Pathfinders: Lost generations (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like a collective summer madness, the World Cup has passed into memory. While it’s tempting to see such events as a harmless flag-waving celebration of ethnic and cultural diversity, the raising of a Malvinas banner after the England-Argentina semi-final was for many a dump of cold water. Rather than being a source of communal pride, nationalism is a nasty and manipulative ideology used to set the poor against each other in defence of the rich.

As media pundits pointed out before the game, the Falkland Islands have been a source of simmering resentment in Argentina ever since the 1982 war. Possibly the thinking is that because the islands are next to Argentina, they should belong to Argentina and the Brits, being not even in the same hemisphere, should keep their grubby hands off it. Silly argument over a few sheep, perhaps, and on that logic much of the world’s land should not ‘belong’ to the non-contiguous states that claim it, for example Greenland, Hawaii, Gibraltar, Guam, Alaska, Guadeloupe, Kaliningrad and a host of other overseas territories. But silly arguments don’t stop Russia from pulverising Ukraine, Israel slaughtering the population of Gaza, the RSF slaughtering people in Sudan, China waging a grey-zone war against Taiwan, or any of the approximately 130 armed conflicts going on right now around the world.

But never mind sheep or patriotic fervour, the Malvinas thing is more about mineral rights, with possession of the Falkland, South Georgia and South Sandwich group giving the UK – which is to say the British owning class – formal rights over 745,000 square miles of ocean and oil and mineral-rich seabed, much of which overlaps with Argentine claims. And what’s keeping the issue hot is that Argentina’s president Javier Milei is enjoying a cosy ‘bromance’ with Trump, and may conceivably be tempted to ‘do a Galtieri’ on the assumption that a) the US would support him rather than the UK, b) it would reinflate his wilting popularity given his brutal austerity regime at home, c) the UK has virtually no navy left with which to defend such a far-flung territory, and d) the global rules-based order has been ripped up and gunboat (or chainsaw) diplomacy is back in vogue.

Why does nationalism work? Because humans like simple explanations, and we like to belong to a group. This combination makes us rather easy to manipulate. Scientists, who strive after objective truth, are not perceived as offering simple explanations. Instead we go for politicians who spin easy but self-serving us-and-them narratives. They make us feel superior while conveniently obscuring questions about who exactly owns all the power and wealth in ‘our’ country.

Science and rationality are not born human instincts, they’re skills we have to learn, and our education systems are paradoxically lukewarm about encouraging that. Capitalism needs workers to be smart enough to boost productivity, but also dumb enough to be consumers who don’t ask questions. It needs scientists, sure, but it doesn’t need a general population with basic science literacy, who can tell what’s plausibly true from what isn’t. That’s why people believe in cosmic woo-woo, and why some, in the recent heatwaves, forked out up to £120 on hoax air-con systems that supposedly cooled a room in 90 seconds.

On the plus side, scientists are getting media savvy these days. New Scientist is now doing YouTube, presumably for the same reason as the New Statesman, Private Eye and others, to boost paper sales in a shrinking market. Arvin Ash does quantum theory, Sabine Hossenfelder rants against physics and the standard model, and Kurzgesagt does it all as cartoons for kids. Cambridge maths professor Hannah Fry is all over YouTube ‘shorts’, explaining with engaging insouciance how to instantly cool your overheated car, and how we know when modern humans first migrated from Africa to Europe (approx 100-170,000 years ago) by tracing back the DNA of human body lice, which evolved to stick to clothes.

Harvard professor of genetics David Reich, author of the groundbreaking Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018), also has lectures on YouTube. These explain how the new discipline of palaeogenetics has since 2010 shone a new light on the lost generations of prehistory, including a revision of the ‘Kurgan hypothesis’ relocating Proto-Indo-European origins from Anatolia to Iran and Armenia, and the discovery of Sapiens, Neanderthal and Denisovan interbreeding. In ‘Your ancestors aren’t who you think they are‘, he runs through the huge amount of new genetic evidence which reveals that human populations have been in constant flux in time and space, migrating, merging and mixing, such that concepts like ancestry, ethnicity and nationality have no scientific meaning. In short, we are all from everywhere.

But politicians don’t care about any of that. It’s much easier, say in the UK, to blame immigrants for a crumbling infrastructure and falling quality of life than to cite the country’s long-term geopolitical, industrial and economic decline after two ruinous world wars and the loss of a global empire. In today’s miasma of misinformation, bottom-feeding grifters like Farage, Lowe and Robinson can whip up xenophobic paranoia and hope the populist swell carries them into the corridors of power. It’s the same story everywhere, a collective madness that won’t pass.

The price of flag-waving is ultimately blood. The war in Ukraine has now lasted longer than the First World War and has in some ways recapitulated that ghastly conflict. The survivors at the front – many of them teenagers – now don’t even dare to sit in trenches, but hide in underground dugouts from loitering drones. The war has become ‘gamified’, with competitive points awarded for drone kills. Both states lie about the death rate, but it’s certainly enormous. And this keeps happening. Capitalism, like a crazed psychopath, kills its own children, pouring the flower of youth wholesale into nationalist wars that benefit only the rich. We owe it to these voiceless lost generations, and to our descendants, to abolish this capitalist madness forever.

Paddy Shannon

Voice From The Back: Prisoners of want (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoners of want

“One hundred thousand pensioners in old people’s homes are living on allowances of as little as £10 a week. Most are not even receiving the £16 weekly payment to which they are entitled, according to new research. The revelation that legions of old people live on less than many prison inmates will greatly embarrass Ministers, who have boasted of tackling pensioners’ poverty. “We were shocked when we discovered this,” said Lorna Easterbrook, who carried out the study for Help The Aged. “There’s a huge sense of humiliation among these old people. Some are getting £10 of their due allowances, but others are getting just £3 or £4 a week after relatives or homes make deductions.” Observer, 20 January.

The Observer journalist’s view that the Labour government ministers will be “greatly embarrassed” is probably wide of the mark. Nothing could embarrass these vile supporters of capitalism. Fellow workers, this could be your future inside capitalism. If you live beyond your ability to produce surplus value for the blood-sucking capitalist class. A bed pan and a tenner a week.

No cause for celebration

Twenty years ago a British Prime Minister told the Sun, and other slimy tabloid newspapers to “Rejoice” at the victory of the British capitalist class against the Argentine capitalist class. No mention was made at that time about the loss of working class life. We have no figures about the deaths of Argentine workers, but twenty years on, we have some about British workers. 255 British servicemen were killed, but even more awful since that madness, 264 British servicemen, who were involved have committed suicide. (Figures from the Guardian, 19 January.) Excuse us if we don’t rejoice, Thatcher, at the deaths of members of our class in the defence of your system. There are many orphans and widows of the working class today in both Argentine and Britain whose tears make joy impossible.

They like it, My Lord

“A Trade Union Congress report out today estimates that four million people, 16 percent of the workforce, work more than 48 hours a week, the limit set by the 1998 (European Union) directive. Men work the longest weeks with one in four clocking up more than 48 hours; one in ten working 55 hours; and one in 25 working more than 60 hours . . . John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, said: “Britain’s long-hour culture is a national disgrace. It leads to stress, ill-health and family strains.” Times, 4 February. Not everybody would agree with the TUC, though. John Crickland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI offers a defence of the long hours. “Workers want the right to make their own decisions about extra working hours. Managerial workers often work longer hours because they want to.” This defence is rather similar to the Fox Hunting Lobby’s – “The fox enjoys the hunt.”

Science and the profit motive

Inside socialist society the pursuit of knowledge will be free to all. There will be no restrictions on scientific investigation. This is impossible inside capitalism, with its copyright laws and its profit motive. Sir John Sulston, one of the leading researchers in the Human Genome Project has shown how powerful the profit motive is in science-based commerce. “We can’t possibly prohibit discovery. But on the other hand to imagine that we should always exploit, especially if it makes extra money, is insane. I think most reasonable people, including those who run companies, would agree. The trouble is, once people get into a company boardroom, they have no other choice. They have shareholders. I am afraid you have to leave your principles at the door of the boardroom”, he says.” Guardian, 2 February.

