Editorial: What difference is there? (1963)

Editorial from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour governments aren’t what they used to be. They no-longer send chills of horror down the spines of the rich, the near-rich, and workers with a few pounds in the savings bank. It was not always so.

Forty years ago when, for the first time a Labour government took over in Britain, there was quite a lot of fear and panic in the air, even though Ramsay MacDonald went to great pains to give his cabinet an image of respectability by appointing a number of peers. In particular by making one of them, Lord Chelmsford, who had no Labour Party associations, First Lord of the Admiralty so that those who feared the worst could at least feel that the Navy was not in dangerous hands. That Government lasted for about nine months.

The Norwegian Labour Government which came into office in 1928 was less circumspect about its power to inspire fear. Instead of putting the Navy into the hands of a conservative it announced its intention to disarm altogether and threatened other things horrifying to the propertied class. There was a sharp financial crisis and out they went after a fortnight. After a few years mellowing they were back again, with no panic, and continued in government with hardly a break for twenty eight years; only to resign now after narrowly escaping defeat on a Parliamentary vote of ‘no confidence’.

What is significant about the changeover from a Labour to a Conservative government in Norway is the general comment of political observers that it will make little or no difference. The Guardian’s comment was typical.

“Political observers,” it said, predict that the new government “will make few changes in domestic or foreign policy”. When the Norwegian Labour Party took over in 1928 it promised to put the interests of the workers first and to introduce what it called Socialism. Now the voters in Norway know that capitalism will carry on in much the same way whichever party is in power.

It is the same here. No one with any knowledge of the present political situation thinks that a Labour Party victory at the next election would be followed by drastic social changes. If such a thing were possible it would mean that the differences between the Labour Party and the Conservatives are deep and vital, whereas in fact the publicity men in both organisations have a hard time finding differences that look big enough to fight an election.

As fears of Labour government have receded, there is more scope for conservatives and others to air their views on problems of taxation and government, without being obsessed with their old apprehensions of ruin and revolution. So Mr. Harold Wincott, writing in the Financial Times last July, was urging his readers to consider what to them must have seemed a novel proposition. The great problem of the ‘nation’ (meaning of course, British capitalism) is, he argued that of halting and reversing the enormous increase of government expenditure that has taken place during this century. This, for him, is so much the greatest problem that he could write: —”I am …. sure that until a solution to it is found no government of whatever party, or under whatever leadership, will achieve more than temporary success.”

From that point Mr. Wincott’s reasoning goes thus:— A Labour government is likely to go on increasing the size of government expenditure; the Tories are better suited—in the long run—to tackle the twin jobs of getting economy and efficiency, but at present the Tory government is quite unable to think about it let alone do it; so the best solution would be a Labour government in office and the Tories in opposition where they could think about the great task of reducing the amount of the capitalist’s income sucked away to run the Administration. And he adds: —

“It seems that the real, long-term interests of Britain would best be served in part if the Tories lost the next election and. going into opposition, gave themselves the time to solve the outstanding problems of our age.”

That was Mr. Wincott in the Financial Times in July. Two months later the Editor of the Sunday Times (1st. September) started another hare. He would have agreed with Mr. Wincott that a Labour electorial victory was not particularly alarming, nor even a successful Labour government. What he fears is a Labour government which proves a failure:

“This would indeed be an alarming situation, since it would mean that both parties had failed in the same way at once. … If the Labour Party first wins and then fails, that would produce a crises of confidence not in the Government, but in ‘government itself.”

It could be summed up by saying that the Sunday Times is not afraid of a Labour Government because it would hardly be distinguishable from a Tory one. A year, or perhaps two years, after a Labour victory the electors may discover “that nothing really new has happened, that the Labour Party has no answers which the Conservatives did not have, that it has only some other and less energetic Ministers and a younger and perhaps more energetic leader”.

The Sunday Times and Mr. Wincott see the problem rather differently. While the latter appears to put the major emphasis on cutting down expenditure, the Sunday Times editor takes the line that administrative methods are hopelessly out-of-date and that top priority should be given to that problem. “Reform of the system of government is the essential preliminary to all other reforms”.

Of course the fears and hopes of those two gentlemen do not exhaust the possibilities, nor do the policies or lack of policies of the major political parties. If a realisation that there is little to choose between Labour and Tory Government turns workers’ thoughts to a realisation that there is a deeper problem, concerned with social structure and class relationship, they may be the readier to come our way and work for Socialism.

A marriage of convenience (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since they slipped into power last October the Labour Government have been pursued by speculations on whether they would come to an arrangement with the Liberals which would have the effect of keeping them in power. This speculation has, of course, become more intense as the Government’s majority has been slowly whittled down.

The idea of a Lib/Lab alliance, as the newspapers are fond of calling it, is not new. The Guardian, which is running a campaign in favour of it, recently published a series of extracts from editorials of 1912, 1924, 1926 and 1929 which advocated such an alliance (although it is difficult to appreciate what this was supposed to prove).

The whole thing is, in fact, one of the most grisly of all the spectres which haunt the Labour Party from their uncomfortable past. Their first attempt at Government, in 1924, was brought about only because the Liberals supported them, but the same Party turned Labour out of office as quickly as they had put them in. When they came back in 1929, Labour’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald, left us in no doubt about where he thought the blame for his previous defeat lay. “I am,” he told the press, “Going to stand no monkeying.”

This sounded very grand, Yet if anyone was doing any monkeying it was MacDonald himself, because despite his experience in 1924 he was once more relying on Liberal votes in the House to keep a minority Labour Government in power. This showed that Mr. MacDonald possessed the one essential quality of an “intellectual,” which is the ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

As it turned out, MacDonald went further than a mere voting pact with the Liberals. When the crunch came a couple of years later, when the unemployment figures were around the three million mark, when the finances of British capitalism were in turmoil, and when the Government were imposing panic cuts in expenditure, MacDonald did not wait for the Liberals or anyone else to defeat him in the Commons. He led the way into a coalition with the Liberals and the Tories. He joined hands with the men regarded by generations of Labour workers as representatives of the hated mine owners and steel masters, of the hard-faced men who had ground the working class down into unforgettable destitution.

There is no need to recall here the shattering effect which this had on the Labour Party. It is enough to say that the debacles of 1924 and 1931 made coalition a forbidden word in respectable Labour circles.

Of course, these same circles saw nothing wrong in their Party joining the wartime coalition, even if this was under the man who was a lifelong enemy of the working class, who had been openly contemptuous of starving miners and who had so zestfully edited the official British Gazette during the General Strike, when the workers were desperately defending what remained of their livelihoods. The war coalition was, apparently, different. Churchill was no longer cur enemy. He was our friend and protector. This coalition, said the Labour Party, was in what they called (but which they were not rash enough to attempt to define) the National Interest.

We should all be aware by now that when the bugles are blowing to rally us all to defend the National Interest a certain amusement can be had by observing countless politicians, men who swear by their own honesty and consistency, going back on a lot of what they ever said. Thus it was with the Labour Party, when they embraced their bitterest foe and joined the Churchill coalition in 1940. This gave them the experience of running capitalism which stood them in good stead when they took over in 1945 and had to tell the working class that the promises made during the war could not (naturally) be kept.

But no bugles are blowing now. The Labour Party cannot pretend that a pact with the Liberals would have anything to do with their precious National Interest. It would have only one object and that would be to keep the Labour Party in power. Ten regular Liberal votes in the House would enable Mr. Wilson to luxuriate in unaccustomed security of tenure at Number Ten. There is no secret about the price of these votes—a tailoring of the Government’s programme, to drop steel nationalisation and to push ahead with schemes like the Ombudsman.

