A Look Back (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently there has been a good deal of looking back, recalling the events and atmospheres of the past quarter-century. Most people find pleasure in it because of personal associations — friends and places which have vanished now. In the clutch of present-day inflation it is remembered that everything was laughably cheap twenty-five years ago (without remembering that wages were correspondingly lower and bought no more). Society is the sum of relationships within a given structure. Has it altered? Did many hopes of 1952 come true? What kinds of fruit were borne by changes of government, technical advances, reorganizations, plans? We make our own brief survey.

War and Peace

Although only a few years old the United Nations was looking a little tarnished in the early 50’s. Formed after the devastation of the 1939-45 war, much lip- service was given to the concept of peace. But good intentions and pious talk are not enough it seems, for during its existence war has never ceased in parts of the globe. Korea, Malaysia, Aden, Hungary, Cuba, Congo. Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Chile, Cyprus, Angola, Vietnam. Lebanon—that list is still not complete. The world is divided into three power blocks all armed to the hilt, and each possessing the ultimate weapon—the H-bomb. Many of these struggles have been civil wars with a rising capitalist class striving for power against the entrenched rulers, or between rival groups of capitalists for control. They have thought it worthwhile to expend their labour force to gain their ends, notwithstanding the terrible modern weapons that industry and science have produced. Sadly, they have been able to persuade deluded peasants and members of the working class to fight for them. The USA and her allies, Russia and satellites, China and SE Asian block stand by, interfering with arms or men in order to gain influence as each new flare-up occurs. The thought should not be overlooked that one of these could ignite another global war.

British troops, like others, have not been retained just for ceremonial purposes. By 1952 they had seen service in Palestine and Korea and were being used in Malaysia. They have since been involved in several of the conflicts as parts of the former Empire have broken loose, including the role they are performing in Ulster at the present time.

Health

In 1952 the National Health Service was in its infancy but there were already rumblings of discord. The alleged object of this reform was that treatment would be available to all on the basis of need only. It was assumed that under those circumstances health standards would so improve that in the course of time expenditure on the service would decrease. The image of a “free health service” was sacred to certain Labour Party notables. Aneurin Bevan resigned in protest at a shilling prescription charge.

By now charges for dentistry, spectacles, and prescriptions are well established. While waiting lists for hospital treatment grow these establishments are being asked to reduce the length of stay of patients, hospitals are being closed as “uneconomic”, and there are cutbacks in building and modernization. The largest group of sick people are those whose malady can be loosely termed as mental illness—suffering from stress, anxiety, depression. Every year there are 20 million prescriptions (not pills) for barbiturates issued, and 6 million Phenothiazine tranquillizer tablets swallowed (Sunday Times 30th Jan. 1977). Relative health standards generally have not improved. The better-off still have better health, live longer, and spend more time in consultation with doctors than the poorer social groups. Medical research is hampered by lack of funds, and some of the advances made involve equipment and methods that are costly in money terms. Doctors have the harrowing decision of whether or not to give expensive treatment to patients. Some people die because the NHS cannot afford to save them.

Education

By 1952 the 1944 Education Act was coming into full swing. One of the catch-phrases of this Act, which was regarded as a great step forward, was “secondary education for all”. It was argued that this would lead to better realization of abilities among the working class. The Act was enforced by raising the school-leaving age to 15 after the war, and by literally rubbing out the word “elementary” on the existing schools and painting in the word “secondary”. The type of education offered, and the status of the new secondary school, hardly differed from what had existed before. An 11-plus selection procedure was used, and it did not take long for the idea to develop that those “selected” for the Secondary Modern school had failed. It is interesting to note that the number of children thought suitable for a grammar-school education always exactly tallied with the number of places available, and whether or not a child passed the 11-plus depended on the area in which that child lived.

Comprehensive education was then devised to avoid the 11-plus selection, although whatever label it receives there is usually streaming inside the Comprehensive school. The school-leaving age has now been raised to 16, but learning skills have not risen in proportion to those extra years spent in school. Educationalists, unable to see further than the ends of their noses, have cast around for reasons, tinkering with different teaching methods.

Nobody is happy about education today, teachers, parents, or pupils. The false hopes of the early 1950s are gone. Now there are protests from some large employers about the educational standards of young people approaching them for jobs. Here they are contributing hundreds of millions a year to prepare their future work-force and their reason for education is being overlooked!

