50 Years Ago: The King and the Slums (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity given to the decline in unemployment and to increasing prosperity (measured in the capitalist mind chiefly by Stock Exchange prices) is somewhat offset by the conditions in the depressed areas, at the moment in the spot-light.

Dudley Barker, in the Evening Standard (November 16th, 1936), quotes an instance of a typical town in the coal-mining and steel area in South Wales which has 60.6 per cent. of its industrial insurable population unemployed. He instances a case, again typical, of a miner who, when employed, is 6s. a week better off than when unemployed. Similar examples could be given of towns in the coal and steel districts in Durham, Northumberland and Scotland. They have been referred to and described by nearly all the capitalist newspapers. The results of the chronic depression in these industries are appalling. Wide areas are derelict, bearing all the aspects of intense poverty, drabness and malnutrition. The Daily Herald (November 6th, 1936) reported a case of a shipbuilding worker who had not worked at his trade for 16 years. Innumerable cases have been reported of men in their twenties and some nearing their thirties who have never worked. Edward VIII, after his recent visit to the depressed areas in South Wales, said, “Something will be done.” The extent to which ”something will be done,” we prophesy, will not touch the fringe of the problem.

[From an article by H. Waite, Socialist Standard December 1936.]

Newport Rising? (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

Last month’s Socialist Standard contained a listing for an event taking place as part of the Newport Rising festival. It’s held every year to commemorate the Chartist uprising of 1839, a large-scale rebellion by workers against their exclusion from the political process and a demand for the right to vote and to have their voices heard. This event was the Newport Radical Bookfair at the Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre, where the Socialist Party had booked a stall. Unfortunately, just a matter of days before it took place, we were informed by the organiser that our booking had been revoked owing to a ban imposed on stalls for political organisations. We were told that this was due to the event being held in a publicly managed establishment. However, when we enquired further, we were given a different reason, which was that Newport Rising was a registered charity and to allow political organisations to have stalls at its bookfair would compromise its charitable status. When we pointed out that we had been allowed a stall at last year’s event, we were told that ‘it shouldn’t have happened’.

Party members nevertheless attended the bookfair as individuals and, when they did, they found several stalls of a political nature: one, for example, run by the Socialist Medical Association, which is affiliated to the Labour Party; and another seemingly promoting ‘trans’ ideas but offering a selection of anarchist leaflets and pamphlets, one of which contained the following statement: ‘For far too long the masters have convinced us that violence is exclusively their domain, and we have cowered and accepted this as truth. It’s about fuckin’ time we fight back, and I’ll sing the praises of anyone who kills a cop or a military jarhead. Those who end the lives of oppressors should be held in the highest regard as liberators’. So much for the exclusion of politics. We intend to pursue this further with the Newport Rising charity and, if necessary, with the Charity Commission.

Despite this our members who were present on the day were able to hand out some of our leaflets to those entering and leaving the bookfair and to participants on the traditional Torchlit March through the city in the evening which is the culminating event of the celebration of the Chartist uprising of 186 years ago. The text of the leaflet we gave out is reproduced below.

Labour has failed: Give Socialism a chance

 The Chartists recognised the importance of political power and universal suffrage to enact social change. They rightly saw the vote as the way to political control. Once the workers had the vote, they reasoned, they could use it to send delegates to parliament who would pass laws to improve their social and economic situation. But they soon found, as everyone has found since, that the vote alone cannot alter the capitalist system. It can’t change the way the capitalist economic system works, based as it is on minority class ownership of resources and wealth and production for profit.

The last 150 years  

For over 150 years now, a majority of the electorate in Britain has been made up of workers in the sense of those who, excluded from ownership of the means to produce wealth, are forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or salary in order to live. From time to time, as at present, voters have elected Labour governments but, when in office, those governments have always accepted capitalism, at best trying to reform it in various ways. The theory of some who supported Labour was that a series of successive Labour governments would gradually transform capitalism into a more equal society. But this has not happened and Labour is now an avowedly capitalist party, in fact proclaiming itself a ‘party of business’.

The Corbyn/Sultana party 

Understandably, many who have supported Labour up to now no longer have any faith in it and a new left-wing party is apparently being set up, with Jeremy Corbyn as figurehead. But if ever it was in government, it would face the same problem as Labour – that of needing to administer a system that exists not to satisfy human needs but to generate profit for the tiny minority. The plain fact is that capitalism just cannot be made to work in any other way than according to its own economic laws that impose themselves on those who run governments as well as on those who run businesses. It is a profit-making system that can only run in the interests of the profit-takers and never in the interests of workers whose labour is the source of profits. No government can overcome these laws and all governments have to apply them or risk provoking economic chaos.

The task now 

What is needed is an understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of the majority. That understood, it follows that the only political party worth supporting is one based not on a strategy of trying to tinker with capitalism’s effects but on a commitment to abolish it altogether and replace it, in one go, by a society of the common ownership and democratic control of resources with production directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit. In a word, socialism.

Once a majority want this, they can use the vote to win political control with a view to carrying out this revolution in the basis of society. The urgent task of socialists is to convince more people that that there is a viable alternative to capitalism – socialism as described above. Hence the need to work to educate and mobilise public support for it. This is the policy we in the Socialist Party have been pursuing since our foundation in 1904.

Editorial: The Miners’ Eight Hours Bill. (1909)

Editorial from the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once more the position of the S.P. is vindicated when they point out that “‘palliatives’ don’t palliate.” The first result of the passing of the Miners’ Eight Hours Bill was the threat of a general miners’ strike if the employers insisted upon the terms they laid down.

The trouble started in South Wales, probably because, as the Manchester Guardian suggests, “a large number—more than half it is said— of the men are paid by the day” in that district. Hence the shortening of the working day, if all other factors remained as before, would amount to a rise in wages for the day hands. The mine-owners however, were not prepared to allow all other factors to remain as before. They demanded first an alteration of wages. The men resisted. Then they claimed that clause 3 gave them power to extend the working day within certain limits. The clause reads :

“The eight hours per day may be extended as respects any mine on not more than sixty days in any calender year by not more than one hour a day.”

The employers demanded that this provision should be enforced, saying that its enforcement was within the owners’ option. On the other hand the miners claim that it cannot operate without their consent—a claim that the wording of the clause in no way supports. However, it has been decided to take a test case to the courts for a judgement thereon.

Then the owners claimed the right to introduce a double shift, which the men again opposed on the grounds of it being unhealthy owing to the gaseous nature of the South Wales coal. This idea was, naturally, scouted by the owners. “Perhaps, however,” says the capitalist paper quoted above, “the main root of the miners’ objection is economic—the fear that the double shift may end in lower wages. The wages of the miners depend on the price of coal, and if the double shift meant a considerable increase in output, it might involve a drop in wages without a corresponding drop in profits.”

This is certainly evidence from the enemy in support of our contention that the time occupied in fighting for these reforms is a sheer waste as the general conditions of wage slavery still remain, and the evolution of capitalistic production in economising the methods employed, more than compensate the masters for the apparent benefit conferred upon the men by such reform. On this point what is called a compromise has been effected and the miners are to have a share in deciding in every case whether the double shift is to be introduced. It may be left to the employer to see that the “share” of the men in this decision will not go against the owners’ interests.

Further evidence comes from Staffordshire, where the pit lads came out on strike because the masters wanted to reduce the meal time to an extent that meant practically working the 8 hours right off.

