News in Review: Algeria (1962)

The News in Review column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Algeria

In Algeria and in France the blood still flows.

The shootings, the bombings, the threats—even the publicity-worthy attempt, by the OAS to extort money from Brigitte Bardot—are typical of a bitter struggle between nationalists and colonialists.

Recent events have been bad enough. But according to some correspondents they are only the lull before another terrible storm breaks over Algeria.

What has happened to de Gaulle, the strong man who was going to clear up this mess? Whatever local influence the French President has had on the struggle—and there is no denying that he has had some—he is pretty well powerless to resolve the basic dispute.

The Moslems are still adamantly for an Algerian Algeria. The settlers stand firm for French control of the country.

Post-war history has been notable for its bloody nationalist struggles as the colonial powers have been pushed out of country after country, not always going without a fight.

This is what can be expected when capitalism throws up its disputes over property and the right to exploit a country’s workers.

That is basically what the trouble in Algeria is about. Within capitalism such struggles must go on.

Weak politicians can certainly do nothing about this. Strong politicians may make a show of doing something but end up no better than the rest.

Pay Pause

There was, of course, much moaning in the House when they got the news that the pay pause had been defied by the award to the electricity workers.

No moaning in the power stations, though. The workers were bound to resist the pause, because it is a threat to their living standards. That is what drove the teachers to demonstrate and what may cause the civil servants to start working to rule.

For the workers, then, it is simply a matter of fighting for their interests.

And for the employers?

For some of them the pay pause was a welcome thing. But for others it was not so simple.

Some weeks before the electricity award many private employers in the road haulage industry had chosen to ignore the Minister of Labour’s ruling that a pay increase and a cut in hours could not operate until the first of this month. The employees of these firms got their rise and reduction in hours in the middle of last November.

Why did the road haulage firms give in? Simply, they reckoned up the cost of surrender. Then they balanced it against the cost of the strikes and other protests which would follow a postponement of the rise. They found that capitulation was the cheaper course. So they paid up.

Which goes to show how capitalism’s divided interests extend to the employers themselves and often defeat the capitalists’ own ends.

Scooter Slump

One by one, the never-had-it-so-good industries are feeling the unaccustomed draught of recession.

Cars, television sets and refrigerators have already had their slumps. Now a side-show industry in the post war consumer goods boom has taken a fall.

Scooters and mopeds took their share of the boom, winning a lot of young people away from the bicycles they used to pedal around. Like the rest, they had their glorious summer in 1958 when the H.P. controls were off and everything sold like hot cakes.

This was the time when Raleigh Industries, already famous for their pedal cycles came in to try to take their share of the scooter and moped market.

Since then times have become hard. Lambretta recently had to cut their prices drastically in answer to their competitors’ reductions. Now Raleigh, who have already suffered in the slump in bicycle’ sales have announced that in March they will close their factory at Smethwick which turns out their scooters and mopeds. Fifteen hundred people will probably lose their jobs.

Perhaps this only amounts to a recession from which the stricken industries will soon recover. But there are enough of them in trouble now to cause fear that it is more serious than that.

Capitalism is still a system of ups and downs. Its spells of relative prosperity cannot have any permanent value. Workers should not wait until they are on the dole queue before they learn the truth of this.

Lib-Lab?

It is early days yet for the Labour Party seriously to consider an alliance with the Liberals. Mr. Gaitskell still has enough hope of becoming Prime Minister in his own right to explain his description of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s suggestion of a Lib.-Lab. link-up as “silly.”

It is safe to assume, though, that the suggestion finds rather more favour among the Labour Party members who arc getting sick of being on the losing side. If the Tories give them one or two more drubbings at the polls, anything could happen.

Nothing new in this, of course. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 blamed their alliance with the Liberals for their failure to run capitalism. They swore that they would never again allow their hands to be so tied.

But having the 1945 government to themselves made no difference—the Labour Party failed again. The best that some of them can now suggest is to revive the idea of a Liberal alliance— which they themselves told us was discredited by the events of 1924 and 1929.

There is nothing surprising in this. The Labour Party do not exist to propound political principles. Like any other capitalist party, they are out first of all for power.

This goes for the Liberals as well. They have made it plain that they would only consider an alliance which was worth their while in terms of Members of Parliament.

All good, clean, cynical fun this. May we be excused if we do not see anything to laugh at?

News in Review: Hurrah for the NCB (1962)

The News in Review column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hurrah for the NCB

Who was it who once prayed to be protected from his friends?

When he was plain Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, Lord Chandos was a prominent member of the Conservative opposition which duelled with the Attlee government over its nationalisation bills. They fought in the House of Commons all day and. sometimes, all night as well. So effective was their propaganda that to many voters nationalisation became a very-dirty word.

But what is Lord Chandos saying about nationalisation now that he is a big industrial boss, chief of the mighty Associated Electrical Industries combine and of the Institute of Directors?

“Nationalisation of a fairly substantial sector of industry has come to stay. Whatever I may have thought in the first place about the wisdom of this policy, it is quite clear that every loyal citizen must try to make our nationalised industries work efficiently … As an industrialist I want cheap fuel and reliable supplies and I believe that with a little more working together that is what you [Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board] will secure for us.”

Lord Robens need not feel embarrassed at this new friendship. Nationalisation was designed to give just what Lord Chandos wants — cheap and reliable supplies of vital commodities.

The only pity now is that Lord Chandos did not tell us this some years ago, when he was spreading the fairy tale that nationalisation had something to do with Socialism.

New Hospitals

One of the things which have missed out on the post war boom is the hospital. Over a fifth of those taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 were built before the American Civil War. Nearly half of them were built before the beginning of this century.

What has been done to put this to rights? Since the last war only one large general hospital has gone up—in Northern Ireland.

To the reformers who have been worried about this, the recent government White Paper must have come as a ray of hope. For plans are being laid to spend nearly £800 million during the next ten years to give us, in the words of the White Paper.” . . . the physical equipment and the pattern and the setting which will everywhere place the most modern treatment at the service of patients.”

This sounds fine. Who can disapprove of bigger and better hospitals? But we have heard this sort of promise before.

We heard it about the roads and the railways and about the Health Service itself. For Capitalism is full of problems which are left to fester until a government decides to tackle them with heavy expenditure.

Many of these grandiose plans have been axed out of recognition in successive economic crises, when, the government has been looking for ways of reducing its expenditure.

There will be more economic crises. Which means that there will be more cuts in expenditure. Which means that Health Minister Powell’s beautiful hospitals may never see the light of day.

Expensive Royalty

Many tongues were clucked at the news that the Royal Family is to have some more money spent on them.

It must cost around £400 a year in fees alone to send the Prince of Wales to Gordonstoun School. The fees, says the school, vary with the parents’ financial circumstances; which does not mean, of course, that the school is full of clever, deserving boys whose parents pay no fees because they cannot afford them.

It will cost about £85,000 to renovate the wing of Kensington Palace where Princess Margaret and her husband are living—£15,000 more than the original estimate.