Or the Labour Party could go into whole-hog coalition with the Liberals, and Mr. Wilson preside over a Government containing one or two Liberal ministers. Or again—another favourite dream of political wanderers—a new party could be formed, a so-called radical party with a programme consisting of bits and pieces from both Parties, mashed up and blended into something which, it is hoped, would attract massive electoral support.

Any of these is possible. It is evident that the Liberals, as distant from power as ever, are awaiting their chance. Mr. Grimond’s famous interview with the Guardian some months ago could not have been entirely a coincidence. It is more likely that the ground had been prepared in advance. This interview might have been Mr. Wilson’s chance to inspire his disconsolate supporters with a valorous, defiant refusal, to goad them forward on their devious, never-ending journey to the Promised Land. Instead, the Liberal offer was met with a heavy silence which, when we consider the business of coalition government, and of government itself, assumes a certain significance.

Governments are there to run capitalism, which means in the general National Interest of the capitalist class. Governments look after the economic affairs of that class, they keep up the machinery by which the capitalists assert their dominance in society. Governments concern themselves with customs laws, trading pacts, the police, prisons and armed forces. They look after capitalism’s finances and they do their best to weaken what bargaining power the working class may have in matters of wages, hours and so on.

Whether they are dictatorships or so-called democracies, governments always face a certain amount of opposition. This means that to stay in power politicians must exercise a deal of cunning and ruthlessness. The manner and the field in which these qualities—if that is the word for them—are applied varies with the type of government. In this country, where governments are elected by popular (if not very enlightened) vote, political skill often expresses itself in a politician’s ability to do one thing and persuade the mass of people that he is doing the exact opposite. This skill sometimes reaches a very high level, as, for example, when it was being practised by Baldwin and later Macmillan. It seems that Harold Wilson has also won his way into this distinguished company.

This is the perspective in which we should view Wilson’s silence at Grimond’s offer of an alliance. The Labour Party are supposed to be opposed to the Liberals, but in fact they have done little, in major policy, to displease them. True, they have pushed through a declaration that they intend to nationalise steel, but so far this remains no more than a declaration. On most other issues, as the Guardian never tires of bleating (“It will be a tragedy if the Government is brought down needlessly. Much of what it wants to do is common to the Liberal and Labour Parties.” 6/9/65), the two Parties are in harmony.

This means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson has the votes of the Liberal members. In other words, he has all the advantages of a Lib/Lab coalition without any of the disadvantages. He is doing one thing while convincing everyone that he is doing the opposite. In addition, he does not have the tiresome necessity of allocating jobs to the Liberals, he is not exciting the emotions of Labour Party workers who remember 1924 and he is left with the tactical asset of being able to fix the date of the next election.

This is by no means a surprising situation. The only thing to prevent an alliance between political parties is a difference of principle and the capitalist parties showed in 1931, and again during the war, that they are all united on the basic principle of protecting the National Interest of the British ruling class. Compared to this, whatever differences they may have are trivial. The Labour Party have always claimed they were basically different from the others, but experience shows us that in fact they are merely another administration for British capitalism.. Even more, they have claimed that their close connections with the unions would enable them to hold wages in check—in other words, to do capitalism’s dirty work—much more efficiently than the Tories could do it. Recent events at the T.U.C., and in Mr. Brown’s Department of Economic Affairs, shows that this is one claim Labour have made good.

The Wilson Government’s policies have upset many of their supporters; in the Guardian of 6th September last, for example, Mr. Reginald Paget, Labour M.P. for Northampton, was asking: “Ought a Labour Government, committed to Tory expediency, be permitted to continue in office? . . . should they be allowed another session?” The obvious answer to these questions is that it all depends upon Mr. Paget—only one vote, after all, is needed to turn the Government out. But who is really to blame for all these broken hopes? Mr. Paget is disillusioned simply because he had illusions to lose. He actually believed, in the face of all evidence, that a Labour Government would be different from a Conservative. Now that Labour have once again shown how similar they are, they have not only confused their friends; they have also confounded their enemies. Even Mr. Heath, strain as he might, can pick no specific quarrel with them—only vaguely accuse them of not doing the “right sort of deeds.”

The whole point is that, whether they formally admit it or not, all the capitalist parties are constantly in coalition to support the private property system of society. In many ways they actually need each other. But even more they need the votes of the millions of workers who are misled into thinking that capitalism is in their interests and who, if Mr. Grimond ever succeeds in getting Mr. Wilson to the church on time, will be lining the aisles to give the uneasy couple their blessing.

Ivan

Common Market: The great debate — where we stand (1971)

From the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who has recently been able to spare time from the test matches, television, pop music and so on may be aware that there is a new, rival attraction in the entertainment field. It is called the Great Debate on the Common Market, which makes it sound as if we have all been joining in, in every pub and bus queue and factory floor. At times, indeed, it has gone beyond mere entertainment, what with Harold Wilson walking about with a small forest of knives sticking out of his back and the Labour Party taking such fright at the public spectacle of its leader opposing something which his government tried to pull off, and then spending so much time in pious justification of his two contradictory attitudes, that they have suddenly started a Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to Harold campaign.

In fact, as Wilson (who has been known at times to tell the truth) says, there is a wide split of opinion on whether this country should join the Common Market. Both the big parties are split although the Tories, perhaps not yet completely recovered from their stunned delirium at the victory of June 1970, have been largely successful in stifling their dissenters. The public outside the parties are divided; soon, perhaps, marriages will be ruined and brother fall out with brother, swearing never to speak to each other again. And all because of the Great Debate on the Common Market.

One problem which the politicians have is in stimulating interest in something which has been an issue for about ten years. And such are the intricacies of capitalism’s trade — its agricultural support policies, its commodities agreements, its financial jugglings, that only an addict must now be able to stay awake when the thing is being discussed while the rest of us drop off in front of the telly set.

On the one hand the government case for going into Europe, while admitting that some food prices are going to rise (which, Common Market or no Common Market, is a pretty safe bet anyway) is that this is a tremendous opportunity for unheard of prosperity for us all. The official Factsheets on Britain and Europe talk about British industry having access to a market of more than 250 million people, of firms being able to plan their operations more adequately, of the “major benefits” resulting from the removal of tariffs between Britain and Europe.

It does not need a cynic to perceive a certain familiarity in those promises of a golden future. We can all remember similar prospects, held out over similar schemes of international unity or even international separatism, or some equally irrelevant proposal. The opponents of British entry seem to think that the golden future is here already. They argue that membership of the Six will mean abandoning, or weakening, the trading tie-ups with the Commonwealth, with no compensatory advantages. They mutter about upsetting the balance of payments, of losing that comforting trading surplus, which apparently stands between us and some unimaginable calamity. Some opposition may even be based upon xenophobic fears about the free movement of labour — about virile Frenchmen and Italians flooding over to steal all the best jobs and the most desirable women.

Now the Socialist Standard has always made it clear that such matters as the balance of trade, the exports of one capitalist state as against another, the exploitation of markets, are of interest to us only in as much as they illuminate the hopeless anarchies and inadequacies of capitalism. It is for this reason that we do not take a stand of opposing or supporting the efforts of the British capitalist class to get into Europe. This is not a matter of refusing to have any opinion or of imitating the feat of Wilson (and of Gaitskell before him) of sitting on the fence. In fact on this issue, as on all others, we have our own side. We are there, alone, but unlike the rest we know why.

At this point it is necessary to return to basics, however tiresome this may be to anyone who hungers for the excitement of the Great Debate. The first basic is that this is capitalism — if it were not, there would be no such thing as the Common Market. The attempt to join Europe, and the arguments about it, are all based upon the acceptance of capitalism, its needs and its priorities. We are invited to believe that these needs are of concern to workers, that the failure or success of the British application will make enough difference to our lives to be worth taking sides over. But the least which is needed to support this argument is evidence that the countries which are in the EEC are significantly different from those which are not in it.

