News in Review: Respectable revolt (1965)

The News in Review column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Respectable revolt

Straws which are currently in the wind of British capitalism are rumblings of militancy in the so-called middle class, and the re-occurrence of the plea for more unemployed.

Some teachers and doctors have recently considered withdrawing their labour power, the former from schools and the latter from the National Health Scheme. Their reasons, basically, were concerned with their pay.

Doctors and teachers have long considered the strike as unprofessional, and in bad taste. But capitalism does not exempt any worker from the need to fight to maintain and increase his standard of living; and if doctors and teachers remain quiescent their standard of living must suffer.

Before the war when unemployment was widespread the “secure” teachers grumbled about their pay. Doctors got their patients in a free market, and many in the poorest working class districts were little better off than their patients.

Now both groups are complaining about their financial rewards; they are finding that a sense of vocation is no weapon in this competitive society. So they are considering the withdrawal of their labour power—in other words, using the weapon which marks them as members of the working class.

There is another way of losing your pay.

Lord Plowden, former Chief Planning Officer and Chairman of the Economic Planning Board, also chairman of Tube Investment Co. Ltd., and director of four other companies, was reported in the Daily Telegraph in January as wanting . . . ”better use of the labour force . . . this would lead to transitional unemployment . . . to do everything possible to mitigate the resulting hardship.”

“This is what we mean when we say that we want increased productivity, and why should we be mealy-mouthed about it?”

Capitalists are not opposed to unemployment if they think it necessary. Plowden wants to replace the carrot with the stick, on the theory that there is nothing like a dose of unemployment to increase productivity.

Is Lord Plowden himself prepared to live on the dole? Or is that a fate reserved for the workers on whom he so coldly theorises? These are questions which no highly paid servant of capitalism should want to duck.

Unless, that is, he is being mealy mouthed.

Everlasting Milk

The news which came out during the first week of last month, that British scientists had developed a method of treating milk which will make it last for months, was greeted in the newspapers with all the customary enthusiasm.

The chairman of the Express Dairy, Mr. W. E. D. Bell, helped the enthusiasm along a bit by proclaiming: “At last, we can feed milk to the two-thirds of the world that is starving.” He might as well have said that at last they could break into a market which up to now has been held by dried milk, which is easier to handle and transport than the liquid.

The Express are not, of course, about to throw in their hand with OXFAM and become a charitable institution. They quickly set up a new company to deal with the export of the new milk. Orders have been received from Central America and some shipping lines, and more may follow from the British and United States Navies.

It was not the desire to feed the hungry which was responsible for this haste. Mr. Bell made it clear: “We must,” he said, “Pull our fingers out and get this project going before the Swiss or anybody move in.”

At the time of writing, the new process has not been approved by the government for milk sold on the home market. Exported milk is not covered by the need for official approval. If the new milk is approved for home distribution, there will probably be considerable savings for the dairy industry whose bugbear, like other branches of agriculture, has always been the expensive business of rush distribution.

Agriculture is as much tied to the need to make profits as any other industry, and it is constantly looking for ways around its distribution problems. Hence the development of massive, mechanised farms, of the broiler hen and the beef factories. Hence the rise of the frozen food industry.

Some people, derided as crackpots, have questioned the effects which all this has on the food. But as long as there is a profit to be made, or increased, who cares about quality? Capitalism encourages the shoddy rush job in many of its industries, and there is no reason why agriculture should be an exception.

This is the motive behind the everlasting milk. The Sunday Times thought that, apart from anything the Express will get out of the new product, “. . . it offers a way of giving the dairy farmers more for their milk without raising the price to the public.”

The profit priorities of capitalism affect every aspect of our lives. Everywhere we go, everything we wear, the very air we breathe, everything we eat and drink, is polluted by it. And all the time there is the smokescreen of hypocrisy about human interests—about, for example, feeding the world’s hungry when the real motive is to make life more comfortable yet for the privileged few.

Vietnam

For some reason, it has suddenly become fashionable for journalists to use some peculiar words about the war which is currently being fought in Vietnam.

They have called it the “unnecessary” war, the “tragic” war, the “forgotten” war. As if all wars are not tragic, unnecessary affairs.

The Americans, deeply involved, have their own description of the war. It is, they say a vital war, because it is being fought to defend freedom. Every time the American jets go in, President Johnson claims that they fire their rockets in the cause of liberty.

We are, as usual, invited to accept the story that in Vietnam one side (the North —theirs) stands for brutal dictatorship and the other (the South—ours) stands for liberty and brotherhood.

But the South Vietnamese have shown what they mean by freedom and brotherhood by the manner in which they maltreat their prisoners. One of their recent tricks was to use a wounded prisoner (who later died) as a human mine detector—to send him wading across a river to detonate any mines on the bed.

This is only one piece of the surface evidence which shows up that it is barefaced nonsense to claim that the war in Vietnam is for freedom. In fact, the United States are involved in the war for familiar, classical reasons.

They are interested in the strategic position of Vietnam, and in the bases which they have set up there. They are desperately concerned that the expanding Chinese threat to the established powers in the Far East should be held in cheek.

The British capitalist class, who have their own troubles a little further south, are reluctant to become involved in Vietnam. British influence in the Far East was extensively diminished during the last war, and although there is still a lot of British capital invested out there, the protection of it is largely the concern of the U.S.A.

The Soviet Union is also reluctant to get involved, but is having its hand forced. They also fear Chinese ambitions; hence the belligerent words from Moscow —which remain no more than words.

The Economist’s prophesy of the outcome of Premier Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi was remarkably accurate:

“Mr. Kosygin is virtually certain to proclaim . . . that (American) attacks would involve the risk of nuclear escalation. In exchange, the Russians may well urge the North Vietnamese not to push their present military advantage in the south too far.”

Vietnam is a typical local struggle in the wider conflict of interests between the great blocs of capitalism with China, struggling for its place in the world power line up, an aggravation. China’s belligerency is customary for an upstart capitalist power; customary also are the efforts which the established powers are making to stifle her.

This could mean that the Vietnam battle will not escalate (ugly word) into a major nuclear war. But mistakes and miscalculations have been known before.

If Vietnam does prove to be the first spark in a world wide conflagration the result will be an unnecessary war, a tragic war but one which, if there is any-one left to remember it, will not be forgotten.

Gordon-Walker and immigration

The defeat of Patrick Gordon-Walker at the so-called safe seat of Leyton provided both press and politicians with a field day for comment and speculation. A number of reasons for the surprise result were suggested; in a survey just after the by-election, The Observer placed coloured immigration at the head of the list, with Labour voters the majority to voice dissatisfaction on this problem.

When the Conservative government introduced a bill curbing the flow of immigrants into this country, the Labour Opposition resisted it, creating the impression that they were in favour of unlimited free entry. Disastrously for a party seeking mass support, they overlooked the political climate. It is possible that their slender majority at the general election was caused partly by this. Gordon-Walker had the job of opposing the Tory bill in Parliament and this has made him an obvious whipping boy in what the press is fond of calling the white backlash.