Some critics say that Prince Charles should be sent to a comprehensive school, like a sizeable part of his subjects. Others think that the Princess should be content to live in a council semi-detached, which to them seems roomy enough for a couple with only one child.

These views are way off the mark. The Royal Family stand for the possessions, rights and privileges of the British ruling class. It is, therefore, only appropriate that they themselves should live in lavish privilege.

And nobody has yet explained how sending a prince to a council school, or sticking a princess in a small house, would help the working class parents who struggle to keep their children at school past the age of fifteen and who have to renovate their house during their summer holiday.

These problems are typical of what faces workers all over the world, under monarchies and in republics.

While the tongue-cluckers do their measly, pointless sums, Capitalism grinds merrily on, providing a fat living for a few of its people and condemning the rest to dull poverty.

Tory Unrest

The Government took on a slight list last month, under the blast of criticism from many quarters.

The strikes of railwaymen and engineers encouraged The Guardian to sigh that, although they reproved the strikers, industrial unrest was the inevitable result of the Government’s policy on wages. Other critics thought that the trouble was caused because the Government had not explained the pay pause properly to the workers.

Some standard bearers for free enterprise were disappointed at the Government’s refusal to interfere with the free enterprise take-over bid from ICI for Courtaulds. Labour had a go on Lord Home’s criticism of UNO. To cap it all Tory M.P. Sir Harry Legge-Bourke suggested that fellow Old Etonian Macmillan is getting past it and should hand over to a younger man.

It would be interesting to hear how a government could explain a wage freeze so that the frozen workers accepted it. Workers sell their energies to their employers, which means that they are bound to resist any effort to keep down the price of those energies, whatever tricky name it goes under.

Such problems are typical of the confusion of Capitalism and are bound to cause unrest as the Government—any government—grapples with them. Critics and rebels may flex their muscles impressively, but when it is their turn to do the grappling they never shape any better than the men they have criticised.

The fact is that the individuals who say they are in charge of the affairs of British Capitalism really have little control over events. And that goes for their critics as well.

So it does not really matter whether or not Macmillan manages to ride this latest storm. We shall still all be in the same boat together.

News in Review: Respectable revolt (1965)

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

Respectable revolt

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

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

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

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

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

There is another way of losing your pay.

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

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

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

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

Unless, that is, he is being mealy mouthed.

Everlasting Milk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vietnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gordon-Walker and immigration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News in Review: Mr & Mrs Average (1961)

The News in Review column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr & Mrs Average

According to a new Stationery Office publication—Britain, 1961 Edition— “ Mr. and Mrs. Average " are described as having a TV set, vacuum cleaner and occasionally a washing machine and a 'fridge. The acquisition of these goods is equated by advertisements, films and magazines to true, lasting happiness. We all know the phrases “No more washday fatigue with Blank's wonderful washing machine", etc. The mere fact of possessing these goods, however, does not produce happiness as soon as the gadget is installed. On the contrary, they often produce problems, mainly financial, and occasionally their "happy" possessors are driven to desperation, as in the case of a young couple in Birmingham, who clearly were "Mr. and Mrs. Average". The husband was the envy of the neighbourhood. He had bought a five-piece living room suite, washing machine, bedroom suite and TV set on hire purchase, and had redecorated his 15/- a week house from top to bottom. On 28th December I960, with the Christmas decorations still hanging gaily, the husband, wife and their 2 year old daughter were found dead in their gleaming, gas-filled kitchen. The wife was expecting her second child the following week. A note said that they worried about their hire purchase debts.

Never had it so good . . .

Airways Strike

The maintenance staff of BOAC and BEA staged a four-hour stoppage on Wednesday, January 2nd, in support of a wage claim that has been going through the laborious negotiating machinery. This, of course, caused some dislocation of airline schedules. This undoubtedly caused a lot of hardship to some passengers, but the unfortunate fact is that for the aircraft workers one of the few ways in which the employers and their own union officials can be gingered up is by resort to a strike. This was bound to be unpopular: remember how the press and the Government castigated the railwaymen and the busmen in the past for their strike action that "inconvenienced the public"?

But what happened when the strikers at the airport reported for duty after the four-hour stoppage? BEA immediately suspended them for a further 24 hours, causing six times as much inconvenience to the public. 

One would have thought that this would have brought howls of protest from the press and Government. But the only newspaper comment was typified by the Daily Mail of January 6th, which said that BEA was determined to push home the lesson to the strikers. It seems that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

On the Brink

Both Russia and the United States waxed indignant about each other's interference in the Laos disturbances. Sheer hypocrisy of course, because they had both been dabbling their fingers in that particular pie.

The Russians have supplied arms to Captain Kong Lae's army. Since 1954, the United States has pumped between forty and fifty million dollars into Laos. Washington wants value for its money: in 1958, it played its part in the dismissal of Prince Souvanha Phouma's government, after the elections in May of that year had returned a lot of communist members.

China is probably interested in the strategic potential of Laos, as a buffer between her and SEATO member Thailand. The Americans, notoriously trigger-neurotic in the Far East, seem to want the country more firmly under their control, and not simply neutralist.

The Laos dispute may be small in itself, but it is a miniature of the clashing interests of two giant power blocs. It could be another Korea. Or even a Sarajevo or a Danzig.

This must be the fear which overhangs every minor upheaval in the world. We are as far away from peace as ever.

Yes to De Gaulle

General de Gaulle came to power to joyful motor horns tooting the rhythm of Algerie francaise in the streets of Paris. This was an exuberant indication of the hopes of the general's supporters, that he would ruthlessly crush the FLN and maintain French rule over Algeria.

In the event de Gaulle, by resolving to come to terms with Algerian nationalism, has shown the more realistic assessment of the interests of French capitalism. In this, like many other politicians, he has disappointed a lot of his former supporters.

Last month's affirmative vote for the general's proposals gave the go-ahead to the organisation of another referendum, to be held in Algeria alone. This could express a preference for an independent country.

The second referendum will be held if security conditions in Algeria allow. This could mean that there will soon be further talks between the French government and the FLN, and that the end of the present fighting in Algeria may be in sight.

Evidently de Gaulle was determined to get his way. The questions in the referendum were loaded, the government hogged most of the propaganda and left the French army in no doubt as to how it should vote.

If this is the beginning of the road to peace in Algeria, there is no cause for another joyful tooting of horns. We all know that there will be other Algerias, with their own bloodshed and misery.

Canadian Illusion

It was not so very long ago that some of the air and sea lines in this country were working hectic overtime to accommodate all the people who were clamouring to emigrate to Canada.

These people must have gone with great expectations of a country full of good things, where everybody was happy. How has it turned out?

It is now expected that this month, Canada’s unemployment will reach ten per cent, of its working population, which is the highest since the war, and several times higher than in Great Britain.

The solutions which have been recommended for Canada's slump are not new. Some economists favour higher import tariffs and a strong effort to replace imported goods with home products. Others advocate a freer economy, with fewer fiscal restrictions.