Blair, bombast and bombs

At the Labour Party conference last year Tony Blair said: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world”. Poverty, corruption, famine and war, he thundered like an Old Testament prophet, must be tackled. It went down big with the delegates. It is the sort of thing the Labour Party adore – talking about social problems in sanctimonious moral tones, and then doing nothing about it. But this time they were doing something about it – they were making it worse! “The government was facing condemnation from protesters against the arms trade last night after new figures revealed that the value of arms sales to Africa will more than quadruple by next year . . . High levels of spending on arms are seen as one of the main causes of poverty in Africa. A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that in 1999 African nations received £52 million worth of arms in deals with British firms. That figure rose to £125.5m in 2000 and is set to top £200m next year.” Observer, 3 February.

Post-combat syndrome

A report in the British Medical Journal claimed that post-conflict symptoms had been suffered long before the Gulf War and stretched back as far as the 1889 Boer War. “They concluded: “Post-combat syndromes have arisen in all major wars over the past century, and we can predict that will continue to appear after future conflicts” . . . The researchers said the best way to tackle the illnesses, which have cost subsequent governments considerable sums in financial assistance, was to better understand their characteristics.” Herald, 8 February. Surely, a much better way to deal with the problem is to abolish capitalism, the cause of modern warfare. No conflict = no post-conflict syndrome. You don’t need to be a trained medical researcher to work that one out.

 

Editorial: Socialism no accident (1982)

Editorial from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The readers of the Sun may not have been aware of it, but when their man in the Falklands sent in his reports, couched as they were in glorious yobspeak (“Up Yours, Galtieri”), he was making his small contribution to bolstering a seriously misguided concept of history.

It is an established, popular notion that wars spring from the personal idiosyncrasies and failings of political leaders. In some cases, those leaders are supposed to be insatiably belligerent — like Galtieri. In other cases, they are described as bloodthirsty and genocidal — like Hitler or Menachem Begin. According to this theory, if there had been no Galtieri and no junta, there would have been no war over the Falklands. More peaceable leaders would never have tried to take by force that which was not theirs by “right”. On this theory, the Falklands war was something of an historical accident.

At home, we have seen this notion at work also in the case of the rail strikes by ASLEF and the NUR. These strikes, we were told, were the work of a minority of unreasonable, restless militants. Without them, the railways would operate smoothly, as workers and management co-operated to the benefit of everyone. By these standards, the rail strikes were also accidental.

Then there is the example of Margaret Thatcher, who is the butt of much anger as a stubborn, prejudiced and callous adherent to policies which. she insists, will be good for us even if they kill us in the process. Three million unemployed, and the intensifying pressure on workers’ living standards, are attributed to the historical misfortunes of Thatcher’s obduracy. Without her, we hear, there would be less unemployment — or even none at all — and easier, fuller lives for everyone.

But while it is true that people have a crucial influence on the course of history, and while there are important historical factors which might loosely be described as “accidents”, the fact is that history is basically not to be understood in such terms. The process of social development from the most primitive of societies to the present day has only one valid interpretation and that is as a continuous, predictable, evolution along a discernible course. On that concept, we not only understand what has happened in the past; we can foresee with some confidence what is likely to happen in the future.

The Falklands crisis did not spring solely from the determined belligerence of a handful of South American militarists. Latterly the Islands have assumed an increasing importance in the overall strategy of Argentinian capitalism, complicated by the possible presence of rich oil fields and the fact that historically the Falklands issue has been cynically used to stifle the realities of wage slavery in Argentina under a blanket of patriotism. The British ruling class, far from losing sleep over the “paramount” wishes of the Falklanders, have for decades been negotiating to pass the Islands over to Argentinian rule. This policy was no accident; it fitted in with the reality of Britain’s place in the conflicts of world capitalism.

The rail strikes cannot be explained in romantic terms, of militants against the true interests of the railwaymen. Workers on the railways, like those in other industries, were resisting a downward pressure on their wages and working conditions. Perhaps their effort was badly timed; when there is high unemployment strikes can have little muscle behind them. Perhaps the abrupt climb-down by the NUR was their acknowledgement that the time was not propitious. But in historical terms it was another incident in the continuing class struggle of capitalism and it will not be the last of its kind, as one side or the other takes advantage of the current conditions of the labour market.

The policies of the Thatcher government are not basically different from those of Callaghan, Wilson, Heath, Macmillan . . . Every government has to contest with the working class; that is part of their function as the administrative arm of the capitalist class. In most cases, governments in post-war Britain have been weakened in their efforts by the strength the workers have drawn from relatively high employment and demand for labour power. This meant that attempts to keep wages in check — pay pauses, wage freezes, social contracts, whatever name they went under — were easily undermined and, sooner or later, modified or abandoned. As Thatcher came to power, the slump in world capitalism had reached such depths as to enable a government to impose policies which until then had had scant chance of success. Thatcher, then, is no accident; she personifies an especially repressive, exploitative phase in capitalist history.

The importance of understanding that capitalism does not progress through a series of accidents is in the fact that the next stage in human history — socialist society — will evolve from the contradictions of the present and will not therefore be accidental. Indeed, the very conditions for that change have been, and are being, historically laid down.

Capitalism has provided the human race with the possibility of producing an abundance of wealth. It has developed the means of production, distribution and communication to the point at which a society in which the human race can live in material security is immediately available to them.

Capitalism has refined the class structure so that there are now only two classes in society. It follows from this that the revolution to bring about the next stage in social evolution must be the work of one of those classes, with the object of emancipating that class.

It is the working class who historically fit that bill; they are the revolutionary class under capitalism. They are the class who are to be emancipated, the class who produce the wealth of capitalism but have no effective ownership. To fulfil their historical, revolutionary role the working class must understand capitalism, and the need to abolish it. They must also be aware of the effectiveness of replacing capitalism with a society of common ownership and free access. Capitalism itself, in the everyday experience of its inability to meet the needs of its people — its wars, famine, repression, disease — provides the motivation towards such an understanding. Historically, capitalism works towards its own demise.

History can be left to condition itself; the work of human beings is to make their history, albeit with many “accidents . . . surprises . . . mistakes. . . ." On those terms, the human race is moving to the historical step of establishing the first social order based on the interests of the majority.

War fair (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

One feature of the Falklands conflict which caused the jingoists to boil over with ill-directed wrath was the fact that some of the armaments used by the Argentine forces had been made in Britain or EEC "partner" countries. Some details are given in a recent New Statesman article by Duncan Campbell, under the extremely confused title of "No Lesson Learnt" (21 June 1981). Campbell tells us how

Ferranti workers in Edinburgh and Manchester made the Isis bombing sights with which the Argentine Skyhawks were fitted . . . Their French counterparts at Bourges made the Exocets. Sterling Armaments of Dagenham sold the Argentines some 100 submachine guns seven years ago, which turned up at Goose Green.

Later in the same article, we learn that Sterling Armaments and Ferranti were among the exhibitors at last month's British Army Equipment Exhibition, a bi-annual international arms sale held at Aldershot. Campbell writes:

In 1976. just three months after we had broken off diplomatic relations .  . . two Argentine generals came to Aldershot. In 1978 ten officers came. In 1980. after the restoration of diplomatic links, five generals visited Britain. The Ministry of Defence even paid their air fares . . . Every other military dictatorship from Turkey to the Americas got the same treatment.

Unexpectedly, no reformist cries for "control" appear in the text, although the title does hint at a belief in such "solutions". On a note of unusual realism. Campbell signs off by saying: "There is no sign from Britain or anywhere else in Europe that the Falklands war will have changed the world of arms dealing”.

Those who express patriotic anger at such revelations are probably unaware that history provides many examples of arms sales to the "enemy", and of those not directly involved in a conflict selling the machines of death to both sides. Even in the Middle Ages, mercenary soldiers took whichever side could offer them employment at the time. After the Industrial Revolution, however, the arms trade gathered pace.