At Smethwick, his Conservative opponent, by using an extremist minority as his supporters, played on the electorate’s prejudices, and their fears of the growth of a large coloured population in Britain. While the fascists ranted and raved and worked on a suppressed sore, the Tories got the benefit. At Leyton the racial question and immigration were smothered by the three main candidates, but Gordon-Walker was pestered by Nazi gadflies.

Most workers, irrespective of colour and race, fear a sudden mass influx of foreign workers because they see them as a threat to their jobs and as an aggravation of the housing shortage. On top of this is a fear that people coming from less developed areas may be willing to accept lower wages and social standards.

Immigrants have entered Britain before, but they have been mainly European and were therefore quickly assimilated. It would, for example, be difficult to trace the whereabouts of the Germans who came to Britain in Edwardian times. The recent wave of immigrants is vastly different. The colour of their skin makes it impossible for them to be quickly submerged and forgotten. They stimulate a multitude of primitive fears among the working class.

But what will happen if the coloured population of this country increases enormously? Most coloured people are just part of the working class, subject to the same rough end of the economic stick as their white brothers. In time the demands of industrialism will destroy their own customs and they will appear similar to the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Poles etc, that go to make up the British population.

Smethwick, Leyton and Gordon-Walker are examples of how it is impossible to operate vague humanitarian concepts in a capitalist society. The government has in fact already announced much stricter screening of coloured immigrants at the points of entry. Thus do capitalism and a non-socialist working class destroy the best laid plans of mice and men.

At Random. (1908)

From the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Mr. Burrows ought to be in Parliament; he is much the sanest of the Party to which he belongs.” (W. T. Stead, Review of Reviews, August, 1908.

* * *

After this handsome certificate of comparative “sanity” from one of the most notorious tin gods of Nonconformist-Liberalism, the suave gentleman who plays “Socialism” on a cracked pipe in an impossible key to the tune of “Reform,” should experience no trouble in making one of those “compacts” with the master-class which the Social Democratic Party would never endorse.

* * *

What, never ? Well; hardly ever ! See Manifesto of the S.P.G.B., pp. 1, 9, and 10.

* * *

The “humanity” of individual members of the governing class often throws a lurid light on the all-essential conception of class-consciousness. We learn from the Correspondent of the Daily News that “President, Faillères and M. Clemenceau have stubborn objections to capital punishment.”

* * *

Whether a criminal shall take his last look through the “little window,” or be immured in prison, has little, or very remote, bearing on the interests of the gentlemen in question as members of the governing class. Quite otherwise with a strike. The sabred right of the capitalist to exercise his unfettered “freedom” in brutal exploitation is challenged. The genial Fallières and the clement Clemenceau have no hesitation then in shooting.

* * *

“Stubborn objections to capital punishment” en masse, in the interests of the employers, have as little existence with Fallières and Clemenceau. as with Asquith and Burns.

* * *

When will the worker fully grasp the fatal significance of the armed forces of the nation to himself ? “Hard times” are in store during the coming winter. Sharp reminders of the real moaning of such forces may serve to help even fatuous fools of the Blatchford type to see that preservation of “our” country is the function of the army and navy only on the clear recognition of the fact that “our” is synonymous with the class that hold and control the instruments of production.

* * *

The worker is fatherland-less. Stripped of all claim to any advantages which he may have formerly enjoyed from the use of land, the appeal to save “our” country from foreign conquest by the Editor of the Clarion, is on a par with his strenuous begging for funds to finance “our” Vans—which belong, as you please are solely controlled by—spite the feeble Clarionese kickers—the Editor of the Clarion

* * *

As thus : “MY method is soon told. I look out for good men. When I find one, I give thanks. I put him into the right place. I give him a free hand.”

“Alderman E. R. Hartley will be appointed Van Organiser.—Clarion (recent issue).

* * *

Inimitable style, Nunquam’s ! ! My very dear friends of the Clarion brand of “Reform,” DO YOU READ “YOUR” ORGAN?

* * *

Listen to the tale of woe ! The Class Teacher this time. “Pious professional protests, pious professional tears have all been in vain. In some cases we (the teachers’ unions) are actually progressing backwards.”

“One gets sick unto death of it all: we are singing and making merry while the ship is sinking.”

* * *

The “dearth” of teachers has come to a most brutal, beastly, unseemly end. The poor pedagogue is actually being brought face to face with “iron laws of supply and demand.” But—soft ! We will take heed unto ourselves, we will take counsel of the miner, we will learn wisdom from the bricklayer, and the gasworker. We “will reduce the number of possible blacklegs.”

* * *

Why, damme ! if it comes to that, “we will adopt strike principles.”

* * *

Ay ! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the Counter-Jumpers’ Champion, noise it not abroad in the Dustmen’s Herald—we will bow our heads, and admit “uncertificated teachers” to the Union what time we declare that “with the ‘supplementary ‘ teachers we have no cause in common.”

* * *

“No cause in common.” Fools and blind ! Compelled to sell your pitiful commodity, a shoddy education, at a rate which compels you too oft to occupy your “leisure” time in petty trading, in divers pursuits which a false pride and an eye to income tax compels you to hide, you have yet to learn that you have a “cause in common” with your class, the working class.

* * *

Meanwhile, the President of your Union is discovering that there is a “great sense of unity” among teachers in the wonderful German Empire.

* * *

A comrade from Manchester, who modestly hides his individuality under the weird title of “Jaybee,” writes: —

“The futility of endeavouring to put a stop to industrial operations by such a method as the general strike, was shown during the recent strike in Paris ; Mr. Clemenceau, the Premier, said he would be able to place at the disposal of the directors, military engineers to take the place of the men in supply stations if they went on strike.”

* * *

“Further, he was prepared to supply TROOPS TO GUARD THE MAINS.”

* * *

A striking commentary on the soundness of the position taken up by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, viz: that, whilst fully recognising the necessity of organisation on the industrial plane, the seizure of the political machinery (including the armed forces of the nation) by the worker, is absolutely essential to working-class emancipation.

* * *

“Direct action,” however thickly veiled with high-seeming Socialist phrases, is Anarchy, and he who would persuade the worker to “drive out Beelzebub with Beelzebub” is working present woe, and hindering future weal in a way that is the more tragic, in so far as a genuine desire to serve his class often dominates the misguided devotee to an ancient and obsolete faith.

A. Reginald

The teaching business (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

You may have seen adverts for those very exclusive sounding little "tutorial colleges", private cramming colleges, places which seek to guarantee urgently needed A-level or O-level results in a hurry, in return for a suitable fee. All very discreet and polite, very popular perhaps with young students whose parents have got a few quid to spare and who forgot, during their two years of working for A-levels, that that was what they were doing. No Arthur Daleys here, you might think. This is the world of education, and the people who run these colleges must be fine pillars of the educational establishment, devoted to enhancing the cultural tone of life in the 'eighties and getting those diligent pupils through such very noble examinations.

