to the much discussed and very vexed question of racial prejudice. The ability to pay £120 per week will throw down all barriers just like the trumpets of Joshua broke the walls of Jericho. Let this be a rallying cry for all the coloured races. Use your initiative and enterprise and make a lot of money and all else shall be given unto you.

A. S.

Letter: "Does the Socialist Party applaud the Scottish postal workers? . . . (2001)"

Letter to the Editors from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Considering myself a socialist postal worker, I wish to direct your readers’ attention to an aspect of a recent mail strike.

Re-acting to the Post Office’s “slap across the wrist” disciplining of a manager, guilty of sexually harassing a 16-year-old postwoman, the entire Glasgow mail ground to a halt as postal workers came out on wildcat strikes.

Now, what struck me, as a socialist, was the sense of solidarity that has developed, after many years’ experience of industrial action, amongst postal workers. As is the custom, regardless of whether official or unofficial, all mail from Glasgow was blacked, a tactic to foil any Royal Mail attempt to move mail around the country to isolate and defeat a strike-bound office. It is illegal secondary action under the statutes, but the Post Office rarely challenges the refusal to handle blacked mail. On this occasion, however, and no doubt, as a result of their success in forcing through the “way forward” productivity deal, Royal Mail tried to divert letters to Edinburgh who subsequently went out on strike too.

Once again, postal workers have demonstrated the strength of industrial solidarity and expressed a spirit, nobly cited by Anton Pannekoek in Workers’ Councils:

“Direct action means action of the workers themselves without the intermediary of trade union officers…The first and most important task is to propaganda to expand the strike…Capitalists know or feel this quite well and so the only inducement to concessions is the fear that the strike might spread universally…”

Also in his “Ethics And Socialism” article:

“The workers could not be made to understand what wrong they had committed by stopping work for a day in support of a group of workers at war with their employers. The bourgeois journalists argued along these lines:…to go on strike for others through solidarity! (sheer madness, indeed…).”

Does the Socialist Party applaud the Scottish postal workers, as I do?

Alan Johnstone, 

Livingston

Reply: 

Yes, even if we don’t share Pannekoek’s view that unofficial, wildcat strikes are always best. As far as we are concerned, any strike to improve conditions or stop them getting worse, official or unofficial, legal or illegal, is all right as long as it is democratically decided and run by those involved. Full-time trade union officials should be the servants of their members, not their bosses as is so often the case today – Editors.

The Myth of Scotland's Oil (1973)

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the victory of the Dundee by-election was regarded as a triumph by the Labour Party, the Scottish National Party must also have been elated by the large number of votes secured by their candidate who ran a close second. This would suggest that the Nats are making a comeback after a period in the doldrums following the party’s zenith in 1968, after Winifred Ewing’s election at Hamilton, when membership was claimed to be in excess of 90,000 with some 500 branches. At present members total some 60,000, with branches around 440.

Why the revival? Undoubtedly the rejuvenating shot in the arm came in the form of North Sea oil. The recent successes of the oil consortiums couldn’t have happened at a better time for the SNP, for two reasons. First—and this is the kernel of the Nationalist argument — the SNP have always asserted that the problems confronting Scotland resulted from the channelling of Scottish revenue directly into the coffers of the “English government’’ thereby preventing the Scottish worker from deriving any benefit from it (despite the obvious fact that his English counterpart doesn’t do too well either!). The advent of the Nats’ new sacred cow, oil, greatly strengthens this argument and has the added bonus of promising such offshoot titbits as rig-building, construction and service industries.

Second, the Nats had previously conceded (surprisingly) that in the early days of home-rule the standard of living would actually be lowered. The wealth they claim oil would bring to an independent Scotland allows them to discard this vote-loser, and the result is that many workers who were previously sceptical of home-rule are now expressing concern over “Scottish Oil” which goes, according to the SNP poster, “To London with Love”.

Who owns North Sea Oil ?