Perhaps these are the same economists who were telling us, only yesterday, that the days of boom and slump belonged to an old era of ignorance and were gone for ever.

The emigrants must know differently. But there is little hope that they will lose the illusions which they took west with them.

Some may return to this country, or travel on to other lands. Others will stay in Canada. But wherever they go capitalism, and its problems, will be waiting to greet them.

Battle of the Roads

Despite the reduction in road deaths over the recent Christmas period as compared with that of 1959, the Ministry of Transport and the various road safety organisations are still faced with the task of exhorting the restless tide of humanity, to walk and drive carefully. Each year hundreds of proposals for road safety are considered. One of the main difficulties is that of the separation of pedestrians and traffic, but since this can only be accomplished at enormous cost, it is not considered practical, and consequently palliatives and not remedies are preferred.

There is a mistaken belief among some people that these road problems are only a recent phenomenon, but as long ago as 1846 the daily newspapers were complaining of the inadequacies of the principal thoroughfares and of the fact that all that could be done was to patch up and mend. In today’s battle of the roads one can see all the contradictory nature of capitalist society. Whilst Mr. Marples is making his appeal, we are being told about the super-petrols which are supposed to make cars go faster, not to mention the prestige value of the bigger and faster car.

But big problems are often solved by simple remedies. The question of cost in relation to profit is at the root not only of the road problem, but of most of the major problems facing society today. The road problem is aggravated by the thousands of commercial and business vehicles which congest the highways and bye-ways, taking back and forth goods which have covered the same ground several times before. There are also thousands of small, medium, and large size shops selling identical goods to the people in the already overcrowded towns and cities. We can only wonder that the accident rate is not higher than the statistics show.

Appeals for less density of commerce and industry in the larger cities have failed. London, for instance, seems to be going the same way as New York and this fact alone should dispel any illusions the long suffering travelling public have of ever avoiding the “ peak hour ” chaos—a battle of the roads with no holds barred.

News in Review: Two classes (1963)

The News in Review column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

Two classes

We are still, the government anxiously assured the voters in the recent by-elections, living in the Age of Affluence. Very well. As the Conservatives promise that their new government will bring in a more vital, more prosperous Britain, as the Labour Party bid for our votes with a vision of this country as a vast test-tube, what is the latest from the poverty and riches front?

The Co-operative Permanent Building Society reported that half the people who buy homes through them earn less than twenty pounds a week and that a quarter earn less than sixteen pounds a week. Two-thirds of the houses bought through the Co-op. cost less than £3,000. Anyone who has lowered himself into the perilous pit of working class house ownership will appreciate what these figures mean in terms of size and quality of houses and of struggle to pay off the loan on them. House owners are supposed to be among the most affluent of the working class but the Co-op's report shows that none of them live in a castle and that buying a house relieves nobody of the usual working class battle to get by.

Housing of another sort cropped in one more of those conferences—this time of the National Housing and Town Planning Council. Dr. Eric M. Sigsworth, lecturer in economic history at the University of York, said that there will be three million unfit houses or slums in this country by 1973. Now this is after the promised speed up in slum clearance. Perhaps they would clear more if they slowed down?

Many workers think that the road out of poverty, bad housing and the like, is one of loyal obedience to their employer. Among other firms, the Ford Motor Company have encouraged this idea. They give silver and gold badges to the men who have done long service, and who have kept essential machinery going when there was a strike on. They also give these men certain staff and pension privileges. But Fords are now in the midst of another efficiency drive and what account does that take of loyalty? The drive has meant that four of the gold and silver badge men have been sent back to the factory floor, which means that they have been demoted and that they have lost their privileges. If they did not like the way the company was repaying their long service, the lour men could have accepted dismissal. Which must have caused some hard, rueful, thinking in the loyal heads of Dagenham.

Everything very normal, in other words, for the working class. Nothing changing, either, for their social betters. The will of Sir George Usher, an industrialist who died last October, showed that he was worth over £2 million at the end of his life. Each of his sons inherited over a million pounds which must have come from somebody's hard work, but not theirs.

The Finance Accounts for the United Kingdom 1962-3 showed that it is still a paying business to be a figurehead for British capitalism. Annuities paid to the Royal Family amounted to £166,000 during the year. Not bad for reading out speeches which somebody else has written for you, shaking hands and generally doing as you are told.

Will the household budgets of any readers of the Socialist Standard be affected by the increase in the fees of Eton? Anyway, it is instructive to hear about them and to ask whether every child really has the equal chance in education the politicians are always promising. Eton has gone up to £554 a year. If you can't run to that you can try for Harrow or Winchester (both £498) or Charterhouse (£492). Or there is always the local Council Primary, which costs a little less and has other differences besides.

Getting to know you

It is a common fallacy that a Minister who is familiar with the problems which his department has to deal with is able to solve them that much more easily. And, of course, it gives a boost to people's morale if a Minister appears in their midst, looks at their conditions and clicks his tongue in sympathy. They forget that when he gets back to Whitehall he is so often quite powerless to do anything about the conditions.

So it has come about that successive Ministers of Housing have always made an early tour of the worst of the slums as if looking at them would make the slums go away instead of increasing, as they in fact do. And so it was that Lord Hailsham (as he then was), when he was put in charge of the unemployment problem in the North East, went straight off to tour the area—cloth cap and all. But any personal experience which Hailsham might have gained about the North East was wasted, because Douglas-Home replaced him with Edward Heath.

Now Mr. Heath is supposed to be a very astute man. Did he, then, abandon the pretence about the usefulness of a personal appearance? One of his first appointments was to fly off to the North East to see for himself what unemployed men and their families, and idle shipyards and factories, look like.

Labour and the TSR2

One of the latest babies of British capitalism, proudly wheeled out by its doting parents, is the TSR-2.

This aircraft, it is claimed, can do almost anything by way of airborne destruction. In its ability to perform the most horrifying deeds, in the range of its destructive power, in its diabolical versatility, the TSR-2 is something like a precocious, delinquent child.

These horrors are going to cost something like a couple of million pounds each. Commenting on this, Mr. Denis Healey, the Labour M.P. (who put the cost at £20 million each), asked what this sum represented in terms of schools, hospitals, and so on. This is a common complaint, whenever the amount of money which capitalism spends upon weapons is discussed. Yet what do the Healeys expect? Capitalism has a list of priorities to which it allocates its resources and human comfort is not near the top of it. This was as true under the Labour government which Mr. Healey supported as under the Tory one which he attacks.

Indeed, Mr. Healey showed how small are the differences between his own party and the Tories on the issue of armaments when he went on to say that the TSR-2 is a waste of money, which could better be spent on military helicopters and other transport aircraft and on the Buccaneer, a naval strike ’plane which is already in service.

The best, then, that the Labour Party offers us on the matter of armaments policy is to look after the purse strings more carefully than the Conservatives have done. They will try to make sure that every penny the British ruling class spend on their weapons gets value for money.