Here again a compromise has been effected whereby the men are to be allowed 20 minutes for their mid-day meal. If as the tale told of Gladstone relates, it is necessary to chew one’s food thirty-two times before swallowing to keep one’s digestion in order, then the miners will have to measure their mid-day meal by troy weight instead of avoirdupois to keep in health. 

For years past the miners have been asking for a legal 8 hours day. Now they have it their first actions are, in one direction to threaten, and in another to actually, strike against its effects. What stronger evidence can be given of the correctness of our position on palliatives?

A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing to the “Daily Citizen” (4.6.14), gives information of a singular occurrence in a signal box on one of the main railways. The box was visited by a company of soldiers, who were admitted in batches of nine. They were accompanied by the district inspector and a plain clothes officer, who instructed them in the art of railway signalling and block working, much to the surprise and discomfort of the signalmen on duty.

Yet the “Daily Citizen” and its supporters are always howling for the nationalisation of the railways !

* * *

When the “Storstad” arrived at Montreal after her disastrous collision with the “Empress of Ireland,” she was at once seized by the sheriff and placed under arrest. When the writ was nailed to the mast Captain Andersen demanded to know: “By what authority do you board my vessel and arrest her?” The sheriff replied (probably because the “Storstad” was a “foreigner”) that his authority was “the authority of the British Empire.”

Under that authority, of course, anything could be “pinched.” That’s how Eugland became “great.”

* * *

Keir Hardie appears to believe that the emancipation of the workers is but of secondary importance. Capitalist measures should receive prior attention. He told his audience at a labour demonstration at Lesmahagow (Lanark) that the Labour Party were out to unite the working “classes,” but before this could be done the Home Rule question had to be got out of the way.

The Socialist Party, I might point out, are also out to unite the workers, but with this difference—they are out to unite them for Socialism. And of the various obstacles in the way of this unification they have had to encounter, one of the biggest is, not Home Rule, but—the Labour Party !

* * *

At a recent meeting of the Blackburn Board of Guardians it was stated that the sum spent in out-relief during 1913 was £2,000 less than that paid in respect of officials’ salaries. I am beginning to see why there is such a rush for these jobs.

* * *

Mr. Rockefeller’s millions appear to bring him endless trouble. He is now expecting to be called to give evidence before the Inter-State Commission which is investigating the affairs of the Newhaven Railroad, U.S.A. In one portion of the evidence a Mr. Millen, ex-president of this concern, said that enormous losses were made through financial trickery. He alleged that over £2,000,000 were juggled away by the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan.

We often read, in stories of the old buccaneering days of the Spanish Main, where pirates used to cheat each other out of their share of the plunder, and which invariably ended up in a fight and a lot of blood-spilling.

Similarly, to-day, the industrial pirates quarrel over their share of the booty. Whilst agreed that the manner of acquiring it is satisfactory (to them), yet, as soon as they begin to handle the loot they cheat each other mercilessly, and invariably wind up in a fight—not a bloody fight, but a legal one.

In this case blood is spilled in order to get the booty—not the blood of the pirates, but that of the toiling millions who are bludgeoned and battered into turning it over to them.

* * *

Many meetings have been held of late to protest against the employment of Chinese and other “foreigners” as seamen on board British ships. Yet one thing seems to have been left out of account. That is that “Sea Scouts” are now being shipped as deck hands on board British vessels. Possibly it is only to gain experience—but experience of what ? Is it the same experience that Boy Scouts are undergoing in connection with the military forces ?—experience that may be turned to account “should any danger threaten the Empire” from within or without ?

The scout law says : “A Scout must be loyal to his King, and to his officers, and to his parents, his country, and his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly of them.” In other words the “Scouts” are there to be used as the tools of capitalism against the workers. That fact is obvious enough, at any rate. They are well organised on land ; now they are turning their attention to the sea, and the introduction of a few Scouts on board merchant ships also marks the introduction of the thin end of the wedge. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but I “hae ma doots.” It opens up possibilities.

* * *

The Rev. A. G. Waldron tells the “Daily Sketch” (12.6.14) that : “Modern Socialistic philosophy has had a bad effect on many people. They want everything done for them.” Which causes one to wonder what the reverend gent does for a living, that he can afford to talk like that. My experience of these professional medicine men is that they don’t do anything for a living. They live on the product of other people’s toil. To use this pulpit thumper’s own words, they “want everything done for them”—and thanks to the unmitigated foolishness of those workers whom “modern Socialistic philosophy” has not yet “spoiled,” they get “every­ thing done for them.”

Waldron also said that he had “tried the experiment of allowing questions to be asked after the sermon, but it was a failure. Only the fools asked questions in church.” I suppose every person who asked a question was considered a fool. Well, perhaps he was. Only fools and rogues are to be found in churches, and it is the height of a fool’s folly to question a rogue concerning his roguery.

* * *

How is this ? Have the workers of Tonypandy already forgotten the treatment they got at the hands of the capitalists’ butchers ? It would appear so, judging from a picture which was published in a recent issue of the “Daily News and Leader.”

It seems that the Prince and Princess of Teck had paid a visit to Tonypandy. Of course, they went about the mines, where their presence created great enthusiasm (which, by the way, is a very useful element, and quite necessary now-a-days to the capitalists’ game of bleeding the workers), so much so that, instead of going home, they lined up at the pit-mouth, all in their dirt and grime, just as they had come up out of the bowels of the earth, and sang with feeling and gusto, “Land of my Fathers.” This is distinctly good, only the wording of the hymn appeared to me to be inappropriate. It should have been “Land of my Masters.”

* * *

How terrifying is that oft-maligned and much misunderstood phrase, “the class war” ! How soon it will disturb the even temperament of a respectable congress ! For instance, the International Textile Workers held their congress during the second week in June at Blackpool. The congress was asked by the foreign delegates to say that the International Congress would only accept those unions for membership which stood by the principle of the class war. The English section, however, did not like the phrase, “because in England it had rather a bad repute, and was only connected with one small part of the Labour movement.” (This is where the Labour Party chuckles.)

In face of this refusal the Continental delegates were compelled to seek another expression, so they hit upon the phrase “organisations that combat the present capitalistic state of things.” This was accepted.

What surprised the Continental delegates, said one of them, was that, far from looking down upon the workmen, the English employers treated them on a fraternal footing, and with the ordinary politeness of human intercourse. That will explain the repugnance of the English section to the introduction of the class war principle. Naturally, if they are so pally with the bosses, the class war won’t exist for them.

Tom Sala

Editorial: The Fruit of "Victory." (1912)

Editorial from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month comment was made in these columns on the permission by the miners’ leaders of the men to return to work too early, as well as on the impossibility of the “impartial” chairman being impartial. Within the short span of a month both points of criticism are borne out by the development of events.

Lord St Aldwyn, better known when Tory Chancellor as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, was the “impartial” chairman for the South Welsh District Board set up by the Bill that settled the recent coal strike. He is reported by the miners’ leader, Mr. C. B. Stanton, to have surrendered the men to the coal owners.

Says Mr. Stanton : “Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir. E. Grey and others, told our National Executive they considered 5s. per day very reasonable for any man who worked in the mine as a minimum wage. Lord St. Aldwyn has given us a 3s. minimum. This is not a living wage, but a measly, wretched surrender to the Welsh coal-owners, whose profits, greed, and obstinacy at all times are notorious. How any man could, upon the evidence, give such a verdict I cannot understand.”

