General Strike (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Union branches will be passing resolutions and holding events to commemorate the centenary of the General Strike that ran in the United Kingdom from 3 May to 12 May 1926.

As an event, it is a Rorschach test: people see what they want to see in it. For Trotskyists, it was a failure of leadership at a revolutionary moment. For the Labour left, another example of betrayal. For the Labour right, a foolhardy adventure, which proves that sensible electoral politics is the way forward.

The background was declining productivity of British coal: around one and a half million men worked in the mines. Output per man was falling, and it was facing competition on the international markets (particularly from the return of German coal). This was compounded by Chancellor Winston Churchill’s attempts to return to the gold standard (effectively over-valuing the pound, making British exports expensive).

The mine owners reacted by wanting to cut wages to restore their profits. The response of the mine workers was ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’. They sought an assurance of support from the TUC that other unions would back up the mine workers in their dispute, which was agreed.

The Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin intervened: simultaneously buying time by engaging a commission to examine the coal industry and agreeing a temporary coal subsidy, whilst also preparing to meet a widespread strike organisationally. The commission was headed by Herbert Samuels, a former liberal Home Secretary (and recently returned Governor of Palestine). He had, whilst an MP, represented iron mining districts in North Yorkshire.

The report noted that ‘the dominant fact is that, in the last quarter of 1925, if subsidy be excluded, 73 percent of coal was produced at a loss’. It recommended that the state take ownership of the coal in the ground, with compensation for active mines; that mines be amalgamated; that coal mining work more closely with other industries; that research in coal technologies be intensified; that more integration of distribution be carried out; and while the mining day remain at 7.5 hours, working time should be cut from 6 days to 5.

This was a substantial pay cut. Baldwin was happy to accept these proposals, but the miners’ union, obviously, rejected it (along with rejecting compensation for the nationalised mine owners). Without agreement, the government ended the subsidy, and on 30th April the mine owners locked the men out.

The dispute was placed in the hands of the General Council of the TUC, which, according to Miners’ Union General Secretary A.J. Cook’s account, took the dispute out of the hands of miners. As a TUC account of events has it:

‘The only principal unions initially called out in support of the miners were those of the railwaymen, the transport workers, the builders, the iron and steel workers – and the printers, engineers and shipyard workers were called out after the first week.’

As they note, the unions preferred to refer to it as a national strike, rather than a general strike. The strike was enthusiastically supported (better than had been expected by any party).

The government swung into action, and began to call for volunteers to help keep the railways and other services running. They tried to take the high ground. They represented the print workers’ refusal to print the Daily Mail (because its editorials attacked the strikers) as an attack on free speech. They laboured their democratic mandate as the constitutional government. Although police and troops were called out to protect scabs and break picket lines, Baldwin refused Churchill’s call to use armed force against strikers.

The nascent BBC found itself in the firing line: Baldwin was able to broadcast to the nation, but Ramsay MacDonald and the strike leaders were not permitted a voice. Lord Reith did, however, rebuff Churchill’s call for the nominally independent company to be put entirely at the service of the government.

The time won by the subsidy for organisation was put to good use.

As Baldwin said in Parliament:

‘I do not think all the leaders when they assented to ordering a general strike fully realised that they were threatening the basis of ordered government, and going nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have been for centuries past. They laboured—that is, many of them—with the utmost zeal for peace up to the very end. Perhaps they thought that there was nothing more at stake than bringing a certain amount of spectacular pressure to bear, which might suffice to persuade the Government to capitulate without serious damage to the liberties of the nation. But they have created a machine which they cannot control.’

MacDonald’s contribution was ‘With the discussion of general strikes and Bolshevism and all that kind of thing, I have nothing to do at all. I respect the Constitution’, plus a call for ‘co-ordination’ in the industry, which was, after all, the entirety of what he aspired to and called ‘socialism’.

The leaders of the TUC had not intended to overthrow the government, but to win an industrial dispute. The unions and strikers did not represent the whole of the working class (for example, there were as many domestic servants as there were miners). Faced with a resolute government, the TUC backed down and asked for no reprisals (which the government would not commit to). Cook believed that had the TUC held out a few more days, the government would have backed down – and the miners continued their action.

Although a defeat, which led to laws banning sympathy and general strikes, the action was not a disaster. The unions had brought the government to the negotiating table; they had shown the strength of union organisation and feeling. They also survived with their organisation intact. In the end, the reality of coal mining productivity prevailed and world markets asserted themselves. The working class demonstrated resolve and solidarity, but could not overcome the organised power of the state without a clear plan and resolve to that end.

Pik Smeet

Exhibition review: On The Line: 100 years of strikes & solidarity (2026)

Exhibition Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years on the line – People’s History Museum, Manchester

This month is the centenary of the General Strike, which took place from 4 to 12 May 1926. An exhibition ‘On the Line’ is being held at the People’s History Museum in Manchester until November. It consists of banners, photos, pamphlets and leaflets relating to strikes and other workers’ struggles over the last hundred years.

The earliest item on display is a banner ‘Union and Victory’ from the Great London Dock Strike of 1899. There is relatively little on the General Strike itself, but there are photos of soup kitchens, military convoys, and polo players enrolled as special constables policing the streets on horseback. Also, a copy of a pamphlet, written by a barrister, on what to do when arrested.

Among the other disputes covered are the UCS work-in in Glasgow in 1971, Grunwick in 1977, Orgreave in 1984, the ambulance workers’ strike in 1989, and the Liverpool dockers’ strike in 1996. As would be expected, there is a lot of material relating to the miners’ strike of 1984-5. This includes Women Against Pit Closures, with a photo of women in Barnsley supporting the miners, and a T-shirt from Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (‘Pits and Perverts’ is the slogan). A strike at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry from 2023 is recalled with a robot costume: workers felt they were being treated like robots. There is documentation of recent strikes, such as those by couriers and delivery workers, and last year’s strike by resident doctors. From 1972 there is a poster about four workers arrested on a picket line, a reminder of the possible consequences of workers defending their pay and conditions. A 1986 poster ‘Murdoch is bad news’ captures the role of the capitalist media in undermining workers’ struggles.

As noted in the exhibition, Stanley Baldwin, PM at the time, described the General Strike as ‘the road to anarchy and ruin’. The 1927 Trade Disputes and Trades Unions Act, passed in response to the strike, prohibited mass picketing among other forms of resistance. The TUC ended the strike without an agreement; the miners stayed out for another seven months before being forced to return to work.

The June 1926 Socialist Standard responded to the ending of the strike by commenting, ‘The greatest Trade Union action that was ever taken in any country was closed by the most gigantic swindle in the whole history of Trade Unionism.’ It then went on to criticise other organisations’ reaction, such as the ‘Communist’ Party. There was no point, the article argued, in preferring left-wing over right-wing leaders: the very idea of leaders and leadership should be rejected. Trust in leaders was not a good idea: ‘Trust and ye shall be betrayed’. The strike itself was seen as ‘a sham fight’.

The exhibition as a whole is well worth visiting, and gives a good, if necessarily only partial, idea of industrial actions over the last century. Of course, such struggles are still needed, as workers do their best to resist the exploitation and oppression of capitalism.

Paul Bennett

The Political Background 1904-74 (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed there have been nineteen general elections in which the working class have testified to their faith that it is possible to reform capitalism in the interests of the majority and that the differences between politicians are real.

This conception can be lived with only by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. The last seventy years is littered with broken promises and declarations. Lloyd George urging men into the trenches with his picture of them returning to Homes fit for Heroes; Jimmy Thomas burbling that he had “the complete cure” for unemployment (1930, just before the number out of work climbed to an all-time high); Wilson’s “new age” of technology. And the numerous pledges to provide us all with a rising standard of living.

The SPGB came into existence about the same time as the Labour Party. In the 1906 election of a Liberal government, there were 52 MPs from the new Labour Party, claiming to represent trade-union interests but promising to flower into a full-blown reformist party:

. . . It will require all our collective efforts to break down the forces of privilege and monopoly that have so long dominated the political life of this country.

That reads like Harold Wilson, promising to clean things up in 1974; in fact it is Arthur Henderson, celebrating Labour’s triumph in 1906.