And perhaps they will succeed. Perhaps, under Labour, there will be no more Blue Streak fiascos. British capitalism will still have fearfully destructive armaments, the waste of human knowledge and resources will go on, but it will all be presided over by a Labour M mister of Defence who will make sure that it is done at the market price and not a penny over. Does this encourage us to believe the hypocritical Labour claim to stand for peace and progress? It does not.

Abroad

Guiana must wait

It was by something like a slick trick that Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys brought the recent British Guiana constitutional conference, which was supposed to discuss ways of granting the colony independence, to a close.

The British government has rejected the idea of early independence for British Guiana. Instead, another conference will take place after fresh elections next year. The significant thing about the election is that they will be run on a proportional representation scheme which will probably break up the present party groupings. At the last elections the Peoples' Progressive Party, led by Doctor Jagan, got 43 per cent. of the votes, but 60 per cent. of the seats, while the opposition Peoples' National Congress, with 41.5 per cent. of the votes, got just over 36 per cent. of the seats.

This sort of result is common in the direct electoral system which British Guiana, and this country, has worked to. The fact that Mr. Sandys thinks that proportional representation is a good idea for British Guiana does not mean that he is thinking about advocating the same thing for Great Britain. The two big British parties do too well out of the present system for that.

The latest Sandys plan was, bluntly, a tongue-in-the-cheek trick lo impose Whitehall's own wishes upon British Guyana. Dr. Jagan described it as “ dastardly and unprincipled," which is just the expression which other people might have used about the Doctor's own action last year, when he called in British troops to suppress a rising in the colony.

In spite of Jagan's fulminating, the people of British Guiana seemed to have taken the news quietly. It would be good news indeed if this meant that they have come to understand that capitalism is full of diplomatic double-crossing and that in any case the Guianese working people have no more to hope for from independence than they had under British rule.

Sadly, this is unlikely at the present.

Jews in Russia

From the Soviet Union comes more indications of the recent trend there of persecution of the Jews.

The latest example comes in the October 20 edition of Izvestia which reports, and comments, upon the alleged crimes of a number of men but most prominently upon two called Shakerman and Roifman, both of whom are Jews.

These men are accused of embezzlement and bribery, of setting up a profitable racket in the produce of State factories and farms. The full story reminds us of the vast enterprise of Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22; they are said to nave been running a knitwear factory which embezzled machinery and with wool which they had diverted from collective farms. The produce, say the prosecution, was sold on the black market.

Izvestia is furious about these allegations, and raves that the men had amassed thirty million roubles in cash and a hundredweight of gold, diamonds and platinum. The paper has also assumed that the accused are guilty before their trial is complete.

Whether these men are criminals or not, there is mounting evidence of a campaign in Russia to use the Jews as scapegoats to excuse the country’s recent economic difficulties. This is a nasty subterfuge which has often been used in the past. Ignorant workers who are suffering the brunt of capitalism's problems are usually only too ready to blame some racial or religious minority for their troubles.

There need, then, be no surprise that this is happening in Russia. In any case, how is it that economic crimes arc possible in a country which is supposed to be Socialist? How can a country where everyone stands equally offer the chance for a criminal to amass enormous wealth while the rest of the people suffer hunger and other hardships? How can a society where wealth is owned in common have any sort of a market, black or white?

It is impossible to answer these questions, and to explain anti-Semitism in Russia, unless we face the facts. The Soviet Union is not a Socialist country—even supposing that such a thing as Socialism in one country were possible. It is a capitalist country and one where precious little democracy exists at that.

When we have got that straight, every thing else about the USSR falls neatly into place.

Business

Investment, profit, wages

The big mergers in Top Industry continue. Imperial Chemical Industries, who last May put up £10 million with Courtaulds to finance the acquisition of Tootal, have now lashed out another £13 million on Viyella International Ltd. Viyella have interests in spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing.

Viyella were not planning on any big capital investment in the near future but will obviously be able to use ICI’s money. ICI are probably interested in Viyella’s use of synthetic fibres, which now account for about half of its business. Industry is always seeking for ways of safeguarding its interests, but capitalism upsets its plans. Even a giant like ICI is no exception to this.

J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., the teashop firm, is another in the merger field. Its latest venture is in frozen food, the home market for which is estimated to be worth about 72 million a year.

Lyons are tying up their frozen food branch (Frood) with that of Associated Fisheries (Eskimo) and Union International (Fropax). This merger, it is hoped, will result in a combine which will initially command 16 per cent. of the market.

The move is presumably aimed against Unilever’s Birds Eye group, which at present claims two-thirds of the British retail market.

Capitalism is described, by its defenders. as an efficient social system. Yet it would be dillicult for them to find anything efficient or beneficial in the waste of the continual war which rival companies must carry on against each other over the carve up of a market.

The object of it all is, of course, bigger and bigger profits. A company which has succeeded in this past many expectations is Marks and Spencers, which since the war has been transformed from a rather dull chain store group into a bright, hard selling, and very profitable, concern. The very epitome, with its staff welfare schemes and its split second, split penny operation, of a “progressive’’ capitalist company.

The sales of M&S rose to £95.5 millions in the six months up to September this year. This was a record and with the Christmas rush to come, sales are expected to reach £200 million for the year —for the first time in the company’s history. To mark the occasion, shareholders got an extra 1¼ per cent, on their interim dividend.

And what about the people who make these sales, and mergers, and profits, possible? What do they get out of it? The wages of the working class are a constant worry to their employers, for the simple reason that higher wages mean lower profits, and vice versa.

That is why governments are always trying to control wages. Usually this control is described by a smooth phrase which is meant to persuade the workers that their wages are not being held down, and that nobody is trying to do so. Some industrialists, although they recognise their need for wage restraint, think that it should be done more subtly than has been the case in the past. This is what Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board, said on the subject when he spoke at last month’s Annual Conference of the Institute of Directors:

Whether we like it or not, the most sensitive spot in all our industrial relations is the size of Friday’s pay packet. That is why I deplore the continual use since the war of such phrases as "wage restraint,” "wage freeze,” and "pay pause" . . . .

A national productivity drive hasn't a hope of success if it is accompanied by phrases like that.

Their very sound puts a chill down a workman’s spine and they merely create ill-feeling and bitterness between management and men . . . 

Some sort of "guiding light” is essential if we are to rationalise the present chaos of wages settlement.

Inevitably, we must ask whether Lord Robens, when he was an M.P. supporting the 1945-51 Labour government—and later a member of that government—ever expressed so freely his dislike of the term ‘‘wage freeze”. He had plenty of chances too; it was the Labour government which invented it. Presumably, in the days when the Labour government was fighting to check wages, and using every euphemism in the book to do so, Alf Robens preferred to hold his peace.

Blogger's Note:

The aforementioned novel, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard by 'Ivan' (Ralph Critchfield).

News in Review: Disobedience campaign (1960)

The News in Review column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Disobedience campaign

It would appear that true to their policy statement most of the CND leaders have completely disowned Lord Russell’s proposals for a civil disobedience campaign. According to Lord Russell the proposals are an appeal to the conscience and intelligence of all men about the dangers of mass extermination. What concerns us is the kind of society reflected in these measures to flout authority. The real tragedy is that at election times the overwhelming majority vote for the retention of Capitalism and consequently for most of the policies which go with it, including the H-bomb. For this reason the Socialist is not being cynical when he makes the remark: “You got what you voted for.”