Well, don't you believe it. Having just been employed by a private tutorial college for the past year. 1 can assure you that such colleges measure their so-called educational achievements in pounds and pence from start to finish. Let us start by looking at the glossy prospectus which publicises the college. We are dealing here with a business, a company, an enterprise. The fact that it is supposed to be a question of learning means nothing. Education, like every other human activity, has to be debased by capitalism into a crude transaction, an exchange fraught with fraudulence. The prospectus is distributed mainly in Hong Kong, parts of Africa and the Middle East, as British universities are popular with students from those areas, and to be eligible to take A-levels in local authority colleges you need to have lived in Britain for some time. The prospectus displays an attractive photograph of the London University Senate Building (which, incidentally, was taken over by the government during the second world war for use by the BBC misinformation service. George Orwell worked there and used it as the model for the Ministry of Truth building which he describes in 1984). In very small print it is stated that the college which the prospectus is advertising is round the corner from this imposing building.

Union organisation among the teachers in these colleges is (so far) virtually unheard of. although facilities and conditions for the teaching staff are in many ways particularly poor. The teachers' unions negotiate nationally with the association uniting local authority employers, whose agreements are not binding on this private sector. Pay is strictly by the hour. There is no pay at all during any holidays, bank holidays, absence (even through illness) and so on. Students pay approximately £600 for every O-level they are taking, and £800 for every A-level. Courses in English as a Foreign Language often cost well over £1.000. The college I have been working for has over 300 students registered. I had the opportunity on one occasion to see a note in which the owner has been totting up the accumulated income from these students, which ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Towards the end of the year, some students were complaining that they had not been warned against being over-ambitious in taking on too many subjects at A-level at the start. Standards of teaching are not properly monitored, with teachers being pressurised into teaching subjects which they may not be properly qualified for, rather than turn away potential fee-payers for a possible course. Some teachers, anxious to save some money for the holiday periods when their pay will abruptly cease, take on so many hours of teaching that they cannot possibly hope to prepare all their lessons properly. All of this, combined with the fact that a majority of students have been thrust too rapidly into writing exam papers in English even though it is not their first language, leads to a very poor level of results in many cases. The owner confided to me in an oddly candid moment that an appalling set of results has become the annual expectation. This situation is tolerated as long as it does not form into such a widespread bad reputation that there are no further queues of candidates.

Finally, the payment of teachers is carried out with a penny-pinching obsession which defies comprehension. I have personally kept (and framed) pay-slips which include deductions for "lateness" measured minute by minute, penny by penny. "Teaching" is regarded as a mechanical process, and if a moment passes when that process is not "happening" then the teacher must not be paid for that moment. The terms of the contract of employment are quite draconian: "a teacher who fails to attend any class . . . is liable to instant dismissal. Breach of College Regulations renders the teacher liable to instant dismissal" and so on.

No doubt Kenneth Baker would find all this very inspiring. After all. even the state education system is dominated by commercial considerations, ranging from the poor provision of facilities, understaffing and the present conflict over pay, to the underlying aim of turning out model wage-slaves (who should be expertly adaptable to the art of dealing with the DHSS for long periods). In either case, it is safe to assume that real education. the free process of social learning, has hardly begun.

Clifford Slapper

Notes and Clippings. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fred. Jowett, M.P.,—who signalised his career as a public man by bargaining with the Liberals for the exchange of support—has been giving what the Clarion is pleased to call “a Lesson in Political Tactics.” The lesson does not consist, as one conversant with his actions would suppose, in an exposition of the gentle, if somewhat dirty, art of collecting “fly-paper” votes. On the contrary, the member for West Bradford lectures the Scotch representatives on their “docility,” pointing out that Irishmen have.obtained concessions by reason of their militant attitude.

* * *

And how does this Political Bottom comport himself when confronted by the assembly which he so valiantly belabours on paper? Call a witness—Lloyd George : “There were only five or six Socialists in the House of Commons. Though some of them might make wild speeches outside, in the House of Commons they were thoroughly tame. They were there, tinkering up bills, and doing odd jobs of that kind in the Liberal workshop.” Verily, the master class, relieved and amused at the nightingale “roaring” of the bogus lions, may well say “Let ’em roar again, let ’em roar again.”

* * *

A paid organiser of the Independent Labour Party, speaking in opposition to a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, on the 12th of April, in Finsbury Park, said that he had had it on the best authority that Ramsay MacDonald had been offered a post in the government by Asquith, and his manly bosom “visibly swelled” when he informed his hearers that the man whom Quelch says is out for the making of his own career, refused.

* * *

Query: Did the organiser expect him to accept ? Had he done so, what would have been the position of the Independent Labour Party ?

* * *

We pause for a reply—which we do not expect from officials or organisers of the I.L.P. An expression of opinion from any of the rank and file of that organisation would be warmly welcomed—and recorded—by the Socialist Standard. Personal contact with members of the I.L.P. has given more than one of us high hopes of the rank and file. Not a few who had been merely lacking in information as to the methods of their organisation, when enlightened by the mouth or pen of a genuine Socialist, have expressed deep dissatisfaction, which must lead to the inevitable discovery that false methods are the inevitable outcome of a false theory.

* * *

Anything short of the recognition that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself, will inevitably breed the particularly noxious species of parasite that lives upon its own kind, the sentimentalist whose attitude is an eternal compromise between broken-bottle-anarchy and we-are-all-brothers fatuousness, disappointment, disgust, and apathy.

* * *

The National Federation of Assistant Teachers—one of the six unions to which some fortunate pedagogues may belong!—is of opinion that “there is immediate necessity for an alteration in the salaries of assistant teachers.” But alack and alas! the organ of the N.F.A.T. has discovered that “the earnest devotee of the scholastic art is as much a victim of the iron law of supply and demand, as any luckless wight of a miner, joiner, or bricksetter ever was.”

* * *

The remedy proposed, of course, is the old, old Trade Union fake. Strive to create a corner in labour. Lesson the supply. In view of the fact that the “powerful” London Teachers’ Association, represented on the London County Council by the late rejected of Peckham has failed to perceptibly influence the Council with regard to its policy of flooding the market with “scholarship” lads and lasses, bearing in mind that the parents who are only just able to send their children to “secondary” schools, feeling the “economic pressure” which is steadily squeezing them down, down to ever lower levels, are eagerly availing themselves of the opportunity to “place” their children, is it likely that the mop of Unionism can stem the advancing flood ?

* * *

No hope, no light for the teacher until he recognises the fact that the “iron law” which binds him and the miner is but an expression of the fact that he and the miner, having nothing to sell but their labour-power, are wage-slaves, and that the united efforts of teacher and miner, joiner and bricksetter, are required to abolish wage-slavedom. This is only possible by an organisation which shall embrace the whole working class. In a word, the basis of the workers’ organisation must be class solidarity and class interests. Its tactics must be aggressive, and its aim revolutionary. Such an organisation (the S.P.G.B.) exists.

* * *

Mem. for “devotees of the scholastic art” :

Socialist Standard, June, ’06 : “The declared reason for the existence of the National Union of Teachers is the furtherance of the interests of the child. Is there not a danger that it may become the happy hunting-ground of the eloquent Party-man in a hurry to round his own life into a success?”

Daily Chronicle, April, ’08: “Everyone rejoices in the deserved promotion that has come to Dr. Macnamara, who has worked with unstinted devotion for the cause of Liberalism.”