But the tide receded and the Labour Party was losing seats in 1914. Labour leaders who had mouthed slogans about international working-class unity became patriots, joined the war government and persuaded workers to join up. In contrast, Socialists were standing against the war. That was no easy time to resist. Our propaganda was restricted, our members thrown into prison or forced to go on the run. The SPGB hung on, and there are many stories told of how we did it.

In 1918 the working class looked hopefully for all the speeches to become reality. They reasoned that the men who had organized mass murder should organize something in peacetime and the result was an overwhelming victory for Lloyd George’s coalition. Then came unemployment with its lines at the Labour Exchanges and ex-servicemen selling matches in gutters.

At this time a man who was to deceive the working class for a long time emerged. Stanley Baldwin’s vote-winning image was of the pipe-smoking, country-loving Englishman, which went down well with the workers, even those who had never seen a green field. In truth Baldwin was among the craftiest of political operators.

Baldwin battled to get rid of Lloyd George, and eventually accomplished it. (In the opinion of A. J. P. Taylor, Lloyd George was ". . . the first Prime Minister since Walpole to leave office flagrantly richer than he entered it.” The same could not be said for the people he had ruled over, buried among the battlefields of Europe or sunk in despair.) In 1923 Baldwin tried to persuade the workers that a tariff on imports would cure unemployment, and on that issue fought an election. He failed and for the first time Labour was in office.

Labour supporters rejoiced while their leader Ramsey MacDonald confessed himself “appalled at the poorness of the material” on the Labour benches. Anyone who feared wild revolutionaries was reassured when MacDonald, in full Court dress, showed that British traditions were to remain unharmed. But MacDonald’s government lasted only nine months.

The period which followed held the General Strike, which has been called a great betrayal of the working class. In truth, had the strikers been conscious of their class interests, betrayal would have been impossible. Their leaders were not traitors but expressions of the strikers’ lack of that consciousness. It was a bitter episode for the trade unions and the Labour Party.

By 1929 unemployment had reached serious proportions. In desperation, the workers tried another Labour government, again dependent on the Liberals. In 1931 unemployment reached nearly three million. MacDonald insisted that capitalism needed the unemployed to consume less, and took Snowden, Thomas and others to join Liberals and Tories in a National Government. The workers were allowed to join in the applause for this act of statesmanship; they elected 554 National MPs against only 52 to Labour.

Meanwhile in Germany, the Nazis harnessed working-class despair to rampant nationalism. They were the first steps towards the next war. One effect of that was to revive the Labour Party through support for Winston Churchill — Churchill, who never hid his contempt for the working class. Of course Labour leaders did get jobs in the Churchill government, sharing responsibility for the slaughter of millions.

Again, Socialists opposed that war and were made to suffer. Our stand was clearly justified when from the post-war election emerged the first majority Labour government. Many of its ministers had learned to run capitalism in co-operation with Churchill and the Tories during the war. The new government promised better relations with Russia; they brought in reforms in the social and medical services which would, they told us, end poverty; and they could apply their schemes of nationalization.

The Labour government, with its Foreign Secretary Bevin, fought out the first days of the Cold War, which on occasion came near a hot World War. The health service was a more efficient method of servicing workers back to work. Nationalization was discredited. One of the ministers in that government, Alfred Robens, later said of the nationalization schemes he had championed:

I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalizing these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us that they were going to turn into state capitalism. (The Times, 1 April 1968)

“We are the masters now” said Attorney General Hartley Shawcross, but Labour looked anything but masters. Their response to crises was to try to force down working-class standards; to keep conscription; to start a hydrogen bomb. Charges on the Health Service caused a storm of protest led by Aneurin Bevan. By the next election the Labour Party was broken; in October 1951 Churchill returned. There was little difference between the two parties. This may have contributed to a mood of cynicism and apathy which oppressed political activity in Britain for several years.

In 1955 Churchill, so far into his dotage that he was an embarrassment, handed over to Anthony Eden, one of the glamour boys of British politics. But Eden’s rule turned out anything but a romance. British capitalism was in retreat as the mighty sphere of control, mineral resources and markets once known as the British Empire had shrunk. Most politicians had accepted the reality but Eden seemed to live in another world. In the Middle East, British oil interests had been badly damaged by nationalist takeovers. When a new government in Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Eden ordered an invasion of Egypt and in the resultant uproar he lost not only the Canal but his job as Prime Minister.

Eden was replaced by Macmillan, who looked and spoke like an Edwardian fop but knew how to outmanoeuvre opponents and deceive the voters. Macmillan’s party seemed in ruins and Labour hopes were high : the new leader Gaitskell appeared to be convinced that power lay within his grasp. His chance came in 1959, but when the votes were counted he was openly aghast at his party’s defeat.

Disappointed not to find himself Prime Minister, he tried to persuade Labour to say that what they had been advocating was wrong : such as the meaningless Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution, which was interpreted to mean outright nationalization. The result was an enormous battle at a Labour conference in 1959, when Gaitskell bluntly put his reason: “Nationalization,” he said, “is a vote loser.” The following year the Labour Party was in uproar again, as unilateralists fought for the abandonment of British nuclear arms. Gaitskell was not worried about having to take notice of conference decisions; what did concern him was that such decisions would be unpopular among the workers and damage the chances of returning to government.

Soon, however, Macmillan’s Tory government, caught up in another economic crisis, made an assault upon wages. Partly in an attempt to win back popularity Macmillan sacked part of his Cabinet, applied to join the Common Market and pushed the first racist laws on to the Statute Book, in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. As these bids failed, Macmillan was doomed and the Profumo scandal in 1963 damaged him beyond repair. He resigned and Douglas-Home was appointed — by what one disappointed aspirant described as the “magic circle” of the Conservative Party.

But Home was simply not up to the job. Harold Wilson (who became Labour’s leader after Gaitskell died in 1963) rang rings round him, although when the election came in 1964, the Labour Party scraped home with the slimmest of majorities. Hoping that capitalism would not blow up a storm too soon, Wilson stated Labour’s aim to control wages :

For a Labour Government, no less than for the Conservatives, success or failure In the battle against inflation would depend on its ability to secure an understanding with the unions which would make wage restraint possible. (The Guardian, 25 October 1957)

A “Department of Economic Affairs” was set for the attack on working-class standards. It told everyone that the “norm” for wage rises was to be 3½ per cent, a year and we would all have to work harder.

Nevertheless, when Wilson timed another election for 1966 he got an increased majority. He was “Britain’s clever little man” (The Economist, 26 February 1966), Kosygin, the Russian ruler, is reputed to have said: “Sometimes I think you must have joined the Labour Party to save it from Socialism.”

Pundits are still analyzing the fall of the Wilson government in 1970. They had outdone the Tories in racist legislation, imposed statutory restraint on wages, supported the American war in Vietnam, kept up the British nuclear armoury. Having abolished prescription charges, they brought them back again. They made another attempt to get into the Common Market, and sketched out their plans for anti-trade union laws. Whatever the workers thought, many businessmen approved :

. . . I have had to rather reluctantly recognise that the current Socialist administration seems to have a better appreciation of business matters than did its Conservative predecessors. (Frank Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds, The Guardian, 27 October 1966)

Edward Heath’s alternative was a refusal to apply statutory controls because, apparently, if wages and prices were left to their own levels we should be swamped in prosperity. In practice his government became famous for changes in policy, but failed to hold down prices, which ran higher than ever; eventually it too imposed controls, and the anti-union laws which had been among the ambitions of Labour and Tories. In a confused election, Heath was turned out. Wilson promised workers that he would get them back to work — and they cheered him, like galley-slaves cheering the whip.

This has been the background to the seventy years of the Socialist Party’s life. We have seen the working class oscillate between Liberals, Labour and Conservative, forgetting the past. Seventy years and still capitalism is entrenched. The working class have misused the vote, which can bring into being a society of human wellbeing. The work of the Socialist is to show its proper use.

Ivan

Stanley Baldwin: Bluff Squire or Shrewd Politician (1948)

From the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps no politician tried more than the late Earl Baldwin to seem all things to all men. Certainly no other politician more nearly succeeded. That Stanley Baldwin played a role in accordance with ruling-class political requirements is undoubted. That he played it so skilfully was not the least of the services he rendered to his class.