The territorial control of the world’s continental shelf areas was settled by the United Nations Continental Shelf Convention of 1958 when, by an agreement binding after 1969, countries bordering any particular section of continental shelf were given sovereign rights to explore and exploit the natural resources of the shelf. The North Sea continental shelf has since been divided up between Norway, Germany, Denmark, Holland and Britain. The first British round of licences for oil exploration was granted in 1964, several more having been made since, the latest in March 1972. By the end of 1972 at least six commercial-sized oil fields had been discovered in the Scottish sector together with other recent strikes (whose potential is still being assessed). They are:

• Forties Field which was the first and one of the biggest. Discovered by British Petroleum about a hundred miles east of Aberdeen. Eventual peak production will be in excess of 400,000 barrels per day (20 million tons per year).
• Montrose Field discovered about 30 miles south-east of the Forties Field by Amoco and thought to be capable of producing 100,000 barrels per day.
• Auk Field being brought by Shell into production at a rate of 40,000 barrels/day.
• Argyll Field is reckoned by Hamilton’s to be possibly in the 200,000 barrels/day range.
• Brent Field has Shell/Esso anticipating an eventual rate of over 300,000 barrels/day.
• Beryl Field Mobil are looking for a possible 300,000 barrels/day here.

The Face of Prosperity

Under London rule, argue the Nationalists in a new pamphlet The Reality of Scotland’s Oil by Nicholas Dekker, only 9 per cent of the taxes and royalties from this oil will go to Scotland. Under home-rule, however, the Nats claim that by 1980 (assuming that it will take five years to develop an oilfield in the North Sea) new fields discovered during 1973, 1974 and 1975 could bring production up to 150 million tons per year with an estimated gross value of £2,250 million, of which something like £1,400 million or over per annum could tumble into a Scottish exchequer. Coupled with an assumed 50 per cent of “Scottish participation” (investment of capital) in production and of 40 per cent or 60 per cent in ancillary costs (based on above figures), total potential worth to a Scottish economy would be 85 per cent or 90 per cent of gross value—£1,900 million to £2,000 [million] per annum.

This money can, insist the SNP, “be used to secure for all time, prosperity, security, and a satisfying life style for all the people of Scotland”. Among the many promises (play it again, Sam!) would be vastly improved provision for the old, the sick and needy, and the wiping out of the chronic housing problem. Thus armed, the SNP are preparing to contest every Scottish scat at the next General Election.

. . . and its Reverse

Socialists constantly expose the fallacy of home-rule, pointing as examples to other self-governed countries such as Libya, Venezuela, Russia, and even America, where workers derive little if any benefit from oil produced locally. Indeed the opposite can result as is the case in Aberdeen where the oil boom has resulted in a property price-spiral far surpassing anything in Scotland (in fact reaching parity with English property prices) with such bizarre examples as the two-apartment tenement flat which fetched a price of over £4,000!

Equally unsound is the argument that the oil industry must inevitably produce an increase in the number of jobs available. For it could also mean a drop in the demand for other fuels, notably coal, with redundancies in those industries and their offshoots. Not only that, but many of the “new” jobs will, if the SNP have their way, simply have been taken from workers already doing them in England, so it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Jock, a situation which in no way benefits the workers as a class.

Who Benefits ?

Perhaps the biggest fallacy of all is the Nats’ vision of the anticipated wealth from oil being used exclusively to provide a heaven on earth for Scottish workers. Of course, as the Nats themselves admit, the oil companies will have to have it made worth their while if they are to put up the “vast sums of risk capital to finance search and exploration” and so will the “private and semi-private Scottish capital” they talk about. Also, the cost of government, including the armies of civil servants which any modern capitalist nation must have to administer its affairs, will have to be paid for, and obviously no government can afford to neglect to defend such a valuable property as its oil fields so it will have to provide for defence either independently or through NATO. So, one way and another, there can be little left with which to fulfil the grandiose promises being made. We can confidently assert that the benefit of oil in Scotland will go, as elsewhere in the world, to the owners and the most that Scottish workers can expect from the oil boom is . . . work and wages!

Finally, it’s worth considering that if the North Sea does produce a supply of oil of any significance in relation to world fuel supplies, and bearing in mind the recent panic measures taken by President Nixon, the scramble for oil could become intensified (rapidly expanding Japan, already using 50,000 million gallons a year, estimates treble consumption by the 1980’s). And as trade war sometimes develops into armed war, the tragic result could be that workers living in Scotland could well find themselves, like those in Iceland, being called upon to take up arms to defend “their” oil.