Alfred Nobel, like many of the early giants of this business, was a complex character. Idealist, pacifist and admirer of Shelley (in whose style he enjoyed writing poetry), he was also a ruthless financier obsessed with the science of explosives. He is. of course, best known as the originator of the Nobel Peace Prize, a fitting testament to his contradictory nature: fewer people realise that he was one of the earliest to subscribe to the deterrent theory. At the Berne Peace Congress of 1892 he explained his viewpoint to Bertha von Suttner, Austrian aristocrat, authoress and pacifist, who had earlier applied to be his private secretary: “My factories may end war sooner than your Congress. The day when two army corps can destroy each other in one second, all civilised nations will recoil in horror from war” (The Arms Bazaar, Anthony Sampson). Nobel's nightmare vision of destructive power is now all but come to pass, but with no sign of the response for which he apparently hoped. However this philosophy provided an excellent justification for a man who had made his fortune out of the arms race. Sampson believes that Nobel was Bernard Shaw's model for the character of Andrew Undershaft in his play Major Barbara. Undershaft, however, explicitly rejects the deterrent theory when his son-in-law puts his point of view to him: "I am obliged to you for making the usual excuses for my trade, but I’m ashamed of it. I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their business in watertight compartments". There have been both types in the arms trade. Whether the capitalist provides his own justification or relies on others makes very little difference.

Alfred Krupp was a less complicated person than Nobel. In 1866 he insisted, against the wishes of Bismarck, on exporting guns to Austria, which were very soon in use against Prussia in the Austro- Prussian War. Shortly afterwards, despite having just raised a loan from the King of Prussia. Krupp tried to export his guns to France and failed only because the complacency of the French generals stood in his way. At the turn of the century Sir Basil Zaharoff, in his role as master salesman for Vickers, had considerable success travelling between opposing Balkan states — Greece and Turkey — to escalate orders from both sides. In the First World War the Maxim gun, sold by Sir Hiram Maxim to Germans, Austrians and Italians, was the prototype for the guns which fired from all sides on the Western Front. In Russia, Krupp guns fired on German soldiers and the Belgian army had been stocked from the same source. At sea both sides fired shells with Krupp fuses, and after hostilities ceased Krupp’s successfully sued Vickers for payment of royalties on its shells.

All this nefarious traffic inevitably spawned pressure for control on arms sales and for nationalisation of the industry. Even staunch capitalist defenders of “free enterprise” did not wish to see organisations from within their own territory supplying arms to a potential enemy. Whatever the views of the individuals involved, the development of capitalism led inevitably to attempts by the state machine to interfere with the freedom of the private arms manufacturers to sell to whomsoever their immediate interests dictated. The League of Nations, as ineffective before World War One as the United Nations has been since 1945, passed resolutions such as that of December 1933: “That it is contrary to the public interest that the manufacture and sale of armaments should be for private profit”.

The United States Congress, following the report of the Nye Committee of investigation into the arms business, passed in August 1935 a Neutrality Bill which compelled the President, in the event of war between foreign countries, to apply an arms embargo. The hearings of the Nye Committee were freely quoted by the British Labour Party in support of its demands for nationalisation, yet the ineffectiveness of control “remedies” had already been revealed during the Manchurian crisis of 1931. In that year Japan invaded Manchuria, then part of China, in the face of condemnation from Britain and the League of Nations and a boom in British arms exports to both sides ensued. For a couple of weeks the British government imposed an arms embargo. Duff Cooper, then Financial Secretary to the War Office, described the situation thus: "In a fortnight we took off the embargo, but during those weeks we lost a great many orders. China and Japan did not get less munitions, but men in this country got less work, less food, less employment". Thus Duff Cooper, like Alfred Nobel, used an argument more common today than in his own time. The concern of the capitalist over loss of profit is. with varying degrees of hypocrisy and cynicism, masked as sympathy for the workers thrown onto the streets as a result of unemployment. More recently the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East turmoil in general have provided further examples of duplicity. French pressure in 1969 forced Dassault, previously a generous supplier of Israel, to sell Mirage jets to Libya. Significantly the main reason was the need to ensure continuing supplies of oil.

Why does this destructive absurdity continue? The answer lies in the nature of the capitalist system itself. Unsold stocks of any commodity are a dangerous embarrassment to the owners of the means of wealth production. If the value embodied in these goods cannot be converted into cash, profits are lost and, in some cases, bankruptcy results. In the last resort this desperate pressure to sell in the face of cut-throat competition from rivals drives capitalist governments into war. This pressure of course applies in the final analysis as much to government controlled industries.

Under capitalism alliances between stales are often of a transitory nature. Japan was an ally of Britain and America in 1914-18, but fought against them in 1941-45. And despite the long-standing Falklands dispute, Argentina was not regarded as an enemy until the time of the invasion. Despite recent technological advances in the means of destruction, some comparatively old weapons are still effective, particularly in small scale wars. The Canberra bomber, the design of which started as early as 1945, helped India "liberate” Bangladesh in "Mrs. Gandhi’s War” in 1971. This aeroplane and the Lightning (1960) are much in evidence in South American air forces and are indeed not yet completely phased out of the RAF. The variability of capitalist alliances and the long life of some weapons obviously increase the danger of supplying a potential enemy with the means to hit you hard. Weapons bought with one purpose in mind can easily be put to another use. The guns from Sterling Armaments which turned up seven years later at Goose Green may well have been purchased for domestic rather than "anti-colonial” use. Campbell reports that "five were fitted with silencers, which reduce the performance of the bullets too much for conventional military use”. Probably they were intended for use against workers at home rather than abroad.

There is however yet another reason why, even with government control of arms production, sales opportunities abroad cannot be lightly spurned, even if embarrassment is risked in the process. The capitalist class has the problem of how to maintain in peacetime the capacity to produce armaments in an emergency. To convert too many factories to other products such as kidney machines would clearly put this capability at risk. In February 1935, Bernard Baruch, adviser to Franklin Roosevelt, spelled out his government’s policy with brutal frankness:

The only expedient yet used is for the governments of industrial countries at least not to discourage (and I fear almost universally to encourage) the manufacture of lethal weapons for exportation to belligerent countries actively preparing for war. but which have an insufficient munitions industry or none at all. Without specific evidence 1 still conjecture that the Nye investigation will disclose that our Government has not operated on a different policy. To put it bluntly, this is a method of providing a laboratory to test killing implements and a nucleus for a wartime munitions industry by maintaining an export market for instruments of death. Of course, it is absolutely indefensible and we could not be put in a position of excusing it.

This really says it all.

E. C. Edge

It’s a crazy world (1985)

From the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is society barmy or am I? Reading the newspapers it is hard to tell whether the reader is failing to appreciate the subtle beneficence of the system or whether, as seems strikingly obvious, the entire social order is an ill- disguised mad-house.

At the end of September BBC radio announced that a dangerous criminal was on the loose. He had already murdered his sister and had phoned his brother with a promise that he was next to be killed. The "dangerous criminal" in question was described as "deranged", which is not a bad word for a character who goes around killing people. Oddly enough, the BBC reporter was at pains to tell us that the criminal in question was a "Falklands War Veteran". Only a few years ago this now deranged criminal had been doing his bit for Queen and Country. Now. "doing his bit" is not a bad word to describe what happens when a soldier puts on a uniform and. with the government patting him on the back, engages in indiscriminate killing of workers he has never met. Which might sound like the behaviour of a dangerous criminal. But we would be wrong: our friend, the veteran. was a glorious hero when he was killing the hirelings of his master's enemy. He whose deranged criminality we are urged to condemn today was given a medal when he had acted under orders.

If the killer who couldn't break the habit when the war ended is caught he will be sent to a psychiatrist who will tell him, in pseudo-scientific jargon, that he is a sinner. (Shrinks are only the exorcists of a world which pretends to be modern.) If two psychiatrists consider that he is a danger to himself or other people he can be locked away without his consent — just as during war-time conscription, if a doctor says you are fit you can be ordered to become a killer without your consent. But if those who are a danger to themselves and others can be incarcerated, according to the terms of the Mental Health Act. why haven't they got Michael Heseltine yet or the military generals or the rest of the legalised murder establishment?