Honest Stan Baldwin was not merely a caption on a Tory election poster. It was a by-word in English politics. For millions he summed up in his stocky person “our traditional native qualities” of bluffness, forthrightness and sturdy independence. He became the idealised representative of that national piece of Action—“The Typical Englishman.” Perhaps in these “native qualities” a little more typical than most of his countrymen. Possibly just a little more “English.” 

To sustain the emotional significance of the "Dictator Myth” the elaborate symbolism of uniformed parades, massed bands, mass rallies, swastika signs and salutes is indispensable. The Baldwin Myth as the representative Englishman of his age was built up around such homely and conventional items as a pipe and pigs.

His propagandists liked to feature him as a simple country gentleman. Because greatness had been thrust upon him, he forsook the rural peace of his Worcestershire orchards and Bewdley pig-yards for the strife and hurly-burly of Westminster politics. His most arcadian setting found him y a rustic gate, pipe in mouth ready at any moment to proclaim glowingly on the rural charms of “This England.”

That the emergence of Industrialism had disinherited the majority of his countrymen from such rural charms he wryly admitted. That the historic emergence of Capitalism had also disinherited the forefathers of the modern working class, from certain immemorial land-rights to “This England” he never stressed. He liked to think that Englishmen had an innate love for “This England.” Tiny garden patches of withered green in grimy industrial towns, or even the desire of their working class dwellers to have such things was for him, equally with the pride and possession of broad acres, part of our imperishable English heritage. He might have regarded the contents of a flower-pot on the window ledge of some industrial tenement as being equally a part of its possessor's ”imperishable English heritage.”

Such was the popular image of this Tory Prime Minister. In our preoccupation with this genial country gentleman we were apt to overlook his industrial associations, his tie-up in iron works, mines, docks, railways; his banking connections. The highlights of the picture of the bluff Worcestershire squire rather faded him out as being also a typical representative of this society’s most advanced economic phase— Finance Capital, and his story of forsaken business interests in the service of the State soft-pedalled the fact that it was in the pursuit and furtherance of such "interests” that he had spent—"The best years of his life.”

At banquets attended by members of the Federation of British Industries, Earl Baldwin liked to add to the glow of the after-dinner port by wistful references to the rare vintage of the good old English past. Those more leisurely days before the coming of mass-production, conveyor belts, merciless speed-ups and consequent nervous breakdowns. Then work was done at a pace natural to man. He also spoke of the more humane industrial relationships in some of the old-established family businesses which had existed. He hoped that one day this more humane spirit would prevail throughout the land. His social perspective seemed, however, as limited as that of a Melbourne or a Peel. He appeared to be blithely unaware of the historic fact that for masses of the working population, his good old English past was but the dawn of a bad new industrial present.

His nostalgic partiality for the past never prevented him from ardently embracing some very modern instances. He was a firm believer in up-to-date productive efficiency. He even welcomed such "newfangled” notions as Industrial Psychology, with its minimising of unnecessary effort on the part of the worker and its maximising of productive output. His age-long and misty affinity with St. George never dimmed his harsh, realistic view of the nature of Capitalist Society. He accepted the development of Monopoly Capitalism. In his "Peace in Industry” plea he said: "The elimination of smaller firms and industries and the appearance of great Capital amalgamations were the driving force of necessity in the protection from competition.” "That was the tendency of industry and nothing could change it.” He also accepted the fact that "the increasing consolidations of Capital into fewer hands was the natural evolution of English industrial life.” "This fact,” he added, "must be accepted. ”

He also regarded an industrial reserve army as normal to Capitalism. To an audience of Birmingham business men in 1925, he repudiated the idea that any government could solve the unemployment problem. He even felt profoundly thankful that the experience of the Labour Government had taught them that they, no more than any other Government could cure this evil. He claimed that "there was no guaranteed remedy to cure this disease and at the same time maintain the international power and position of the British Empire.” Such was the perhaps naturally antithetical make up of the "English Squire” and the great industrial magnate.

Into the texture of the Baldwin Myth there was embroidered an obscure social philosophy. His speeches, vague, sententious, even commonplace, with their strong literary flavour, were masterpieces of a misty, beyond the mountains, idealism. This apotheosis of Baldwin as the true Englishman and his capacity for enshrining a nebulous faith in some eternal harmony and peaceful co-operation of all classes proved an enormous asset to him and his party. From such intangible resources he built up a personal fund of good-will perhaps unequalled by any other capitalist politician. It was this that enabled him to more easily withstand the stresses and strains of antagonistic class interests. Certain acts and political incidents associated with his reign which might have subsequently dislodged a Lloyd George or a Churchill from popularity and power Honest Stan Baldwin successfully rode.

It was once fashionable to depict him politically as a somewhat ingenuous soul. Nothing could have been further from the truth. No politician, not even Disraeli, was more astute in measuring up the political opposition, especially the Labour opposition. Where a Churchill seeks to slay the Labour Party by vituperation Baldwin killed them with "English” kindness. He referred to them constantly as "My Labour friends." Among certain elements there were on occasions “regrettable lapses.’’ He regarded most of them as being like himself, English to the core. Only Marxism was a gospel of hate. And it was not “English.’’ He believed, however, “ no gospel of hate would ever seize the hearts of our people.’’

He regarded the advent of a Labour Government as being no more than the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. He said in 1923, “When the Labour Party come to sit on the Government benches we shall all wish them well in their efforts to govern the country.”

He followed the Disraeli formula of adopting towards the working class an attitude of benevolent paternalism. He advised young Tories to study Disraeli Conservatism. “ With that you can always win,” he said. No less than the Labour Party he claimed to be the champion of the social “under-dog.” He also believed “we were slowly and gradually moving towards a better industrial system.” As the Labour Party also accept ”the inevitability of gradualism ” they would seem to have shared the same social ideal. In progressive social reforms he said his party yielded to none. So he stole the thunder of the “Left.”

He did more than steal the Labour Party’s thunder. He stole their leaders. In 1931, MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas, etc., left the Labour Party to help form the National Government. In the panic “crisis” election of 1931 the Labour Party were also deprived of their own national “heroes.” Bewildered and beaten they stayed in the political desert for many years.

True MacDonald remained Prime Minister. It would be truer to say he went through-the motions of being one. While he postured and jitterbugged in front of the political stage “simple Stan Baldwin” was the puppet-master who pulled the stringy. In 1934 Baldwin took over again. MacDonald became Lord President of the Council and went back stage.

The Labour Party themselves at one period fell heavily for the “Baldwin Myth.” Some even regarded him as a “Socialist.” His sentiments were sometimes as heartily applauded from Labour Party benches as from his own. When Baldwin spoke on the need for a better understanding between classes or Disarmament "even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forebear to cheer.” Some members of the Labour Party regarded him as acting as a kind of buffer between the workers and the hard-faced men of his party. That he was a shrewd and able representative of these hard-faced men, they never suspected.

In 1925 he intimated that wages must come down. In the same year he made his “Peace in Industry plea” ending with “give peace in our time, O Lord.” He, however, saw signs in the same speech of a coming industrial storm. At that time the coal owners were pressing for heavy wage reductions for the miners. Baldwin granted the mine-owners a subsidy to maintain temporarily the status quo and prepared for the coming industrial storm. It took the shape of the General Strike. Millions of workers answered the call in defence of the miners’ standard of living. After nine days the T.U.C. called the strike off. The T.U.C. had, during the strike, been in contact with the then Sir Herbert Samuel who was Chairman of the Baldwin Government’s Mining Commission, and arranged a “Gentleman’s agreement.” Their excuse was that they believed the Government would accept the terms. Sir Herbert Samuel, incidentally, disclaimed any contract with the Government on the matter and pointed out that the meeting with the T.U.C. was entirely on his own initiative. Baldwin himself repudiated any such suggestion and demanded complete surrender. The miners fought on alone. After seven months lock-out by the owners with the backing of the Baldwin Government the miners were beaten to their knees. They were compelled to go back on conditions which made their occupation a virtually sweated industry.