So here is another basic. Capitalism divides its people into two classes — capitalist and worker, employer and employee, owner and non-owner, whichever term we choose to apply. These two classes are engaged in a struggle over the ownership of the means of wealth production. This struggle takes the form of disputes over wages, which are the only method open to the working class of obtaining wealth, either as the basic necessities like food or the lesser needs such as holidays and so on.

What this means is that a permanent feature of capitalism is (need we say this, in 1971?) the industrial struggle. Sometimes a strike; sometimes a go-slow; sometimes a lock-out. But always a struggle, never ceasing because it is inherent within capitalism. It is not unfair to insist that, if all the hopes and promises about the prosperity of the Common Market were real, its record of strikes and other industrial disputes would be markedly different. Of course it is only necessary to state this to illuminate the absurdity of the idea; France in May 1968, for example, is too recent a memory. Since then there has been a more “normal” pattern of industrial struggle, of transport strikes paralysing Paris, of a one-day general strike throughout Italy and so on. But the point is made. The class division of capitalism is as evident, as divisive and as disruptive in Europe as elsewhere.

We have already said that the Common Market could exist only within capitalism. This is so, first, because capitalism is a market system; its wealth is produced for the market, for sale as distinct from for human need. Now this might be all very well except for the fact that there is no way of adjusting production and the market so that they meet each other’s demands. Capitalism goes to great lengths to find a way of doing this; we are swamped with economic experts and market forecasters and all sorts of other very clever men and most of them are confident, at some time or other, that they have solved the problem and are about to bring everlasting profitability to capitalist industry and trade.

But of course if they ever succeed in this we would never hear dread words like bankruptcy, redundancy, slump. There would never be spectacular collapses like Rolls Royce and Upper Clyde; there would never be unemployment and capitalism would sail along like a great clipper ship under full sail on a calm sea. What actually happens is that it is more like a coracle in the Bay of Biscay in a Force Nine gale. Even the politicians know this; did not the MacDonald government in the thirties blame their troubles onto an economic blizzard; did not Wilson’s lot moan that they had been “blown off course”?

Apply this yardstick again, how does the EEC measure up? Is all well economically across the Channel? All calm and under control? In truth, day by day the reports come in showing that the Market economy is as wild and uncontrollable as anywhere else. On July 27, for example, the West German Economics and Finance Ministry was worried that the “tensions” in the German economy were showing no signs of lessening, with industrial producer prices still rising. The next day the Paris Chamber of Commerce reported a slow-down in industrial production, with what they claimed as the annual growth rate at 4.5 per cent as against the 6 per cent prevailing since last autumn. On July 30 the French Minister of Finance was admitting that the rate of inflation for the first half of 1971 was “not satisfactory”; prices had risen at twice the rate hoped for by the government and a wave of strikes is expected after the summer holidays.

It may be argued that these are trivialities, were it not that they are symptomatic of the basic chaos of capitalism, all over the world. Another current problem of the capitalists of the Six is their “voluntary” limitation of steel exports to America. At present the annual growth of these exports is limited to 5 per cent; the Americans are reported to want to reduce this to 2.5 or 3 per cent, while the European steelmen are anxious that Japanese steel, limited already in its access to the American market, may seriously compete in Europe. Negotiations are, naturally, going on but it does not need a fortune teller to know that they will be a typically futile exercise, with no basic effect on the system nor on the interests of its people.

These are examples of the anarchy of capitalists. As far as Europe is concerned, the anarchy is such that even the “experts” are not united in their forecasts on the British application, nor even on what is happening in Europe at the present. A study published last December by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (described by The Guardian as “the main independent economic forecasting and analytical group in Britain”) contradicted many of the opinions and forecasts from the other “experts”. Compare these views, from the government’s Factsheets and the Institute’s report as it appeared in The Guardian (1 December 1970).:

“Factsheets: One of the striking facts about the Common Market is its rate of growth.

NIESR: The economic growth of the Six has slowed down since the EEC was formed while that of the industrialised countries outside has speeded up.

Factsheets: . . . the main industrial advantage to us would be direct access … to a market of more than 250 million people.

NIESR: So far as the larger market offers advantages, Britain is already getting these from the outside.

Factsheets: The fact that our share of the Community’s total imports of manufacturers is still only about 7 per cent indicates the potential for growth in exports to Europe.

NIESR: Britain’s competitive position inside the Community might suffer as a result of cost increases imposed by Community policies …”

It would be possible to fill up several issues of the Socialist Standard with this kind of analysis of the Common Market. When we have cleared away all the rubbish of politicians’ speeches and the contradictory ramblings of assorted economists we are left with some basic facts. The EEC is no more than yet another instalment in the theory of the larger market which assumes, with absolutely no justification, that the problems inherent in a small market disappear, or can be more easily tamed, in a large market. What, if anything, actually happens is that the problems may well get larger with the market and as the intensity of wage-labour exploitation increases.

The problems are not, and cannot be, solved because the market is itself basically uncontrollable. If it were any other way, capitalism would be a much saner and more peaceable society than it is. Through all the Great Debate on the Common Market none of this is being argued; the debate is pre-occupied with other, quite irrelevant, matters such as commodity agreements and budget contributions. And the working class, who are always being misled into taking their masters’ sides in the disputes of capitalism, are now persuaded once again that their interests are what is at stake in the Great Debate and that it is all happening so that their lives can be improved.

The facts show otherwise. Working class lives can be improved by the simple process of getting rid of the social system which divides people into worker and capitalist and which sets up the conflicting interests and the anarchy of the market economy. That is what socialists want, what we work and struggle for. We are not detached from the Great Debate; we are deeply involved in it because we see in it more evidence of the futility and impotence of capitalism and of the urgent need to replace it with a society of common ownership.

Ivan

“Too much” food again (1971)

From the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism we are faced with a seemingly insoluble contradiction. Poverty and hunger exist in the midst of potential plenty. Within the private property relationships of capitalism the existence of means for ending this problem can itself appear to be a problem.

Take for example three reports in just one edition of The Guardian, that of July 12. In it we are informed on page 3 that:

“The world’s population will double by the year 2004 at the present growth rate, yet food production has already declined on a per capita basis, the UN reported today . . . agricultural production in 1969, the latest year for which comprehensive figures were compiled by UN statisticians, was 2 per cent lower than the previous year.”

A serious problem by any standard when one considers that the majority of the world’s people are inadequately fed at present. But here comes the contradiction . . . Turning over to page 4 we see an article by John Cunningham entitled quaintly “Scientists look into eggs”. He tells us that:

“Scientists are going to work on an egg — actually thousands of eggs — to try to find new uses for a surplus which is worrying the Eggs Authority so much that it is prepared to spend £40,000 on research and development this year.

‘We are not simply looking for food uses’, Mr. Bernard Mallett, the authority’s chief executive, said yesterday. ‘Frankly, anything could hold the key. It could be an industrial use, the manufacture of plastics, decorating materials, cosmetics . . . who knows? We hope research will find some profitable outlet for eggs surplus to even the food products market.'”

However the troubles of the Egg Marketing Board are nothing compared with the problems reported on page 12, in the Business Section, to be afflicting the Common Market Commission in Brussels.

“The record grain now ripening in the fields of Europe is causing grave concern . . . The crop is currently estimated at 174 million tons — four million tons more than the highest previous total. 

If such a crop is harvested, it could revive the nightmare of big surpluses in Europe.”

And their solution? “The Commission”, said The Guardian, “can only pray for rain”.