Talking of mind-doctors, if you ever go to a psychiatrist and complain that you are being watched by someone who is out to destroy you, there is every chance you will be suspected of paranoia. When capitalist nations think that potential destroyers are watching them it is called a "spy scandal". And workers are urged to get cross because those Red bastards are out to discover our secrets. It is hard, just for the moment, for most workers to think of a secret which the Russian spies will be out to get from us. Do they really send spies over to Britain to find out that Mr. Smart of 44 Acacia Avenue has a pile of porno magazines tucked under his mattress and Miss Squint, the regular Church-goer, is having a non-platonic relationship with six choirboys? Workers have no secrets worth stealing; the secrets which the KGB comes to get are as much secret from us as they are from them.

While "spy scandals" go on and phone-in pundits declare war on "the Soviets" (not realising that they were destroyed by the Bolsheviks well before 1921). the ruling class of Britain and Russia do not allow such trivia to get in the way of trade. SPY EXPULSIONS FAIL TO ROCK TRADE BOAT was the Sunday Times Business News headline in the week of the so-called scandal:

Britain's trade with Russia is set to rise above the spy dramas of the past fortnight. A major Anglo-Soviet commercial treaty could be signed by the end of next month and British companies are strong contenders for two £1 billion petrochemical plant contracts (22 September).

British exports to the Russian Empire rose by 65 per cent last year, but Paul Channon. Tory Trade Minister, is not happy that "our" exports are far less than those from West Germany. France and Italy. He is anxious to point out that "British companies should be in a strong position to help improve the Soviet Union's backward agricultural and food processing industries". And we thought they were enemies! Or could the Minister of Trade be a KGB agent?

On 28 September the Guardian's Brussels correspondent informed us of a plan to dispose of the EEC butter mountain by feeding it to the cattle:

The idea is to mix elderly butter from the one million tonne mountain with more conventional feedstuffs for calves. This, says farm commissioner Frans Andriessen. will have a "positive effect" on veal.

Well, it’s nice to think that butter will have a positive effect on veal; the elderly and unemployed workers who can afford neither veal nor butter will be delighted to read about such positive effects. Alas, like all great schemes dreamed up by attendants of the asylum.' the Andriessen plan has a weakness: there is currently a 785,000 tonne beef and veal mountain in the EEC. So. if the butter helps to increase veal production that will simply be shifting one surplus to another place. There is. of course, the idea of letting people eat the butter and the veal, but. . . well, let's stick to "serious" ideas, shall we?

Steve Coleman

Letter: The Falklands War (1982)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

L. Weidberg's letter on the total lack of economic motive in the British sending of a Task Force to the Falklands is not supported by available evidence. It is true that for some twenty years, Tory and Labour governments have been dubious about holding on to the Falklands. but there is also much evidence that capitalist interests in Britain were dubious about letting the islands go. The following extracts from a Sunday Times (13 June 1982) article are not without significance:

Looking to the future. economic development of the islands will be based on a complete reversal of previous neglect. Lord Shackleton, author of a largely ignored report on the islands' potential in 1976, is working on a new version at Mrs. Thatcher's request.

Whitehall has been reawakened to the importance of Antarctica's resources and the strategic possibilities of Britain's South Georgia Dependencies . . . This triangular sector . . . contains more than one million square miles. Over this area a large amount of revenue has been expended on maintaining a chain of meteorological and scientific bases. The surveyor's reports reveal some interesting facts. The mineral deposits in the East (soft coal seams) are known to extend over an area of many thousands of square miles, and it is likely that Uranium, gold, iron and manganese are also present.

Many states have claimed sovereignty over wide areas; Britain's being called the Falkland Island Dependencies. Argentinian and Chilean claims in 1949 overlapped the British area. The US and USSR had made no claims up to 1954. but the US would not recognise the claims of other powers and made abortive attempts to induce the interested powers to accept some form of international sovereignty.

. . . the difficulty of defending the Falklands has been recognised for some time, and British policy has been based on that reality . . . On the other hand the island base is conveniently close to the Antarctic scene of operations — some 9,000 miles nearer than Britain.

Is it likely that British interests would give up this strategic link with the FID without more sacrifices of working class blood? L. Weidberg says that Mrs. Thatcher "knows that the working class, who comprise the bulk of the electorate, would like to think that "we" were going to get some material benefits in addition to saving the world from a fascist dictator " This is turning reality upside down. More often than not the workers have been mugged into believing that wars are fought to uphold great moral principles, while the economic causes are played down.

C. Kincaid

Milton Keynes

Editorial: Nineteen eighty-two . . . (1983)

Editorial from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

However 1982 is remembered, it will not be as a time when the human race progressed towards a resolution of any of its problems. It opened, as does every year, to a fanfare of wishes and prayers that it might be a period of prosperity, peace and happiness. It closed, as does every year, leaving memories of only poverty, fear and misery.

It was the year when unemployment in Great Britain topped the three million mark. There are very few politicians now who are eager to offer the Norman Tebbit explanation for unemployment — that it is nourished by the workers’ lack of will to find an employer. In that total of three million are young people fresh out of school or college, trained and conditioned to take their place in the galleys of wage slavery. To them, viewing their prospects, life on the dole is now as natural as life in employment is to their parents. Unless, that is, their parents are also out of work. The three million include a significant and growing number who have abandoned all expectation of ever again finding a job. Many have accumulated an impressive library of letters of rejection. The conclusion they draw, along with those economists who, mistakenly, argue that high unemployment is structural to capitalism, is that they will spend the rest of their life scrimping a miserable existence on the dole.

It is however important not to lose sight of the reality of this sorry situation. Unemployment is not the scandal which so many ambitious politicians, for example in the Labour Party, would have us believe. It is not some unnatural curse, to be exorcised by the high priests in a future Labour government. It is in fact quite natural to capitalism, a part of the system’s anarchic-cycle of boom and slump. Labour’s record in this is no better than that of the Tories; they have been no more successful in ordering the chaos of capitalist society.

The Labour Party’s present campaign on the issue seeks to gain from the popular belief that plentiful employment means security and prosperity. This belief is a long way wide of reality. Workers suffer poverty of varying intensity throughout their lives; it is an inescapable feature of their social status as members of the class which needs to sell labour power in order to live. There are times when this is easier than at others — in the heyday of a boom, for example, workers can exert more effective pressure in wage negotiations. At other times wages may be forced down, as is happening in many cases now, under the pressure of unemployment in a recession. But all such variations, up or down, do not affect the basic standing of the working class.

1982 was the year of the Falklands war— the year when anyone who thought that the bigotries, the bombast and the phraseology of Victorian imperialism were dead, fit subjects only for the satirist, had to readjust their ideas. The mindless jingoism which the government, supported by the official spokespeople of the Labour Party in parliament, was able to stimulate was soberly instructive to anyone who looks for signs of a developing enlightenment among the working class. The Falklands war showed that the crasser notions which prop capitalism up are alive and well and at their noxious business.

And by crass we do not just refer to the jingoism of Thatcher and her crew. The bombers were at work in Great Britain again in 1982, provoking a response as nasty and illogical as the theories which energise the bombers. The Irish nationalists, in their outdated bigotry and historical redundancy, are a prime example of those who, ignoring all reality and reason, insist that capitalist society would be more tolerable if some slight adjustments were made to it. In their case, Irish workers are recruited to kill and terrorise other members of their class in order to persuade the British government to withdraw their troops and to help organise Ireland into a single capitalist state. No working class interests are involved in such conflicts, although it is workers who pay for them with their blood.

There was, lest we forget, one event in 1982 which, we were informed by the media, was positively joyous. While millions throughout the world starved, two famous members of the parasite class, having first got married, together produced yet another parasite. Expensive doctors were there to ease the parasite into life and the great organs of public opinion (for such they like to regard themselves) rolled out their carpets of words in frantic celebration of the event. Socialists stand aside from all this; the birth of this new prince emphasised the class divisions of capitalism, the superiority in riches of the one class and the humiliation in poverty of the other.