His administration was also responsible for some of the harshest treatment ever meted out to the unemployed. Tightening up of Unemployed Regulations led to the wholesale transference of unemployed to Public Relief. When the numbers of able-bodied people receiving Outdoor Relief reached threatening proportions, heavy cuts were made in the scale of relief. Boards of Guardians who refused to zealously operate the “New Hunger Scales” as they were called, were replaced by Commissioners to see that these new scales were effectively carried out. Later came the notorious Means Test.

There came into being some time after the- first World War, gradually growing in size and intensity, the depressed and devastated areas. In some of the most industrial parts of England grass grew in the streets and men, women and children slowly starved in an atmosphere of decay and despair.

One of Earl Baldwin's favourite themes was the Englishman’s love of his native hearth mid “the sanctity of family life.” Nevertheless* under his administration a wholesale transference of unemployed persons from the distressed areas took place. They were sent to places like London and other parts of the South of England. These places themselves had more than their share of unemployment. Nevertheless the Baldwin Government referred to them as being “relatively prosperous areas.”

Earl Baldwin liked to talk about “Truth” and “ Honour ” in political life. On the need for candour on the part of politicians. He could, however, when necessary sit on the facts with the best of them. When the cynical “behind the scenes” carve up of Abyssinia in the Hoare-Laval pact came out, Hoare was sacrificed to the popular outcry against the secret terms. When Baldwin was pressed for information in Parliament on the matter he blandly remarked “My lips are sealed.”

He professed himself an admirer of the political ideals of Grotius. “ Honest Stan ” could, however, on occasions, indulge in the most Machiavellian expediency, In his successful 1935 General Election he assured the electors that there would be no great armaments. “ I give you my word,” he said, "that there has not been nor will there be any huge increases in armaments or materially increased forces..” Later he confessed that the election was a phoney. He admitted “that the necessity for rearmament existed but he kept his opinions to himself as the pacific temper of the country did not warrant such candour.” His statement that “Democracy must be humoured since it cannot always bear unpleasant truths,” has in the light of the foregoing, sardonic implications.

Another myth of Baldwin was that he stood for disarmament. The facts shatter it. In 1924 British expenditure on armaments was £113 million. In 1937 it was £278 million, nearly two and a half times as much. In the same year, Government plans were announced to spend £1,500 million during the next five years on armaments. His then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, said that such figures were approximations. Expenditure would be indefinitely increased if circumstances warranted it.

His statement in 1934 that “the nation must carry its defensive frontiers to the Rhine” can now be judged in all its ominous and sinister significance. In that year the plant was laid down for the construction of the four-engined Lancaster bombers. He had no illusions about the nature of the coming war. He knew that one of the forms this "British defence” would take would consist of bombing attacks on German towns.

In spite of certain superficial differences as to the best policy for defending British Imperial interests existing between Baldwin and people like Churchill and others, he was no less a ruthless defender of such "interests." As equally committed to re-armament and finally war as they. Such differences were adroitly exploited for purposes of war propaganda. The attack on the so-called appeasement policy served to rouse workers to “our desperate plight.” It became one of the means for emotionally conditioning them to become once again willing, even enthusiastic, victims of a new and greater Armageddon. Baldwin’s stock which had been already in decline, slumped catastrophically. The wheel came full circle. He became in many once-favoured quarters the subject of bitter criticism. even abuse. There were “none so poor to do him reverence.”

But Earl Baldwin is dead! As always on such occasions the atmosphere of the House was heavy with “the odour of sanctity.” Eloquent last tributes were paid by spokesmen of all parties. He became once again, "The great Englishman.”

Mr. Gallacher, M.P., also paid his last respects. As a piece of concentrated sycophancy it would take some beating. It appears that the "English” Baldwin once told him that he had a Welsh father and a Scotch mother. Mr. Gallacher can also claim a Scotch parent on the distaff side. "That,” said Mr. Gallacher, "seemed to create a human bond between us.” On such slender blood-ties was their common humanity finally established. True the Daily Worker (15/12/47) referred to Baldwin as being an enemy of the working class. But it seems that Scotch blood is thicker than working-class water. Mr. Gallacher said, "Nothing should be said that could disturb his peace . . . In the quiet countryside beside his Scotch mother and Welsh father let him sleep in everlasting peace.” While Baldwin may from the Daily Worker's point of view have been an enemy of the working class for Mr. Gallacher he was at least a working-class enemy with a Scotch mother. This would seem for Mr. Gallacher to imply a distinction of some importance.

A pale attempt has been made in certain sections of the Press to see in the demise of Earl Baldwin "The Death of an Hero.” The Daily Telegraph (15/12/47) believed that for him "the trumpets might sound on the other side.” Perhaps a plaque or a bust or even a statue might be a pathetic attempt to ensure his “English” immortality. For posterity however, history will record that his name was writ on water.

Ted Wilmott

Greasy Pole: In the Club – or Out? (2002)

The Greasy Pole Column from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone laughed when Groucho Marx said he would not want to join any club which would accept him as a member. Nobody laughed when Iain Duncan Smith said he would not want to join the Carlton Club because that traditional bastion of the Conservative Party does not accept women as full members. Well you can’t blame Duncan Smith for trying but he will have to do better than that if he is to dispel his image as a man who is most at ease on a chilly, early morning parade ground. Perhaps he thought that by apparently standing up to so stubborn an example of establishment tradition he would seem modern, unstuffy, a man of principle. This would have been likelier of he was not a member of another club – the Beefsteak – which also excludes women from membership. Perhaps he dreamed that the nation would be gripped with excitement at his courage so that they forgot about Osama Bin Laden and the euro and the current crisis in Coronation Street. But instead there was a paralysing apathy. There were no restless debates in supermarket check-outs, no rival groups pelting each other on football terraces. The nation ignored it and went about its business of being exploited and repressed, as the nation always does, leaving Duncan Smith to go about his business of being tedious and irrelevant as he always does.

Carlton

In case anyone is thinking of applying, the Carlton restricts its membership to supporters of the Conservative Party and a lot of its activity is directed at raising money for the party (almost £1 million during the last Parliament). So it is only to be expected that the Club would invite each leader of the party to become a member ex-officio. Duncan Smith refused the offer on the grounds that the Tory Party does not have any no-go areas so it would be inconsistent of him as leader to be in a club which discriminates against women. (For his sake, let us hope he does not intend to act in this way over every example of inconsistency in his party). Officially the Club says “Ladies are welcome and may use the Club’s facilities with the exception of the public rooms on the ground floor designed for members and gentlemen guests”. There is some doubt about whether women would want to use at least one of these rooms, which a male visitor described as “the most vile room in the building, frequented almost exclusively by bores and drunks” and by a female ex-member as “swept by an unpleasant draught”. The chairman of the club’s political committee, Peter Emery (who is responsible for organising all that fund-raising) said he thinks many of the women members like the rules as they are although last year one prominent female member, Shadow Minister Theresa May, resigned because she objected at the way women were treated as “second class citizens” there.

The last Tory Prime Minister to cause a few problems over membership of the Carlton was Margaret Thatcher. To be party leader was one thing; to be offered full membership of this exclusive, all male club was another. The solution was to accept her as an “honorary” member – some might say an honorary man, which brought to mind how the Nazis dealt with finding that they were allies of the racially inferior Japanese in 1941; they decided that the Japanese were “honorary Aryans” – at least for the duration of the war.

Admitting Thatcher to the Club caused quite a few of the crustier members to splutter into their port before they fell asleep again. But they were being unreasonable because this was not the first time the Carlton had displayed a convenient flexibility of principle. In 1967 the late Julian Critchley, who was then an MP, upset the members by giving lunch there to Jo Grimond, Leader of the Liberal Party. Critchley was quietly advised not to use the Carlton to entertain anyone whom he could not nominate for membership – in other words any political opponent. But a week or so later Ted Heath, who was Leader of the Opposition, had the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, Alexei Kosygin, there to lunch. No effort was spared in making the Russian leader welcome; it was, according to Heath, a “sumptuous affair” at a “superb oval table” which introduced Kosygin to the gastronomic delights of oysters. It was rather different from the breakfast Kosygin had had earlier that day, with lorry drivers at a road side caff on the A1. It is not difficult to imagine which meal was given the more publicity in Kosygin’s home country. Whatever outrage club members may have felt about the head of a country they regarded as a deadly foe being entertained in their dining room was not publicised. Neither were we told what the long-suffering Russian people thought about their leader feasting so sumptuously among men who they were encouraged to believe were their class enemies—always supposing they were allowed to know about it.