There are two changes which are of some significance. Teachers have become “militant”. One did not expect to see teachers going on strike twenty-five years ago. Once the conventional, respectable pillars of the establishment, they have learned that their position as salaried employees in “safe” jobs is no more sacrosanct than that of other workers. They are being forced to acknowledge their part in the class struggle. Secondly, their pupils have become more difficult to handle. Young people are no longer submissive, they are reflecting the pace and turmoil of life today.

Housing

This perennial problem was flourishing in the 1950s. It had been increased by the destruction in the war. Squatting had taken place in the late 1940s. when homeless families took over army nissen huts that were scattered about parks and open spaces. There were long waiting lists for council housing, and in 1951 the Conservative Party came to power with a promise to build 6 million new houses and solve the housing problem.

Their success can be measured by looking around today. Prefabs erected in the early 1950s with an estimated life of ten years have done stalwart service. Some are still in use! The foundations were laid for today’s detested tower-blocks. Council housing lists are longer than ever. Rent legislation has succeeded in drying up the supply of private rented accommodation. Workers who have managed to become owner-occupiers have crippling mortgages and high interest rates. According to the latest Shelter report the number of homeless people has trebled in the last ten years.

Everywhere you look

Other aspects are unemployment — there were those who claimed that the problem had been solved in the 1950s — industrial strife, pollution, inflation, racial tensions, crime. Not only have the measures taken by successive governments failed, many of their attempted remedies have thrown up further problems.

Is it then a catalogue of woe and nothing else? No. All through, there runs the desire of the great majority of working people to make as decent a life as they can despite the odds. The disharmony and mess are not their choice. On the contrary, they seek almost universally to make unpromising surroundings agreeable, to be good neighbours, to provide the best possible future for their children. It is precisely this desire for something better that makes them vulnerable to promises and enticements: only give me your vote today, says the Honest Man or the Strong Man or the Amazingly Clever Man of capitalism, and you shall have jam tomorrow.

The gap in realization is very small. Workers are not fools. Often they more than half know they are about to be sold again; but — it is thought and said — what else is there to do but take the least of three or four evils? Often too they are aware that an alternative does exist, but hang back from going against what appear to be stronger forces of opinion. Only a little more understanding and a little more will are required: and the next twenty-five years can bring a life altogether different.

The problems of society lie in its structure. While ownership of the means of life remain in the hands of one class it means the consequent enslavement of the non-owning class. There is a continual conflict of interests between those who produce wealth and those who possess that wealth. The solution to that conflict can only come by converting the means of production and distribution to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole of society. The understanding required to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism is within the capability of all workers; and the working class who run society from the top to bottom for the capitalist class now, are more than capable of running Socialism for themselves. The quickest way is the only way to Socialism, and that is by a majority of the working class understanding and wanting that change in society, organizing politically for the capture of the powers of government, and using that instrument for its own emancipation.

Turn your backs on despair and disillusion; and join with the world’s Socialist Movement to sweep capitalism from the face of the earth!

Alice Kerr

Having a rotten Christmas (1983)

A Short Story from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I suppose", said Tomlinson, waving his hand-rolled Old Holborn as if it were a large, expensive cigar, "you'll be spending it at home with the family?" I looked at him with a wary surprise; for three years in that office I had been working under, or perhaps I should say had been terrified by, him — by the huge temper which sparkled behind his pebble glasses, by the rage which he regularly turned on me when he knew he had made a mistake. if I could find the courage, I would hand in my notice. Now, on this Christmas Eve, I was unnerved by his unaccustomed affability, with its hint that he saw me as a human being who might after all live in a home with a family.

Without warning he lunged to grip my shoulder, bared orange teeth and coaxed across his face, now very close to mine, an expression I had not seen there before. This was it, I thought — the physical attack I had feared for so long, and with wing-like gyrations of my elbow I tried to dislodge his hand. But his grip was strong (he had once been an Olympic gymnast) and for some seconds we writhed wordlessly at his desk until, as he panted "Merry Christmas", it dawned on me that he was smiling.