And how, in 1982, did those humiliated workers react to the poverty, the fear and the degradations of capitalism? When they gave their verdict, it was depressingly hopeless. At each by-election there was solid support for the system to continue. The votes may have been redistributed a little from one capitalist party to another — from Conservative to Labour or Scottish Nationalist with the SDP picking up a few thousand from people under the delusion that they were voting for a fresh, original approach to politics. But the votes never threatened the theory that the society of class ownership of the means of life is logical, essential, efficient and therefore eternal. The security of the ruling class remained untouched.

Disappointing though this is, it does not weaken the socialists’ resolve to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a social system based on the communal ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. We work for this not because we are blind optimists nor because we are inspired with a religious faith in an Armageddon of the intellect. The case for socialism rests on the evidence of history, that people bring social systems to an end as they outlive their historical purpose. Typically, the events of 1982 gave much support to the socialist case that capitalism is no longer of use in the process of social evolution and is now a bar to human progress. It is time for the revolution to establish socialism and the need grows more urgent with each passing day.

Greasy Pole: It’s A Date, Then? Or Not? (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

That was the month that was. In September Gordon Brown celebrated his first speech to a Labour Party conference as Prime Minister by dragging out a procession of exhausted platitudes about the glories of being British and having a Labour government to stop you forgetting it. Soon afterwards a majority of the people who can be bothered to answer the questions of opinion pollsters said that, if given the chance tomorrow, they would vote for another spell of Labour government provided it could be under Gordon Brown. Understandably encouraged by this, Labour’s propaganda machine planted a rumour that Brown would call a general election for 1 November. This was startling news; don’t these people who start rumours know that 1 November comes immediately after Halloween, so that election canvassers were in danger of being confused with kids dressed up as skeletal witches frightening old ladies on their doorsteps with demands for trick-or-treat under threat of having their front gardens vandalised?

Luckily the Tory conference, following hard on the heels of Labour’s event, went some way to putting things to rights because George Osborne, who threatens to be the next Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, did a trick-or-treat on Brown by declaring that when he was in charge at the Treasury only millionaires would be liable for inheritance tax. The dullards who are bothered to be so loyal to the Conservative Party that they turn up at their conferences were ecstatic about this promised financial tinkering to the extent that they failed to notice that Osborne had also put down a marker to be the next Tory leader if the party ever gets fed up with Cameron’s touchy-feely, hoodie-hugging, I-luv-u-babe style of deception. Cameron pitched in with a speech even heavier laden with platitudes than Brown had managed, on the excuse that his speech “may be muddled but it is me” – which, it must be hoped, will not pioneer endless hours of drivel by any leader who confesses to being me. A lot of easily impressed people who had once bothered to tell the pollsters that they would vote Labour changed their mind so that Brown decided it would be wise to abandon the idea of a post-Halloween election, leaving him free to take his kids out trick-or-treating. The Tories were incensed that a party leader could change the polling date to improve their chances of winning, spluttering that this was a diabolical plot, not only to disrupt the winter festivities but also to subvert the democratic process.

Eden

Even by the lax standards of political parties the assumed Tory indignation at the possibility that Brown would fix an election date to suit his party’s interests is suffocatingly audacious. Both parties have adopted the same stratagem; indeed it is rare for a government to run its full course of five years. For the  Conservatives, Anthony Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, after a long, frustrating wait which did nothing to soothe his naturally impetuous temperament, in April 1955. In fact, although the succession had been widely assumed, it was not as smooth or as predictable; Lord Swinton, one of the grander of Tory grandees, told Churchill that Eden “would make the worst Prime Minister since Lord North” and Churchill morosely agreed that he thought it had been “a great mistake” to announce his successor so long ago. The Labour Party, exhausted and shattered by the stress of their participation in the wartime coalition and split by the controversy surrounding Aneurin Bevan, were a long way from offering a realistic option as a government while the Conservative benches were thick with young, thrusting, ambitious newcomers to the Westminster jungle. Political strategy demanded that Eden call a quick election, to exploit the contrast between the ailing, often absent, Churchill and himself as a dashing, handsome, charming ex-Guards officer. After some dithering, notable for the display of the most lurid of his tantrums, Eden decided for an election in May, a year before he had to. Against the Labour Party as it was then, it could hardly be called a gamble; the voters, perhaps in gratitude at having this scion of innate ruling class superiority ordering them about, returned Eden’s government with its unsafe majority of 16 increased to a relatively secure one of 58.

Suez

In fact Eden’s government was notable, not for its chivalry but for the chaos and deceptions of the Suez invasion. This episode in cynicism, although typical of capitalism’s politics, did not seem to inflict any long term damage on the Tory Party for Eden’s successor Macmillan constructed an increased majority for them at the 1959 election. It was an uncomfortable fact that, among their confusion, the working class showed no reluctance to pursue an outdated dream of the glory days of British imperialism during which deranged and treacherous foreigners like Colonel Nasser were unwaveringly taught to keep their place. These unhelpful, insupportable prejudices blossomed again in 1982, when the Thatcher government blanketed a number of inconvenient historical facts to justify their intention to eject the Argentinian forces from the Falklands. Satisfactory as this was at the time to the Iron Lady its full value was not revealed until she had to settle on the date of the next general election – the first test of her record since she came to power in 1979.

Had Thatcher’s government served its full term they would have gone to the polls in May 1984. But the prospects for that date were unpromising. The early 1980s were not favourable to the Tories, marked by economic problems – at one stage there were 3 million registered unemployed – showing up in a series of bad by-election results in constituencies like Croydon North West and Crosby, where the former Labour front bencher Shirley Williams won with nearly 50 per cent of the vote for the SDP. In some cases the Tories were left struggling in third place. Things did not look good if they waited for a 1984 election, in the hope that something would turn up. And something did turn up – apart, that is, from the Labour Party electing Michael Foot as their leader. But the crucial event was the Falklands; when, in June 1982 the British forces sailed triumphantly home, leaving behind their dead and their sunken ships, Thatcher was quick to put the war in the most favourable light for the Tories:

“We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. We have instead a newfound confidence – born in the economic battles at home and tested and found true 8000 miles away…we rejoice that Britain has rekindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before.”

Vote

And after that it seemed absolutely unavoidable that she would apply the heat of that newfound spirit to roast the Labour Party in a general election. In June 1983, a year before the government’s full term was up, the Tories romped home with a record majority of 144. Michael Foot’s Labour Party hit its lowest point since the defeats of the 1930s. All things considered, for Thatcher and her party an example of skilful timing, helped by a bit of luck and some hundreds of dead people, who had not been so lucky.

A governing party is absorbed in the timing of an election on the assumption that if they get it right their vote will be significantly higher. But what does this say about the people who vote? Are they content to use their power to bring about the trivial, short-lived changes which concern parties like Labour and the Tories rather than to erect a fundamental, enduring social revolution to consign capitalism to its unhappy history? Are they happy to so misuse their power that they oppose the Tories when unemployment is high but support them after a victorious war? Are they satisfied to use their vote to repress themselves rather than for their freedom?

Ivan

Patriotism – a politician’s refuge (2006)

From the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gordon Brown wants us to “embrace” the Union Jack and to ape the sillier patriots in America by displaying it in our front gardens. But why do they want us to be patriotistic?

It was not so long ago – certainly within the tormented, frustrated memories of masses of under-educated children – that we were taught British history began with the arrival in these isles of the Romans. Well at least that made it easier for the people who needed to be known as teachers; rather than work at any seismographic-type research or presentation they need only instruct their famished pupils to open the allocated history book and begin to recite from Page One. A corollary of this careless policy was the assumption that history began in Britain because it was a special place, where special people were bred. Telling those kids they should be grateful to be British elevated them from their hopeless, infested poverty through a belief that to be British was best and that all other peoples of the world should be treated with sympathy – respect could be allowed to intrude only if the others kept to their place in the anthropological order of things. It worked alright – as witnessed by the pupils’ daily salute of the classroom portrait of the king and queen.