1922

As an integral part of the Conservative leadership, it was appropriate that the Carlton should be the venue for one of the most crucial decisions in the party’s history. In 1922 a significant wedge of the party had grown restless with the wartime coalition which, with Lloyd George at its head, had rumbled on into peace-time. There was some anxiety, to say the least, that if this situation continued it would destroy the party and that this would become evident at the general election looming on the horizon. The leadership were clear that the coalition should carry on; among the rebels was the little known, self-effacing, Stanley Baldwin, who would never have admitted to being concerned about his chances of eventually leading the party and how these would be stifled under a coalition led by the Welsh wizard, who was not little known or self-effacing but popularly supposed to have won the war and so saved the world for civilisation.

The party leaders thought to settle the issue in their favour by challenging their critics with a vote of confidence and where better to arrange this than at the Carlton, suffused as it was with the party’s traditions, expressed in all those overlooking portraits of past Prime Ministers. On the day all the big guns – Austen Chamberlain, Birkenhead, Balfour – were lined up against the rebels. Their victory was almost a foregone conclusion except that Baldwin had other plans; it was, he said, “time to ditch the goat” – an unkind reference to Lloyd George. And ditched he was. The Ministers had no choice but to leave the government and Lloyd George had no choice but to resign the Premiership. “He will be Prime Minister again” said George V. But he wasn’t. It was a crucial change for the Tories, in which they lost their parliamentary giants. A little more than a year later they also lost 107 seats in a general election which brought in the first, unpalatable, taste of Labour government.

Lloyd George, not amused by his defeat, snarled that the Coalition had been broken up by “a West End Club” – an opinion shared with quite a few others. In fact, however the manner of the decision and the reasons for it, the vote did seem to be in line with the majority wishes of the party. Out of the bitterness and confusion there emerged the 1922 Committee, designed to improve communication between backbenchers and the party leaders. Then there emerged Stanley Baldwin. Now, long after the times when the party leader was expected to materialise after what Harold Macmillan called “the customary processes of consultation”, the 1922 Committee is responsible for organising the election of the leader – an arrangement which is clearly not ideal for the Tories because it has thrown up people like William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith.

Whites

In fact the Carllton’s policy of allowing women a limited access to membership is some way ahead of some of the other, traditional, posh London clubs. Whites is one example. It is the oldest and most exclusive of the clubs and has a grisly history of infestation by gambling addicts, where people who had grown fabulously rich on the pitiless exploitation of the workers spent money in betting on whatever took their fancy. In the 18th century a man dropped dead outside the club and was carried inside while members laid bets on whether he was actually dead. This was the ruling class at play, setting an example to the lower orders on how to behave. That the standards had not improved could have been judged when Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the post-war Attlee government, was kicked in the bottom by a member, who thought this was an effective argument against Bevan’s work in setting up the National Health Service. Other clubs who also exclude women are Pratts, Brooks and the Garrick.

But this is not to say that the Carlton leads the way to a more enlightened and hopeful age. Membership costs are £600 to join (free to women) and an annual subscription of £600 (£300 to women). And what you get for that is the right to share a rather splendid building with a clutch of political twisters or drunken, tedious supporters of a party which has consciously supervised a huge burden of human suffering. Beside that fact the issue of whether women can join on the same terms as men is seen in its true insignificance. The stand taken by Duncan Smith is motivated by nothing more than a characteristically feeble attempt to win a few votes and in the process to deny the importance of human relationships – including those between the sexes—to a sustainable society.

Ivan

Notes by the Way: “Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides” (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides”

United Dairies, Ltd., is a very prosperous concern. The Directors’ report for the year 1931-32 stated that “the business of the Company continues to expand.” Net profit rose from £518,000 in 1929-30 to £549,000 in 1930-31, and to £592,000 in 1931-32 ; which is not too bad in these hard times. The rate of dividend on ordinary shares rose from 10 per cent. in 1929-30 to 11 per cent. in 1930-31 and to 12½ per cent. in 1931-32. So much for the shareholders. What about the workers ? During the past year, after considering the matter for several years, the firm decided to extend to the milk distributing stall a six-day week, hitherto confined to the bottling stalls. Doubtless it was, as the Chairman said, of benefit to the “health and happiness” of the workers not to have to work seven days a week. He also stated (Times, October 29th, 1932) that. “the efficiency of the service has been maintained and increased,” but the change-over to a six-day week “involved certain financial sacrifices from both sides.”

Now we are able to see what is meant by “sacrifices on both sides.” The workers make financial sacrifices and get a six-day week, while the shareholders get increased efficiency, plus the “sacrifice” of seeing their dividend raised from 11 per cent. to 12½ per cent.

Death from the Air

Mr. Baldwin, in a speech on war, in the House of Commons on November 10th, reminded us of the way in which we shall be bombed to pieces in any future war. He said: —

“I think it is well, also, for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through. …. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves….. How have the nations tried to deal with this terror of the air ? I confess that the more I have studied this question the more depressed I have been at the perfectly futile attempts that have been made to deal with this problem. The amount of time that has been wasted at Geneva in discussing questions such as the reductions of the size of aeroplanes, the prohibition of bombardment of the civil population, the prohibition of bombing, has really reduced me lo despair.” (Times, November 11th, 1932.)

In the meantime, attention was drawn by the Daily Express to the fact that British armament manufacturers advertise in German and other newspapers their willingness to supply tanks, bombing ‘planes, etc., to foreign Governments. Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith, the aircraft designer and manufacturer of the Hawker “bomber,” defended this. He said (Daily Express, November 12th, 1932) that aeroplanes of recent design are not allowed to leave the country, but that he sells Hawker bombers both to the Air Ministry and to foreign Governments because “no foreign Government will buy British machines unless they are identical with those sold to the Air Ministry.”

If another war comes, and, in Mr. Baldwin’s words, “European civilisation is wiped out,” it will be cheering to know that the bombers on both sides are of identical make and the product of a home industry !

Lenin and Trade Unionism: A Correction

In the November Socialist Standard, under the heading “Tall Stories from Russia,” the statement was made that Lenin advocated “lying and subterfuge” as a means of gaining control of the trade unions.

Although the words used by Lenin in this connection make it quite clear that he recommended using all kinds of deception, he did not actually use the word “lying.” His words (reproduced in the Australian Communist, (April 22nd, 1921) were:

“It is necessary to be able to withstand all this (i.e., expulsion) and to go the whole length of sacrifice if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into Trade Unions, remain in them and carry out communist work within them at any cost.”

The utter failure of the Communists to gain tangible results by this policy shows how unsound it is.

The Inequalities of Pay in Russia

Nowadays the Soviet Government and the Communists pretend that their policy of increasing inequality of pay as between one individual and. another according to output at the same work, or according to the grading of the work, is in line with Marxian teaching and is compatible with Socialism. Socialists recognise that these inequalities are features of capitalism and can have no place under Socialism, which involves the abolition of the wages system altogether. It is interesting to recall that Lenin shared our view and did not put forward the arguments now used by the Communists. In “The Soviets at Work,” an address delivered in April, 1918, Lenin admitted that the need to attract specialists at high rate’s of pay was a sign of Russia’s backwardness and was accepted only under necessity. He said:—

“Furthermore, it is clear that such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against Capitalism …. but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker. . . . Of course there is another side to this question. The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond dispute–both on the Soviets . . . and on the mass of the workers.”

He also said: –

“We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed to a very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a deflection from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the average worker—principles which demand that career-hunting; be fought by deeds not by words.”

(The quotations above are from pages 17, 18 and 19 of the edition published in 1919 by the Socialist Information and Research Bureau, Glasgow.)

Now, when the inequality is rapidly increasing, the Russian rulers pretend that it is a feature of Socialism. Lenin, however, said, “To pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.”

Viscount Snowden on the Labour Programme

Rather late in the day, Viscount Snowden tells his former Labour Party associates something which the S.P.G.B. told them (and Snowden) many years ago. In an article in the Sunday Express (October 16th) he wrote as follows of the Labour Party:-—

“It gained its former political strength neither from its Socialist idealism nor its election programme. It was an electoral refuge for a vague discontent.