These contradictions are an inevitable outcome of the commodity system. Under capitalism food, together with other things we need in order to live, is private property. Wealth takes the form of commodities, that is, it is produced not primarily that people might eat, but to be sold on a market with a view to making a profit. If too much food is produced for the market system to deal with profitably then the owners and those who run capitalism are faced with a “problem”. But this is only a problem where the relationships of ownership exist.

In a Socialist society, where the means of life will be owned in common by the world community, food will be produced not for profit but to satisfy human need. With the removal of the artificial barrier of the profit-motive, producing sufficient food to feed all the people of the world would present very few problems. Yet today while men and women go hungry eggs are “fed to minks to improve the quality and sheen of the fur” and men in Brussels are hoping rain will destroy food : what a sad reflection on the values of a society where profit is the paramount motive for production.

Gwynn Thomas

Letter: Lifting a phrase (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lifting a phrase

Readers may be amused to know that at the beginning of an editorial in the Guardian (Feb. 24) there was a reference to “some people” talking about “the Footbill”. I suppose it was too much to expect that the paper would mention that the “some people” were the Socialist Standard (article on the Freedom of the Press, Feb.) but at least it is nice to know that they read the complimentary copy of the paper we sent them. At any rate we need not feel inhibited about sending them another copy. Who knows, one day they may even feel like dealing with our socialist criticism.

L. E. Weidberg 

London, N.W.3

Power pact (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political alliance between the Liberals and the ‘Social Democrats' pales into insignificance in comparison with the more sinister alliance between the SDP and the BBC. The media in recent months has outdone many of its previous efforts in paving the path of ‘moderation' as the TV, radio and newspaper journalists invent stories to prove that there is now a popular burst of opinion in favour of ‘centre politics'. What began as a Gang of Four has become a rabble of many: ex-Labour cabinet ministers, sixteen members of the ruling group on Islington council, some Liberals who look like they have just won the jackpot at Bingo, and even an inoffensive looking Tory from Norfolk. Names that once sent us searching for a copy of Who's Who (Had you heard of Bill Rodgers when he was a member of ‘our great movement’?) are paraded across our screens as the speakers of Truth; Liberals who used to write manifestos about saving whales and giving power to Wales (or was it the other way round?) are now adopting pompous airs and talking about ‘preparing for government'; even that undying enemy of labour and friend of Labour, The Daily Mirror, has opted for the alliance, with full-page photographs of semi-nude women saying The middle way is the best'.

In order to establish the mythical middle, mythical extremes are needed. One can imagine the editor of The Guardian issuing the order: ‘Go out and create us a couple of really awful extremes so that we can sell this new centre.' And so the caricatures came to be. First, there is the caricature of the wicked, thoughtless Thatcherite Tories who plan to increase unemployment and blow up the world with American weapons once they have succeeded in getting the whole working class standing in one long dole queue. Like the witch in a children’s book, Thatcher is painted as being wickedness personified. The other side of the caricature is the Marxist- dominated Benno-Trotyskyist Labour Party. Benn is portrayed as a modern Stalin, waiting patiently for his chance to grab power and destroy Western Civilisation (coming soon).

Like all myths, there are elements of truth. Thatcher and the Tories are viciously anti-working class. When have Tories not been? Their ignorant and unhistorical monetarist policies do fail to provide any solution whatsoever to the social problems of our time. They are impotent in the face of disaster and arrogant in the face of criticism. With increasing unemployment, increasing cuts in social services, increasing armaments production and increasing poverty, workers are right to regard the promises of Thatcher and her team as an insult to human intelligence. The memories of Labourites are as short as their alternative policies for getting society out of the mess it is in.

They attack the problems as if Thatcher caused them. As if unemployment did not double under the last Labour government; as if Labour Ministers were not in the forefront of cutting social services in order to balance the books; as if the last Labour government did not place armaments production as a top priority; as if the rich did not get richer during the period of the last Labour government. Who are these people trying to kid? But now they have an ‘alternative economic policy’ and the story goes that if we give Benn another chance (‘another' because he was in the last Labour government) he will run capitalism in the interests of the working class. This claim is a foolish and cruel con-trick. The next Labour government (if there is one) will not run capitalism; capitalism will run it. The portrait of Benn and Co. as a socialist alternative may attract a few people to the Labour party, it may scare some off, but in the long-run it will be seen as a waste of political energy.

And there they are, standing in the middle between the Wicked Witch and the Bogus Marxist Threat: the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Dead centre, dead honest, in fact they claim to be so innocuous that they might as well actually be dead. There is that nice young David Steel and that dear old Roy Jenkins . . . all terribly nice chaps with whom any self-respecting media hack would enjoy sharing a bottle of claret, but there is just one little thing: What the hell do they stand for? So far they have left the electorate in the dark about this minor aspect of their alliance. Like a well-rehearsed play for which there is not yet a script, the Alliance are selling plenty of tickets, but what will they do when their followers demand to see the performance? Not long ago a successful SDP candidate for a local council in the North East was interviewed on the local radio: “Now that people have voted for you, could you tell us exactly what policies you stand for?" asked the man from the media; “Well, we’ll be deciding our policy later this year and as soon as we have, the electors will be the first to know", replied the man from the media. So, there you have it; vote for the Alliance and ask what you are voting for later. History being made? It’s more like a mystery being made.

On one point the allies are definitely in agreement. Both are one hundred per cent committed to the maintenance of the capitalist social order. No need for a policy statement about that. Both the Liberals (who claim to stand for capitalism) and the SDP (who call themselves ‘democratic Socialists’) accept a way of running society in which goods are only produced if there is a prospect of selling them on the market for a profit. Both are opposed to any challenge to the class ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. In this vital respect the alliance is broader than it thinks, for it includes the Conservative and Labour parties. All of the Lefties with their ‘alternative economic strategies’ (for which read, ‘previously tried and failed Keynesian policies’ are as committed to the buying and selling system as any Liberal or SDPer.

As reported in a previous issue of the Socialist Standard, the SDP has refused a challenge from the SPGB to debate its views in public. Its leaders prefer to state their case from the secure distance of a BBC Any Questions studio rather than face real working class people with real problems arising from a real cause which the SDP will do nothing to remove. As the media continues to persuade us of the moderation and reasonableness of the new messiahs; as David Steel prepares to resume where Lloyd George left off; as political careerists from all parties point the accusing finger at one another and say that everyone is an extremist but themselves; as the word ‘socialism’ is tossed about the political arena like a football which changes shape each time it arrives at another team; as a Gang of Bores awaits its call to do for the working class what has never been done before and what can never be done, it is high time that we, the working class, took a good, hard look at those who want us to follow them, and when we have seen them for what they are we can tell them precisely where to go.

Steve Coleman

South Africa—chrome and cricket (1975)

From the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the perennial cry of Socialists that as long as the capitalist system remains intact it will, by and large, dictate the course of events and politicians find they cannot implement promises and policies; and find themselves doing things different from or even utterly opposed to all they are supposed to stand for. The Labour Party, in common with most leftist types such as those represented by The Guardian, has for years been screaming about the iniquity of apartheid in South Africa. And quite right too. It is an abominable system.

So at times they try and do something that will make a big noise and at the same time do nothing to upset the real objective of all governments — to make the system work as efficiently and profitably as possible for the capitalist owners of the country. A convenient opportunity along these lines occurred to the last Wilson government in 1970. Wilson and his henchmen joined with the Hainites and The Guardian to strike a mortal blow at apartheid. They actually succeeded in stopping a cricket tour — and by all the sound and fury generated, one could have been forgiven for thinking that this blow had brought down apartheid, the racialist government of Vorster, and perhaps the whole evil capitalist system into the bargain. Of course apartheid has gone on just the same and as long as governments, Labour, Tory or east of the Curtain, were prepared to carry on trading and investing, Vorster and Co. would survive the loss of a cricket tour.