Tomlinson was shipping manager to a small firm which had begun its life in an office and warehouse in the City of London, importing and selling chemicals. There was, to put it mildly, a resistance to change there; the management was entrenched in a traditional formality which, among other things, ensured that you had to work there for years before you could earn the prefix "Mister" to your name. Nobody, of course, ever used their first name and if one of the secretaries got married the rest of the staff simply continued to call her by her maiden name.

The post-war property boom had blasted the firm out of the high rents of the City into a modern, bleak building in a west-suburban industrial estate. Quite a few of the employees lived in the East End and beyond; before the move they had had a simple journey to work but now each day they had to travel from one end of the Central Line to the other, reading their Daily Express and telling each other jokes using their surnames/ Whatever the reason for such loyalty, it could not have been that the firm were paying high wages. I know that I was paid well below the going rate and, after one fearfully sneaked look at his pay packet, I knew that Tomlinson, for all his airs, was treated no better. Twice a year we got a bonus which was handed out, after weeks of coy reminders from Tomlinson, as if the firm was swamping us in generosity.

It was in this mood that Tomlinson approached me that day. We had just received the Christmas bonus and I suppose he expected my usual enmity would have been disarmed by gratitude. It was, he may have reasoned, the season of good will (although there was never any celebration in that firm); time to repair some of the damage he had done during the rest of the year, perhaps to catch me off guard with an admission that the firm was a relaxed, friendly, caring bunch and that Tomlinson was an impulsively warm and festive personality.

In my gloomier, more penetrative moments I could see that what might be called right was on their side. Far beyond the passages and courts of the City, beyond the gimcrack suburbs, the popular christian festival of Christmas is offered to us just as Tomlinson was offering his hand to me. In the midst of a war, with thousands dying each day in unimaginable fear and pain, Christmas is the time for monarchs and statesmen to place special emphasis on their obscenities about peace and human dignity. A social system in which an abundantly rich minority live off a grindingly poor majority is justified, when Christmas comes, in soothing words about the good times which will come when we have had a change of heart. As millions die each year in famine, Christmas feeds us with its special brand of hypocrisy. Its festivity is a time to try to escape an inexorable, horrible reality, for workers to disguise their impoverished homes in tinsel and coloured paper and to anaesthetise their tensions at the prospect of the exploitation process waiting to swallow them again, when the holiday is over and the decorations are a dusty heap in a corner.

Christmas exists on the delusion that capitalism need be as it is — indeed, at times that it is not as it is. But this society is not a matter of human defects. Poverty exists, not because the working class, who suffer from it, are morally deficient and their masters morally perfect. War lays waste to life, not through human aggression or acquisitiveness. Society is blighted by repression, not because its people ignore moral instruction.

It cannot be said too often, or too emphatically, that the effects of capitalism are unavoidable as long as the system endures. Capitalism inexorably produces war, poverty and human degradation and these problems will not be abolished by seeking a change in hearts but through a revolutionary upheaval. Anything — like the Christmas interlude — which attempts to persuade us otherwise is an episode in hypocrisy and delusion.

All of this was apparent, as it always was with me, as I faced Tomlinson that Christmas Eve. I would like to be able to say that I shook off his hand and told him what I thought of him, of the company he adored, of the country he gave his loyalty to, of the social system he regarded as the ultimate in human rationality. But I wasn't up to it so I muttered and shuffled my feet. reached out for the bill of lading file and immersed myself thankfully in what Tomlinson called work.

And yes, I did spend it at home with my family, where all good wage slaves go at Christmas. But there was no escape there; for the family is not, as the queen so often tells us, a haven of warm security. It may not be too obvious, around the Christmas fireside, but the family has a role in capitalism — to socialise us from childhood into an acceptance of capitalism's privilege-based morality. There was no escape there nor anywhere; the Tories were not long back in power and Suez lay in the not-too-distant future. It was still possible before reality set in, for the media bandits to talk about a new Elizabethan age. I gloomily contemplated capitalism's future and the immediate fact that after Boxing Day everyone would stop being talkative and replete and go back to the deprived and furtive personalities of wage-slaves.

I had a rotten Christmas.

Ivan

Confessions of a Baby Boomer (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the inheritance tax proposal.  Not to say I have anything against Mr & Mrs Concerned – with tuition fees, housing costs, insecure employment, and poor social services (among other things). It’s a rough world out there and I can see why you’d want to do the best for your kids. I love my kids too, and I don’t want them exposed to the chill winds coming from the future. However I think the best way of future-proofing them doesn’t revolve around petty reforms like this. Unfortunately it is big picture time … or else.