The old political parties had failed. Here was a new party which made the social condition of the people its claim to popular support.

. . . . . .

Millions of men and women who know nothing about Socialism, and who have never read the Labour programme, vote for Labour candidates because they believe that this is a party which is going to do something—they don’t know what-—to improve their condition.

. . . . . .

I have been in this programme-making business for forty years. I have always realised its futility. Every programme in which I have had a hand I have seen discarded and another put in its place, later to share the fate of its predecessor.”

He finished the article with a very cruel blow, he told the Labour Party, which has always rejected Socialism in favour of “something now,” that it ought, to drop its silly promises to establish the millennium by Acts of Parliament immediately, and find “a practical policy.”

Mr. Cole Scores 30

The following is from the Star (October 18th, 1932) and refers to Mr. G. D. H. Cole:–

“A leading Socialist who has been busily counting up the number of organisations Mr. G. D. H. Cole has had a hand in starting tells me he has checked off thirty !

‘The latest he is connected with is the Socialist League,’ he said ‘and some of us are wondering how long it will hold Mr. Cole’s affection before another body is created’.”

Mr. Cole’s past loves have included the Fabian Society, the I.L.P., the National Guilds League, and, of course, the Labour Party. Recently he shared in the formation of the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda, which, after only 18 months, has been wound up alter a conference had failed to give a sufficient majority for merging with the Socialist League.

Mr. Cole is an example of the so-called “intellectuals” who have invaded the working-class movement in recent years, much to their own pecuniary benefit and to the detriment of the working-class movement. Surrounded by worshipping students and trade unionists, Mr. Cole reaps the double reward of adulation and large sales for his books, a new one appearing at frequent intervals each time he changes his mind and takes up another unsound theory.

Mr. Cole is a bad judge of political parties. It is interesting to recall what he wrote about the S.P.G.B. and about his own organisation, the National Guilds League, in the “Encyclopaedia Britanmca” (Twelfth Edition, 1922, Vol. XXXI, page 324, and Vol. XXXII, page 507).

Of the S.P.G.B. he wrote: —

“The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a very small and unimportant body of rigid Marxians of the extreme left wing.” (Vol. XXXII., p. 507.)

At that time he was full of the idea of Guild Capitalism (miscalled Guild Socialism), and recorded with gusto the growth of the Guild Movement and the formation of Guilds like the Building Guild.

Within a year or so, the Building Guild was hopelessly bankrupt, and the mushroom crop of Guilds which had sprung up in many other industries had completely disappeared. The National Guilds League, like many other of Mr. Cole’s enthusiasms, is now as dead as the Dodo, and even when it was alive its organ (The Guild Socialist) had a much smaller circulation than the organ of the S.P.G.B.

The Labour Leaders and the “Intellectuals”

Just at the moment, Mr. Cole, in his foreword to the new edition of his “British Working Class Movement,” is telling the trade unions that their policy and methods of organisation should be changed. We agree; but Mr. Cole is one of the least likely persons to have any sound ideas on the subject. Although never constant for long to any idea, he shows no sign of having learned from his past mistakes.

It is popularly believed that the workers gain through having the so-called intellectuals available to advise the Labour Leaders how to lead. What actually happens is rather like this. The trade union official, who is generally far better able to form sound opinions on trade union policy than are the academic Coles and Laskis, observes a stirring among his members in the form of interest in some new or resuscitated theory. Mistrusting his own judgment, he dashes off to seek the guidance of the “intellectuals.” The “intellectuals,” who are equally hesitant about putting forward definite suggestions, lest they should clash with the prevailing sentiment among the workers (and thus spoil their popularity and book sales), promptly set about discovering which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is likely to be. Having made up their minds on this, they then offer their advice, suitably tricked out in university jargon, the advice consisting of whatever theory they believe the workers are beginning to take up. The trade union official and the “intellectual” then feel mutually reinforced and comforted in their beliefs, and jointly offer their new wisdom to their members, the members being under the two-fold illusion that they are being given a lead and that the lead is the outcome of some solid thought by a reliable guide.

A Confusion of Parties

A few years ago the final argument of the Labour Party supporter who could not make headway against the case of the S.P.G.B. was a complaint that our separate existence confused the seeker after Socialist knowledge. “Why could we not all get together inside one big party?” The answer is that it would be fatal and absurd for a Socialist Party to lose its identity inside a conglomeration of reformists like the Labour Party. And it is curious to notice how loath are even the reformist groups to give up their separate existence in the great family party. In addition to the I.L.P. (Maxton), which left the Labour Party over the matter of Standing Orders, and the Communist Party, which wanted to get in the Labour Party but was rejected, there are now the following competing bodies all under the Labour umbrella: The Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the Socialist League (formerly the affiliationist wing of the I.L.P.), the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (now dissolved after a short life), the Scottish Socialist Party (the Scottish wing of the League), the Clarion Fellowship, and the Co-operative Party.

And in face of this medley the reformists still have the impudence to tell us that the way to unite the workers is on reform programmes !

Incidentally, how William Morris, of the old Socialist League, with its fierce opposition to reforms and to Parliamentary action, would snort if he could hear the new Leaguers claiming that they have inherited the spirit of Morris.

Edgar Hardcastle

Press Exposure: Bloody Awful (1995)

Beaverbrook by David Low.

The Press Exposure column from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloody Awful

It must have worked wonders for the sales of the Daily Express when, in the 1960s, no less an expert than the Duke of Edinburgh told some people in Latin America that it was "a bloody awful newspaper”. After all, any man on the promenade in Rhyl or in the back streets of Derby must have sensed that a newspaper which earns that sort of description from a massively boorish social parasite like the Duke must have something to be said for it.

In fact at that time Prince Philip seemed to be locked in unceasing conflict with much of die British press, who gleefully reported all his public relations blunders. For example there was the time he genially soaked an assembly of hacks on a lawn at the Chelsea Flower Show by turning on the sprinkler. The antagonism became so intense that, in the midst of the Profumo affair, the Sunday Express published a remarkable article which, after recounting some of the Duke’s more colourful criticisms of the press, warned that unless he held his tongue the Express newspapers might find it their unavoidable duty as a responsible newspaper serving the great British public to reveal some acutely embarrassing details of his private life.

Empathy

Those were heady days for the Express which, under the eccentric ownership of Lord Beaverbrook, could take comfort from a circulation of about 4¼ million and a reputation for employing some famous journalists. The paper's success was said to spring from their natural empathy with the sort of people to be found in Rhyl or Derby (other papers, of course, had a direct line with passengers on buses in Clapham; all of them seemed to suffer from identical bigotries and delusions). It is unlikely that the Duke would bother to criticise the Express now when its circulation hovers precariously on 1¼ million after a fall of about 6.5 percent over the past year.

Beaverbrook bought the Daily Express for £ 17,500 in 1916 and a couple of years later started up its stablemate on Sundays. To say that he stamped his—rather objectionable—personality on the paper would be an understatement, although he did not baulk [balk?] at employing journalists like Michael Foot and Tom Driberg who had political disagreements with him. He was not always frank about his motives. In 1927 he pretended to give up his interest in the papers by passing his controlling interest over to his son. In 1954 it was the Beaverbrook Foundation, supposedly too purely objective to be interested in any sordid political ambitions, which was said to have been given the ownership. He was more open when he gave his evidence to the Royal Commission on the Press in 1947: "I run the paper purely for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive."

Harlots

Of course other people saw Beaverbrook’s motives in a rather different light We have already mentioned how wounded were the delicate sensitivities of Prince Philip. He was only one of the more recent examples. In 1930 Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, smarting under some particularly savage attacks in the papers, included Beaverbrook in the press barons who aimed at “. . . power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Well, whatever else may be said about this particular harlot no one can accuse her of having a knack for infallible forecasts. In May 1938 the Daily Express assured its readers that Germany would not seize Czechoslovakia. In September that year it declared on its front page that "Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either.” Staunchly supportive of the Tory Party, it ran a typically flamboyant selective and disastrous campaign in the 1945 general election. Time will tell whether it got it right when it supported Major in the recent Tory leadership election.