A. McNeill

Sting in the Tail: Timex (1) (1993)

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

Timex (1)

Another expert on capitalist enterprise has bitten the dust. He is Timex president Peter Hall. He resigned his post in June although in May he was telling The Herald that “he wasn't a quitter and he would see the dispute through to a resolution".

At that time he was full of confidence about the future of the Timex factory in Dundee:

Timex has been in Dundee for 50 years and we will he here for at least another 50 years, despite the fact that some people seem not to want us here.

Five weeks after that confident forecast he had resigned and the company announced that the factory would close in December. Just another example of the complete unpredictability of the capitalist system and the “experts'" lack of understanding it.

Timex (2)

When Timex’s owner Fred Olsen told the striking Timex workers that they should “reflect calmly” before rejecting the reduced wages and conditions they had been offered, Willie Leslie, the deputy shop stewards’ convenor, replied angrily:

How dare a man described as one of the richest multi-millionaires in the world tell workers who earned £125 a week that they need to tighten their belts to make sure . . . that the profits continue to roll into the Olsen empire. (Guardian. 5 June).

His anger was a natural reaction but does he think Timex is in business to provide jobs for workers? Its aim must be to maximize profits but the Dundee factory is a loss-maker, and as Peter Hall put it bluntly “we have to turn this place round".

Faced with the resolve of the strikers, Timex will now close the Dundee factory. Is this another defeat for the working class? Maybe, but if this dispute serves as a warning to other employers that there is a limit to what workers will endure then the struggle of the Timex strikers will not have been in vain.

Tinkerbenn

Tony Benn has in the past shown that he has grasped at least some of the Marxist analysis of capitalism.

You would never suspect this from his ridiculously idealistic waffle in the Guardian on 29 June. Writing in anger about the American missile attack on Baghdad he correctly describes this as:

a return to Victorian imperialism with its gun-boat diplomacy, carrying out punitive raids whenever the imperial power wishes to demonstrate its strength and assert its authority in defence of its economic interests in oil and the wealth of the Third World.

And his solution? He tells us “what we need is a real New World Order". No, not the abolition of the social system which produces all this hut merely “a reformed United Nations"! Its domination by the “rich nations" is to he swept away and “replaced by policies that are in accord with the Charter of the UN”.

Benn, like all reformers, really believes that with a bit of tinkering capitalism can exist without the warts which are such a fundamental part of it.

That reserve army

Will Hutton, economic editor of the Guardian, wrote on 22 June:

In the middle of the 20th century Keynesian economics came to the rescue of capitalism and dispelled the Marxist claim that to work it required a reserve army of the mass unemployed.

Marx certainly held that capitalism needed what he called an “industrial reserve army" and explained why in Capital (Volume 1, chapter 25). This army was needed to provide labour for new industries without disrupting old industries which also required it and, of course, to keep down the wages of those in work.

Hutton now cites the growth of unemployment in the EC which is expected to rise to 17 million in 1994 as evidence that Keynes's rescue “has proved only temporary" and concludes:

Thus the current spectre haunting Europe is that Marx has finally been proven right—if wrong on the solution.

Marx’s “solution" to unemployment was nothing less than the establishment of socialism and obviously Hutton doesn't agree with that.

Some celebration

Did you know that the United Nations is celebrating its first International Year for the World's Indigenous People?

Trouble is no-one told the Brazilian gold and tin “wildcat" miners. The Yanomami, an ancient Amazon tribal people, are being wiped out by the “progress" of capitalism's development.

In this column we reported in February 1990 that the Yanomami, who have lived in the area for 40,000 years, had been reduced to 20,000. We now learn (Observer, 20 June) this number is down to 7,500:

In some villages there are no surviving old people and no children under two. Gold miners have shot children out of trees calling them “monkeys”, they have raped women and bombed villages, where they want to mine.

Thus does capitalisms market system “improve" the world. Only the mining companies are celebrating such progress.