But Mr. Stanton ought to know that the “independent” chairman, even with the collusion of the Government as he suggests, is quite capable of betraying the men and converting a promised increase of wages into a decrease. When did Mr. Stanton put any value upon a Liberal promise to the workers, or trust the “ impartiality ” of a Tory politician ? Why, exactly when it was least justified— when the strike had driven the master class and the political wire-pullers, Liberal and Tory alike, to an extremity.

It was easy for the Liberals to premise the “5 and 2” and to sympathise with the men in their “reasonable” demands. And very convenient to leave to the “impartiality” of a retired Tory politician, the execution of the premise.

Says Mr. Stanton further: “ The rank and file know where the mistake was made before ; we shall not repeat that mistake again.” But it seems to us that the mistake need never have been made at all. Mr. Stanton was among the leaders who advised the men to accept the Bill, with its machinery of "impartial” boards and “independent” chairmen, even against the better judgment of the men. It was the leaders who should have known what the masters and their political servants were likely to do once the men were back again at work.

We of course, can draw no satisfaction from the turn events have taken, except from the fact that in bearing out our prognostications they have given further proof of the existence of the class struggle and the solidarity of the capitalist class against the workers. Had the miners’ actions been guided by this knowledge they would not now be lamenting that they have been tricked by the masters and sold by—but the law of libel bolds us dumb.

Nationalisation: A Solution for the Disillusioned (1955)

F

rom the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The decision of the National Coal Board to close Brynhenllys Colliery has cast a shadow over the mining valleys of South Wales. “Last Friday 193 miners received notice to finish work on August 26th. The previous day the N.C.B. accused men of “indiscipline.” (South Wales Evening Post, 16/8/55).

Many of the people in the mining districts of South Wales supported nationalisation of the mines, believing it would solve their economic troubles. They did not and still do not understand that nationalisation is no different from private ownership insofar as it is still Capitalism. But now many of the miners from the colliery in question have openly stated they preferred the conditions operating under private Capitalism. Here then is a clear and sad picture of the confusion in the minds of workers everywhere on the question of “nationalisation.”

As Marx pointed out in “Value, Price and Profit,” “Capital presupposes wages; and wages presupposes capital; one cannot exist without the other.”

So the existence of the Capitalist system presupposes the wages system; wherever this exists, Capitalism exists. All that happens under nationalisation is that capital, instead of remaining in the control of private individuals, passes under the control of the State; it becomes centralised. But the Capitalists do not lose by this move, rather do they gain; for what greater security can one have than State bonds. All they now have to worry about is the economic stability of British Capitalism as a whole Even if all the collieries closed down, they would draw their interest. In Russia, in China, in America and Great Britain, and in almost every other part of the world. Capitalism operates either as State Capitalism or as private enterprise.

If the workers of the world will only stop and think about these things, instead of allowing themselves to be led up the garden path by leaders of any variety, they will realise the solution lies with themselves, and not in trusting to leaders. They will vote for the abolition of Capitalism and the wages system, and introduce a system of society based on common ownership of the means and methods of production and distribution by and in the interests of the whole community; irrespective of race, sex or colour. Goods will be produced for use and not for sale; there will be no buying, no selling, no trade and no barter; the money system will finish in its entirety. Man will then have proved that he is civilised. There will be no war for there will be nothing to have wars about, since things will be commonly owned. There will be no stealing; for what man will steal from himself. All our ideas of ethics and morality will change; because the laws operating under minority rule are related to property. A man’s wife is his property in law, just as much as his lawn mower. Under Socialism men and women will be equal; the only bonds will be bonds of affection. There will be opportunity for each to follow the occupation of his or her choice. Opponents of Socialism say human nature wont allow it to work; when what they really mean is “ human behaviour.” People will not behave in the crazy way they do today; after all because there is plenty of water in the tap we do not leave it on all night. In the same way when Socialism becomes a fact people will not hoard things up. Why should they? since they can have as much as they want anyway. They will not refuse to work since work will not be as it is today, everything will be done for the benefit of man; conditions of work will be different from now, since there will be no bosses; there being nobody to boss for. In short, a sane people will see the necessity for Socialism and so they will behave in a sensible way. For the first time in history they will be able to control their destiny.

Phil Mellor

Snowden’s Goodbye (1932)

From the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

On September 28th, Philip Snowden (now a noble Lord) wrote a letter to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald (not yet a noble Lord) giving his reasons for resigning from the National Government. Whether he proposes staging a “come-back” as leader of the Liberal Party, we do not, of course, know, but the possible future appearance at a general election of Ramsay MacDonald leading the Tories and the noble Lord leading the Liberals would certainly add to the gaiety of elections.

Lord Snowden’s long letter contains only one reference to the workers, that since the National Government has been in existence “unemployment has greatly increased.”

The following extracts from his letter (taken from the News-Chronicle, September 29th) give the basis of his reasons for leaving, and are an illuminating expression of his outlook and where his sympathies lie.

He writes: —

“But I can no longer, without loss of all self-respect, remain a member of a Government which is pursuing a policy which I believe is disastrous to the welfare of the country, which will lead to the disruption of the Empire, and which is fraught with great danger to our international relations.” (Italics ours.)

The main purpose for which the National Government was formed has been achieved. . . . The acute national emergency which then existed no longer exists. The Budget has been balanced: stern economies have been enforced; borrowing for the dole has been stopped; a great conversion scheme has been successfully carried through; and the threat to our national credit has been removed. (Italics ours.)

The Agreements (Ottawa) have surrendered our fiscal autonomy, and handed over to the Dominions the control of British trade policy, reducing this country below the status of a Dominion.

You cannot expect Free Traders to acquiesce, even passively in such a policy of national humiliation and bondage.”

How sad. How very sad ! Like the sea waves that always keep returning and telling the same old tale. After helping to enforce stern economies and stopping borrowing for the dole, to be faced with the disruption of the Empire and national humiliation. It is really too harrowing. Will it move to tears the three million unemployed and the workers who have had their wages reduced ?

Anyhow, the News-Chronicle for October 17th informs us that Lady Snowden (with portrait, as usual) is supporting the proposal of Sir Landon Ronald for the broadcast of an appropriate prelude to the Two Minutes’ Silence on Armistice Day. On the same page is a reference to a broadcast on disarmament by five Fellows of Oxford Colleges. The reference commences : —

“The writers outline the present alarming state of Europe and the growth of a situation containing the seeds of war, . . .”

However, although he has, for the moment, said goodbye to the Government, Lord Snowden is not out of the “news.” In a message to the National Association of Building Societies he is reported as delivering himself of the following: —

“By the help which this institution offers, about one-fourth of the houses in this country are now owned by their occupiers. The social significance of this fact is tremendous. It has given to this large part of the population a feeling of security and independence.”

Has the noble Lord any conception of the existence of these people who have tied a millstone around their necks for years ? The number who, through illness or unemployment, have had to give up their “own” houses and seen the small savings they had used thrown away after stinting themselves and struggling fruitlessly to meet the demands of the building societies and the expenses of their jerry-built houses ?

The value of an Englishman’s home and the reward of “thrift” is shown up in a significant manner by the following extract from the News-Chronicle of October 13th: —

“CARDIFF, Wednesday.

The Ministry of Labour are likely to become the owners of considerable house property in the mining towns of South Wales in the near future as the result of instructions recently sent to local public assistance committees.

This instruction, which is issued under the powers of the Poor Law (Public Assistance) Act of last year, requires that any applicant for relief who is an owner of property in any shape or form must first of all lodge the deeds of such property with the Public Assistance Committee.