However, among the promises which Labour’s election manifesto poured out, was one about the iniquity of investing in South Africa. Fresh investments that is: there was no question of throwing away the vast sums already invested, or of ceasing to trade with Britain’s third biggest customer. That would worry Vorster and his apartheidists, but it would worry British capitalism even more, so such real gestures were out. The name of the game is to kid the leftists (such of them, that is, who believe their own claptrap). Not to hurt British capitalism. As though that lot isn’t in deep enough trouble already!

And so again, the needs of running the system fly in the face of all the leftists are supposed to stand for. I cannot do better than quote from a long and almost literate letter from a Labour MP called Kinnock (Guardian, July 31):

“Last October all Labour candidates fought in support of a manifesto which said that a Labour government would take urgent steps to reduce drastically British economic involvement in South Africa . . . End all financial links . . . Bring about the withdrawal of all or part of existing investment and establish machinery to prevent any further investment . . . Now, ten months later, the government permits the British Steel Corporation to invest heavily in a chrome plant in S. Africa”.

Well said, Kinnock! You have in fact exposed the Labour government as a bunch of hypocrites who would not tell a black man the time if it conflicted with the interests of the British capitalist class. Only one trouble: these people are your kith and Kinnock. You can’t accuse the government without accusing yourself at the same time. You are a Labour MP (masquerading as a socialist like all your swindling clan), and you keep that government in power for the privilege of riding to the cushy jobs at Westminster on the bandwagon. So what does that make you?

In the leading article on the same subject in The Guardian (July 29) the humbugs of Grays Inn Road give their own views: “Chrome: the only decision.” Unlike Kinnock, who denounces his own Fuehrer, the great leftist mouthpiece tells us that Wilson and his gang were quite right to rat on the manifesto. “The Labour Left may not like the idea of giving aid and comfort to South Africa”: it is “making an unnecessary fuss.” Among the reasons for this remark from the paper which made such a screaming fuss over a blasted game of cricket is:— “British Steel is among the companies with better reputations as employers of black labour. It claims it has gone to some lengths to make sure that the 184 black workers it will employ will be paid a reasonable wage, above the poverty datum line.”

Now isn’t that just ducky? It’s all right to break your word and give aid and comfort to the apartheidists if you “claim” to . . . do what? To pay the blacks good screws for working in the chrome mines? Equal to those earned by those who write hypocritical leading articles? Not quite: “Above the poverty datum line.” An extra handful of mealy, from the mealy mouths of our do-gooder Press.

But that’s only half of it. The editorial goes on to say: “It is hard to believe that what the British Steel Corporation does with its blocked funds is going to make any difference to apartheid.” So the same creeps who fooled the idiot wicket-sitters that they were striking a blow at apartheid, who endorsed the Labour manifesto without demur, now have the impudence to tell us that investment in chrome is neither here nor there as far as Vorster is concerned. They may be right. Maybe Vorster doesn’t give a monkey’s whatever Wilson and his capitalist lackeys do or do not do. But for The Guardian to say so beggars belief.

The main reason for Wilson’s decision is that South African chrome is cheaper than the rest. The editorial keeps to capitalist basics on this. If the chrome is dearer in South Africa it is right to honour your principles and buy elsewhere. But if it is cheaper, why, then you are right to say: Let the blacks go hang, we are buying in the cheapest market. There is a delightful bit at the end. In the case of another precious commodity, uranium, Tony Benn (the sanctimonious twit who wants to shed his name — but not the wealth that derives from it) wrote a letter to The Guardian in Sept. ’73 (when he was not yet in power and talk was therefore cheap) “pledging himself to end Britain’s contract to buy uranium from the Republic”. But when his lot came to power, they found: what? Why, that it would cost more to buy elsewhere. So they have not honoured this rat’s pledge to end the contract at all. Money talks louder than principles with Labour leaders — and with Guardian leader-writers.

Last, in the New Statesman, that other rag which stands for Labourite capitalism masquerading as socialism, around the same date there was a leading article on the same subject. But they objected to the betrayal of the blacks. How nice of them. The blacks will be very pleased to see them denounce the Labour Party at the next election. (A likely story.) But they actually say that something or other that Wedgbenn has done has “fastened the chains of slavery still tighter” round the victims of racialism in South Africa. I wonder what the sages of Great Turnstile will say about Benn at the next election? Workers beware? He is another twister who will sell the workers down the river (white ones as well as black)? Another likely story. One can only conclude by borrowing a pun from Marx. Es lebe der wurst! Es lebe der Hanwurst ! Long live the sausage! Long live the clown!

L E Weidberg

In other words (1975)

From the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Guardian is by and large (we are not saying they are consistent or that any capitalist rag can have such profitless burdens as principles) a paper that supports Labour. It is therefore the more significant to read the following passage in their leading article on the economy of July 17: "Whatever Mr. Healey may say in public, he is relying on rising unemployment to give a real bite to his anti-inflationary policy.” This is no doubt clear enough but perhaps we can put it into even simpler terms: “What the Labour government says to the working class who are stupid enough to follow their leadership is a pack of lies. What the government want is not cure unemployment, as they always say in their election addresses. They actually want to worsen unemployment as they find this necessary and desirable for the running of British capitalism (which is their job). And they want it for the purpose of giving a real bite. Out of what? Out of the living standards, of the working class.

We do not suggest The Guardian is aware of the force of what they write. But that only proves their own stupidity. What they said was true enough. Which makes a nice change.

Economical death (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

From The Guardian, 28 July, 1983:

“The most economical method of disposing of the dead in nuclear war, would be by mass burial", Mr. Alan Bullett, Kent’s deputy surveyor, told the Cremation Society conference at Harrogate yesterday. We should be planning them now. A mass grave of “manageable proportions" would be up to 50 metres long, 4 metres wide, and 2.5 metres deep, to accommodate five layers of 200 bodies — 1000 bodies in all . . . Mr. Bullett drew' some guidance from Ministry of Agriculture advice on the burning of animal carcasses after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease . . . Crematoriums could be used as radiation sickness took its toll. A member of the audience said that bodies needed a hard base for loading into a crematorium. If coffins were not available, a sheet of corrugated iron would do . . . Deaths occurring up to 3.3 miles from the burst would leave 200,000 bodies for disposal, with more to come from radiation sickness. The Government has given local authorities the task of disposal.

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 1. Come and exploit our Africans (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always made clear that nationalism, whether in Africa, Israel, Ireland or wherever, is a snare and a delusion for the working class of the country concerned. National independence may well be a good thing for the native capitalist class who are naturally concerned at seeing the fruits of the exploitation of the local working class going into the pockets of the British Imperialists or whoever the alien ruling class might be. But for workers to risk imprisonment or even death in a struggle for independence which will ensure for them nothing more than the joy of being exploited by their very own capitalists instead of foreign ones is clearly the height of folly.

A rather lurid light on this subject has recently been displayed in an advertisement in The Guardian by the Nigerian Government:

People are earning

HUGE PROFITS

in Nigeria


Huge domestic market of 55 millions


Abundant manpower is available at a rate
as low as 7 U.S. cents an hour.

You can get your investment back in
less than 3 years.

It should be pointed out that the words Huge Profits are printed in gigantic capitals in the advert, and are repeated at the end — People are earning huge profits in Nigeria: why don’t YOU ! The word “people” is itself a misleading term beloved of capitalist propagandists. It made nice capital, for example, when Nigeria was part of the British Empire, for the national capitalists to appeal to the Nigerian workers: People of Nigeria, fight to throw out the British Imperialist Exploiters. But nobody can be deceived by the present rallying-cry in the advert. The “people” who are “earning” these huge profits are not the African workers. They are earning something less. 7 cents an hour, in fact.