So They Say: Bigger Crumbs (1975)

The So They Say Column from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bigger Crumbs

Sir Andrew Gilchrist, chairman of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, has recently been pouring cold water on the idea that Scottish workers were all about to share in the much publicized “Oil Bonanza”. Writing in his Board’s journal (North 7) on 5th March he announced:

There were large areas (in Scotland) which would not secure a direct share of the massive investment needed to get oil out of the seabed and which would have no part in the well paid employment prospects.

(The Times, 6th March ’75)

“Areas” of course are not employed, it is workers who are employed; nor can any of them hope to “secure a direct share of the massive investment”, they are paid wages. Bearing in mind that Sir Andrew’s chief function is to act as a form of capitalist missionary in the north, even those workers who will be concerned in oil and affiliated industries would do well to remember that “well paid employment prospects” simply means that bigger crumbs will fall from the capitalist’s table.

For the others, Sir Andrew has been busily at work seeking out ways to make them useful:

We must look beyond oil and its present benefits. These are reasons enough for continuing and sharpening our effort to strengthen existing industry and to encourage new types of enterprise. If we are to have any hope of a balanced growth these things are essential . . . In the past nine years nearly 3,000 prospects of different kinds and different sizes have been brought to locations in the Highlands and islands. With them they have brought nearly 10,000 jobs. That is what Highlands development is about.

The interests of the "we” and the “our” refer to the capitalist class. That is what Highlands development is about.

War on Want

In a letter to The Times on 10th March, Mr. Peter Burns, General Secretary of “War on Want”, put forward the following view on the “world food crisis”:

The problem is essentially one of insufficient demand not insufficient supply. There is food available that the poor do not have the means to buy. Only poor people starve.

Considering its source, this is a most peculiar form of argument. If people are starving is there not a demand? The simple answer is that there is, but the capitalist answer — which Mr. Burns has clearly accepted — is that if men and women cannot afford to buy food there is no demand. He goes on to argue that supplies of food in the form of foreign aid merely “stifles incentive to invest in rural development” and the answer must be on a local basis to

increase food production and its availability to those in need within the Third World, there must be land reform, guaranteed food markets and prices for the Third World, and aid and development programmes directed toward the landless and the poor peasant farmer. These are the policies to tackle poverty, which is the real enemy that tightening one’s own belts will do nothing to combat.

Look again, Mr. Burns, at the world around you. Why imagine that such projects as your “guaranteed food markets and prices” will prove any more satisfactory than those already existing? The basis will remain unaltered, those who can make a profit from selling food will produce it. Those who cannot afford it will starve.

To make “War on Want” you will have to "make war” on the system of society which gives rise to such lunacy as starvation while food is both available, and is even deliberately destroyed for the "benefit” of its "markets.”

On the Bandwagon

The Church of England is always scouting around for some current events on which they can make meaningless remarks in an attempt to bring us all back into the fold. In this respect they have regarded the economic phenomenon of inflation with what could be described as a jealous reverence for some time. Now however a report has been published (6th March) “on behalf of the industrial committee of the board for social responsibility” which feeds out the C. of E. line to its followers. Among other things we note they recommend:

A more rational and institutional way of determining levels of income was needed to re-inforce the social contract, for unless wages and salaries were held to reasonable limits a situation would arise in which a statutory incomes policy would become a moral incentive.

(The Times 7th March ’75)

That word “reasonable” has been slipped in again, and when the Church talks of “reasonable limits” they mean just what the capitalist means — as low as possible. However the report does not apply the same criterion to the rate of inflation. It produces instead a dynamic new theory which will surely have even the confused capitalist economists rocking in the aisles:

Inflation, the report argues, is a sign of a society that has lost its way. 'In some ways it can be seen as the climactic by-product of a relaxed society’.

We fail to observe much that is “relaxed” about capitalist society, except perhaps the benign ignorance of the Church of England, but we would be interested to learn if successive governments since the war have realized that by increasing the supply of inconvertible paper money they failed to recognize “the sign of a society that has lost its way” and can now see this contemporary burning bush as clearly as the C. of E. does.