* * *

Salary, £2,000.

* * *

Another mem. “N.F.A.T. Handbook,” p. 57 : “The following standard of salaries has been adopted by the National Federation of Assistant Teachers and the National Union of Teachers as a just and reasonable remuneration for Class Teachers:—

Metropolitan Men, Maximum, £220.

Women, Maximum,                  £165.”

* * *

Really, the humility of the average “class teacher,” if the above may be taken as a true reflection of his opinion, “passeth all understanding.” He deliberately rates his services at a tenth of that of his astute former colleague. How is this estimate arrived at ? Will some of the younger members of “the profession” enquire? Why are a woman’s services rated lower than those of a man ?

A. Reginald.

Cuts in Education (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again capitalism is going through a pretty severe crisis. There is of course nothing new in this. Nor is there anything unusual. On the contrary, it is merely evidence of the normal working of capitalism; a society in which crisis is as endemic as weeds to a flower bed. Marx pointed out over a hundred years ago, that capitalism would inevitably move in phases, one of which was crisis which is what is happening now. When capitalism in Britain or elsewhere gets into a financial crisis its government must turn to anything which offers a prospect of saving the situation, one vulnerable arm of expenditure is education. The direct benefits of investment in education are not as evident to all the capitalist class as is investment in plant or machinery. It takes some considerable time to get any return on the expense of getting children ready for “the work of life” (one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of education); at least ten years in school to make a labourer, considerably longer for a worker with a technical degree, even longer for a scientist capable of inventing a new type of warhead. So capitalism cuts.

This cannot be in the long-term interests of capitalism. Advanced capitalism needs well-trained labour. Without it, the individual capitalist state may fall behind its competitors in world markets. But long-term interests seldom enter into it. To make his workers redundant, close his plant etc. means less profit for the capitalist, yet nevertheless the capitalist class finds itself doing just that. So also with education. The dictates of this crazy system do not allow for common-sense (even from the point of view of capital). For one thing there are no jobs available for all those expensively-trained students (especially those coming out of so-called higher education). The Times reported (16th January 1976) over 1750 vacancies in colleges, universities and polytechnics which could not be filled in the south-east alone. From the point of view of the capitalist class, with a situation like that, why not cut?

So the hatchet men of the capitalist class (currently the Labour party) start looking for ways of saving the capitalist class’s money. Apart from straight cutting, a future hatchet “person”, Mrs. Thatcher has been suggesting one way for the capitalist class to have its cake and eat it. The method? Easy; you have more colleges, universities etc., without the State paying for them. Which is in effect what she recommended when she open the new University College of Buckingham. This was launched in February of this year as the first "private” university to be started this century in the UK. It is private because there are no direct “public funds” being used for its establishment and maintenance as distinct from other universities in the country. Of course in the long run if this experiment survives, most of the money will come from the capitalist class anyway, but for the moment the state is not being asked to fork out directly. Which is what Mrs. Thatcher meant when she said that she hoped in the future universities would be “encouraged to take their destinies more into their own hands and to embark upon institutional adventures which do not involve the lobbying of public opinion or government departments.” (Times Higher Education Supplement, 13th February 1976). She means of course those that do not require direct public funding.

But apart from this limited possibility, the capitalist class must look at the situation as it is. It must have been clear to the capitalist class what education was costing them. In the financial year 1975/76 for example the total cost of education (admittedly including “libraries, science and arts” government figures) will be £6,164 million. The only item of government expenditure which would cost more this year is the one misleadingly called “social security”. The remedy was to cut £618 million for next year and £1,000 million from the education budget for the following two financial years.

The effects of the cuts were predicted in the run-up to the publication of the government White Paper on public expenditure. One result forecast by the Times education correspondent (23 January 1976) was a large number of staff redundancies; hardly a difficult prediction since there was a serious unemployment problem in the teaching profession before the cuts were introduced. Among the other estimated effects from the cuts are higher school meals charges, reductions in the numbers of students undertaking higher education courses from an estimated 800,000 to 600,000 in the year 1981, a standstill on staff appointments, a reduction in the target for the number of teachers, a standstill on the numbers of children able to attend nursery education etc.

The reaction of the teacher unions was as predictable as the results of the cuts themselves. Fred Jarvis, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, was typical. He complained about the wastage: it had cost millions of pounds to train teachers who were to be made redundant. “The amount of public money wasted in training them would be about £50m. ‘This is the economics of Bedlam’, he said.” (The Times 20 January 1976.) But it is the economics of capitalism, which unfortunately he and most of his members continue to support. Most of the unions talked of “action” to oppose the cuts. Teacher unions received motion after motion with “demands” for no cuts, opposition to redundancies, opposition to closures, etc. The National Association of Teachers in Higher and Further Education for its 1976 conference has a list of 111 motions almost all of which relate to opposition to the cuts, or financing and salaries. All about as effective as trying to stop Concorde by throwing paper darts at it.

In all the loud and useless flannel of the unions, there are few signs of any realization that the chaos in their lives and those of their children is the result of the capitalist system. For example the Technical Journal for December 1975 when commenting on the disastrous effects the cuts would have in higher education grudgingly acknowledged that as the funding of much of further education “is closely linked to industry, this sector of education has always encountered the occasional potential redundancy situation due to such factors as a declining industry.” Although that could qualify for the understatement of the year, it nonetheless demonstrates something of an awareness (as yet alas, dim) that anarchy in production must lead to havoc in human existence.

Of course it often used to be possible for expensively trained teachers who were suddenly made expensively unemployed to leave the UK and find work abroad, at least in some of the Commonwealth countries. But just as capitalism is world-wide, so also are its periodic crises and so also therefore is unemployment. The Observer (8th February 1976) reported that it is no longer possible for British teachers to get jobs abroad. It even warns teachers against accepting jobs if lucky enough to be offered them. The article ends by pointing out that in the USA teachers can find education authorities running out of money and not having sufficient to pay the wages! So much for “successful” capitalism.

The SPGB is not joining in the campaign to oppose cuts or redundancies. It is pointing out to workers instead, that the cutting down in teachers and resources, while schools are short of both, is yet another of the endless dilemmas created by a social system where cost is paramount. The dilemma in this case is for those who protest at cuts but cannot suggest where the money is to come from, and will go on supporting capitalism which creates such problems.

Ronnie Warrington

So They Say: Fair Play in War (1976)

The So They Say Column from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fair Play in War

A certain mental agility, not to say an outright contortion of sanity, is part of the stock-in-trade which our “superiors” find necessary to employ in order to explain (away) the irritatingly persistent difficulties which arise from the private-property system and what they intend to do about them. We say agility, because that is what it takes to face several directions at one time. The progress of Mr. Jimmy Carter in the US primary elections for example, is surely evidence enough that the days of the two-faced politician are over: now it is essential for them to display at least three or four.