So the Nigerian government is setting out to get British capitalists to come and exploit African workers. Which means, of course, that a lot of these workers are going to find themselves in the ironical position of once again being exploited by the same white capitalists from whom they had fought and won their alleged independence. It is not sure, what with devaluations of the pound and revaluations of the dollar, exactly what 7 cents is worth these days but a tanner (two-and-a-half new pence to younger readers) would be somewhere near it. “In less than three years” gives an effective rate of exploitation to show a net return on capital of between 30 and 40 per cent, per annum. That’s really mouth-watering exploitation — far better than you would find in England or America. Or far worse, of course. Depending on whether you are a worker or a capitalist. That makes all the difference. Black or white clearly makes none.

Naked and unashamed, the Nigerian capitalists are boasting to Guardian readers (those poor devils who are fed each day on a diet of anti-racialism as though that were the only cause that mattered and anti-South-Africanism as though the natives of that unhappy land were living on even less than a tanner an hour) about what shockingly low wages they are getting away with. These are the people that the other people, the Nigerian workers, have put in power. “Come and exploit our blacks. They are the cheapest wage-slaves you can get.” We are not saying that the wage-slaves were better off under British rule. It is clear that they could hardly have been worse off. Even the worst capitalists must pay wages sufficient to live on. And they could hardly live on less than 7 miserable U.S. cents. And it is doubtful if such brutally cynical advertising would have happened. British capitalists are a bit too sophisticated to advertise “Our workers are paid less than other wage-slaves”. It certainly adds insult to injury to know that your exploiters are actually boasting about your slavery in the columns of the world’s leading do-gooder paper, god help us.

One wonders what that old do-gooder, the Labour peer Lord Fenner Brockway, thinks of the result of his efforts on behalf of African nationalism. No-one was more scathing in days gone by about the Socialist Party’s contention that nationalism was nothing to do with Socialism and was a trap for the working class. Brockway and the other leading Labourites of those days were all great friends of people like Nkrumah, Banda and Kenyatta. All of whom, when in power, have treated the African workers to an adaptation of the Biblical phrase: the British rules you with whips, we will rule you with scorpions. Which of course did not stop Brockway and other lefties from supporting people like Nkrumah who could fairly be described as Black Hitlers in the making (and the last little phrase would be omitted by the victims of the Nkrumah dictatorship which Brockway upheld).

Only a couple of years ago, the Nigerian government which had achieved independence had a spot of bother. It seems that some of their fellow black capitalists who lived in a part of the country they called Biafra wanted independence from their own black capitalist brothers. There was a lot of oil in the Port Harcourt area where they came from and they didn’t see why they should share the swag with the other black capitalists in Lagos. So there was another little fracas which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Africans, Nigerians and Biafran workers and their wives and children, being caught in a most murderous bloodbath or starved to death. But it seems that this was independence that the Labourites didn’t approve of. You see, these were the days of the Wilson government, and the fake socialists who were then managing British capitalism preferred to pay ball with the Nigerian government because this was in the interests of British Business (as a searing article in, of all places, The Guardian made clear when it was all over). And now that Nigerian independence has been finally won and defended against black and white alike, the net result of all the suffering and carnage is that African workers get a tanner an hour.

L. E. Weidberg

The Real Issue in Czechoslovakia (1938)

From the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

All sorts of people who ought to be able to remember the way in which fine slogans in the last War were used to cover secret imperialist aims have walked into the same trap again. This time it is Czechoslovakia, the argument being that the way, and the only way, to help democracy is to prevent the Germans in Czechoslovakia from carrying out the desire of the majority of them to come under German rule. Those who hold this view about democracy are prepared to go to war if necessary in order to preserve Czechoslovakia. It is, therefore, interesting to see that the special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, who wrote up the whole question on August 20th, frankly admits that democracy is not the issue at all.

He shows how the capitalists of Germany are interested in the economic and the military penetration of South-Eastern Europe (the second as a means to the first), and how various countries are likely to act in the event of war, then he adds: —

. . . The true character of the struggle that is going on even now (though as yet without arms) is fully understood in the Balkan countries. It is not a struggle for democracy, but for national independence, an independence imperilled by German “peaceful penetration” and in danger of being destroyed altogether if Germany takes up arms against Czechoslovakia. If Czechoslovakia disappears there will, in time, be no genuinely independent countries left in Eastern or South-Eastern Europe.

It should be noticed that this statement appeared in the Manchester Guardian, which backs the policy of supporting Czechoslovakia against Germany at all costs. Mr. H. N. Brailsford, who takes the same line as the “Guardian," admitted in Reynolds Illustrated News (August 21st, 1938) that what we are witnessing is a clash between two imperialisms, the German trying to dominate Europe, and the French trying to prevent it.

The real issue is whether Hitler shall overthrow or the French retain this barrier that closes the road to the corn and oil of the Lower Danube. As always, since the Entente Cordiale of 1903, two armed Imperialisms are struggling for strategic posts.

Another factor which seriously occupies the minds of the French and British rulers is the possibility of Germany and Russia coming together again. As the Manchester Guardian correspondent says: —

Like the Franco-Soviet Pact, the alliance between Moscow and Prague is chiefly intended to counteract the chances of an alliance between Moscow and Berlin. (Manchester Guardian, August 20th, 1938.)

The Manchester Guardian and Mr. H. N. Brailsford are saying no more than the truth when they admit that democracy is not the issue dividing the rival imperialisms.

The argument, therefore that the British workers should be prepared to go to war for democracy, as represented by Czechoslovakia, needs to be amended to give due recognition to the fact that the British and French and German ruling class are not at all interested in democracy, but in world power as a means of safeguarding profits.

Still the advocates of war on behalf of Czechoslovakia, have a further argument. They say that, no matter what the motives of the ruling class may be, democracy will incidentally be preserved if we resist Germany. The answer to that is that it flies in the face of all experience. Another European war would be the signal instantly for the suppression of democracy in all the war making countries without the least likelihood that the end of the war would see democracy restored even to its present state. The last war was to make the world “safe for democracy." Instead it made the world safe for Mussolini, Hitler and all the other dictators, and in this country it paved the way for the 1927 Trade Union Act, which whittled away the powers of the Unions. '

It can be readily admitted that there is an evil side to the incorporation of independent small countries into large empires, as this invariably involves attempts to suppress local culture, language and customs, with consequent embitterment, but is it worth losing millions of lives to prevent this? If it were then we would be committed to the doctrine that war is worth while to secure the break-up of the British Empire (as the Communists used to argue), and the next step would be the policy of getting the assistance of rival empires in order to do this.

The Socialist answer to all such arguments is that the lesser evils cannot be remedied except by victory in the struggle for Socialism, and this victory is not helped but hindered by war. Our task is to go on preaching Socialism (which includes internationalism), and organising the workers of the world for the achievement of their emancipation. Only then will real democracy be gained, and local culture and language be safeguarded against persecution.

Edgar Hardcastle

What price reform (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a social reform since embodied in legislation became law not because the ruling class or its political representatives were moved by the plight of certain sections of the population, but primarily because advantages accrued to capitalism. Not benevolence but the profit consideration was the motive.

A great deal of evidence is available to substantiate this view, and that it actually accumulates almost daily is evident from what follows. In two days’ issues of the Manchester Guardian were found the following three examples.

One: Speaking of the position of young widows with children and the inadequacy of their Widows' Allowances so that “ they simply had not enough money to live on ” and were being forced to put their children in nurseries and go out to work, Dr. J. C. Heenan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, commented: “It need hardly be said that it costs the country more to maintain nurseries than it would do to give widows adequate allowances.” (March 27th, 1958.)