A member of the Pontypridd Public Assistance Committee to whom I spoke to-day said the order had caused much resentment, particularly in view of the fact that hundreds of aged ex-miners, who had bought their cottage homes with their life’s savings, had, owing to the depression, come to the end of their resources and were now compelled to part with the last remaining link with prosperity and happy days.

UNABLE TO REPAY.

Doubtless, said the Member, the Ministry will compel us to hold these deeds until the loans from the Public Assistance Committee are repaid. As, however, there is little likelihood of many of the being ever in a position to do this the Government looks like acquiring a lot of cheap house property.”

From the above the “social significance of ownership” certainly does appear to be “tremendous” when it is a case of workers “owning” houses which they get if they live long enough, keep up the payments, and the houses are still standing at the end of the term.

Fellow workers, how much longer will you allow shallow self-seekers, like Snowden and his kind, to throw dust in your eyes and divert you from the only thing that matters—the control of your destinies by yourselves.

Gilmac.

Literary Curiosities. No. 1.—Mr. Keir Hardie’s Election Address. (1905)

From the September 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Merthyr Boroughs Parliamentary Election 1900

________________

TO THE ELECTORS.

Gentlemen,

It is with pleasure that I accept the hearty invitation of the

TRADE-UNIONISTS of the MERTHYR BOROUGHS

to come forward in the Labour interest as a Candidate for the representation of the constituency in the House of Commons.

The confidence and friendship shown by this invitation is an honour which I value as being far above riches.

WE ARE NO STRANGERS TO ONE ANOTHER.

I was among you endeavouring to cheer, encourage and strengthen you in the dark days of your recent great Industrial struggle. Not many years ago, when during the Hauliers’ Strike, the Government sent soldiers into your District, it was MY VOICE THAT PROTESTED against this in Parliament, when others upon whom you had more claims were silent.

My Programme is the Programme of Labour. My Cause is Labour’s Cause—the cause of Humanity,—the Cause of God.

For twenty-four years I have been before my fellow-men as a Trade-Union Official and a Political Leader.

MY RECORD FOR THESE YEARS is the best pledge I can give of what my future course of action will be. Whether in Parliament or out of it, I always have been, and always shall be found on the side of the Workers. I know everything that is to be known about the life and work of a Miner.

Born and reared in a Collier’s cottage, and afterwards working for FOURTEEN YEARS IN THE PIT, I know only too well what such a life means, and I am not willing that any human being should continue in the life without further essential reforms.

I am a Democrat in Politics, aad a Socialist in Economics. I first learned my Socialism in the New Testament, where I still find my chief inspiration.

Our claim for one representative is moderate and reasonable enongh. In a constituency where we are in an overwhelming majority, we ask but for half the representation. Workers ! in being true to me, you will be TRUE TO YOURSELVES ! Let us, then, work hard for a great Labour Victory at the Polls on Tuesday next.

I am, Gentlemen, Respectfully Yours,

J. Keir Hardie.

Lochnorris, Cumnock, Scotland,

September, 1900.

Editorial: Heroism or Imbecility? (1905)

Editorial from the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“To no section of the industrious working-class are we under deeper obligation than to the miners …. The Kingdom and Empire of which it is the heart, owe much to Welsh coal. … No deed of valour on the battlefield can surpass the splendid but quiet and unostentatious bravery which these rough workers display . . .” 

Yes, according to the capitalist press the whole world stands agog at the heroism of the miner in times of catastrophe similar to the recent explosion which took such a fearful toll of working-class life in a Welsh mine. But let these same heroes take a stand in order to secure a few of the comforts of life to set off against the dreadful hazards that they daily face; let them organize to fight the capitalist class for some improvement in the unmitigated hardships of their condition ; let them so much as hint a threat against the liberty of their masters to take the whole product of mine labour less that diminishing quantity necessary to the maintenance of the physical effectiveness of the miner, and this same Press will send such a howl of indignation up to high heaven at the unutterable selfishness that would reduce profits, and the crass stupidity whose insistent demands can only be satisfied at the risk of driving trade out of the country, that the workers in alarm cease their agitation or reduce their request by one half or (which amounts to the same thing) hasten to agree to the appointment of a conciliation Board, under the impression that they have done a wicked thing, or, with the idea generally fostered by their leaders, that they must do nothing to alienate public sympathy.

“Heroes” they are when they suffer suffocation without protest; endure hardships without complaint. “Bulwarks of the Empire” they, when they return to work without hesitation even while their comrades’ mutilated bodies are being brought out of the bowels of the earth. But let them organize for some amelioration in what is ironically designated their “lot” and they are scum to be flouted or children to be wheedled or dogs to be shot as at Featherstone—shot ruthlessly, unhesitatingly, with the calculated approval of capitalist hacks misnamed Labour Leaders who, having mounted to position upon working-class backs, betray the trust and sell the interest confided to their keeping. The line between working-class heroism and working-class imbecility is, in the eyes of capitalism, thin indeed. And seeing that, however small the demand, capitalist good opinion (the preservation of which to the unenlightened working-class mind is so important) is alienated; however feeble the protest capitalist love is turned into hate, capitalist bullets take the place of capitalist benevolence, it does seem to the casual observer that workers in the mine and factory stand to lose nothing by increasing their demand from the present absurdly ineffectual ha’penny or penny an hour advance in wages or the establishment of the status quo ante Farwell, to the demand for the full result of their labour and the abolition of an altogether useless and unnecessary capitalist class.

Burberry applies the law of profit (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last September Burberry announced that its Treorchy factory was no longer viable and would close this March with the loss of 309 jobs

Until the summer of 2006, it is probably true to say that the village of Treorchy was little known outside Wales – except to devoted enthusiasts of Welsh male voice choirs. Nestling in the shadow of steep and rocky hills, the village lies at the head of the Rhondda Valley and is typical of the abandoned communities that were originally established to mine the now worked-out coal of the South Wales valleys.

The Rhondda Valley is today an area of demoralising deprivation, characterised by dire poverty, poor housing and a drug problem that is almost out of control. Many of Treorchy’s ageing 8,000 strong community have chronic health and anxiety conditions. Unemployment is abnormally high and such local jobs as exist, mainly in retail, are difficult to come by. The village has one large employer of note – the factory owned by the iconic brand name Burberry.

Burberry was established in the middle of the nineteenth century when its founder Thomas Burberry invented a method of waterproofing cloth, which he called gabardine. Since the 1980s the company has successfully expanded the brand into a variety of luxury and fashion goods, including clothing, sportswear, watches, and perfumes and has enjoyed rapid international growth. Burberry’s first half results to September 2006 showed an increase in the company’s turnover of 10 percent to nearly £400 million and an increase in operating profit of 7 percent to £84 million. (burberryplc.com, 14 November 2006 .) The employees of Burberry in Treorchy had every reason to feel assured – after all, it had been their sacrifices that had contributed to the company’s startling success. But the events that were about to unfold showed their confidence had been seriously misplaced.

At the beginning of September Burberry announced that its Treorchy factory was no longer viable and that it would close in March 2007 with the loss of 309 jobs. The company said that rising costs could no longer be recovered by raising worker productivity and that skill shortages and a decline in the local supplier network meant that the factory no longer had a future. Burberry had been the community’s main employer for generations, and its workers, many of whom had been employed for 40 years, were stunned. Their union, the GMB, had received no warning of the closure or of company plans to transfer the production of designer polo shirts to China.