To those CND supporters still undecided as to their next move it could be pointed out that by supporting any kind of civil disobedience they are fighting and will continue to fight the effects of the present system rather than abolishing it altogether and replacing it with a new and much less frustrating society.

Right to Strike

Patrick Neary has been released after spending six weeks in prison. He was the leader of the recent seamen’s strike, and was sent to jail because he did not comply with a court order which told him (in effect) to give up all connection with the strike. Some newspapers have claimed that he was imprisoned not because he was a striker, but because he disobeyed the court order. This is to reject the substance and catch at the shadow. The reason Neary went to jail was because he had been elected chairman of the strike committee, and had therefore emerged as the figurehead of the strike. The shipping companies wanted to remind the seamen of the Merchant Shipping Act. under which any striking seaman can be sent to jail. As far as the mass of strikers were concerned, the companies were perhaps afraid of having them all sent to jail, for fear of repercussions: and so decided to call in the state machine (which after all they maintain to look after their interests) only against one man, the figurehead, Neary. Therefore Neary has had to endure for six weeks the vile indignities which are the lot of anyone in jail, because he took part in a strike and was elected chairman of the committee which ran it.

And what happened to the protests which we might have expected? The last war (our leaders told us) was fought to defend democratic freedoms. The right to withhold labour is a central democratic freedom. The alternative—sending men to jail because they refuse to work on the terms offered them by the capitalists—is slavery. But our ruling class had no objection to Neary's sentence. Their newspapers applauded it. Let us remember this the next time our rulers want our help to “fight for freedom and democracy."

Kennedy v. Nixon

BBC television has given up an hour of its time to show one of the debates between the rival candidates for the Presidency now being staged in the United States. It isn't clear why, unless it wants to demonstrate to British workers that there would be no point in emigrating. For the debate showed that politics have reached much the same stage over there as they have here. There are two great parties contending for the support of the working class. One of them holds that the system as it now stands is as near to perfect as anything ever devised by man. The other, which has the support of the unions, wants one or two reforms, which would do nothing whatever to change the class basis of society. Each of them has a programme and a policy, the essence of which is that each would run capitalism better than its rival.

In one respect the parallel is even closer. Over here we have become used to the Government of the day (whether Labour or Conservative) attacking any claim made for higher pay made by members of the working class, and treating any strike or threat to strike as if it heralded the end of civilisation. And then at each election, the Government, with superb effrontery, brings out any figures of higher pay won by the workers against the strenuous opposition of that very Government, as if it alone was responsible (and, at the same time, usually skates over any figures showing how inflation has left the workers in much the same position as they were before). In the televised debate Nixon, who has been vice-president for the last eight years, performed this very trick. He brought out the figures of wage increases as if he individually had led the workers in all the struggles which must go before the smallest pay rise. And no doubt if Kennedy wins this time, he will re-appear in four years using exactly the same argument which Nixon uses now.

The Referendum

The South African government has been given a majority vote in favour of a republic—a majority, that is, of white voters, as the vast mass of the population (the Africans, Indians and Cape Coloureds) in this referendum, as in all elections, have no vote. This winning of the referendum has, no doubt, pleased Dr. Verwoerd and his Nationalist supporters, but not all white South Africans are so pleased, although Dr. Verwoerd hoped that the creation of a republic would at last end the bitterness and hostility existing between the Boer South Africans and the English-speaking South Africans, which has remained since the Boer War. But this has not, so far, happened, and one of South Africa's leading industrialists, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, is frankly worried that the Republic may have a harmful effect on industry, should it not be readmitted to the Commonwealth, partly because of loss of the imperial preference.

Suicides

From a recent meeting of the British Medical Association at Middlesbrough, comes further evidence of the anti-social consequences of competition and production for profit. Dr. Sargent, physician-in-charge of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital. raised the matter of the 5,000 suicides which occur in this country yearly. According to Dr. Sargent, many patients who go on to commit suicide do so after wrong courses of treatment often resulting from confusion created by drug manufacturers in their publicity campaigns. Recently, advances have been made with a new group of anti-depressant drugs. “Unfortunately intensive competition between drug manufacturers to capture their share of an enormous potential market had resulted in excessive claims being made for them and wrong groups of cases suggested for their use," said Dr. Sargent.

Clearly the human considerations of treatment of the sick are secondary in the drive towards commercial success. Even so, anti-depressant drugs can at best only hope to treat symptoms. A far more satisfactory way of preventing suicides would be to establish a society based on more harmonious social relations and which takes no toll of the individual in terms of emotional stress.

Nigeria changes

Nigerians living in London marked Nigeria's coming to independence by publicly wearing their colourful and roomy national costumes. Was it worth celebrating? At the most, Nigeria will develop into another minor capitalist state; and we have seen enough of those to know that they have no more to offer their workers than any of the older established powers. Dr. Michael Okpara, the President of Eastern Nigeria, stated in the region's Assembly on 8th October that Nigerians would rather lay down their lives than lose their newly won freedom. At a guess this is a correct estimation of the loyalty of patriotic Nigerians who, like any other politically ignorant workers, are wide open to the propaganda of their masters.

But Dr. Okpara's statement gives the lie to those who pretend that the emerging capitalist countries are basically different from those whose power they have replaced. All over the world, workers are periodically called upon to die for the protection of their master's interests—and always they are told that they are dying to defend some high minded principle. British workers, for example, have fallen for this for a very long time. Now, the Nigerians are getting the same treatment. With, presumably, the same results—bloodshed and tragedy.

Blowing their tops

Mr. Khruschev had a rare old time at the United Nations. Hugging Fidel Castro, making violent speeches, banging his desk and shouting. He even heckled Mr. Macmillan, which gave the British Prime Minister the chance to show how an Old Etonian deals with that sort of thing in the House of Commons. Such bad behaviour, it was reported, upset Mr. Eisenhower, who cancelled any intention of shaking hands with, or talking to, the Soviet Premier.

Now diplomatic conferences are not like chats over the garden wall, when boorishness can cause a man to be bad friends with his neighbour. Capitalist powers do not split on points of etiquette—their disputes are over rival economic interests. International politicians know better than to lose their tempers as openly as Khruschev did—unless it suits their purpose to do so. And all of them will willingly hobnob with people guilty of worse than bad manners. If the immediate interests of their capitalist class demand it, they will talk to, shake hands with, embrace, pose with, other diplomats who are little better than murderers.

The disputes of capitalism have always involved a large measure of humbug. The stakes are high—and no trick barred. A dirty game.

News in Review: The Polls (1964)

The News in Review column from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Polls

Over the past few months, watching the so-called public opinion polls has almost become an obsessive national activity. Glassy, fascinated eyes have watched the graph lines of support for the two big political parties snaking up and down.