As a baby boomer I’m one of the lucky ones. I and my peers grew up in a world where we were still carried on the tide of the post-war settlement which gave us a reasonably secure place to grow up in. Put aside the cold war (and the proxy third  world war being waged in Vietnam, Angola, etc) and the so-called industrial strife and there was a society which had plenty of jobs with often life-long security giving enough money to meet your needs and a little bit more; there was plenty of council housing; school places for all the children; cheap widespread public transport; predominantly free health service and not too much of a wait for treatment; free higher education with grants (remember those?). We weren’t bombarded with adverts reminding us of our inadequacies, to be solved by material acquisition or bodily adjustments.

I grew up in London where most of my friends were like me – in rented accommodation and none too affluent – and before you ask, about 50 percent  non-white UK. Learning in my first year of secondary school about pollution came as a bit of a shock to me: everything seemed fine so what a shame there was this issue. But despite the fact that it was known about in the late 60s, as we all know nothing of any significant value has been done about it; reckoning was still a long way off. The 60s and 70s, despite what the Tory rewrites of history tell you, were by comparison to today, fairly optimistic times: things did not get really dark until the 80s and Thatcher. Remember, prior to the Falklands and her magnificent PR exercise, hers was the most unpopular government that century, more unpopular than anyone else in the 70s.

Whilst I do think my parents’ generation have things to answer for, I think we possibly have more. What has happened since the 70s? An orgy of consumption, largely fuelled by debt. Surprise surprise, the wheels came off with the banking crisis. Which was then used as an excuse for a rightwing agenda that the Tories had all along: shrink the state and transfer more from the poor to the rich. But I get ahead of myself. What happened in those intervening years? I think we need to go back again, and the question is what happened since the 1945 Attlee government. The massive state welfare edifice they created came about for a number of temporally unique conditions. These include a memory of the 30s and the rise of fascism, both amongst the workers and the rich; a very powerful state able to enact massive change; a disposition of states to spend money; in England at least a cabinet-in-waiting who were able to plan everything in advance of office. Here’s the chance to create a ‘capitalism with an acceptable face’, and whilst I would argue that in fact they did not, nonetheless they created a society which gave us an attenuated version of it: some of the harsh corners had been blunted. Allied to this fact was the existence of the USSR which plainly offered an alternative view of the world; our society couldn’t be that rough as otherwise it might encourage the serfs to go over to the other side.

Reforming capitalism doesn’t work because you haven’t changed the power base. Sooner or later the power of money will reassert itself and this gradually happened over the next 35 years, although it was disguised by the economic growth associated with peacetime expansion and record defence spending. But even in the 70s differentials were not that great. I even recall the Tories arguing that the top rate of tax should be cut because high top rates meant that senior staff asked for greater pay rises as they saw less of it… (as history shows us, cutting the top rate in fact led to the explosion of top pay – greed once allowed knows no bounds, eh?). Labour’s ‘In Place of Strife’, and Heath’s Industrial Relations Act started to erode labour power, i.e. reassert the power of business. Then the Barber boom, leading to the start of the property market boom, and the IMF bail-out, slashing public sector spending – as ever with the IMF –, together with the nationalised industries withering on the vine of bad management and planning, and the clock is going backwards.

Enter Mrs Thatcher with her crusade of sweeping away the ‘nanny state’ and any vestiges of ‘socialism’ – the markets were let off the leash – and how many millions unemployed? The unemployed paid the price; the start of the increasing transfer of wealth from poor to rich and the creation of a large sub-working class. More importantly perhaps was the PR-isation of everything: selling the message that great wealth was nothing to be ashamed of, and poverty was to be sneered at – recall Lord Young: the homeless were something you trod on when you came out of the opera? A return to the Victorian values you can read about in Jayne Eyre and Hard Times.