However, fleet footwork is not the sole preserve of the professional shadow boxers; the affliction spreads further afield. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute produced a recent report — Medical Protection Against Chemical Warfare Agents — dealing with nerve gases. We put aside for the moment the fundamental flaw in its viewing “protection against” as of greater importance than the reasons for the existence and development of killer gas. The Institute has been investigating “a non-woven synthetic textile, coated on the outside with a repellant, and has a layer of activated charcoal on the inside” which may offer protection. Such treated material could be used in “gas masks and combat jackets.” They acknowledge some drawbacks.

Even if some of the new drugs could be incorporated into military auto-injectors [protective clothing], all that can realistically be said of the new methods of treatment is that they will provide more time than is available with the existing treatment to move poisoned individuals to medical facilities. While this is a valuable step forward, in times of war, it is unlikely that medical facilities would be able to cope with the vast number of casualties.

Daily Telegraph 5th June 76

Capitalism turning the knife in the wound; insufficient medical facilities on one side struggling to cope with the over-efficient work of other “medical facilities” who have been developing the gas. However the monster has its scientific counter-balance, the problem being

Clothing capable of giving full bodily protection to the skin and to the respiratory system, is so cumbersome that soldiers wearing it would be brought to the point of military uselessness.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute seem to be waiting for the day when “our boys” in the improved carbon jackets can withstand nerve gas for long enough to become militarily useful. This is what they appear to project but these “peace artists” paint a gloomy picture. The answer to the techniques of killing does not lie in double, or triple-think, but in the abolition of the social system which produces war. That is a solution within the realms of possibility.

Divide & Rule

Five members of the Felixstowe Conservative Association face expulsion from their local Conservative club because they campaigned for an Independent Labour candidate at the local elections in May. Their story is that they wanted to divide the Labour vote, allowing a Conservative candidate to top the poll in a previous Labour stronghold. Although the plan succeeded, their local treasurer was not impressed, “as far as we’re concerned they’ve worked for the opposition”. However the five are unrepentant:

We’ve succeeded in getting a Conservative elected in Labour’s safest ward in the only way that it could be done . . . and believe there was the strongest justification for what we did.

Daily Telegraph, 1st June 76

No doubt they all threw up their hands in horror and shouted “Cheat!” with the rest of their cronies some days later when Labour MPs broke “pairs” and entered the lobby to avoid a government defeat in the Commons.

Virtue of Necessity

Disquiet is growing among both teachers and students over the contradictions which face them when trying to apply a “text-book” analysis to capitalism in the expectation of a logical answer. On the one hand there are student teachers who are occupying their colleges, or marching, in protest against the likely failure of an estimated 15,000 of them to find teaching jobs. Against this there is the President of the Association of Head Teachers (Scotland) referring to “overlarge classes” and concluding: “We need these extra (not “surplus”) teachers.”

On the other hand there will be, according to figures given at the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers, the likelihood of 250,000 school leavers without jobs this summer, while the Lord Privy Seal, among other notable onlookers, is calling for “more sheer hard work before we are anywhere near out of the wood” in the Times of 10th June. The contradictions have encouraged the self- styled experts to exhibit some of their “departmental” reasoning in the letter columns. The President of the National Union of Students writing to the Daily Telegraph on 5th June argued that the government had “a golden opportunity to improve the pupil-teacher ratio.”

The Government has already spent £50 million training this year’s jobless student teachers for the dole queue. How can our economy benefit from miscalculation and wastage of human resources on such a massive scale?

“Our economy” and “wastage of human resources” gives away the extent of the NUS’s ‘“revolutionary leanings.” These refrains are music to the ears of the ruling class — it is only the tempo upon which they disagree. However the difficulty may be overcome according to the Headmaster at University College School, London. Unemployed teachers and unemployed school leavers? Apply a little thought and you come up with the following:

Here, surely, is a great opportunity for unemployed teachers to set an example giving themselves experience of the kind of work which many of their future pupils will have to do. Industries, businesses, hospitals, hotels, schools and institutions of one kind or another ail have vacancies for what is mis-termed “menial employment” . . . If unemployed teachers give a lead showing that a job well done, however “menial” can be rewarding and satisfying then the unemployed school leaver might be inspired to follow.

Times 10th June 76

We had a fancy that the man of learning may have been glancing through “The Charge of the Light Brigade” shortly before penning his letter, but there is a difference. He sees the officers turning home before long in order to continue the good work. Having gained an experience of “menial” jobs, he argues, “in the long run they would be much better teachers.” And what of the others? The school leavers who were “inspired to follow.” Ah yes, with luck wage slaves also — but that is what capitalist education is about.

Dear Sir

Reinforcing this last point was the response to the new GCE examination in the “business use of English.” The Managing Director of Adpower Ltd., a “specialist staff consultancy,” had some pertinent observations to make.

Many (school leavers) are unable to get a job in the professions or in industry because they are incapable of filling in a job application form (even ours which are deliberately kept simple) . . . College leavers have simply not been prepared for the next stage in their lives — getting a job. If this new GCE examination lives up to its expectation of training young hopefuls how to speak and write commercial English, then the Associated Examining Board must surely have the backing of everyone in commerce.

Times 10th June 76

Dear Capital, Assuring you of our best attention at all times the “young hopefuls” remain therefore your most obedient servants, etc. etc.

Alan D'Arcy

Here and There. (1907)

The Here and There column from the August 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Students of Bible-lore can hardly have failed to observe that the steady deterioration in Saul’s character dated from the time that unfortunate monarch was observed by the gossips to be “among the prophets.”

—++—

The Editor of the Review of Reviews should have noted the fact before assuming the role of prophet. Says he: “The men and women of Leyden listened for an hour and a half with rapt attention while I proclaimed the great truth that the coming of the Federation of the World is near at hand.”

—++—

It appears that Lord Milner unkindly postponed “the garnering of the harvest of the Peace Conference of 1899 by his determination to crush the Boers.” These little eventualities are most trying to the modern seer. Then, again, the Organiser of Peace—and incidentally collector of pieces—has omitted from his calculations the somewhat strained relations subsisting between Master and Man all over the world.

—++—

Which reminds one of the bright and beautiful boy who— magnificently heedless of details— ignored the “blooming dots” in a problem involving “decimals,” and so arrived at an alarmingly incorrect, not to say, wildly impossible, solution.

—++—

But our enterprising journalist has, at any rate, learned the supreme merit of vagueness in his valicinations. “Near at hand” cannot be accused of Baxterian definiteness. But Upton Sinclair, of Chicago, where the potted meat et cetera—no negligible quantity either, that “cetera”—comes from, is distressingly definite when he assumes the prophet’s mantle. As thus: “the Social Revolution will take place in America within one year after the Presidential Election of 1912.”

—++—

And who is to be the “Abraham Lincoln of the coming revolution” ? HEARST !

—++—

No comment. Perhaps our American comrades will oblige.

—++—

Really, if one is to judge from the enthusiastic reports which London teachers have brought back as a result of their visit to American schools, the New country must be a veritable El Dorado for the Knights and Dames of the Ferule. One reads of schools where “the entrance hall was decorated with large palms and other shrubs, giving it more the appearance of a conservatory leading into a gentleman’s mansion than the entrance to a schoolroom,” of “lavish expenditure” on equipment, of “delightful atmosphere” in schools. One enthusiastic lady is even led to remark, somewhat oracularly, that “only he who sees takes off his shoes.”