The long drawn out decline of the Daily Express set in after the death of Beaverbrook and has continued through several changes of ownership and management. After Beaverbrook there was his son Max Aitken whose talents as a fighter pilot and a playboy did not extend to running a newspaper. There was Jocelyn Stevens who was sacked by Lord Matthews who ran the great combine Trafalgar House. Stevens, who was a millionaire merchant banker, maintained the Express tradition for getting it wrong when he said in 1987 that the stock market fall should be ignored as it was only a computer blip. The present Managing Director, Andrew Cameron, recently announced an economy drive in which 220 workers would lose their jobs ". . . to put us into fighting shape. (The cuts) are about securing the future."

Poverty

There may be people—in Rhyl, in Derby—who will ask what shape, what future, what security? In other places too. In July the MP for Manchester Gorton, Gerald Kaufman, told the Commons about how some of the people in that city live. Taking the national mortality rate as 100, in Manchester it is 163 for men and 148 for women. The rate for stillbirths in England and Wales is 4.2 percent, in Manchester it is 6.4 percent. For infant mortality Manchester rates 8.4 percent against 6.5 percent for the rest of Britain. These are symptoms of the extremes of poverty, of the stresses of unemployment which force down the wages of whose who are in work; Kaufman mentioned one man who works 64 and 72 hours a week whose hourly rate of pay has been cut from £3.02 to £2.35.

The poverty endured by these people is extreme in comparison but not too exceptional in its nature. Rather, it is conventional to capitalism, part of the process which produces rich people like Lords Beaverbrook, Matthews and Stevens we are supposed to admire and poor people, in Rhyl, Derby. Manchester or wherever, we are encouraged to despise. The Express may be a bloody awful newspaper but there are no bloody good ones and it speaks for a bloody dreadful social system.

Ivan

Ted’s all at sea but does it matter ? (1971)

From the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard 

If we accept their own evaluation of themselves, there can be no doubt that our politicians do a wonderful job. Toiling night and day, they control the economy to a hair’s breadth accuracy — stimulating here, damping there, so that we all enjoy the most marvellous prosperity ever known to man. And if anything goes wrong with their control, if they stimulate when they should dampen, or vice versa, they are ready with a number of amazingly generous schemes of social security which ensure that even when we are out of work we are almost as prosperous as before.

Then there is the matter of defence. We all know that we live in an extremely dangerous world where everything we hold dear, like our motor car and our back garden and the Royal Family, is under the threat from Russia and China and Egypt and many other uncivilised countries. To ward off this threat the politicians have arranged a fantastic armoury of weapons which are enough to frighten away the most insensitive Oriental ever born. Of course at the same time as they claim the credit for the production of these weapons the politicians also tell us that they have attended numerous conferences and signed numerous treaties with the professed object of ensuring that the weapons are never used, But that apparent contradiction should prove to everyone except the most cynical what wonderful men our leaders are.

With all these tremendously good, and time consuming, works being done for us the wonder is that the politicians ever have any time spare for anything else. Yet many of them are active in all sorts of other fields. Churchill, for example, used to spend a great deal of time eating and drinking; Attlee was clever enough to be able to doodle silently while the great affairs of state were being fought out all around him; Macmillan and Douglas-Home were both fond of the grouse moors. But now we have a Prime Minister who is better than all of them because he is an international sportsman.

It is possible that some sport fans will he misled by that description into thinking that Ted Heath has been recruited into Alf Ramsay’s squad and will shortly be taking on George Best for the glory and honour of Old England. But before any of them have a heart attack at this idea, it should be made clear that Heath’s international sporting is confined to yachting, in which he has represented Great Britain.

Perhaps Heath’s public relations men think that his hobby — if that is what it can be called — fits in well with his image of the small seaside town grammar school boy who made the top. This, you see, is the age of the Daily Mirror dinghy, when almost any worker who is not actually out of work can probably afford to buy or build his own sailing ship for a fairly modest outlay. Unfortunately Heath’s rather elephantine publicists seem to have overlooked the vital fact that his boat is larger and more expensive — something like £20,000 more expensive — than all those little do-it-yourself boats.

In addition the Prime Minister is providing the Labour opposition with some handy ammunition, because as he has been absorbedly sailing backwards and forwards there has been an escalation of the current problems of British capitalism which he as the top politician should be able to solve. In Ulster the violence flares even higher, with more and more deaths. The world is in the throes of yet another currency crisis. At home, among the usual poverty problems like housing, unemployment has become an issue and is likely to reach the dreaded million mark this winter.

The Labour Party have always been adept at picturing leisured Tory ministers callously at their sports while the workers are suffering. On the face of it, it seems reasonable to expect, politicians to be energetic and committed to their work. But it needs only a little probing beneath the surface to put this assumption in a very different light.

Of the men who have held the job of Prime Minister since the First World War, one who provoked a lot of criticism by his apparent inertia and lack of concern was Stanley Baldwin. He was a man who was always ready to make a sentimental speech about the beauty of the English countryside but who preferred to spend his holidays in Southern France. He exploited the image of the comfortable, fatherly, pipe-smoking leader talking to the people like a family doctor — which he rather spoiled by being photographed looking affectionately at a pig. Chamberlain referred sarcastically to his ‘‘poetic temperament” and whatever truth there was in this sneer, Baldwin was capable of coining some memorable phrases — like his slogan of ‘‘Safety First” for the election of 1929, when there were a couple of million unemployed in this country who might have been expected to want anything but a policy of caution. Nevertheless the workers were so fascinated by Baldwin’s promise of tranquility that they gave him almost enough votes to get back into power.

Just after he got back to the Premiership in 1932 he

. . . declared himself by no means overwhelmed by his responsibilities ... He was going to the theatre tonight!

(Neville Chamberlain’s diaries; 23.5.1932).

And while Baldwin was so gay and carefree Sir John Orr was telling the world, which included the politicians, that the cost of an adequate diet — nine or ten shillings a week — was beyond the purchasing power of one third of the people. A little before this Baldwin had announced to the Junior Imperial League that “This is a glorious age in which we live . . . the whole world is sick” but he did not mean the same thing.

After a time his lethargy and stone-walling became a liability. In addition he once made the statement that “You cannot palter with the truth for the sake of votes”, which must have seriously unnerved his fellow' politicians and, more than anything else, convinced them that he had to go.

Baldwin was succeeded by the scrawny Neville Chamberlain, who may have been the most unpopular Prime Minister of recent times. So old fashioned was he that he regarded the fountain pen as a new fangled instrument of torture. Chamberlain belied his appearance because, apart from recurrent gout, he was a robust and physically tireless man. He took the chair of every Cabinet committee dealing with major domestic policies; he was the one minister in his government who could always be relied on to read and digest every paper before the Cabinet; when he was seventy and would tire out his police bodyguard by dragging him on long, hard hikes over the Chiltern Hills. And of course there were those famous flights to meet Hitler — in those days quite an adventure for a man of 69.

Although Chamberlain championed many of the methods of running British capitalism which might have been put forward by the Labour Party — for example state welfare schemes and what he called a “managed economy” — he was the image of the stiff, grim faced Tory. Yet none of his opponents could accuse him of lethargy; indeed, when he later became damned with the memory of Munich the Tories must have wished miserably that he had not been so energetic. Perhaps a bit more of Baldwin’s casualness would have saved something from the wreck which emerged as Labour’s victory of 1945.

But in the nature of capitalism’s politics the Tories recovered and after Attlee’s men, many of whom were so energetic in their efforts to defend the interests of the British capitalist class that they worked themselves into an early grave, came the Age of the Grouse Moor. As it happened Macmillan was a one-time admirer of Baldwin’s and shared many of his characteristics as a slick performer on the political tightrope. He too made slushy speeches, once persuading a deputation of railwaymen to call off a strike by tearful reminiscences of the 1917 battle of Passchendaele.

Macmillan was a man who presented strongly contrasting images. He liked to affect the “effortless superiority” of one who had gone to a posh Oxford college yet he could also sponsor policies like the Premium Bonds which some Tories thought were vulgar. One of the many surprises he sprung was to become energised by taking on the job of Prime Minister. Before that he was thought to be worn out by his time as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But as Premier he blossomed; crisis suited his acting talent and he quickly dominated his party, stifling any gestures of opposition with elaborate yawns and deliberately boring speeches.