Even the Stock Exchange has reacted, becoming more optimistic as the forecast support for the Conservatives has increased.

The two big polls National Opinion Polls in the Daily Mail and Gallup in the Daily Telegraph have differed in their assessments. NOP turning up figures more favourable to the government than Gallup. Both have agreed that the Tories have steadily gained ground.

Who Knows what the polls are worth? Naturally, they protest their own accuracy; they are now big business employed by famous companies and advertising agencies to estimate what razor blades we use, what size washing machine fits into our kitchens.

In the political field, the polls have never really lived down their massive boob in the American Presidential Election of 1948, when Truman won against all their forecasts. They blamed that on to an unsuspected flaw in their method, which they now claim to have eliminated.

But none of them, of course, can interview an entire electorate and inevitably their sampling methods come in for some criticism. When the election is over, the polls do some furious figure juggling and, not surprisingly, claim that their forecasts were accurate.

The political parties welcome or deride the polls, according to whether they are currently favourable or not. Some time back a constituency Conservative Party which was fighting a by-election suggested that the polls were undemocratic, because they actually influenced people to vote for the party which they tipped to win.

In that by-election, need we add, the Tories were doing badly when the opposite is true they do not complain about the polls.

The whole thing is, in fact, a rather amusing game. And. like a game, it has no real effect. We can make one forecast now, without the aid of the polls.

Whichever of the parties wins the election, and whatever the composition of Parliament when the votes have been counted, capitalism will remain. It will be business as usual for everyone, including the pollsters.

Restrictive practices

Sam Goldwyn has long been famous for his super-colossal films and for his snappy wisecracks. He has always been the newspapers' caricature of a Hollywood tycoon expansive, ebullient. But now he is under something of a cloud.

The great Sam recently sold fifty of  his films for showing on television. Now everybody knows that the one word which is likely to make the cinema owners see red, in the most glorious, panoramic technicolor, is television.

So Mr. Goldwyn’s sale is regarded by the cinema interests as a stab in the back or, as Mr. Ellis Pinkney, secretary of the Cinema Exhibitioners' Association, put it. biting the hand that fed him. Goldwyn was not around when this remark was made: had he been, he would doubtless have made another funny crack in reply.

But the CEA are not joking. They are pressing all cinema owners in Britain not to show any more Goldwyn films. As they claim a membership of over ninety per cent of cinema owners, including Rank and Granada, their ban may well be effective.

Now the film industry was once famous for the demarcation rules which its workers' trade unions applied in the studios. These rules were strict; no carpenter would stick up so much as a square inch of plaster, no plasterer would knock in the smallest nail.

The employers complained bitterly about what they called these restrictive practices. They implied that the workers were childish, that the rules would ruin the industry and would deprive the public of their films.

In fact, the unions were using an old established weapon to try to defend some hard won improvements in working conditions. This may mean some tough fights, but that is the way it is jungle of capitalism’s class struggle.

And toughness, and restrictive practices, are not confined to one side. What the cinema owners are now going to do in their fight against Goldwyn can only be described as a tough restrictive practice.

Naturally, they try to justify it by using the same tones of moral indignation as they use when they attack the film workers' demarcation rules. But morality docs not come into it.

Both sides arc only trying to protect their interests and that is something that goes on all over the capitalist world. Even that part which is the preserve of the tinsel unrealities of the film men.

Johnson's fortune

Nobody expects elections to be other than dirty businesses but sometimes, in their anxiety to throw mud the parties of capitalism achieve some strange results.

Consider the case of Johnson's fortune. The exact amount of the American President's wealth has become something of an issue in the election over there, so much so that Johnson has engaged a firm of accountants to report on the matter.

The conclusion of this investigation was that the Johnson family is worth about three and a half million dollars. This estimate has been questioned, because it is based on the original cost of the Johnsons’ interests, whereas their present market value would be somewhere nearer $14 million.

For some strange reason, this dollop of wealth is regarded as a possible electoral liability to the President. The delusion about the barefoot boy who rose from log cabin to the White House apparently persists in the United States, even after all that the Kennedy family did to destroy it. 

Yet why should his wealth lose Johnson votes? A rich man, after all, is capitalism’s highest form of life—he is successful. Does not Johnson, therefore, fit in with the prejudices and presumptions which dominate elections? Is he not the sort of man the American workers would want as their national boss?

Perhaps there are doubts about the methods which were used to amass the Johnson fortune. And these, too, are humbug.

Even the most illegal ways of building up wealth—and there is no proof that the President has ever done anything outside the law—are no worse than the simple, legal method of the exploitation of the working class.

No method is more degrading, more repressive. No method leads to more violence and unhappiness. Property, Proudhon said, is theft and that is it up.

From this we can see that Lyndon Johnson is eminently suitable to administer American capitalism, with all the ruthlessness that it may require. He has also shown that he can accept, and turn to his advantage, any of the system's anomalies.

At the same time as his fortune was being counted, Johnson was pushing through Congress his so-called Anti Poverty Bill, which is supposed to rescue millions of Americans from the depths of destitution.

Perhaps some of them will get the point, and remember it when the time comes in November.

Matter of importance

From the London Gazette of 1st September, 1964:

In future, on occasions when it is desired that decorations be worn invitations should state either “evening dress decoration" (signifying white tie with full orders decorations and miniatures) or “dinner jacket, decorations” (signifying black tie with orders decorations and miniatures as described above).

When “evening dress decorations" is prescribed those not in possession of full evening dress may wear orders decorations and miniature badges and medals as described above with a dinner jacket.

How comforting to know that, in this world of hydrogen bombs and hire purchase, of malnutrition and mental illness, there is still a spark of dignity.

How nice to know that the Queen, ever alert to the onward march of democracy, has graciously consented to unbend the once inflexible regulations on the wearing of decorations with evening dress.

What ease of mind it brings to us all, to know that “. . . orders, decorations and medals may be worn with dinner jackets . . . with shirts having a stiff collar or soft collar.”

What an uplift for the soft collar, to be put at last on a par with the stiff! How satisfying a fruition of human struggle and endeavour.

And how sick it makes you feel.

News in Review: Verwoerd—hypocrites at work (1966)

The News in Review column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Verwoerd—hypocrites at work

Anyone who had been able to forecast the assassination of Dr. Verwoerd would also have had no difficulty in imagining the comments of world statesmen.

These comments, in their many tones, were all determined by the international interests of the countries whose leaders were making them.

It was also predictable that there would be widespread condemnation of the use of violence, and that many world leaders would say the use of force can solve no problems.

President Johnson, for example, said the assassination was “a stroke of violence that shakes the sensibilities of men who believe in law and order”. It was clear that the President was grimly forgetting some inconvenient facts.

During the last war the Allied leaders did not condemn the violence of the attempts on Hitler's life; they did not say then that assassination is a primitive and savage act.

The United States is now keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Vietnam—much to the outrage of the sensibilities of many Americans who also believe in law and order—in an attempt to prove that their kind of violence works.