—++—

In spite of all these advantages, in New York, 90 per cent. of the teachers are women, because “men of education usually draft off into pursuits where dollars flow more freely.” Note right here, that “salaries are much higher here than in any other city of the States.” No wonder the pedagogues of Washington “complain bitterly.”

—++—

Of course, the usual snobbery, the internecine feuds among workers which are inseparable from the capitalist system, is to be observed. “I had plenty of opportunities of noting that in the States, as in England, the University graduate and the normal school graduate do not dwell together in unity ; they are inclined to nurse a mutual prejudice; they rarely dream of going to school with each other.”

—++—

The average teacher has need “to go to school” again to learn certain facts. For instance : the “emancipation of the Certificated Class Teacher” can only be accomplished in the general emancipation of the class to which he belongs—the worker. While he may be able to snatch an apparent “victory” here, a doubtful “concession” there, (for which he is always “truly thankful. Amen.”), the economic trend of events must tend to make his wages conform to the general law operating in the present state of Society—they must tend to bare subsistence level. He has only his labour-power to sell in the mart. This he cannot dissociate from himself. He goes along with it. He is a COMMODITY.

—++—

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is open for membership to all workers. Its aim is the emancipation of the worker, its strength the recognition of the futility of “reform,” its inspiration the knowledge that it is but a factor aiding in and accelerating the inevitable Revolution towards which Society is progressing.

A. Reginald

Letter: Giving way over wages (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Giving way over wages

I have bought the Standard for 34 years and voted “Socialism” at elections as you advise us to do.

Recently I have been having a battle in the local newspaper with married women teachers who have husbands earning the average industrial wage of £60 a week. I have suggested that where they have joint incomes of £160 gross per week they give up their employment in favour of the young unemployed who receive £11 dole. The reply of the married women teachers is that the law has now been changed and they are going to hang on to the good life no matter how many are out of work. This legislation I believe was due to pressure on the Labour government by women’s organizations. By the way the local Labour Party have kept out of the argument!

What has the SPGB to say on this matter to the unemployed? I myself am existing on £14.15 invalidity pay at 59 years of age. Will we ever get Socialism? Do we deserve it? The so-called "middle-class” women have no principles.

E. Hewkin,

Derby

Reply:

We sympathize with your anger over inequalities, but in this instance you are mistaken. What you are proposing is a variant of the “wages fund” idea; i.e. that a certain amount of money is available, and one group of workers gets more only at the expense of another group. That is not the case, nor is the converse—that if one group relinquished its higher wages the money would go to others who are poorly paid.

If married women teachers resigned on principle as you suggest, who would get their jobs and salaries? In the present situation, the answer is “Nobody”. The numbers of teachers are being cut down, not by sackings but by non-replacement of those who leave (normally by retirement). The authorities, who are seeking to reduce government expenditure, would be gratified at having the process thus speeded-up; they would not then defeat the object of “cuts” by giving extra money elsewhere. The result therefore would be two people out of work instead of one, with the dole as it was.

But higher incomes do not mean opulence for workers. Wages represent the cost not only of producing labour-power, but the cost of reproducing it: maintaining the worker and his family. Some labour- power is a cheap product, requiring little training and maintenance—hence low wages. Skilled, professional and managerial workers generally are selling a more expensive product, hence its higher price. However, the latter must also live in a manner which reproduces their labour-power satisfactorily; and, just as with unskilled workers, that will take them to the extent of their incomes. In housing, for instance, poorer-paid workers may live in Council dwellings or privately-owned ones, at relatively low rents. A mortgage of £7,500 on an “owner-occupied” house at present Building Society rates over 15 years means repayments of nearly £100 a month, and similar expenses knock holes in the sort of wages you refer to. Please understand that we are not asking you to shed tears for people with incomes several times bigger than yours. We are pointing out that all workers are ultimately in the same boat. The married women replying to you may pretend to be arguing from principle, but in fact it is expediency thrust on them by the economics of capitalism.

Why not point out, instead, that women workers are exploited the same as male ones, and “the good life” is a carrot on a stick? An unemployed person seeks whatever solution he can find to his immediate individual problem, but the only way to get rid of unemployment and its miseries is to abolish capitalism. Don’t bother your head with such questions as whether we “deserve” Socialism. The capitalist class did not consult its conscience but simply pursued its material interests: Socialism will be established by the working class doing the same.

Editorial Committee.

To market, to market (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Have you ever been on a cattle ranch and watched thousands of tons of beef on the hoof stampeding in a single corral? You must have at least seen such a sight in the movie theatres or on your TV. Those animals are being prepared for the market and pretty soon they will be herded into railway cars to be transported to the slaughter houses.

Now what about that other sight we see at least five days a week in the mornings and evenings? Thousands of tons of labor-power on the hoof being herded into surface cars, subway trains, buses, automobiles and trucks, being transported to the labor market and home again for the rest and recuperation needed for the next day's toll.

There are differences, of course. In order to realise the profit in the beef, the steer must first be slaughtered. Humans, on the other hand, have no exchange value when they are dead (excepting to the funeral directors, embalmers, cemetary Industry, etc.) It is that value-creating labor power they generate, while alive, that is of importance to the capitalist class. They don’t want to own our bodies — as was the case In times of chattel slavery — they just want to buy our labor power for stipulated time periods And they also want our votes, on election days, to give approval to their system by electing those who wish to continue it. We are not slaves, they tell us, but free men and women.

Is this a gross exaggeration? It certainly is not and the very language of capitalism underscores its truth Take the word market, for example. Merriam Webster defines it as "a meeting together of people for the purpose of trade by private purchase and sale usually not by auction." In light of this, a labor market would be a place where labor-power (mental and physical) is bought and sold. The only reason the workers must bring their bodies to work is that there is no way — as of now — to ship the abilities without the carcasses. In other words, those who must work for a living in the industries of the capitalists are regarded mainly as the owners of a needed commodity and little more. If their particular abilities are marketable, they work at them. If not, they find something else, go on welfare, "mooch on the stem.” or starve.

As an Illustration: recently there was a feature story in the New York Times of the plight of newly-graduating school teachers. There are few jobs at the profession available today. The market for general school teachers became glutted, the story tells us, and the future of these recently-trained purveyors of capitalist- oriented education is grim. Most of those who do find jobs will be working as waitresses or in other unskilled fields far removed from their intended careers. So what happens now in the school teacher manufacturing industry? The same thing that happens in any other industry under the same circumstances. There will be a shrinkage for a number of years in the production of new school teachers, a falling-off of interest in going to such schools. Eventually, say about 1980 or ’85, a new shortage of teachers will have been created and there will be another rush of applicants to that discipline necessitating a new expansion of the industries — referred to as colleges — that manufacture school teachers.

They might just as well be so many sausages or legs of lamb, those bright-faces and starry-eyed youngsters who clutch those sheepskins so proudly. — Is there any sanity to such a system of society? The vast majority seem to think so or at least take it for granted as the only possible way of doing things. Socialists disagree and offer a whole new way of life, a sane world — World Socialism. Won't you join us in trying to bring It about?