One whose portrait did not hang in the classroom, but whom the kids were often reminded of as an icon of British superiority, was Captain Scott the naval officer who led the 1910 expedition to Antarctica. Scott’s previous experience there taught him a lot about the perils in setting foot in the place and about the need for detailed, meticulous planning. He was ready to go back and this time, apart from certain scientific operations, there was no doubt about the intention of the expedition. The brochure aimed at potential sponsors put it: “The main object of this expedition is to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of that achievement”. Scott himself saw it as “. . . an empire expedition . . . by a set of men who will represent the hardihood and energy of our race”. Implicit in these declarations was that Scott’s men would be the first to get to the Pole but when he stopped off at Melbourne on the way to Antarctica he learned that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen would be in competition with him.

Scott

After landing and setting up camp at Cape Evans Scott’s men experienced a succession of emergencies which, while no lives were lost, were a grim foretaste of what was to come. The Pole party – Scott and four others – set out on 1 November 1911. They arrived at the Pole on 16 January 1912, after a journey which had all but drained them of all their resources, to find that Amundsen had got there a month before them; a black flag was there, fixed to a sledge. “Well we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition with some feelings, and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging – and goodbye to most of the day dreams” wrote Scott. But it turned out to be worse than that. Battered by savage weather and malnourished, the five men were simply unable to get back to Cape Evans. The first to die was Taffy Evans, whose reputation was as one of the strongest in the expedition. He collapsed on 17 February and died quietly in the tent that night. The rest of them pressed on; Titus Oates could hardly walk and Scott’s feet were so damaged that he thought amputation was the best he could hope for. They had no choice but to shelter, as best they could, in the tent until the blizzard blew itself out but there was no let up in the weather.

It was then that Oates went out into the storm to die and the three others – Scott, Wilson and Bowers – stayed to die together, on or about 23 March 1912, eleven miles from the depot where they had left the food which should have saved their lives. “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far” wrote Scott in his diary. Their bodies were found by a search party eight months later.

Decline

That was not the time for any useful appraisal of Scott and his expedition – of the mistakes, the miscalculations, the flawed equipment. That would come later. Meanwhile, on 14 February 1913 there was a short memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral in which, according to the Daily Sketch, the keynote was “ . . .  a song of thankfulness for that these sons of our common country had died as they had lived, in the spirit which is the noblest heritage of Englishmen”. During the service thousands of captive schoolchildren throughout the country were subjected to “. . . the true story of five of the bravest and best men who have ever lived on the earth since the world began. You are English boys and girls, and you must often have heard England spoken of as the greatest country in the world, or perhaps you have been told that the British Empire . . . is the greatest Empire that the world has ever seen . . .” How many of those schoolchildren, or readers of the Daily Sketch, thought back to a year before, to another service at that same cathedral centred on the victims of the Titanic disaster, when the destruction of the unsinkable liner had said something about the decline in British power, as had the humiliation of the British army by the Boers. In the near future was the 1914/18 war, the traumas of the naval battle of Jutland (when a British admiral wondered out loud whether there was “something wrong with our bloody ships”) and the slaughter on the first day of the Somme offensive, which re-aligned British military history. Scott’s tragedy was cynically used to blanket the reality of what was happening to British capitalism and to its people.

Falklands

On the way southwards to Antarctica lie the Falkland Islands, which hardly anyone apart from stamp collectors had heard of before 1982 when they were briefly occupied by Argentine forces until they were ejected by a British Task Force. This victory in a far away place was remarkable for its effect on the British political scene. Since the end of the war British armed forces had not enjoyed a string of unqualified successes; among their most stressful experiences was the Suez campaign in 1956, which was little short of humiliation for British interests in the Middle East. At home the 1970s were notable as a time of economic decline, with unemployment reaching three million. In this situation the effects of a British military victory reached far beyond the battle zone, encouraging workers to believe that although they were on the dole there was still something to be said for being able to call themselves British. In 1982 this particular delusion was called the “Falklands Factor”. According to Thatcher, “it is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the Falklands War transformed the British political scene . . . but the so-called Falklands Factor was real enough. I could feel the impact of the victory wherever I went”. One of the places she went to was Cheltenham Racecourse, to address a Tory party rally, where she exulted that after the Falklands victory “. . . we rejoice that Britain has re-kindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before”. To encourage the mood and flavour it with a bit of Battle of Britain memories, Vera Lynn was recruited to sing The White Cliffs of Dover at the victory parade.

Strikes

But in the same speech Thatcher stated what she meant by the impact of the Falklands factor and the re-kindled spirit. As the troopships returning from the Falklands sailed into Portsmouth harbour a banner hung from the sides of one of them, with advice for striking railway workers: “Call Off The Rail Strike Or We’ll Call Down An Air Strike”. This referred to a strike called by the National Union of Railwaymen (as it then was) which, Thatcher said, “. . . just didn’t fit – didn’t match the spirit of these times . . .” The strike leaders were “ . . . misunderstanding the new mood of the nation”. Another dispute involved the ancillary workers in the NHS; it had been rumbling on for some time but Thatcher was not impressed: “There is a limit to what every employer can afford to pay out in wages”; clearly, the new spirit did not involve any appreciation of the value of low paid workers doing jobs which were vital to the welfare of patients. Partly through the Falklands Factor, the Tories swept to a massive victory in the 1983 election, which gave Thatcher all the encouragement she needed to take on the trade unions – in particular the miners. It was an example of how patriotic hysteria is used directly against the working class.

Brown

One who has obviously absorbed the necessary lesson in this is Gordon Brown. Addressing the Fabian Society last January, in what was heralded as his first major speech of 2006 – which did not leave us breathless about what else was to come from him before the year was out – he declared that it was time for the “modern” Labour Party and its supporters to be “unashamedly patriotic as, for too long, such feelings have been caricatured as being tied up with right wing beliefs, when in fact they encompass progressive ideas of liberty, fairness and responsibility”. He also raved about what he saw as the need to “embrace” the Union Flag and to ape the sillier patriots in America by displaying it in our front gardens. Brown was “absolutely right” about this, said ex-Tory Prime Minister John Major, whose concept of an ideal Britain encompassed warm beer and elderly ladies cycling through country lanes to get to evensong at some ancient village church. It was not known whether Brown was comfortable to receive support from such a quarter; in any case he is probably accustomed by now to dealing with the fact that his party is indistinguishable from the Tories, especially in the matter of showing up as flag-waving, mindless patriots.

Malignant

Patriotism has run through politics like a malignant fault. It did not represent progressive ideas when, in the case of Scott, it was applied to persuade millions of workers that they should endure the terror of the trenches and all the other miseries of that war. The same was true when it was used by the Thatcher government, in the wake of the Falklands victory, to push through measures which damaged the trade unions and so increased the vulnerability of the working class in relation to their employers. It is not a progressive idea now, when the Blair government wields it to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with all they mean in terms of destruction and murder. Enormous damage has been done, throughout the world, by the notion that one country and its people are superior to the others. A truly progressive policy – socialism – recognises the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building society on that basis.

Ivan

Troubled waters (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

After ten years of intermittent discussion the Law of the Sea Conference finally came to a close last December when a Convention was signed by 117 states at an official ceremony at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Several key states, however — most notably the United States, Britain. West Germany and Japan — have refused to sign on the grounds that the proposed International Seabed Authority limits the freedom of their mining companies to exploit the resources of the seabed. The creation of an international organisation to manage seabed mining threatened the existence of the Conference throughout the last ten years and even now poses a threat to the workings of the new Law of the Sea. In fact the central issues which predominated during the conference were the thorny ones of ownership and control of resources. It could be said, however, that the aim of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference was to establish the rules of the game for the use and abuse of the oceans. This proved necessary since there was an increase in the recoverable economic value of the seabed combined with a polarisation of interests between the industrialised states of the north and the developing states of the south — a factor promoted by the increase in the number of new sovereign states since the post-1945 de-colonisation. The interests of the south are articulated by the Group of 77, which in 1980 comprised 117 states. This coalition is determined to ensure that there will be no new colonialism in relation to the wealth of the seabed.