This is typical. Cyprus and Algeria are only two recent examples of the results of politicians stubbornly believing that violence can be useful.

Capitalism, in fact, is a social system which uses force constantly and which can never attempt to solve its disputes in any other way.

Hypocrisy is an art which politicians must learn to master. There is no more apt occasion to employ what they have learned than when one of their number dies.

Perhaps, when Verwoerd died, they were all secretly agreeing with Malta's Borg Olivier. “Let us hope,” he said, “That it does not happen to us”.

U Thant exposes UNO

Few things have more cruelly exposed the futility of that international white elephant, the United Nations Organisation, than the possible standing down of its Secretary-General U Thant.

UNO was once supposed to be the answer to war, because the major world powers would all be members, because every country would bring its disputes to be settled at the Assembly and because the Organisation would have at its disposal an international armed force which would police any trouble spots.

It did not take long to break down this image.

U Thant complained that UNO has not yet ". . . achieved universality of membership”—meaning that the United States, as part of its struggle with China, vetoes that country’s attempts to join.

He condemned the fact that the Vietnam war is an example of ". . . relying on force and military means. . .” as if there has ever been any sign of a capitalist power carrying on a struggle in any other way.

Over Vietnam, the United States pretends that UNO does not exist. This is not the first time this has happened. In many cases when a country’s interests have been threatened, and it has not been sure of the formality of UNO support, is has simply ignored the so-called peace-keeping Organisation.

Russia has done this several times. Britain did it over Suez and the Americans went into Korea before UNO had had a chance to consider the matter. (There was never any pretence that, if UNO had voted against America over Korea, the troops would have been withdrawn.)

UNO was founded on the idea that capitalism’s problems can be settled around a table and that the trouble in the past was that the big powers had not tried hard enough to do this.

A fatuous notion, which has been exposed again and again. Now UNO’s secretary has himself spoken up, and revealed that he too realises the Organisation is trying to do the impossible.

Confusion on the left

It is obvious that those trade union leaders who back the wages freeze are not acting in the interests of their members. But even those who oppose the freeze are hopelessly confused when it comes to politics. This was well shown at a meeting on September 1 organised by five of the unions opposing the freeze.

Not seeing Socialism as a practical alternative, the five general secretaries who spoke offered their own solution to the present financial problems of the British capitalist class: cut military spending overseas; impose import controls; launch a productivity campaign and end the status of sterling as a reserve currency. On this last point, loud applause followed a statement of the general secretary of the Association of Scientific Workers in which he said that they did not want “our” currency being a commodity traded in by foreign bankers! Again, Clive Jenkins of ASSET commended De Gaulle’s policy of erecting a fence round France to prevent Americans buying up French industries. “I’d like to see the same here”, he said amidst applause.

This petty patriotism expressing itself as a dislike of international bankers (and America) is a characteristic of the Left, one which clearly distinguishes them from Socialists. Socialists know that patriotism is a delusion as workers have no country.

Jenkins' main charge against the Labour government was that it was incompetent. Wilson was wrong, he said, in claiming to have been blown off course; he had steered right into the eye of a hurricane. “Had the government not heard of Keynes?” he asked, suggesting that since Keynes any government that allowed unemployment to grow must be incompetent

This is another myth of the Left. Governments fail to solve our troubles not because they are incompetent or insincere or irresolute but because they are trying to do the impossible. Our problems just cannot be solved within capitalism. The Left, with their so-called solutions, merely serve to keep alive the myth that capitalism can be made to work in our interests. That is why Socialists oppose them.

Retreat to the Thirties

In some mysterious way, the Labour Party have been able to establish themselves as the party which can control capitalism’s economy.

Perhaps this idea can be traced to the pre-war years, when Labour embraced the Keynesian doctrine which was supposed to have the solution to the sort of slumps which persisted during the Twenties and Thirties.

It was all supposed to be very simple. A slump meant low purchasing power, investment in the doldrums, reduced demand for workers.

The solution was to increase purchasing power by cutting taxation, step up investment with tax incentives and promote a demand for labour by launching out on public works schemes: roads, hospitals and so on.

These so-called remedies are, in fact, quite useless. And perhaps the Labour government have realised it.

At last month’s TUC, Harold Wilson threw out the warning which is an especial favourite with him lately: “. . . one false, careless, regardless step . . . could push the world into conditions not unlike those of the early Thirties”.

If this were true, and the Labour Party were keeping faith in the Keynesian economics they have propounded for so long, the government would now be stimulating investment, cutting taxes, building hospitals and schools as fast as they can.

But, in fact, as we all know, they are doing exactly the opposite.

Does Wilson now think that Keynes' theories are bunk? Has he forgotten all his party ever said about slumps? Does he realise that capitalism is out of control and always has been?

Or does he ponder on another event of the early Thirties? Some people would say there is no need for Wilson actually to leave the Labour Party to imitate Ramsay MacDonald. Others would reserve their judgment.

History repeats itself

The oft repeated phrase “History repeats itself’ is a half truth. It derives from the desire.to put into fewer words the idea that like situations produce like results.

In the latter half of the 18th century the proposal was made that, as wages were so miserably low, they should be supplemented by poor relief.

Eighteen Berkshire justices, including seven clergymen, met at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland near Newbury and set down a minimum scale for workers and their families. This scale was adopted throughout the country and where wages did not provide the minimum it. was built up by payments from the rates.

Historians have not failed to point out that this could only, and did, resultin employers paying the lowest wage possible in the knowledge that their workers would get by on the combined wage and poor relief.

Compare this with the following from the Teddington and Hampton and The Richmond and Twickenham Times of Saturday, August 13, 1966.

This paper quotes from the parish newsletter of the Reverend Emrys Evans, vicar of All Saints’ Church. The Rev. Evans urges

the elderly to take advantage of a part-time employment scheme organised by the Richmond upon Thames Council for Social Service, in which they may work either on a casual basis or a 24-hour week at an hourly rate of l/3d.

He adds that those who have already applied for work have a wide variety of skills, ranging from former book-keepers to shop assistants and that they may still be of real service to the community,

“and at the same time augment your pension”.

Words and deeds

On April 29 the Hampstead Labour Party passed the following resolution by 26 votes to 6:

This Hampstead Labour Party views with alarm the Government’s increasing and continuing support of the American war in Vietnam. It is aware also of the pressure on the Government to make a token military commitment in this war, perhaps in the form of British ‘‘observers” or “advisers".

We therefore wish to state in advance that should the Government yield to such pressure, the Hampstead Labour Party will re-examine its relationship with the national Labour Party and invite other constituency parties to do the same.

On July 25 a Foreign Office spokesman stated that there were four hundred British military engineers in Thailand helping to build a military airport at Loeng Nok Tha (see Financial Times, 26 July). Loeng Nok Tha is in north-east Thailand and it is from this area that three-quarters of the air raids against North Vietnam are launched (see Economist, 3 September). So troops, under the control of the Labour Party government are helping the war effort in Vietnam. They are in fact helping to build an airfield which American planes can use for bombing raids on North Vietnam. If this is not "a token military commitment in this war” what is?