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the fall of the USSR. Don’t get me wrong I was not a fan: Leninism is a blind alley, as elites breed elites. However it was an alternative of sorts. When it was deservedly placed on the ash heap of history we get Fukuyama and the End of History; the triumph of capitalism… and then all restraint went. Hello debt-fuelled consumer-driven turbo capitalism replete with uber-rich movers and shakers at Davos and Bilderberg and their agents at WTO and GATT and IMF. Well there was never any such thing as society anyway, eh? Everyone for themselves. Spend, spend, spend and get, get, get: that’s the societal mores – the more you get the more you are. (Funny how I have never seen written on an epitaph ‘he had lots of stuff’ or ‘she was soooo wealthy’).

I quite liked the world I grew up in; I felt a kinship with most people I knew. Somehow that seems to have gone. People now seem to come together despite rather than because of the system, often in opposition to it. Game shows, celebs and loads of stuff; junk food and booze and legal highs; porn and more porn and endless pap on the multi-channel TV – 57 channels and nothing on, Springsteen said correctly. Zero hours contracts; poverty wages; housing crisis; student debts; most expensive rail fares in Europe; 4hrs+ waits in A&E; mis-selling PPI, worthless private pensions, and selling your own house to pay for your elderly care. And then there’s the environment.

This is the inheritance that matters; a dysfunctional world which is heading for an environmental disaster; where because of the power of big corporation PR, despite the overwhelming majority of those in the know agreeing about climate change, many of the public – perhaps even a majority – think it’s a con. The sea is become too acidic, our soil denuded of vital nutrients, our world in all senses becoming all used up and wrecked. Also we’re running out of clean water. The thing that tells you all you need to know is that when the North Pole melts due to climate change, instead of that being the alarm bell getting us to stop, business wants to dig it up for oil. Big business will only worry about things when it impacts on profits: the movers and shakers are so ideologically blinkered that they would rather the whole thing came down than they surrendered their power or changed courses - if they think about it at all. Probably too busy enjoying the fruits of enormous wealth.

So let’s stop for a moment and reflect (not popular I know). If you are really worried about your legacy to your children, a bit less tax here or there is tangible and looks nice but you are being sold a pup. With the magnitude of the storm coming their way, it is going to be of slight comfort. If however you reject this entire social structure – if you look to a socialist alternative – you might be bequeathing something of real value to your children and future generations.

Howard Pilott

Absolute end (1986)

Film Review from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The release of Absolute Beginners—a film based on the novel of the same name by Colin MacInnes—has coincided with some of the most intensive advertising ever launched for a British made film. In recent months all available publicity outlets—television and radio shows, magazine features, newspaper articles, billboard advertisements and pop video promos—have been mobilised in a desperate effort to sell the film to the British public.

The main financial backers, Goldcrest Films, are still smarting after the costly flop of their last major film, Revolution. Unless Absolute Beginners is a box-office success, Goldcrest Films threatens to go bust and the so-called renaissance of the British film industry which began with international triumphs like Chariots of Fire and Ghandi will come to an abrupt halt. The message then is loud and clear, buy British and help to save the British film industry.

But why should this be? In capitalist society films—like everything else—are produced as commodities to be sold on the market with the aim of making a profit. A successful film is one that makes a profit; an unsuccessful film is one that makes a loss. Films are no different from any other commodity in this respect: those who invest in a particular film do so in the belief that at the end of the day they will get more money out of it than they put in. Why should anyone pay to see a film just to line the pockets of those who have invested in it?

The British capitalist class has no doubt learned by now that appeals to patriotic feelings alone are not enough to sell commodities. The commodity itself must be carefully packaged to ensure success and in this respect Absolute Beginners is equipped with a wide variety of selling points. Its shrewd blend of music, glamour, fashion, nostalgia for the 1950s, and the presence of chart-topping pop stars such as David Bowie, Style Council and Sade should guarantee its profitability. As the film trade magazine Screen International puts it, Absolute Beginners is "a must for fans of the various star singers and musicians, and the mass audience of under-25s already hooked on pop videos".

In terms of content, Absolute Beginners is predictably superficial. Although it attempts to portray certain aspects of modern capitalism—the commodity fetishism of the advertising jungle and the Notting Hill race riots of the late 1950s—it does so only in a half-hearted manner and somehow succeeds in only glamourising them. Working class racism is vividly portrayed but no attempt is made to understand its underlying causes. However, accurate descriptions of reality are the last thing we should expect from a film like Absolute Beginners. If you desire escapism, fantasy and a glamourising of the past, then this is the film for you.

Paola Doyle