Two: On the 25th of March the Maintenance Orders Bill was before the House of Commons. Now, this Bill is ostensibly designed to ensure that any man who deserts his wife and has had a Court Order for maintenance made out against him will not be able to bilk payment by simply moving about from place to place. The method by which it is hoped to ensure this is by an attachment of the man’s earnings, a form of P.A.Y.E. The essential point here is not the advantage that there may be for the women, but again the L.S.D. motive. Mr. Renton, Joint Under-Secretary to the Home Office, moving the third reading of the Bill, stated that the Bill dealt with the problem of a woman who could not get maintenance and a man who drifted into prison because he had failed to keep up regular payments more by incompetence than by malice. Continuing, he said: “More than 3,000 prisoners were now sleeping three in a cell. Prisoners are costing us (sic) nearly £6 per week per head and we ought to try and avoid sending thousands of men a year to prison for defaulting payment.” (March 26th, 1958.)

And, three: In 1955 a Committee was appointed by the Minister of Labour to investigate “industrial health.” The Report of this Committee’s first survey was published on the 26th of March, and it was given some prominence by the Manchester Guardian devoting an editorial to it, headed, “ Keeping Well at Work.” Among other things, the editorial informed us that in over one in four of nearly 800 workplaces visited in Halifax (employing some 7,700 people) washing facilities and general cleanliness were considered unsatisfactory. And Halifax was chosen not because its regarded as particularly unhealthy in any way but because it is “a concise industrial town with a fair diversity of industries.” The editorial’s summing-up paragraph is a little masterpiece of simple, lucid Guardian language. “ It is both more profitable and more sensible to spend money on keeping people well than to grant sick leave; and the best work is usually done in the best-kept places.” (March 26th, 1958.)

And there you have the Holiest of all Holy Trinitys— Church, State, and Press—lamenting the plight of young widows, deserted wives, and the working-class in general; yet withal their reforming zeal and burning fervour against injustices never leaving out monetary calculations, but all the time carefully weighing the price of one reform against another.

Chris Walsh

News of Party Activity (1975)

Party News from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two more successful debates have taken place recently, and we give short reports of both below.

Labour Party

A good-sized audience attended Ealing Town Hall on 6th June for our debate with the Labour MP Sydney Bidwell. The subject “Labour Party and Socialism — is there a connection?” was chosen by Bidwell himself; he also asked for last-minute changes in the speaking arrangements. After he had thus called the tune, it turned out to be an atrociously flat one.

Bidwell spent more than half his opening twenty minutes on the positions he held and the importance of the work he did. In the remaining time he spoke of the Labour Party as a loose movement not bound by principles and of its being supported by trade unionists. No attempt was made to explain “socialism”, or the political purposes of the Labour Party.

Our representative, Comrade Barltrop, defined Socialism and gave an analysis of capitalism. Being a loose movement without principles meant simply that Labour existed on the support of non-Socialists. Labour’s history was of reform legislation and — on the quoted evidence of many Labourites themselves — this left capitalism and the situation of the working class unchanged. The Labour Party was an anti-socialist, anti-working-class party.

A period of questions to both speakers showed unmistakably what the audience thought. Bidwell responded to every instance of the perniciousness of Labour policies by saying that the Tribune group, of which he was chairman, disowned all the disagreeable things. His closing speech was received silently, while our speaker’s summing-up of the Socialist case was enthusiastically received. Literature sales for the evening were excellent.

Common Market

In a debate arranged by the Philippa Fawcett College on 30th May on the Common Market Referendum issue William Shelton (Tory MP for Streatham) spoke in favour; John Fraser (Labour MP for Norwood) urged a “No” vote; Sue Slipman (NUS Executive) also said “No”; and C. May (SPGB) put the Socialist position.

Shelton argued the benefits of staying in. He spoke of the greater opportunities for capital investment which would give more jobs; the military advantages; and the myths put out by the anti-Marketeers to frighten the electorate. Fraser’s case was that membership had not brought the promised benefits and would create difficulties for the Labour Party in carrying out its programme. Sue Slipman’s remarks can be summed-up as “student nationalism”; her concern was that European influence would dictate how our colleges and universities would operate.

Comrade May challenged the other speakers on the poverty of their contributions. He analyzed the EEC’s capitalism and pointed out that the problems of unemployment, housing, poverty etc. were features of capitalism everywhere. All the other contributors had to offer the working class was work (and that only if things went to plan).

The SPGB would vote neither “Yes” nor “No” but register votes for Common Ownership: a world system to deal with world problems. Socialism would organize production solely for use and abolish all markets. Such a society could solve the major problems. When the majority understood and wanted it they would take political action to build a world where, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “Man will be known not for what he has, but for what he is” — a refreshing thought compared with the abysmal standard of contribution on the Referendum issue.

There was an audience of about 70.

The Guardian Doesn't Apologize

On 1st June we held a rally at Trafalgar Square on the theme “Common Ownership not Common Market”. The Guardian published a photograph of part of the audience, with a caption describing the meeting as an “anti-EEC” rally. Two letters of correction, one from a regular contributor to this journal and the other from a speaker at the rally, produced only the reply that The Guardian would try to print a clarification of our position at some time. A further letter to the Editor, saying that printing one of the letters now was the only useful way of rectifying the matter, received no answer. Presumably The Guardian has varied its old slogan to: “Comment is sacred, but facts are free.”

A Silly Weekend

We were recently in touch with London Weekend Television over the possibility of a Party speaker taking part in a discussion of London rates. At their request, we sent a three-minute script outlining the Socialist case on this question. London Weekend’s reply was that this was not appropriate to their programme because: “You have no particular proposal to make other than that an unspecified form of socialism would wipe out the need to pay taxes and rates.”

Well, it isn’t much of a proposal when you think of it, is it? All these people want to do is abolish capitalism and change the whole of society, and get rid of money and have free access instead. What’s special about doing that?

What the reply reveals is that TV discussion programmes want only trivia, of course. If our script had proposed replacing rates with a Tax on Amorous Glances, or putting comic hats on parking meters, we should have been invited to send a speaker to sit facing an interviewer with corrugated brow asking "But is it viable ?” — and, no doubt, a couple of economists saying earnestly “What about the cost- push and demand-pull?”

Interesting Figures

One feature of the Common Market Referendum voting was the large number of ballot papers recorded as “spoiled”, i.e. marked otherwise than as required. The total over Britain was nearly 55,000, and there were 6,874 in Greater London.

At every election we urge people (except where there is a Socialist candidate) to write “Socialism” across the ballot papers as a means of registering what they want. How many did so on this occasion?

Trafalgar Square

A successful 2½-hour meeting was held with an attentive audience of around 500 on a fine but occasionally chilly afternoon. A total of £14.60 literature was sold from the two literature tables, in addition to sales by members; the final total was probably in the region of £18. Two collections realized £21.06.

58 members were present and the three speakers dealt with the subject of the Common Market extremely well. Several members of the audience took advantage of the roving microphone to ask the platform questions, and it was a most successful propaganda meeting.

Classes, but not class antagonism. (1930)

From the April 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Manchester Guardian” (January 11th) has a delightfully phrased hope about class relationships. The Socialist points out that under Capitalism there is an owning class which lives by owning, and a non-owning class which has to work for the owners. The remedy for the resulting class conflict is to abolish private ownership and the class division. The “Manchester Guardian” has a brighter idea :—

“We have got to eliminate from the industrial state that rancour between the privileged and the disinherited, of which the heated controversies about the ‘dole’ are the latest form.”

A really choice piece of Liberal impudence. Let us keep the privileged and the disinherited, but let us find out how to induce the latter not to harbour hard thoughts about the former !

S.