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) started in 1973. UNCLOS was divided into three main committees — for deep sea mining; traditional law of the sea problems such as navigation, continental shelf and fisheries; and marine research and pollution. These issues were not without controversy since disputes exist over national boundaries, rights within national boundaries, those over rights in the ocean beyond national jurisdiction and those arising from non-ocean sources. Around the world there are numerous contested zones, islands, archipelagos, not to mention rights over navigation. There are more than 100 strategically important straits such as the Malacca strait between Malaysia and Indonesia, through which the bulk of Japan’s oil supplies pass. There are disputes over fishing where the interests of the maritime states — the Soviet Union and Japan for example — with large distant water fishing fleets collide with those of the coastal states with large fishing grounds off their shores.

The establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone — EEZ — would allow states to claim exclusive rights to the seabed out to 200 miles from the shore. There are, however, numerous islands whose ownership is hotly contested, the Falklands for instance. Although islands are defined as naturally formed areas of land surrounded by water at high tide and therefore entitled to an EEZ, this does not prevent states from demanding EEZ rights for rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life on their own. The reason for this is simple: states commanding rocks in resource-rich areas can use them to claim the contiguous resources. In this respect the dispute between Britain. Ireland and Denmark over Rockall, a tiny rock about 400km west of the Hebrides, came into focus since it commands an area of 201,250kms of the continental shelf with potential oil reserves. It is not surprising then that Britain has consistently argued that existing international law makes no distinction between different types of island and that to do so is likely to result in ambiguities. The resolution of this particular squabble — ownership and whether such rocks are entitled to an EEZ — will set an important precedent as there are similar disputed “rocks" in the Pacific and Caribbean.

The Falklands war was not unrelated to the question of EEZs since the continental shelf contains oil reserves and the seas are rich in fish stocks. It is for this reason that seemingly insignificant islands as the Falklands Dependencies, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, assume strategic significance as they can be used to stake claims to the resources in the surrounding seas and on the seabed. Furthermore such islands are useful as a staging post to the Antarctic, another area potentially rich in untapped resources. Shortly after the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands Lord Shakleton was moved to remark:

What is at stake and what undoubtedly is in the minds of the Argentinians is not just the Falkland Islands but their claim to Antarctic territory. (3 April 1982 Hansard (Lords) vol. 448 col. 1585.)

Two supposedly allied NATO states, Greece and Turkey, were at one time more likely to go to war with one another than with the Soviet Union over the resources of the Aegean Sea. According to Barry Buzan, “The conflict of interest between Greece and Turkey arose, like many others, after discovery of oil by an American exploration company” (Adelphi Papers No. 143, A Sea of Troubles? Sources of Dispute in the New Ocean REGIME).

In the Far East. Japan, in addition to the long-running dispute with the Soviet Union over the Kurile Islands, contests the ownership of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea with both China and Taiwan. The significance of potentially large off-shore oil is not lost on states dependent on oil imports such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, the continental shelf and economic zone boundaries cannot be drawn until this dispute is resolved.

The Barents Sea and the conflict of interests between the Soviet Union and Norway is. perhaps, typical of many of the problems associated with delimitation. The contested area constitutes roughly 153,000 square kilometres of the continental shelf between Novaya Zemlaya and Spitsbergen. For the Norewegians substantial fish and seabed resources, principally oil, depend on how the boundary is drawn. This is particularly important for the Norwegians since oil is vital for their economy. The existence of indigenous oil reserves, as in the North Sea and possibly in the Barents Sea, allows Norway to avoid the vulnerabilities associated with dependence on Middle Eastern oil. It is for this reason that Norway is concerned about the activities of a Russian oil drilling ship, the Valentin Shashin (Guardian, 2 May 1983). Energy supplies, even for resource-rich Russia, may become critical in the next decade since Soviet oil and gas supplies may be insufficient to meet both domestic and growing Eastern European demands. Despite the disputed zone the Norwegians have recently signed a deal with the Russians which will, according to the Guardian (27 April 1983) permit the Norwegian Petroleum Consultants to evaluate exploration costs to decide where to drill and to frame the timetable of the operation. Offshore oil exploration is an area in which the Russians lack the technological expertise of Western states and are, therefore, heavily dependent on Western assistance. In fact, “the Norwegian offshore industry is keen to get in on the act, and the yards have been pressing the Government to be allowed to sell to the Soviets” (Guardian, 17 June 1983). Furthermore, the British and the French are keen to sell the Russians oil-exploration-related technology even though the American government would rather they did not. However, “this is not in the interests of West European industry and commerce” (Guardian, 27 April 1983).

In addition to the availability of oil and gas the Russians have a keen military interest in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea. The Russian Northern Fleet has bases at Pechanga, Murmansk and Severomorsk, all of which are situated on the Kola Peninsula in the Leningrad Military District. Moreover, one of the two Soviet ballistic missile submarine bases is at Polyarny at the Eastern end of the peninsula. However, as the British and Norwegians discovered, increased commercial traffic and oil exploration do not mix — as they had to transfer their joint manoeuvres from the North Sea to the Shetlands. UNCLOS allows for the concept of “innocent passage” whereby ships are entitled to passage provided it is not prejudicial to the “peace", "good order" or “security" of the coastal states. Warships and submarines, however, pose problems but all attempts to restrain their passage have been opposed by the major maritime states.

Perhaps the greatest controversy facing the Conference relates to deep sea mining. The resources at stake are large deposits of potato-shaped polymetallic nodules — “manganese nodules". They contain traces of vital “strategic metals" such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. On average each nodule contains 30 per cent manganese, 1 per cent nickel and ¼ per cent cobalt. Cobalt, for instance, is an indispensable element in the manufacture of small high-powered magnets necessary for weapons guidance systems. In a uranium enrichment plant employing the gaseous diffusion method nickel plated steel is used since it is able to withstand the highly corrosive uranium hexathoride gas. However,

The nodules themselves have lost glamour to deposits of polymetallic sulphides containing copper and other metals in much higher concentrations, first encountered at volcanic vents in the Pacific rift near the Galapagos Islands and off the coasts of Oregon and Washington. Similar deposits are certain to be found elsewhere along the 40,000 mile world-gridling submarine rifted ridge. (“The Law of the Sea. Elisabeth M. Borgese, Scientific American, March 1983, Vol. 248. No. 3. p. 33.)

Hitherto such metals were only available from relatively few states which were either politically unstable or unfriendly to the West. Since the EEC’s import dependence for materials such as manganese is 99 per cent and copper 91 per cent, “The European Community's industrialised countries are keen to see that seabed mining for cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel begins as soon as possible and with as little restraint as possible” (Guardian, 23 November 1982). Japan is 95 per cent dependent on imports of manganese and 98 per cent on nickel. It is, therefore, not too difficult to appreciate the interests of Western states in the possibility of achieving independence in relation to the supply of industrial materials. This chiefly explains their opposition to the deep sea mining provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention. Britain and the US vigorously oppose the insistence of the developing states that an International Seabed Authority should regulate the market, transfer technology and ensure that the benefits accrue to the developing states. In short, the key problem is who will be permitted to exploit seabed nodules?

The Group of 77 argued that since the new resources of minerals threatened the economics of those states in the developing world dependent on the export of one or two minerals such states should be compensated for the loss of export earnings. Moreover, it urged that an ISA should have stronger powers; for example, to regulate production and to carry out mining operations and related activity in the name of the Authority. The United States however, largely at the behest of its multinational mining companies, opposed the treaty on the grounds that such an Authority would limit their commercial freedom, specifically by obliging them to pay taxes on earnings from mining to such an authority as well as to supply it with technology. Although the Group of 77 insisted that the establishment of an ISA is an integral component of a New International Economic Order and sees the ISA as very much a test case for future resource redistribution, the Group has been unable to maintain its unity. It has been dominated by coastal states, especially those with large coastlines and significant offshore resources. This has been achieved at the expense of the “geographically disadvantaged states” — landlocked states and those without large coastlines or significant offshore resources. Even though the industrialised states oppose the content of the ISA proposals, not all are in favour of unhindered access and exploitation since this would work to the unilateral advantage of American mining companies. Britain, West Germany and Italy share the American view, but Ireland, Denmark and Greece “recognise the advantages the treaty could provide for countries lacking the industrial base for seabed mining” (Guardian. 23 November 1982).