An Out-of-Date Creature

As various strange bedfellows begin to join together for or against Britain’s continued membership of the European Economic Community, Mr. Len Murray, General Secretary of the TUC, has given notice that his organization is opposed to membership. His reasons appear to be that the EEC as at present constituted is in some way harmful to “the social welfare” of the “British People.”

Unions in every EEC country were less than satisfied with the operation of the Community: many thought that it had started off with too much competitive purpose and too little community purpose: too much of economics and too little of social welfare: too much about fair business practices and too little about fair social practices. ‘I am afraid that your Market is rather out of date, a creature of its times, and its times were some time ago.’

(The Times, 8th March ’75)

Not that Mr. Murray has any basic objection to capitalism or the exploitation of the working class here or abroad,

We shall need to be satisfied that decisions are taken in ways which give due and balanced weight to common interests and to what the member countries themselves see as their essential and proper national interests.

We can reassure Mr. Murray that the capitalist class will most certainly take steps to realise their “essential” interests: in or out of the EEC. And they will continue to do so while men like Mr. Murray misleads his members into believing that “fair social practices” can have any relevance or application to capitalist society.

The Other Side of the Same Coin

To balance the issue, the Times report of Mr. Murray’s Utopian mouthings was adjoined by a report of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher’s “opening salvo” for her Keep-Britain-in-the-EEC campaign. That Mrs. Thatcher is capable of making any kind of “salvo” is open to conjecture; she did however make a realistic comment on the Government attempts to revise the terms of membership. Having wished Mr. Wilson success in this field, she said:

No doubt, she said, Mr. Wilson would return claiming that his renegotiated terms were vastly better than anything the last Conservative Government had been able to achieve. ‘In fact of course, they will be but the latest stage in a continuing process of adjustment between the members of what is essentially an evolving partnership.'

The evolving partnership she refers to is that between the various capitalists, and she is quite right in assuming that they will be constantly competing against one another for more favourable terms. The honour among these thieves will no doubt be sorely tested after Mr. Wilson announces the new rules of capitalist competition in Europe.

During the course of her remarks, Mrs. Thatcher expressed her willingness to “fight alongside all men and women of good will, from all parties and from none, who wanted to put the future of Britain above partisan quarrels.”

While noting this almost libertarian gusto, we can’t help remembering that Len Murray also wanted to put the future of Britain first; only he suggested doing so by leaving the EEC. How on earth then are we, “all men and women of good will”, to decide upon this momentous issue? It is all very puzzling and a report (“The Grudging Europeans”) published by Social and Community Planning Research on 5th March confirms this bewilderment. There is throughout Britain

a grudging acceptance of our need to rely on Europe, an almost petulant acknowledgement of the benefits to be derived from partnership, there is precious little enthusiasm either for the idea or the reality.

(The Times, 6th March ’75)

The answer is that with Britain in or out of the EEC, the international working class will remain shackled to a system of private property ownership. To believe that this relationship can be altered by leaving (or remaining in) the EEC is time-wasting nonsense and only further delays the job which all workers should be undertaking to establish Socialism.

Alan D'Arcy

Thicker than Water / Obituary of a capitalist ? (2008)

From the February 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the late 1970s a shepherd in Perthshire, Scotland was made redundant. Around the same time the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher was starting its privatisation programme, including the deregulation of public transport, permitting anyone to provide bus services in competition to the council services. The shepherd gave his £25,000 redundancy pay to his two children, Ann and Brian, to buy two second-hand buses.

Accelerate twenty-five years forward and their company (Stagecoach) has grown into an international transport conglomerate extending to bus, rail and airport operations, with holdings in five continents and turnover of £1.5bn.

Brian Souter is now the richest man in Scotland and his sister Ann Gloag is the richest woman. Souter has an explanation for this: “ethics are not irrelevant, but some are incompatible with what we have to do, because capitalism is based on greed”. But unknown to many there was a third founder of Stagecoach, way back in the early 1980s. What happened to him ?

In December 2007 a number of newspapers reported on the death of the third founder, Robin Gloag. Who’s Robin Gloag to deserve an obituary, you might wonder? He certainly was not well-known, but his was arguably the flip-side of a capitalist “success” story. It would be hard to read his obituary and not reflect on the misery capitalism causes.