Editorial: The Printing Dispute (1959)

Editorial from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the ordinary trade union point of view of a struggle to enforce more pay and shorter hours, the printers' strike seems to have been well conceived and executed and well timed.

The claim was for a 10 per cent. increase of pay and a reduction of 3½ hours, from 43½ to 40. After lengthy negotiations the employers offered 2½ per cent. and 1 hour, but tied up the offer with a long list of demands for the reorganisation of the industry to increase production. The Unions rejected this offer and rejected also the employers manoeuvre of trying to get them to take the claim to arbitration. Having taken a ballot of their members the printing unions came out on strike on June 17th, over 100,000 men and women being involved. The dispute affected the Newspaper Society and the British Federation of Master Printers, but not the Newspaper Proprietors' Association or the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, so while the Provincial newspapers, the magazines and periodicals and general printers were brought to a standstill the national and Sunday papers and London evening papers carried on, as did a certain number of firms which accepted the Unions' demands. A second dispute affecting printing ink threatened to stop the other papers, but this was avoided.

The timing was favourable for the workers because trade was recovering from the depression, unemployment was falling and the imminence of a general election made the employers, the Government and the big political parties worried lest a long-drawn out strike should hold up the very big volume of literature of various kinds needed for the election.

In the third week of the strike, discussions started under the chairmanship of Lord Birkett. Towards the end of July, at our time of going to press, the employers made an improved offer, of 3½ per cent. increase of pay, and a reduction of 1½ hours. The unions rejected this. They considered that the substantial concessions they were prepared to make to make to increase productivity justified more than 3½ per cent. on pay and at least an undertaking of a further reduction of hours at a later date. Settlement was then Expected at 4½ per cent. proposed by Lord Birkett.

The Sanctimonious “Guardian”

The dispute produced several surprising, diverting and instructive incidents. As was to be expected the Manchester Guardian led the Press in its sanctimonious comment of June 13th, laying down the usual employers' line that everyone believes in the right of the workers to strike so long as they never exercise the right:

The right to strike is a fundamental human freedom, but its exercise ought to be justified by some great cause. There is no great cause in the printing dispute—it is a piece of market bargaining over money.

Can anyone remember the Manchester Guardian ever supporting a strike (except a strike of foreign workers)? The Guardian editor’s further remark was equally hypocritical.

In the nineteenth century, when Britain had few industrial rivals, and when the main domestic industries had well-hedged fields to themselves, a strike or lock-out did not matter much, except in terms of personal suffering.

If some diligent student were to study the Guardian’s attitude to strikes in the nineteenth century, we do not doubt that he would find that the Guardian always managed to find overwhelming reasons for condemning those strikers too.

Lord Sourgrapes

It might have been expected that the newspapers that continued to be published would have solidly defended the employers, though Labour Party supporters doubtless hoped that their two mouthpieces, the official Daily Herald and the unofficial Daily Mirror, would line up with the workers against the employers. It turned out otherwise and some of the liveliest abuse during the strike was to be found in a fierce battle between the Daily Express and the other two. Beaverbrook’s Daily Express roundly accused the big magazine combines of having precipitated an unnecessary strike by their "tough and unaccommodating attitude," and said (4th July) that the provincial newspapers were the “victims of the tycoons of the magazine trade. They are paying a heavy price for their association with these richer more powerful and more belligerent allies." The biggest printing union, NATSOPA, promptly endorsed the charge. The Mirror and. Odhams (the latter owns the People and the Herald) are the “magazine tycoons" referred to, and they angrily denied the accusation. The Mirror of July 6th, in a slashing leader headed “ Lord Sourgrapes—and the drop of poison," explained that Beaverbrook has no magazines except “a couple of inconspicuous comics," called it a “smear campaign,” and passed the buck to the smaller printing firms and smaller newspapers who feared that the Unions' demands would put them out of business. The People (July 5th) blamed the Unions for not having let the claim go to arbitration in the first place. The Herald itself tried to ride both horses. It held that the men have a good case for their original demands, but that the employers “think they have a good case for insisting on increased productivity as a condition of any wage rise" (June 19th). It tried to escape its dilemma by blaming the Government for not immediately setting up a court of inquiry, which, of course, the Unions did not want, anyway.

The “Principle” of Shorter Hours

A weakness of the trade union position (to be found in many other industries as well) is the ambiguous attitude to shorter hours. Mr. Willis, one of the Union leaders and Chairman of the T.U.C., declared at the conference of the Miners' Union that the printers were striking “in support of the principle for which every trade unionist would fight, the shorter week." (News Chronicle, July 8th.) But what are the facts? Though the standard hours are now about four less than in 1938 the actual hours worked in industry are no lower than they were then. The claims for shorter hours have turned into claims for more overtime pay. In 1946 printing hours were reduced by 1½ to 43½, but within a few years the actual average hours of male workers in the paper and printing trade were higher than they were before, and in 1957 were 47 a week.

Confusion about Arbitration and Impartiality

The trade unions are in a muddle about arbitration. The printing unions consistently opposed it on the ground that it would not be “impartial,” but later in the dispute they were asking that Lord Monckton be invited—though he declined the invitation—to preside over the negotiations “to advise, guide and control” the discussions, but not to have power to be final arbiter. Lord Monckton was for four years Tory Minister of Labour (described by the General Secretary of the railwaymen in 1955 as “a very able friend of the N.U.R.! ”) and is now chairman of the Midland Bank, which refuse; to recognise the union of bank employees! Arbitration is established by the Government to settle industrial disputes and it cannot be impartial in the sense of deciding the merits of a case on some abstract principle of humanity. No such principles are laid down for the present court or the one abolished last year. The job of the arbitrators is to find a basis on which the workers can be persuaded to carry on working and the employers can keep in business—with, as an inescapable background, the continuation of Capitalism.

To illustrate the general confusion in the trade union movement it has only to be recalled that last year the T.U.C. and many trade union leaders were deriding the Government for abolishing the arbitration tribunal, which other unions declare they will not have anyway. The Daily Herald then (October 24h, 1958) called it a move to help the employers by abolishing the “referee to see fair play.”

And in the present dispute Mr. Willis, in the matter of strike pickets, was calling on the Government to observe “strict impartiality” (Times, June 26th), as if a government committed to keeping Capitalism going (as all governments must be that take on the administration of Capitalism) could “impartially” stand aside and not defend the property rights of the propertied class.

The International Aspect

The fact is that the trade union movement still broadly accepts Capitalism though prepared to strike against the Capitalists. This was clearly shown by the attitude of the printing unions. They belong to the printing workers Trade Union International, the International Graphical Federation, and some at least of the continental unions acceded to the request that they should advise their members not to do “black” work sent abroad during the strike. But in the middle of the strike NATSOPA released a plan it had drawn up suggesting a deal between the British unions and the British employers. If the latter would concede the demands on hours and wages, in return the unions would cooperate on a joint productivity council: “ The essence of the plan is that the prosperous big groups with stable and profitable home markets will help the small and medium printers, and particularly the printing concerns working on export printing. The plan should make British printers highly competitive in markets abroad.” (News Chronicle, June 23rd, 1959.)

So the unions, while fighting the employers, are quite prepared to collaborate with them to capture foreign markets—where, of course, they will clash with foreign printers who. again with the collaboration of the workers, will be resisting the invasion and trying to counter attack. This, of course, makes nonsense of the object of the printers' trade union international: “To safeguard the economic, occupational and general interests of graphical workers in all countries and to promote their solidarity.” (Our italics.)

In the nineteenth century Socialist critics of the trade union movement used to ridicule the illogicality of workers fighting the employers in the industrial field and electing the same people to Parliament and supporting them nationally. The present outlook of the trade unions shows that they have still a long way to go before they realise that the workers’ interest demands real international working class solidarity against the employers—and for Socialism.