50 Years Ago: The Plight of the Teachers (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The National Union of Teachers has been in existence for 35 years. It has three representatives in Parliament, a membership rivalling in numbers the great Trade Unions, each member a “captain and guide of the democracy.” An Archbishop sends greetings to its latest Conference. Vicar and Major, Ex-Cabinet Minister and M.P., all unite to “welcome” and patronise the delegates assembled at said Conference. All are greeted with rapturous “applause,” and all is as well as well can be in this best of all possible educational worlds.

And yet—and yet—the career of a “captain,” the lot of a “guide,” is still like unto the policeman’s life “when constabulary duty's to be done." List to the plaint of the President:—

  “A career inadequately remunerated, passed under harassing conditions, practically, in many cases, the servants of officials who rule with an iron hand, depending for their livelihood on voice and brain, and, if these fail, cast aside without remorse."

He is a little higher than the artisan, and a little lower than the bank clerk. In any case he is absolutely dependent upon wages for his subsistence. He is, in short, a proletarian. Does he ever seriously consider that, for class purposes, he is ever busily employed in manufacturing better material for the merchant and sweater, sturdier stuff, mayhap for “cannon fodder,” obedient tools to shoot their own kith and kin if necessary.

#    #    #    #

If 35 years of Unionism has effected so little for you. might it not be worth while to seriously review the position, and, dominated by a set definiteness of purpose, recognising your position as but units—useful units—in the great Capitalist game of Grab, infuse a more dignified, less cap-in-hand attitude into your Union? The declared reason for the existence of the N.U.T. is the furtherance of the interests of the child. Is there not a danger that it may become the happy hunting-ground of the eloquent Party-man in a hurry to round his own life into a success?

[From the "Socialist Standard," June, 1906.]

Running Commentary: Royal parasites (1986)

The Running Commentary Column from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Royal parasites

Two things were blindingly obvious in the first television reports on the engagement of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew. The first was the total absence of even the feeblest note of dissension. It would have seemed, to a viewer from another planet, that the entire nation were ecstatic over the betrothal of these two brainless parasites. Not even the most cautious voice was allowed to suggest in the most tentative way that perhaps there might just be another point of view.

When so resolute and comprehensive a blanketing of opinion is practised by the state capitalist dictatorships of Eastern Europe, the media in this country react with a contemptuous scepticism. And this is, after all, democratic Britain where there is a free and equal opportunity for all attitudes to be expressed . . .

The second thing was the apparently boundless and seemingly invulnerable confidence of the couple in their own class superiority. What jolly fun, while the world is still being fed with pictures of the pitifully starving children of Africa, to tell everyone about this prince making you eat profiteroles at a banquet! How ripping, soon after a cold spell which killed so many old workers who could not afford to heat their miserable homes, to show which class you belong to by spending £28,000 on an engagement ring!

In the same news bulletin, the cameras visited a school where blind and deaf children are being taught to communicate with others. This is real, necessary, demanding work, performed by highly skilled people who, as far as anyone can under the bestial capitalist system, operate to an approximation of the morals which socialism will have — that human needs should be the only reason for human activity.

The relief from seeing this school was only partial; this brief hint of how a humane society will deal with its unavoidable problems was in all too sickening a contrast to what is happening now under capitalism, when human needs are the lowest priority. In a world infested with misery, overshadowed by a desperate peril, the media were preoccupied with the irrelevant antics of a useless couple wallowing in their class privilege to the point of disfigurement.

It could only make anyone concerned for the welfare of the human race seethe with anger for what is happening now and with impatience for what will happen in the classless future.

Parsimony

No, not houses to live in; not much-needed hospitals or schools — not even prisons. Street shelters are to be built for claimants in the queue at the offices of the DHSS. The Guardian (4 March 1986) quotes Peter Jones, branch secretary of the Civil and Public Services Association:

  Some days we have 200 to 300 people claiming benefit . . . Many people start queueing at 7am for the office to open. They often have to wait outside all day before they can be seen and if they arrive later than 10.30am they are too late to be served.
. . . Half the staff in offices are in their probation year. There is an 80 per cent turnover for clerical officers and a 100 per cent turnover among clerical assistants. Many staff are taking Valium because they can t stand it — others are turning to drink for relief. . .

However there are some in government circles who consider staff at the DHSS underemployed. The new Social Security Bill put forward by Norman Fowler and currently being examined by a Standing Committee of MPs has found a new job for them (Guardian 12 March 1986). To save government funds, instead of grants being made for the purchase of necessities such as furniture to people with savings less than £500. members of their families and even friends and neighbours are to be approached by the DHSS to ask if they are willing to lend the money.

Apart from the ethics of this exercise in parsimony, no thought seems to have been given as to how long this would take, how the already over-worked staff are going to find the time to do this, nor how it should be done. Will these good people be invited to attend the local DHSS office? Will they be visited or written to? How often will they be reminded that a reply is required? How long must the claimant wait before the DHSS pays out in the absence of a willing private lender? There is also the possibility that friends and good neighbours who have been helping in other ways might back off when they find that they are going to be pressurised into lending money which they have saved for other things or may not even have. Will they have a means test to establish if they can afford to make the loan? Who will decide who is to be asked? And of course it is most unlikely that those already on supplementary benefit would be able to repay the debt. And this is called Social Security . . . On the other hand, perhaps it could be called a return to Victorian values.

Class apart?

So, to the consternation of the leadership of at least one of them, the two main teachers' unions are inching towards some form of unification — in thought if not as yet in deed. About time too, some might add. But, given the circumstances, exactly what good will it do? Listen in on an average staff-room discussion of labour problems and you will shortly begin to wonder how it is that so many teachers can associate with so downmarket an institution as a trade union at all. (Indeed, since in at least three titles the terms "association" is preferred to "union" perhaps many teachers feel they do not).

For if there is any one weakness that strikes most fatally at the heart of genuine social understanding on the part of your average pedagogue it is what Karl Marx described as a false consciousness of class. This refusal to identify, consciously or subconsciously, with their fellow workers is presumably what enables so many teachers to troop unquestioningly into a hymn-and-prayer session every morning (how many other workers would put up with such rubbish?). This blindness helps them to pass off, with massive imbalance, the loaded "history" and social-scientific half-truths of our ruling class' approved texts while blithely castigating identical practices in the — so-called — communist world.

Ordinary workers though they may be, obliged as are any other wage-slaves to sell their skills to an employer in exchange for wages (sorry! salaries!), far too many of them lack the enlightenment to do other than snipe at manual workers and their union spokespersons. (Scargill is a very dirty word indeed in many staff-rooms).

What. then, is the answer? To start with, no comprehensive solution is possible given the continued existence of world capitalism However, teachers — indeed, any group of workers — can do little to alleviate the consequences of their own exploitation if they wilfully ignore their own class condition, preferring to hide behind a mask of "respectability".