Outraged Burberry workers and their union organised themselves to resist the closure. While public protests against factory closures are not new, what was different about this campaign was its success in turning the threat of closure into a public relations battle that rapidly mobilised public opinion. They lobbied politicians and successfully sought the support of celebrities to keep the issue in the public eye to shame the company into reconsidering and to persuade customers not to buy the its products. The campaign quickly became a public debate about whether a successful company hailed as a British icon and already enjoying healthy profits should simply be ‘allowed’ to pack up and abandon a small community.

Burberry is heavily dependent on the sales of its goods in other countries. In these countries the company has always marketed itself as a quintessentially ‘British’ brand, an appeal that has been summed up by the journalist Janet Street-Porter with the words, ‘To many, Burberry is just as British as the Union Jack’. Burberry workers and politicians have endeavoured to exploit this connection to argue that if the company’s success is so dependent on its ‘Britishness’, then it has an obligation to take care of its workers in Britain and treat them ‘fairly.’ Such appeals to economic patriotism have invoked issues of corporate accountability and nurtured a view amongst politicians that, while this type of behaviour may be expected from ‘foreign’ companies, this does not mean it is acceptable from a British employer.

The support from celebrity figures, many representative of the kind of people who have the money to buy the Burberry brand, has been an important factor in keeping the closure in the news. Amongst those who have offered their support – promoting their ‘Welsh credentials’ and enhancing their own public image in the process – are Bryn Terfel, Emma Thompson, and actor Ioan Gruffudd, who until recently modelled Burberry fashionware. More recently the tax exile entertainer Tom Jones, who hasn’t lived in Wales for decades, has added his support and Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson has also lent his name to the campaign. Other objectors include the Prince of Wales and interestingly the Church of England, which has investments in the company and has written to Burberry questioning its proposals to close its factory. There is no evidence, however that, as a shareholder in the company, the Church is offering to forgo its dividend if Burberry keeps its factory open.

The politicians – with an eye on this May’s Welsh National Assembly elections – have also been trumpeting their support for the stricken workforce. In October last year Leighton Andrews, Assembly Member for Rhondda, put a ‘Statement of Opinion’ to the Welsh Assembly deploring the closure, and Rhondda MP Chris Bryant put down an Early Day Motion at Westminster calling for Burberry to reconsider its decision.

In November 2006 the workers gained further publicity by staging a public protest outside the company’s prestige New Bond Street store in London. After he had seen which way the wind was blowing, muted criticism also came from Wales and Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who said such an ‘iconic British brand’ should not be made abroad.

The public relations battle continued in January 2007, when Burberry chairman John Peace and its chief executive Angela Ahrendts were called before the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee to give evidence to its inquiry on globalisation. This intervention followed criticism of Burberry bosses over the insensitivity of Christmas bonuses given to its Treorchy workers – a Burberry scarf and a £30 voucher to spend in its stores. As well as this, Chris Bryant MP is urging Parliament to revoke Burberry’s Royal Warrant if the company proceeds with the closure, asserting that these should only go to British companies with a ‘fair employment policy’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6305703.stm). The issue has even gone to the European Parliament, MEP Jill Evans saying, ‘I will be calling for corporate social responsibility to be made legally binding’ (South Wales Echo, 9 January 007). It is hard, however, to see these activities as other than cynical and meaningless gestures designed to placate disgruntled voters who are threatening to give Labour politicians in Wales a rough ride in May.

Burberry, for its part, has continued to resolutely defend its ‘Britishness’, recently saying, ‘We are proud of our British heritage and we continue to design and manufacture in the UK’ (Observer, January). The company has been keen to point out that after the closure it will still employ some 2,000 workers at its Castleford and Rotherham factories in Yorkshire. Its third quarter results for 2006 (announced in January 2007), show, furthermore, that the high profile campaign against the brand has done little to dent sales and profitability. Chief executive Ahrendts said, ‘This outstanding quarter has been led by Burberry’s strong retail performance,’ prompting broker Merrill Lynch to hail the company as ‘one of the most promising stories in the sector’ leading to forecasts that Burberry revenue could exceed the £1 bn mark by March 2009 (www.yorkshiretoday. co.uk, January). Burberry’s management appears to have correctly calculated that the bad publicity arising from the closure of its Treorchy factory would not arrest rising sales and profitability. This is because Burberry is a brand that is aimed almost exclusively at an elite of shoppers who mainly live in other countries. Its products are outside the purchasing power of the average working class shopper and the company has nothing to fear from a boycott by workers on the minimum wage, including those employed at its British factories.

The anticipated closure of the factory bringing the prospect of hardship, misery and trauma to Treorchy should of course be condemned, not only in South Wales but everywhere where workers daily suffer a similar fate. But however well meaning and sincere this condemnation, it is not enough, and cannot alter the mechanisms that make such events an accepted part of the economic system in which we live.

The workers at Burberry are engaged in a battle against capital, which like workers everywhere they ultimately cannot win. Employment is created only when there is an expectation that the goods produced by workers will realise profit when sold on the market. Profit comes from the employment of working people and continued employment is dependent on continued profitability. Capital investment follows profitability, which means that if profitability cannot be maintained or the prospect of greater profit arises elsewhere, then the jobs upon which wage and salary earners are reliant will be terminated.

Like many other successful brand names, Burberry is looking to divest itself of its traditional productive workforce and, through sub-contracting mechanisms, to have the actual production of its goods take place in Asian sweatshops. Although labour costs represents a minimal proportion of its total costs, every penny saved in the production of its goods means a penny added to profits and more importantly improves the company’s attractiveness for future investment.

In capitalism such decisions are inevitable because profit is more important than people’s welfare. Decisions must be taken without regard for the social consequences or for patriotism, which amounts to a misguided notion that as a British registered company Burberry should have some allegiance to the country where it was established or where many of its employees live. The fact that Wales already suffers dire poverty and that comparable jobs will be virtually impossible to find is of no consequence on the balance sheet, where the only consideration can be the bottom line. Companies have but one goal – the maximisation of profits for their shareholders.

The proposed Burberry closure shows how the interests of wage and salary earners are everywhere diametrically opposed to the interests of the owners of the means of production. But it also shows something about capitalist politicians. The politicians do not condemn Burberry for exploiting the workforce that is the source of the company’s rising profits. Nor do they condemn a system that brings prosperity to the few by perpetuating the poverty and insecurity of the many, by reducing wage and salary earners to conditions not much better than slavery, and whose very wellbeing is dependent on how successfully they can be exploited. Legally binding ‘corporate social responsibility’ that would restrict a company’s ‘flexibility’ will not be allowed to happen because this would effect capital accumulation and lead directly to a migration of capital to other less restrictive and more profitable parts of the world.

The experiences of the Burberry workers have happened time and again in the past and will be repeated time and again in the future, for as long as the working class believes that there is no alternative to the capitalist economic system. Working people everywhere would do well to reflect on the fact that capitalism cannot operate in any other way and is incapable of being reformed to do so.

Steve Trott

Running Commentary: Base metal (1989)

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

Base metal

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond Ken

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

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

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

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

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

Percentage game

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

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

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

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

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

Merthyr Vale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poverty, nationalism and the Wales Millenium centre. (2005)

From the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Friday 26 November was a ‘good news’ day. It marked the beginning of a three-day gala opening of the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) in Cardiff, an event that was greeted by a media fanfare that relegated all other news in Wales to the back pages. Built in the Cardiff Bay area that was once home to the city’s red-light district, the WMC is a replacement for the Cardiff Opera House project abandoned for being too elitist almost ten years ago. The construction, plagued with funding problems and originally due to open on St David’s Day (1 March) 2001 was finally completed (after a £37 million Welsh Assembly grant in January 2002) at a total cost of £106 million.