At the signing ceremony of the Convention the US representative, Thomas Clingan, stated unequivocally that:

The US has an extreme national interest in having access to strategic metals from the oceans . . . the Treaty just doesn’t meet our interests in terms of deep sea-bed mining provisions. (International Herald Tribune, 8 December 1982.)

And that, in the end, is what the Law of the Sea Conference is concerned with: the pursuit of the “national interest" — the owning minority. The resources of the seabed beyond the 200-mile EEZs are designated “the common heritage of mankind”; nothing could be further from the truth.

John Walker

Political pantomimes (1984)

From the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was just a year ago that Neil Kinnock, obviously appalled at being elected leader of the Labour Party, made his well-publicised attempt to throw himself into the sea, only to be thwarted when he lost his footing in the treacherous shingle of Brighton beach and was hauled to safety by his wife. Those were days of a sprouting optimism in the Labour Party. The awful experience of being led to predictable defeat by bungling Michael Foot had, the party members hoped as they left their conference, been put behind them. They now had a new pair at the helm — the so-called dream ticket of Kinnock and Hattersley, which was another way of saying that between them these two politicians were expected to be able to pander to every imaginable prejudice and misconception in the minds of the voters. With unemployment on the rise and the Tories’ luck surely due to run out. Labour could look forward to a year of improved fortunes; perhaps they would win a few by-elections, carry some important local authorities and set their sights on an early return to power.

The Conservatives too were euphoric — and with better reason than the Labour Party. Their election was in the bag and nothing is more likely to enthuse party members, from the silver coiffures of the constituencies to the ambitious back-benchers. than the prospect of a long period in government. The gamble of the Falklands war which, had it failed, might have wiped out their chances for a long time, had succeeded triumphantly. The atavistic appeal to workers' most miserable prejudices of patriotism had paid off; voters everywhere were convinced that the war had again proved that British soldiers, sailors and airmen are many times tougher, braver and more durable than any others. It was all very dramatic and heady. Of course there were a few people who had been killed, a few more who had been horribly maimed and disfigured who could not be shown to the cheering crowds at the “victory” parade. But they didn’t count; they were less likely to win votes than the marching ranks of those who had come back in one piece. The Falklands helped Thatcher slaughter Foot in the election; the list of politicians she has picked off grows impressively long — Heath, Callaghan, Foot . . . No wonder the Tories enjoyed themselves so much at the seaside last October for by their standards everything was going so well; if they ignored the unemployment figures they could feel the economy was coming right, if they ignored the mounting evidence of the sharpening of working class poverty they could proclaim that their policies were reaping a rich harvest.

But as they gather for their annual bout of morale-boosting this year, the two parties may be in different humour. For the Labour Party, Kinnock has not turned out to be the Kennedy-style vote winner they hoped for. A recent attempt to appear athletically informal backfired to such an extent that he was in danger of being stuck with the image of a rather foolish playboy — something he has since worked hard at expunging with some long, tedious contributions to what are called debates in the House of Commons. On the more delicate matters of policy — delicate because they require a skilful balancing act between warring factions within the party and because it is a matter of luck in their timing whether they are vote winners or losers — Kinnock has too often been exposed in his attempts to fudge the issues.

On nuclear weapons he declares that a Labour government under his leadership would scrap the Trident missile programme and turn the American nuclear bases out of Britain. In his rise to the top Kinnock trod the traditional left wing back bencher’s road of support for CND and this is too recent for him not to now make some gestures towards it. But what he now puts forward is a long, long way from the unilateral abandonment by British capitalism of its nuclear weapons stock. It is a long, long way from promising any solution to the horrifying prospect of a world nuclear conflict for even without Trident and cruise missiles the capitalist powers would still hold several times more weapons than would be needed to blow most of settled life off the face of the earth. But of course no one in their right mind would expect a Labour government, trying to protect the interests of the British capitalist class, to scrap their nuclear weapons, whatever the last party conference had said. Nobody in their right mind — which means nobody with the slightest knowledge of how the competitive system of capitalism has to work — would expect the other powers to be impressed by any such modification of policy as Kinnock promises. And no worker about to be changed into atomic vapour would worry about which weapon system was responsible, or what its name was. What this means is that as long as the support for capitalism, which is so tirelessly fostered by the Labour Party, continues the system will carry on in its inhuman, perilous way until perhaps the missiles fly and there are a few' minutes for the working class to regret their rejection of the revolutionary solution to it all.

If nuclear disarmament is liable to cost the Labour Party a lot of votes, the issue of strikes looms even larger in their nightmares of another June 1983. The working class attitude to strikes can be a curiously ambiguous affair. On the one hand most workers, whatever their prejudices and pretensions, are liable to be persuaded that only strike action can protect their interests. This is true of many groups of workers who at one time would not have been seen dead in a ditch with a picketing miner or docker. But now hospital employees, banking workers, and civil servants are among those who have used the strike weapon. Even “professional” (whatever that may mean) workers like teachers and engineers are prepared to come out to get better pay and conditions or to resist attacks on their standards. But on the other hand these workers are often quick to condemn other groups who take strike action. Another widespread inconsistency in workers’ attitudes towards strikes is the impression that somehow the Labour Party is invariably in favour of them. Of course this is quite unfair to the Labour Party who. when they have been in government, have always bitterly fought workers who stood against Labour’s attempts to cut back their standards. If Tory ministers now inveigh against the alleged excesses of pickets and urge other workers to break the picket lines, they are following the example set by members of the last Labour government, like Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and Prime Minister James Callaghan who, in that infamous winter of discontent, knew on which side of the picket line their sympathies lay.

So when he is confronted with something like the strike in the coal mines. Kinnock has a serious problem in assuaging several prejudices at once. This year’s Labour conference will give a lot of attention to the issue; there will be demonstrating workers urging all-out support for the miners, opposed by sober warnings about the effect this will have on Labour votes outside. This has been the story of many a Labour conference, as some members passionately joust for what they have been brought up to know as the soul of the party against those who are alive to the reality of a party which wants power over British capitalism and must not let a little thing like political theory or principle get in the way. Kinnock’s every word at this conference will be carefully probed by zealous media hacks who at the end will give their verdict on his capacity as a possible future prime minister, which means their rating of his ability to deceive. For him it promises to be a harrowing time and so far he has not shown too much agility when under such pressure. Perhaps this time he won’t slip up at the water’s edge.

The fact that the Tories are rather better at hiding their splits should not disguise their existence. For some time now they have been in trouble on a number of issues, bravely dismissed by them as a slight matter of slipping on banana skins. But this evasion cannot apply to the coal strike, which has its electoral perils for the government. At the moment they may well be gambling on beating the miners through a combination of starving them back to work and shaming them back as the strike leads to winter power cuts and an inevitable reaction from workers whose normally miserable lives are made even more so by being plunged into darker and colder conditions. But the most recent precedent for this, the three day week in 1973/74, did not turn out as a victory for the Heath government. Rather than being seen as the valiant defenders of civilisation against rampaging hordes of workshy saboteurs, that government were damned as causing a disruption to industry which could have been avoided through more sensitive and canny handling — the sort which the Labour Party, with its so-called social contract and Employment Minister Michael Foot, were only too anxious to provide.

It is history now. that Heath never recovered from that disaster which has left him sulking on his party’s back benches. If it turns out that Thatcher has similarly miscalculated. the same fate could await her. The suffering and the squalor of capitalism goes on untroubled by any realistic expectation in those two parties that they will ever bring it to an end. None of that matters; the leader is safe as long as they can work so successful a deceit on the working class that fear is conceived as happiness, disease as health, repression as freedom. Look carefully at Thatcher's speech at the Conservative conference this year; under the pressures of running British capitalism she is showing signs of wear and such are the disputes in her party now that it will need a truly slick performance by her if that inevitable standing ovation is to be really as rapturous and as heartfelt as it seems.

Is it too gloomy to predict that, as usual, both parties will succeed in their deceptions and that once again the workers will nourish this society with their bland acceptance of what should be unacceptable? Party conferences are designed as occasions when the morale batteries are recharged. It needs only some flashes of insight into social realities for them to become occasions of exposure and despair for the politicians and of exhilarating hope for the people.

Ivan