Robin Gloag at one time owned one-third of Stagecoach, along with Brian Souter and Ann Gloag – his wife. At the time of his death he still retained one share in Stagecoach the international bus and train company. “They tried to get me to sign it away, but it’s still in my name… They didn’t push hard enough and I didn’t fall off a cliff.”

But he was all but pushed off a cliff, being legally shafted within the rules of the market when the thieves fell out. Brian Souter and his sister Ann manoeuvred Robin Gloag out of the business after 3 years. It seemed he didn’t have the necessary personality or willingness to match their ambitions for the fledgling company. He preferred to have his head under the bonnet of the coaches.

He was given £8000 to leave. But when he used this pay-off from Stagecoach to set up a small-scale rival running only one small route near Perth this was still perceived as too much of a threat by his (now ex) wife and brother-in-law . They halved their fares then dropped them to nothing to put him out of business altogether. No love appears to have been lost. After putting his company into administration, Ann Gloag and Soutar purchased it for pennies and sacked him.

Dysfunctional families falling out over money happens regardless of class of course. World socialists aren’t interested in individuals – it’s the system we oppose. We are opposed to the nice fluffy capitalists just as much as the bastards, the Richard Bransons and Anita Roddicks, as well as the Brian Souters or the Conrad Blacks of this world.

As the business grew, the ultra-competitiveness with which Stagecoach forced Robin Gloag off the roads become legendary in the initial cowboy world of unregulated bus services . One Monopolies and Mergers Commission judgement branded Stagecoach’s behaviour as “deplorable, predatory and against the public interest”. Investors were delighted however.

While Ann amassed enormous wealth, Robin Gloag continued to work at his small coach hire business. He was no capitalist : “I am far too soft” he said. Ironically, he had planned to run it as long as he was fit enough, reflecting: “It’s what I have always done and I enjoy it… I have never been afraid of hard work.” Robin Gloag died in December 2007 working at the age of 64; he was covering a shift for one of his employees who was sick.

The Stagecoach story is a lesson in the random nature of business success. Capitalism partly justifies itself on the basis that it is open to anyone to become a capitalist. In reality the vast majority of the members of the capitalist class were born in the right bed to start with. But there are exceptions, including the shepherd’s children, Ann Gloag and Brian Souter. But their story is not one of incredible initiative or hard work, just a fair bit of money to start with and good timing (the launch of Stagecoach conveniently coincided with a national rail strike). Plus of course a willingness to shaft anyone – friends or family – who got in the way.

On the same day that Robin Gloag was killed at work, Stagecoach reported healthy six-monthly results, posting a 9 percent rise in profits to £85 million.

Brian Gardner

Party names and games (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Last year Parliament passed an Act to allow political parties to register, both to protect their name and to present lists in elections where an element of proportional representation has been introduced—as in the elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly this May, but also in those to the European Parliament in June and to the Greater London Authority in May next year.

The parliamentary parties brought in this Act mainly to protect their own position by stopping candidates calling themselves, notoriously, Literal Democrats but also Conversative Party and Independent Labour. However it has also settled our dispute with Militant over their attempted usurpation of one of our names (see Socialist Standard, February 1997).

While we have been registered under our full name of “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”, Militant were refused registration as “Socialist Party”. They are now going to Court to seek a judicial review. We don’t know officially on what grounds Militant were refused recognition but this can be gathered from a letter from their Executive Committee to the Registrar of Political Parties published in their paper The Socialist on 12 March. Part of this reads:

The reasons you give are that the similarity of our name to other parties will cause confusion to voters, and that we have adopted our name relatively recently compared to others.

Militant’s letter also includes a passage from the Registrar’s letter to them:

  “other and possibly lesser parties in terms of their organisation and membership have used the name ‘Socialist Party’ over a substantially greater number of years and therefore have a prior claim”.

Reading between the lines it is clear that the Registrar came to the conclusion that, on the evidence, there was another party—us—who had a prior claim on this name because we had used it for longer (95 years compared with 2).

Militant themselves certainly assume this as, in their letter to the Registrar, they try to demolish us in his eyes:

  Over the past two years, we have built up recognition of our name in many areas of the country. There is much greater recognition of our name due to the work we have done, than there is of the SPGB.