Amongst the host of celebrities in raptures over the building, lovingly described by many as having looking like a cross between a giant computer mouse and an armadillo, was the patriotic Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel.  Gushing with adulation he exclaimed, “The eyes of the world will be on the opening this weekend, but it’s important that the good work continues over the next year and that we, as a nation, embrace it.” (Western Mail, 26 November)

Many, including Terfel, share a patriotic delusion that people born in the same country have a common interest, unique to their particular geographical location and a source of misguided pride. This nationalistic nonsense and talk about ‘nations’ disguises the actual division of the world’s population into two classes, the minority who own the means of producing and distributing wealth and the majority of working people who are compelled to work for a wage or salary in order to live. These two classes have opposing interests, since the wealth enjoyed by the owning class depends on depriving working people of the things they need and reduces them to a life of servitude, insecurity and poverty. Working people have no country or nation, only a place where they were born and where they are exploited for the benefit of the owners. The interests of working people in Wales are common to working people throughout the world and antagonistic to the world’s capitalist class, including those in Wales. It is class not nationality that determines your role in society.

So instead urging people to ‘embrace’ the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ Terfel and his nationalist friends might stop to embrace a few facts about people in Wales, with many of its three million population in dire poverty. Does he embrace the fact that NHS waiting list cause BMA staff in Wales to “weep in despair”? On the day of the gala opening, “Dr Calland spoke as new monthly figures showed 311,000 people were waiting for treatment – up 2,400 on last month.” (BBC Wales Ceefax, 26 November)  Or perhaps he might embrace the news that on the day of the gala opening reassurances that ‘Support Line Cymru,’ the teacher’s telephone support line, would continue to get Assembly government funding. The support line, set up in 2002, received no fewer than 650 calls from teachers suffering from stress last year (ITV Wales, Teletext, 26 November).

 

Or even the unpleasant facts about those victims of work related injuries, the subject of a TUC report also reported on BBC Wales news (Ceefax page 165) on the morning of the 26 November. The report concluded, “Wales is the worst place in the UK for injury sustained by people slipping and tripping in work.” Stress, repetitive strain injury and back strains are itemised as the top three health risks facing workers.

Perhaps it’s a little too embarrassing to consider the facts about Cardiff’s environment. On the morning of the gala opening, the WMC’s new neighbours, the residents of Leckwith were told to embrace the fact they must “take special precautions” after traces of arsenic, lead, nickel and mercury had been found in the soil in their gardens, stadium and local allotment. Council investigations revealed “unacceptable levels of contamination” prompting the issuing of a warning to children and pregnant women, “to limit the amount of Leckwith-grown produce they ate.” The area had once been a railway yard and later a landfill site but is now a place where working people live. (www.bbc.co.uk, 26 November).

Reviewing the facts about unemployment in Wales will probably be even less palatable. John Osmond, Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs observed, “On the surface in Wales, unemployment appears to have reached tolerably low levels, but when combined with sickness and disability claimants, the proportions not working are higher than almost anywhere else in the UK. There are pockets of extreme poverty throughout. The Valleys pose particular problems, with their legacy of ill health, low skill levels and low employment activity rates. But there are also concentrations of poverty along the North Wales coastline, in south Pembrokeshire and in parts of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea” (www. jrf. org. uk /pressroom, 27 February). Nor the facts about the 55,000 inhabitants of Merthyr Tydfil, unless, of course, their quality of life has improved significantly since 2001. Then, 66 percent of homes had less than £10,000 income a year, 48.6 percent of people were in employment, 28 percent of homes receive housing benefit, 12.5 percent of homes are not fit for habitation, 44 percent of 16-60 year-olds had no qualifications and 30 percent of people suffered from long-term illness (Welsh Assembly Government, Mapping social exclusion in Wales, 1999; 2001 census)

Perhaps the plight of youngsters highlighted two years ago in a BBC examination of poverty in Wales that reported, “Youth unemployment in Wales is now the second highest in the whole of the UK” is worthy of being embraced by the nationalists. The BBC report showed that 14 percent of youth were jobless, 19 percent of the population received benefit and 700,000 people were below the low-income threshold, which meant that in the EU only Greece had more in so-called ‘official poverty.’ (news.bbc.co.uk, 30 July, 2002) In the period 2002-3, 27 percent of Welsh 15-year olds (10,000 children) failed to obtain any GCSEs above grade D and 8 percent obtained no GCSEs at all (3,000 children) compared to 4 percent in England (www.poverty.org.uk/intro/index.htm).

But, we shouldn’t let awkward facts spoil something as grand as the gala opening and many facts are best left unsaid. These might include the despair of thousands of people in Wales seeking help with debt problems, which three years ago had reached a total of £120 million. In September 2001, “The Welsh Consumer Council report+ reveals consumer troubles with loans, overdrafts, credit and store cards have risen by more than a third in the last four years. And trading standards officials are increasingly concerned about the activities of unlicensed loan sharks who use illegal or threatening tactics to collect cash. Today’s report reveals Citizen Advice Bureaux in Wales dealt with more than 56,000 debt inquiries” (Tom Badden, Liverpool Daily Post, 13 September 2001). Meanwhile, “the figures show there were 11,967 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in the third quarter of 2004. It was an increase of 6.2 percent on the previous quarter and 31.1 percent on the same period a year ago” (www.clearlybusiness.com).

Equally unattractive is embracing the knowledge that Shelter Cymru are “helping over 13,000 in housing need every year” and “estimate that 50,000 children are living in unfit housing in Wales according to the last house condition survey.” Or perhaps the estimated 33 percent of children in Wales who suffer asthma symptoms, more than three times the levels in Spain, Poland and Denmark. “The link between poor housing, homelessness and poor health are so obvious but they often seem overlooked when it comes to resources.” (www. sheltercymru, 7 July)

John Puzey, Director of Shelter Cymru had earlier warned that the housing ‘boom’ meant, “Fewer people are able to access the housing market with the average price of a home in Wales at £120,000. There is more pressure for social housing because people can’t afford to buy properties but social housing is less available due to lower levels of building and a continuing loss through the right to buy” (www.sheltercymru, 17 June).  During 2003-4 the number of homeless households in Wales rose to 9,147, while those in temporary accommodation rose to 2,890 by March 2004, an increase of 94 percent in a year. “Even more damaging are the increasing numbers of families with children with no alternatives but to stay in overcrowded bed and breakfast accommodation – the latest figures show almost 700 households in B&B with about a quarter having dependent children.” Puzey continued that housing children in temporary accommodation “can cause serious life long problems, disrupting education and arresting development.” (Shelter Cymru, 29th September 2004). The BBC noted, “It is estimated that £3 bn is needed to bring every home in Wales up to a decent standard”(www.news.bbc.co.uk, 26 October).