Nevertheless, behind the facade of the dandy in a fashionable play Macmillan was doing a tricky political job. He played a large part in recognising the necessity of, and organising, the retreat of British capitalism from the old Empire so dear to Tory hearts. He signalled this policy in a speech which passed a new catch phrase — the Wind of Change — into common usage and which infuriated those Tories whom Macmillan had allowed to believe that he would carry on with Eden’s policies in areas like the Middle East. Years later, in an interview with Nigel Lawson (Listener 8/9/66), he described the process of this trickery:

Lawson: Would you say it is easier for a Prime Minister in this country to do one thing if he says he is doing something else?

Macmillan: It is a very common method, yes.

As in the case of Baldwin, Macmillan’s popularity waned and his grip on his party weakened, with the growing impression that he pursued too casual a style while crisis mounted all around him. In the end he panicked, he came to admit in the Profumo debate that he was out of touch with the times and, after one last effort, he retired from the Premiership. Even his influence on the choice of his successor Douglas- Home provoked such a split in the Tories that they never used that method again.

After Douglas-Home, Wilson came roaring into office with a reputation for crushingly hard work. He was another grammar school boy made good — in fact the original, authentic article with his simple life style and comfortable family. Wilson was said never to relax, giving up even his Sundays to reading and to preparing his speeches. He said he thrived on work; only boredom made him tired and the most responsibility he had the more relaxed he became.

For a time this was effective; we all remember how pleased the voters were with their new, bustling Prime Minister after those thirteen years of Tory snobbishness and lethargy. It was only as reality forced its way into the picture (yet again, for the umpteenth time) that Wilson was discredited. He himself probably helped in this process, by persisting with the image long after it had been exposed as a sham and the man of action written down as a slick purveyor of empty clap-trap and blatant trickery. It will need a massive confidence trick now to reestablish him as a creditable politician worth any of the millions of votes which will be cast for capitalism at the next election.

It would be possible to go on like this for some time, but every example would lead us back to the same conclusion. The personalities of our politicians — whether they are stupid or clever, energetic or lazy — have absolutely no effect upon the world they are supposed to control and improve. The tragedy is that, as political leaders are necessary to capitalism, the working class assume that they will always be necessary in any society. In fact, a successful politician needs many of the talents and qualities of a good actor, which means that he cannot represent reality. It is not uncommon, when a play is no good, for the customers to enforce its shut-down by the simple method of not supporting it. In the same way the working class could bring down the curtain on the destructive farce of capitalism.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: About Class (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working Class! Capitalist Class! Middle Class! A plague on all your classes. I do not like to think of men and women in society as belonging to different classes.

I like to think of these people as individuals all doing their best to meet life's joys and anxieties with enthusiasm and determination.

A one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, whose benevolent face and rotund figure are often the background for a pipe, became a little disturbed at such descriptive class titles and consoled himself and his hearers with sentiments similar to the above. How he abhors such marking off into sections of certain members of the human family! Nevertheless, I am sure that he knows to which class he belongs. Probably some evidence will be found on his railway ticket; on his particular suite in a luxury cruise; on his standing under his own pergola or chandelier; on the power of his effective demand upon the mass of commodities within society.

Now there are many who, like our one-time Prime Minister, give more evidence of sentimentality than sense when discussing society, when faced with the logical terminology which is forced upon them by the economic system which we know as Capitalism.

However, the march of events takes but little notice of a person's particular dislikes, and we are compelled to take notice of facts, not fancies. In society, as at present constituted. there are two distinct classes with interests diametrically opposed — Capitalist Class; Working Class.

(From an article Working Class, Socialist Standard April 1939.)

Working Class (1939)

From the April 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working Class! Capitalist Class! Middle Class! A plague on all your classes. I do not like to think of men and women in society as belonging to different classes.

I like to think of these people as individuals all doing their best to meet life’s joys and anxieties with enthusiasm and determination.

A one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, whose benevolent face and rotund figure are often the background for a pipe, became a little disturbed at such descriptive class titles and consoled himself and his hearers with sentiments similar to the above. How he abhors such marking off into sections of certain members of the human family! Nevertheless, I am sure that he knows to which class he belongs. Probably some evidence will be found on his railway ticket; on his particular suite in a luxury cruise; on his standing under his own pergola or chandelier; on the power of his effective demand upon the mass of commodities within society.

Now there are many who, like our one-time Prime Minister, give more evidence of sentimentality than sense when discussing society, when faced with the logical terminology which is forced upon them by the economic system which we know as Capitalism.

However, the march of events takes but little notice of a person’s particular dislikes, and we are compelled to take notice of facts, not fancies. In society, as at present constituted, there are two distinct classes with interests diametrically opposed—Capitalist Class; Working Class. Each has its own characteristic. Taking them in order of importance, we name first the Working Class; because from its productive efforts proceed the entire wealth of society.

Taking them in order of power, we call the Capitalist Class, because it owns and controls the means and instruments for producing wealth and the property rights over the mass of commodities resulting from the aggregate efforts of the workers.

Our one-time Prime Minister is a well-fed philosopher. He enjoys that characteristic of his class—a surfeit of the world’s good things; a well-stocked larder; a neatly documented rent-book; a well-furnished wardrobe. His privilege is a hold upon wealth, such as he, however industrious, could never have produced. He enjoys the benefits of exploitation. He has a store of other men’s labours. Exploitation of whom ? Of a class ? Yes! And that class the working class. It is a wage-slave class. Unlike the leisure of the class to which the man with the meerschaum belongs, the leisure of the working class is a forced leisure. It is a poverty enduring class. Although unemployment makes the living conditions much worse for millions of the members of the working class, the cause of its poverty is capitalism, and not unemployment.

Nevertheless, this poverty-stricken class is, by virtue of its position in capitalist society and the exigencies of the economic system, the class which maintains an idle parasite crowd by its surplus labour. The entire capitalist state and its hosts of flunkeys and hangers-on, from kings downwards, are fed and clothed and entertained solely from the vast stream of wealth which flows from the industry of the toiling millions called the working class.

The Socialist did not coin the phrases Working Class; Capitalist Class; Wage slavery; Class hate; Class warfare. These words are not the projections of a disordered mentality peculiar to men who preach revolution. They correctly mark conditions which obtain under capitalism and will only disappear when that system falls.

The Socialist can readily understand that our country-loving, honest-to-goodness, one-time Prime Minister eschews looking at society as it really is. It might spoil his contented smoke. Nevertheless, it sometimes amazes the Socialist when he finds his fellow wage-slaves envisaging capitalist society as a happy human brotherhood, and taking their cue from Cabinet Ministers and the Labour Opposition.

In the part of the city where it has pleased my heavenly Pop to place me, there are many indications of the class sections in society—working men’s dining rooms; working men’s hotels; working class clothiers. A working class neighbourhood. At times the King comes along to look at some of the working class amenities, accompanied by his Ministers. Then they go away—and thank God that they are not as other men. It never appears to strike these "high and mighty” personages, when they say “Give us this day our daily bread," that the Almighty has left too many loaves in their porch and too few in the doorway of the worker, or is it that they know that it is none of His doing ?

The Socialist asks his fellow worker to study his position in capitalist society. A book has just been published by Lawrence & Wishart, 2, Parton Street, London, W.C.l, entitled “Hunger and Work" by Jurgen Kuczynski. 2s. 6d. The author concludes that 10,000,000 workers live below the poverty line. He takes Rowntree’s minimum as the standard. It is well to notice that this scanty existence is the full heritage of a class, namely, the industrial working class of this country.

This statement is nothing new to the Socialist, and maybe our proud-of-England one-time Prime Minister had his tongue in his cheek when decrying the class labels which are everywhere evident.

As I am writing this a miner is broadcasting from Manchester regarding the benefits arising from the “Holidays with pay" movement. He described it as one of the greatest blessings which had come to the worker. He earned 8s. 9d. per day, and until this year had not been able to take a week's holiday for himself or his wife or children. Again I would draw your attention, and the attention of Earl Baldwin, to the fact that this sort of experience is the experience of a definite class. If he is really seeking a classless society, let him read and understand our “Declaration of Principles," and help us to bring about Socialism, and with it the end of class distinctions.

B. F. Lee