In a footnote reference after SPGB they write:

 The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small party founded over a century ago who are about one-tenth of the size of the Socialist Party (ourselves). They very rarely contest elections and are mainly a propaganda and discussion group.

This is wrong in nearly every respect. We were not founded over a century ago. We have many times more than a hundred members. And it is not true that we “very rarely” contest elections.

Although numbers can’t settle the issue, for the record, we have contested 12 of the 15 general elections that have taken place since 1945 as well as a number of by-elections and the 1989 and 1994 (and now the 1999) European elections. Geographically we have contested elections in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, Oldham, Newcastle, Jarrow, Easington, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Livingston, Swansea and Belfast. In fact, in the 1994 Euro-elections alone, when we stood 4 candidates (including one against Militant who then called themselves “Militant Labour”), more electors—2 million or so—were faced with “Socialist Party” on the ballot papers representing us than the electorate of all the local wards and Westminister seats Militant has ever contested under the same usurped name added together.  

How Militant took the news

Dramatics in Scotland

In Scotland we found ourselves headline news for a week or so as the Registrar announced his intention not to register the latest name for Militant’s front organisation there of “Scottish Socialist Party”. His reason for this preliminary ruling was, apparently, that the name “Scottish Socialist Party” could be confused with ours, especially as we had contested two seats in Scotland at the 1997 General Election. SSP leader and Glasgow councillor Tommy Sheridan, who already sees himself as an MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament), wasn’t at all happy.

First he said he was going to go to the Commission for Racial Equality because it was “racial discrimination” to refuse to allow a Scottish party to call itself Scottish because an English party had a similar name (Herald, 3 March). Then he claimed it was a breach of “two sections of the European Convention on Human Rights” (Herald, 4 March). Then he threatened “a campaign of mass civil disobedience to disrupt the Scottish General Election in May” (Herald, 8 March). Less amusingly, a section of the press began a smear campaign against us. Matthew Norman, for instance, wrote a piece in the Guardian (5 March) suggesting that while the SSP was a serious party with three councillors we were “a minute, slightly weird group which runs in very few seats, proposes the abolition of money and runs on a programme unchanged since 1910”.

Sheridan needn’t have bothered. First, although of course we don’t like people calling themselves “socialist” when in our opinion they’re not, that’s something to be settled by political debate not law. Our dispute was with Militant in England and their use of the same name as us even on the ballot papers (which Militant in Scotland never did, standing in the last election as the “Scottish Socialist Alliance”). Second, in the end the Registrar adopted a relatively liberal approach, allowing as many parties as possible to register including the SSP, only ruling out blatant cases of parties trying to usurp a name to which they had no historical right.

It is true that there would have been no possible confusion had Scottish Militant stuck to their name till last October of “Scottish Socialist Alliance”. But since we, being resolutely anti-nationalist, would never dream of calling ourselves “Scottish” (or “British” or “Welsh” or “Irish”) socialists, we can agree that any confusion between us and the SSP is going to be minimal.

How to vote Socialist (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters for the Scottish Parliament will have two votes, one for a constituency member as in elections to Westminster and a second which can be cast for a party list covering a larger, multi-member region.

We are not standing any individual candidates so our message to those who want socialism is to use their first vote to vote against all the various reformist and pro-capitalist candidates by writing the word “SOCIALISM” across the ballot paper.

We are, however, presenting lists in 2 of the 8 regional constituencies (Glasgow and Lothians). Each of the 600,000 householders in these two regions will receive through their letterbox one or other of the socialist election leaflets reproduced on these pages. Here, of course, those who want socialism can show this by using their second vote to vote for the Socialist Party list. Be careful not to confuse our list with that of the “Scottish Socialist Party” which, despite its name, does not stand for socialism but is a leftwing nationalist—a Tartan Trotskyist—party.

Unfortunately our resources do not permit us to give more than a quarter of Scotland’s 4 million or so electors a chance to cast a vote for socialism. In the six other regions those who want socialism will have to indicate this by writing “SOCIALISM” across their second ballot paper too.