We can be sure that life in “The South Wales Valleys [who are] facing a drugs ‘epidemic’ with heroin dealers operating “every quarter of a mile,” is a fact that won’t be embraced. Assistant Chief Constable of South Wales Police, David Francis, said “The drugs problem is the biggest crisis that is facing our communities – people in these communities are being torn apart by what drugs are doing to their families and the crime that is related to it.” (www.bbc.news.co.uk, 25 October, 2002)

Wake up, Bryn and all those peddling delusions of  ‘nations.’ The only things that working people need ‘embrace’ are the undeniable truths that capitalism cannot work in our interest and the nationalist message is everywhere poisonous and divisive, embracing the notion that capitalism is somehow better when administrated locally. The socialist message is that working people everywhere must end the servitude, insecurity and poverty that capitalism is incapable of curing by embracing socialism, a world community without nations, class discrimination, production for profit or money. In socialist society each, according to their individual taste, will be freely entertained in venues like the WMC throughout the world, while the fear that we must sink back to a life of deprivation and misery after the final curtain falls will have become nothing more than a distant memory.

Steve Trott

The Passing Show: The last days of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last days of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen

The village of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen lies in a valley among the peaceful hills of South Wales. It runs no risks from volcanoes or other forces of nature. And yet, if the National Coal Board carries out its declared intention, Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen will be destroyed as surely as Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii.

The National Coal Board, like any other Capitalist board of directors, thirsts after profit. But it took over coalmines which private Capitalism had bled white; much investment must be made before the mines can become profitable again. In the meantime, some pits, because of such geological conditions as faulting in the seams, lose more money than others. And because of such geological conditions, there are more disputes between masters and men at such pits over proper rates of pay. Strikes occur, men are dismissed because the management say they are employing “go-slow” tactics, bitterness increases; and this in its turn leads to more disputes.

Among such pits are the East and Steer pits at Gwaun-Cae-Gurwenn. Over a thousand men from the village work there. There is no alternative employment nearer than Margam steelworks, 20 miles away. Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen lives because it works at the two collieries.

And on May 11th last the National Coal Board gave 14 days' notice to all the miners at the two pits. It intends to close both of them because "continued restrictions of effort, lack of co-operation by the workmen, and low productivity” have resulted in serious financial losses. (The Times, 12/5/56).

Those who extol the merits of the British ruling class say that in Britain no one is punished without a fair trial and conviction. But here is. punishment—and what punishment is more severe than deprivation of livelihood? —without trial, without even individual accusation; it is group punishment, for which the British ruling class condemned the German rulers in the last war—making all suffer for the supposed faults of some.

Wasted Effort

But apart from that, how clearly the action of the N.C.B. demonstrates the position of the workers under Capitalism, Private or State. The worker is employed by the kind consent of the Capitalist; when the Capitalist no longer wants him, he casts him out; and the worker must crawl away until he finds some other property-owner who will make a profit out of employing him. In such a case as Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, the worker must cut his family ties, and perhaps leave the village where he was born, before he can find other work.

What a tragedy is here! Troy was taken and wiped out by enemy soldiers, hiding in a wooden horse which the enemies of Troy had built. But Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen is to be destroyed by the National Coal Board, for the creation of which no one worked harder, or sacrificed himself more eagerly, than the South Wales miner. Capitalism, whatever it is called, does not change its nature; the National Coal Board is preparing to offer up Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen as a tribute to the great god Profit with as little compunction as private Capitalists could have shown.

Gambling—selective criticism

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of England, the Congregational Assembly—all join in condemning Mr. MacMillan's new premium bond scheme. The scheme, they say roundly, constitutes government encouragement of the practice of gambling. But not a word from the reverend archbishop, or from the august assemblies, about the great gamble which is the Stock Exchange. Which is not surprising. The Church of England is doing very well from its speculations upon the Stock Exchange; and all churches realize, consciously or sub-consciously, that their function in present-day society is to allay any discontent among the masses by promising a rosy future in the sky; and to draw attention to the activities of the ruling class, upon the Stock Exchange and elsewhere, is not the best way to perform that task. So while the churches criticise some forms of gambling, they keep quiet about other and more serious, kinds.

Mass deportation

At the conferences among the victorious war-chiefs at the end of the second world war it was agreed that eastern Germany, beyond the Oder and the Neisse, should be given to Poland to compensate her for territories she had to give up to Russia? As was foreseen, Poland deported the millions of Germans living in this part of Germany, and repopulated the territory with displaced Poles. As the knowledge of this atrocity—surely one of the most gigantic "War-crimes” committed by either side—spread, the western allies tried, by undignified squirming, to put all the blame on Russia. Russia, of course, must bear her share of the blame, but not all of it.

But not all of our "leaders” have abandoned mass deportation as an answer to the problems of Capitalism. Step forward, Mr. R. T. Paget, Q.C., M.P. Mr. Paget believes that mass deportation of the Cypriots to Greece would solve the Cyprus problem. He wrote to The Times on April 27th:

   "Whenever an act of terrorism takes place and no information is forthcoming from the locality, then compulsory purchase orders should be served on all Greek property owners in that locality and the inhabitants should be deported to Greece. . . . The ships that deported the Greeks would return with Turks who would purchase and settle in the property we had acquired from the Greeks."

“This process,” Mr. Paget writes blandly, “would continue until there was a Turkish majority or until terrorism stopped.” Mr. Paget, as becomes a leading supporter of Capitalism, leaves out of the reckoning any question of the human suffering this would entail, the merits of punishing all for the faults of some, and the justice—even by Capitalist standards—of deporting people from an island where they and their forbears have lived for hundreds of years. It only remains to add that Mr. Paget is a prominent member of the Labour Party, which claims to be devoted to increasing the sum of human happiness.

Queensbury Rules

Another Labourite, and former M.P., Tom Driberg, also has some comments to offer upon the Cyprus situation. Unlike Mr. Paget, Mr. Driberg believes that “when government degenerates into tyranny... violent resistance is legitimate ” (Reynolds News, 13-5-56). He goes on:

  "Violent resistance, however, should have its code of decency. Attacks should be directed primarily against enemy installations—camps, airfields, stores of weapons, radio-stations. It is wrong to throw bombs into married quarters, to shoot soldiers off duty, shopping with their families."

The code which Mr. Driberg offers for the guidance of the EOKA resistance in Cyprus is not the code which the British forces pursued in the last war, with no protest from Mr. Driberg. Bombs were not only thrown but dropped in large quantities into every kind of quarters; British soldiers and airmen did not stop to enquire whether the Germans they killed were soldiers off duty, or indeed whether they were soldiers at all. If Mr. Driberg thinks so much of his code, he should have offered it to the public earlier, during the last war, when he was in Parliament.

As for Socialists, they have nothing to do either with bomb-throwing Cypriots or schoolboy-flogging Britons. The issue being fought out in Cyprus is this: are the Cypriot workers, Greek and Turkish, to be exploited by a British ruling class or a Greek ruling class? The Socialist attitude to Cyprus is the same as the Socialist attitude to every other part of the world; abolish Capitalism, which subsists on exploitation and leads to bloodshed and establish Socialism

Alwyn Edgar

The profit motive : a case study (2005)

From the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January Sony, the multinational electronics corporation, announced it is to declare 300 redundancies at its two factories in south Wales – 80 from the Bridgend factory, producing cathode ray tubes, and 220 from the TV factory adjacent to the M4 at Pencoed –  a move that almost certainly signals the imminent closure of an operation that once employed 3,300 working people. This latest news will be of no surprise to those working in the two factories where Sony has been quietly shedding jobs since the late 1990s.