Political Notes: Union Bashing (1987)

The Political Notes Column from the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Union Bashing

The government has recently published a green paper (discussion document) entitled Trade Unions and Their Members which outlines phase four of its union bashing programme. Having whittled away at the rights of trade unions to engage in industrial action, and dictated how they should constitute themselves and run their affairs, the latest proposals are primarily concerned with bolstering the rights of individual trade union members against their unions. The intention is to provide legal protection to trade union members who refuse to take strike action, even though that action has majority support as expressed through a ballot of the whole membership. The Green Paper states:

  Every union member should be free to decide for himself whether or not he wishes to break his contract of employment and run the risk of dismissal without compensation. No union member should be penalised by his trade union for exercising his right to cross a picket line and go to work.

And to ensure that the rights of individual union members are so protected, it is proposed that a special commissioner for trade union affairs be appointed by the government to provide advice to trade unionists wishing to take legal action against their union.

The language of the Green Paper is that of "rights" and "freedoms", but it is individual rights that are to be protected at the expense of the collective rights of the unions themselves. The only strength that unions have comes from their collective strength and ability to remain united when involved in industrial action in defence of wages and conditions of work. The rhetoric of "rights" and "freedoms" disguises the government’s real purpose which is to undermine trade unions by helping to create divisions within them. The fact that some of the proposals contained in the Green Paper are concerned with the democratisation of trade union organisation — such as the proposal for secret ballots for elections of union officials — should not blind us to the fact that this is not the real reason for this latest round of trade union laws. It is up to workers themselves to ensure that their unions are democratic and that governments do not interfere in the internal structure and constitution of trade unions.

Teaching Teachers a Lesson

Another blow was struck against the trade union movement with the passing of the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act, which completely removes from teaching unions the right to negotiate with their employers (local education authorities) about pay and conditions of work. Instead the Act imposes a pay settlement and contains provision for the appointment of a committee which is to be responsible for advising the Minister for Education on teachers' salaries and conditions of employment. The minister will then decide whether or not to accept the recommendations of the committee.

The teaching unions will play no part in this process since the Act only states that the unions can be consulted on the Advisory Committee's recommendations. So in other words the government, acting on the advice of a body appointed by, and responsible to, itself will be able to decree what teachers should be paid, how long they must work and so on. And this from a government that claims to be committed to the "free market"!

Teachers have once again voted to take strike action in protest at this erosion of their union rights. However, in taking further industrial action they may well run up against other restrictions on the right to strike. The government and the media will undoubtedly try to present teachers as irresponsible, unprofessional and even in breach of the law. The fact that the government, in passing this Act. is itself in breach of the International Labour Conventions is likely to go unnoticed.

Unemployment Tactics

The government offers two tactics for dealing with unemployment: job training schemes and financial support for small businesses. Since the usefulness of the former depends on sufficient jobs being available when people are trained, even the most complacent of government supporters can have very little confidence in this remedy. The president of the Confederation of British Industries in his New Year message for 1987 was certainly not over-optimistic about future trends in employment: he "warned of fewer jobs in manufacturing in 1987" but thought that "demand for labour by service industries should more than offset the loss to bring about a slow but steady fall in unemployment of about 100.000 over the year".

However, the government has shown its determination to support small businesses by making David Trippier the "Minister of Small Firms”. One of his jobs is the encouragement of investment in small firms by insurance companies and the controllers of pension funds. Barely one per cent of their huge financial resources, he claims, are being used to back small companies.

  Given that their total funds were estimated at £170 billion in 1983, and taking account of the 100 per cent rise in the FT share index since 1983 this is a national disgrace. . . . I can't believe that they would be taking too big a risk by investing up to 2 per cent in the smaller companies which are not quoted on the Stock Exchange (The Times 2 February 1987).

Under the present economic system, capital flows to those areas of the economy where the prospect of profit is greatest, for maximising profit is the very basis of our economic system. David Trippier has been given a thankless task indeed, but it could be worth quite a few votes.

To Fit the Crime?

If anything excites the gutter press more than a horrific rape it is a horrific rape for which the rapist receives a comparatively light sentence.

So we should not be impressed when newspapers like the Sun report (they would probably prefer the word expose) sexual offences, in a mixture of relish and indignation. while at the same time they publish girlie pictures with captions like this:

  Sexy Sammy Fox simply shines — as she gets set to make you and your partner BULLIONAIRES.

This merchanting of distorted femininity — superficially inviting but actually unreal and unattainable — is good for sales but not for sexual harmony. Deliberately and cynically, it preys on the repressed and malformed sexuality which is ail too often evident in offences like rape.

The Ealing vicarage rape case — particularly brutal and horrifying — was all the gutter press could ask for. It also gave a few publicity-crazed MPs the opportunity to get themselves a bit more media exposure. Notable among these, seizing his chance like the pro he is, was the local Member Harry Greenway, who annually shows how he rates women by arranging to have himself photographed clutching some haplessly smiling contestants in the Miss World festival of female degradation.

Punishment freaks on the right wing like Peter Bruinvels — who wouldn't mind the job of hangman if capital punishment is ever brought back here — were in sympathy with feminists and left wingers in outrage at the Ealing sentences. It was, they agreed, a simple matter to reduce the incidence of rape — dish out harsher sentences to the rapists. Clearly, there is need for a few words from another point of view.

The Ealing sentences were short only by the standards of the English courts, which are notorious as among the most punitive in Europe. The sentenced men are likely to suffer grievously at the hands of their fellow prisoners. They are unlikely to learn anything about how capitalism with its poverty, its slums, its repression, its cynicism, discourages people from trusting or caring for each other. What sort of attitude does the Sun. for example, encourage men to adopt towards sexy Sammy Fox?

The mock horror in the press at a judge who seemed to set property at a value higher than human beings was particularly sickening for these same newspapers ardently support the capitalist system which operates on exactly that principle. What else was the Sun saying, when it gloated over the slaughter of hundreds of Argentinian workers when the Belgrano was sunk?

The outcry over "inadequate" or "lenient" sentences encourages workers who are afraid or disturbed about what they see of capitalism in the 1980s to think they can leave the remedy to politicians to introduce harsher laws and to the judiciary who will impose them. Crime springs from the roots of capitalism and. contrary to the hysteria of the gutter press and vote-obsessed MPs. it will not be eradicated through punishment.

Business as usual

The Tower Commission's report into the sale of arms to Iran by the United States has left the way open for things to continue pretty much as usual. The Commission concluded that the (unelected) National Security Council. from which the policy apparently emanated. on the whole does a good job; that the decision-making processes are basically sound; and the President, although incompetent. is a good guy at heart. Ronnie has gone on television to put things right with the "American people" by admitting that he goofed and his popularity ratings seem to have recovered as a result. Nancy gave Don Regan the boot and a new Mr Clean has been brought in as the White House Chief of Staff. No doubt, as a consequence of the continuing investigation by Senate and House of Representatives committees, a few other people will be asked to resign. There may even be a few prosecutions and the self-styled Rambo, Oliver North, may, with luck, be certified insane.

What is unlikely to happen is large numbers of people in America asking the question why, in a country where there is a long history of shady deals by politicians, covert activities by those responsible for "national security" and deliberate attempts to conceal what is really going on — and all this in a country which boasts of its democratic political system — why is it that the majority continue to grant power to the minority?