Yet, to date, there has been no news of any breakaway move by the Hampstead Labour Party.

News in Review: Quick look around (1965)

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

Quick look around

To those who find the headlines depressing, and who prefer to look for the news in the newspapers’ smaller columns (“Vicar, 73, Weds Secretary, 21”) we can offer little comfort.

Events which are considered of minor importance reflect the same drab image as the big news.

Nearly two million people are receiving National Assistance in this country, which shows that many more than two million are not sharing in whatever the Tories meant when they talked about our rising prosperity. About three quarters of those on National Assistance are pensioners, which shows again that although the shadow of want may have been lifted from some people (for example the judges who are soon going to get a twenty-five per cent rise in their already big wages) it still hangs over the retired worker.

We have been promised that the report of the government’s Study Group on the North West will shortly be published. The Group found that parts of the North West have the highest mortality rate in the country, due to the fact that so many of its people live in towns and cities, under squalid conditions. It also discovered a fact which some other people had known for a long time; that there are still plenty of slums in this country, and that they are increasing fast. The Group concluded, in fact, that it will take fifty years, at the present rates of clearance, to get rid of the North West’s slums.

In Geneva, United Nations Secretary General U Thant said that on present showing there will be more unemployment, more hunger, more malnutrition, in 1970 than there is today. “The misery of the developing world,” he said, “is a progressive misery. It threatens to grow worse in the second half of the decade.” The only comment to make here is that this gloomy opinion comes from someone who, with the job which he has, must obviously be one of the world’s top optimists.

There is no reason to hope that the news will get any better. It is apparent that there was something seriously lacking in the perceptive powers of the man who first said that every day, in every way, things are getting better and better.

Vietnam mission

It is fairly safe to assume that Mr. Wilson was not heedless of the political advantages to be gained from the publicity which was bound to accompany the suggested peace mission on Vietnam.

Perhaps it was even hoped that in the excitement few people would have realised that the mission had not actually done anything, or gone anywhere and that indeed most of its members had split up and gone home.

The mission was the same sort of empty gesture—like Chamberlain’s trip to Munich, like the Locarno Treaty in 1924 — which convince workers that capitalism’s leaders are about to solve the problem of war.

This conviction rests upon a delusion; that wars are caused by international statesmen omitting to talk before they start shooting—or rather, before they tell their workers to start shooting for them. (At one time there was a popular theory that Stalin’s intransigence could be dealt with by getting him to raise a Kremlin cricket team to play an XI from Westminster.)

In fact, there is no lack of opportunity for capitalism’s leaders to confer. And, as the Vietnam mission has shown, there are also plenty of informal channels through which they can communicate, even if they do not recognise each other’s existence. It is clear .that they fail to do so only when they think there are other ways of settling their differences.

It is also clear that wars are not caused by a failure of communication. They are caused by conditions which cannot be affected by any conference, and they start when further talking is pointless.

The Western powers are now trying to get the Vietcong to negotiate, when they are convinced that they are close to victory. This is something like Hitler trying to impose his terms on the Allies as his empire was collapsing in April 1945. Like any other war, the one in Vietnam has its own momentum of ruthlessness and it will be played out to its bitter end.

That will not be the end of the matter; Vietnam is only the latest of the small wars in the greater struggle between the world powers over which shall control and exploit South East Asia. There is no sense, no reason, no humanity, in such conflicts—and no “right” either on any side.

It is typical of Labour Party hypocrisy that they should pretend that normal human standards can be applied to the war in Vietnam. They are among the supporters of the social system which produces the war there and which could make it (to use the current ugly jargon) escalate into something which even Mr. Wilson does not pretend to be able to control.

Algerian conflict

During the long war for Algerian independence, the people who suffered in the nationalist cause were comforted by the thought that out of their tribulations freedom would be born in Algeria.

At that time, as the French forces were daily committing the most brutal of excesses, it was easy to represent the FLN as fighters for liberty.

One of the heroes of the rebellion, who quickly emerged as the effective ruler of Algeria after independence, was Ben Bella. He was supposed to be the man who, once the French had been banished, would lead the poor Algerian peasant to freedom and prosperity.

One of Ben Bella’s closest associates, the man who stood by him and did so much to help him root out opposition after the rebellion, was Colonel Boumedienne. If anyone bears a load of responsibility for selling Ben Bella as Freedom’s Messiah, it is Boumedienne.

Yet now, according to the Colonel, the whole thing was a mistake. Ben Bella does not stand for freedom—he is a despot, a demagogue. He squandered Algeria’s resources, he frightened off investors. (We should remind ourselves here that the Colonel, who has pledged himself to encourage investment in Algeria, calls himself a Socialist.)

It is too late, now, to discover that the Algerian rebellion was to result in replacing one despotism by another; it would have saved some lives if at the time Boumedienne had reminded his followers that nationalist risings often have that effect.

All nationalist movements claim that they are fighting for freedom, and not a few of them also claim to be Socialist as well. But when they get power, and the moment of truth arrives, they frequently impose dictatorships.

Algeria is only the latest of several countries in which this has happened recently, and in which the leaders of the rebellion, after they have won, have split and denounced each other as despots. In one after another of the new African states this has happened—sometimes until the imposition of a one-party state has silenced the opposition and left only one side to put over its point of view.

These are the fruits of nationalist rebellion. There can be few causes which have induced so many people to waste so much time, energy and blood.

Gaolbreak

One fact is often overlooked by the man-in-the-street advocate of the deterrent effect of heavy sentences. The more severe the sentence, the greater the incentive to escape.

Heavy sentences are often imposed on members of big and well-organised mobs like the Train Robbers, who are well enough equipped, in daring and organisation, to bring off a rescue from gaol.

The prison authorities are of course aware of this; if rumours are true they have thwarted plans to free two of the Train gang. But the criminals have the same sort of advantages as guerrilla fighters—they can move freely in the world outside, they can watch and wait and pounce when they think the moment has come.

The rescue of Ronald Biggs has confirmed what the escape of Charles Wilson showed—that big time crime is now refined and organised enough not to reject any job. Perhaps some criminals with a sense of humour might reflect that they at any rate are responding to the Labour government’s appeal for greater technical expertise in our work.

It has been often said that men like the Great Train Robbers would make excellent soldiers or big business men. It is apparent that they do have the required amount of ruthlessness to succeed in these fields.

At the moment, however, they prefer to rob people in ways which capitalism says are illegal, and to ignore other methods which are likely to bring them a place in the Honours List.

One thing the robbers fear above everything else, above imprisonment, above the nervous stress of their work, and that is to be a normal member of the working class. They cannot face the prospect of the daily journey to the factory or office, the clocking on and off, the monotonous routine jobs, the kowtowing to the boss, the leisure time spent in visiting or cutting the lawn.

This is one of the influences which persuade them to be criminals. It is also one of the influences which persuade the capitalist class to hang on to their privileged situation, and to the rights it brings them to be legalised robbers.