Production from these factories relies on ‘old’ tube technology and, as a spokesman explained, “The move away from CRT-based TVs accelerated last year with flat panel products now accounting for around half the UK market” (Guardian,  21 January). It is now evident that the managers employed in Japan to make profits for shareholders had decided by the late 1990s that investment to support flat screen televisions would go elsewhere and after 30 years have decided to call it a day in Wales. So where did it all go wrong?

Sony’s Bridgend factory, officially opened by Prince Charles in 1974, was the first major manufacturing venture in the UK by a Japanese multinational corporation. The main imperative of capitalism is to expand – a fact well understood in Japan where by 1972 the country had the largest television industry in the world producing in excess of 8 million sets a year and a domestic market on the verge of saturation. Japanese exports had already devastated the American television industry and while UK imports of Japanese colour TVs were rising, UK manufacturers found some comfort under a 1962 treaty that limited imports of Japanese televisions.

Sony needed unrestricted access to European television market and the UK government was on the verge of joining the European Economic Community (EEC). Assembling televisions inside Europe would circumvent the agreement limiting imports and end the stream of accusations from European manufacturers that Japanese televisions were being ‘dumped’ on the market at ‘uneconomic’ prices.

 

Welcomed

The British government was friendly to Japanese investment and politicians quickly warmed to the prospect of new jobs. This, combined with financial grants made available to ease job losses in traditional coal and steel industries, an established market and a region crying out for employment made Wales an attractive proposition. Bridgend was to be Sony’s assembly base to compete in the EEC, a venture viewed by Britain’s partners in Europe, particularly in Holland – the home of Philips – as a ‘Trojan Horse,’ an apt description for a company importing 90 percent of its components from Japan. In 1976 the British government, under pressure from the EEC and the European television industry, moved to protect  ‘home’ producers. It agreed that unless 50 percent by value of components had European origin, sets could not claim to be ‘British-made’ and would therefore count towards Japanese import quotas agreed between the two industries. By this time, however, Sony was operational and employing over 500 people and compliance with this ‘origin rule’ was quietly forgotten.

Other Japanese television manufacturers followed and by 1977 Britain had ‘overcapacity’ in both set and component manufacture. The Radio Industry Council made representations to government for protection and again policy was altered. In future inward investment was to be encouraged provided it either took over existing capacity or resulted in joint ventures with established manufacturers – hence Rank-Toshiba and GEC-Hitachi. But by 1979 it was apparent that British television manufacturers were unable to compete with Japanese design and manufacturing technology and in October 1980, Pye at Lowestoft was shut with the loss of 1,100 jobs. Despite the higher wages paid to Japanese workers, “the direct labour cost of a set made in the UK was almost double that of one made in Japan because the Japanese set took 1.9 hours to make and the British one 6.1 hours.” (Keith Geddes, The Setmakers, 1991) Japanese television sets incorporated 30 percent fewer components by making greater use of integrated circuits, and automatic insertion accounted for 65 percent of components against 15 percent in the UK. These advantages forced a spate of factory closures and ‘consolidations’ as European producers tried desperately to compete.

Sony’s output at Bridgend had now increased to a level that justified investment in a tube-manufacturing factory, built alongside the television factory and opened in 1982. This expansion was essential because Sony holds patent rights to a cathode ray tube – “Trinitron” – fundamentally different from its competitors and available only from Sony in Japan. Local production was needed to reduce enormous importation costs. Further expansion to tube manufacturing came in 1989 when the television factory was relocated to a site 3 miles away allowing the tube factory to double in size. The new television factory – hailed as Sony’s ‘European Flagship’ – was constructed on former farmland in Pencoed and opened in 1992 at a cost of £30 million. By the early 1990s Sony had a major share of the European television market and was locked in bitter competition with Philips. Output peaked at about 1.75 million televisions and computer monitors were added to the production line-up. The combined turnover of both plants was approximately £800 million.

But then things started to go sour. Intense competition from manufacturers producing high quality, low cost televisions and the collapse of a major market in Russia started to eat away at profits. The market demanded cost reductions, and Sony  –  which had traded for so long on a brand name that marketing gurus had made synonymous with quality and price premiums – could not deliver, at least in Wales. A further threat emerged as Sony’s recently opened television-factory in Barcelona, employing the latest technology, gathered momentum.

The ‘centre of gravity’ of the European TV market was moving eastwards and factories in Wales were no longer suitably placed. The company then negotiated generous grants and tax concessions and, eager to exploit cheap labour, opened new factories in Hungary and Slovakia to improve competitiveness in the growing east European market that had once been supplied by the Pencoed factory. The factories in Wales had served their purpose and utilising ‘old’ technology were now to be run-down while ‘new’ technology and investment went elsewhere. The workforce now lived under threat that production would be transferred unless profits improved, serving to keep wages and benefits fixed, while the trade union, effectively anaesthetised since the 1970s, collaborated with management on projects to increase profits. Desperate to cut costs, investment in manufacturing was slashed; internal component production contracted out, permanent workers were replaced by temporary employees and leavers not replaced. Discipline became oppressive and workers grew demoralised and indifferent to the continuous demands to improve performance. The company’s reputation as an employer plummeted and official redundancies were first declared in April 2000.

The bottom line

So who is to blame? Why did the bubble burst? It would be easy to blame local management employed to squeeze profits from working people or the working people who became dispirited or perhaps even market conditions. But all this evades the fundamental issue that we live in an economic system that demands that corporations must roam the world in pursuit of lower costs to remain competitive to increase profits for shareholders. Sony, like any other corporation with global aspirations, cannot stop to consider how its working people, many employed since the beginning in 1974, are to survive when the factories in Wales close, as they must surely do in the near future. The fact that Wales already suffers dire poverty and comparable jobs will virtually impossible to find is of no consequence on the balance sheet, where the only consideration can be the bottom line. It should not be forgotten that the social cost of Sony’s years of successful profit-making in Wales was achieved at the expense of forcing thousands from employment in factories across Europe with all the misery and trauma this entails. The wheel has turned full circle and it is now the turn of people employed by Sony in Wales to by abandoned, cast aside in the pursuit of greater profits. This is capitalism.

In capitalist society there can be no allegiance or loyalty to a workforce or community. Production is motivated solely by profit, regardless of the social consequences. As a recent article in the Economist states, ‘corporate social responsibility’ – “a kinder, gentler capitalism,” is a non-starter. Instead, we learn:

  “The goal of a well-run company may be to make profits for its shareholders, but merely by doing that the company is doing good works. Its employees willingly work for the company in exchange for wages; the transaction makes them better off” (22 January).

Now we are asked to shallow the outrageous proposition that capitalism has a benevolent social purpose – but try telling that to the people until recently employed by Sony or those formerly employed by the thousands of other companies that have shed working people when higher profits are demanded. The choice is stark; the working class either sells its labour power in return for wages or salaries or goes without the essentials of life. This is not willingness but compulsion. It is wage slavery. 

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness and must be immediately replaced by socialism. Capitalism divides the world’s population into two classes, the majority who sell their labour power in return for wages and salaries and those who own the means of producing wealth and live on profits. It is class struggle where workers will always be the losers, with the impending closure of Sony in south Wales a testimony to opposing class interests of workers and owners. As ex-Sony workers go about rebuilding their lives, they, and working people everywhere would do well to reflect on the fact that capitalism cannot operate in any other way and is incapable of being reformed to do so. Like millions before them, capitalism has condemned these workers to an uncertain future, breeding the stress and anxiety that is linked to a Jobcentre interview likely to lead nowhere.

Steve Trott