Observations: Your country? Your interest? (1986)

The Observations Column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your country? Your interest?

Does Paul Hogan, the Australian comedian, have more in common with his fellow countryman Rupert Murdoch than with Billy Connolly or Lenny Henry? Does an English electrician. doctor or fireman have more in common with the Duke of Buccleuch and his 268,000 acres or the Duke of Westminster and his land value of over two billion pounds than with a Spanish. Russian or Mexican electrician, doctor or fireman? One glance into your back garden or at your alarm clock will help you to answer these questions.

According to government figures, the richest 3.2 per cent of people in Britain today own 84 per cent of listed shares. 91 per cent of private companies and 88 per cent of land. This is what a "property owning democracy" means — a democracy where three-quarters of the daily newspapers are owned by just three millionaire companies, where non-elective judges, generals and civil servants wield tremendous power. None of the lords, dukes and baronesses are elected, nor are any of the multinational companies who also have a marked effect on workers' lives. Wealth is owned and controlled by a small section of the population — the capitalist class. They are a parasitic, redundant class who are dependent on the vast majority of the world's population, the working class. The workers run the present system from top to bottom, they produce everything in it and own nothing except their ability to work, which they sell at a price called a wage in order to live. If you feel your wages are not high enough, that your rent or mortgage payments are getting you down, that you can never seem to save any money and that you are always dominated by money-related worries, then that doesn't make you typically British but a typical member of the working class. The only difference between workers from different geographical regions is sometimes the extent to which they are exploited.

What workers need to do is to question, not only their loyalty to "their" country, but of what benefit, and to whom is this loyalty of any significance? They need to question a system which is based on rivalry; which sees only a minority of the world's population living in luxury at the expense of the vast majority; where tens of millions die of starvation every year although scientists estimate that the present world population could be fed seven times over. It is a system based on profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs that needs to be questioned.

Edwina on health

Commonsense would be enough to tell most people that poverty is a major cause of ill-health. Nevertheless it is always useful to have intuition backed up by hard facts such as those contained in a report from Bristol University which shows that poverty in the North East of England is a cause of premature death, chronic ill-health and low birth weight.

But commonsense and statistical evidence are not enough to convince Edwina Currie, the newly appointed Health Minister, who suggested in a talk to an audience in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one of the cities covered by the health survey, that ill-health had more to do with ignorance about good eating habits than with poverty or unemployment. She advised people to eat more vegetables and natural fibre and drink more milk. This advice is about as useful as telling starving refugees in the Sudan that they wouldn't suffer from malnutrition if only they would eat more sensibly.

Duke’s hazards

Independent is not an adjective usually associated with the BBC. No doubt as part of the Thatcher administration's campaign against alleged "anti-government bias", a new chair of the BBC Board of Governors has been appointed to replace Stuart Young, who died recently. The only qualifications that the new chair. Marmaduke, "Duke" Hussey, would seem to have that equip him for the job are his connections with certain aristocratic elements within the ruling class. He is married to Lady Susan Hussey, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, daughter of the 12th Earl Waldegrave and big sister to William Waldegrave. Tory MP and Minister for the Environment.

His connections with the media are somewhat less impressive. He was a chief executive and managing director of Times newspapers in the 1970s and was responsible for the confrontation with the print unions over manning levels and wage structures which took The Times and the Sunday Times off the streets. More recently he was brought in as a chair of the ILR station Radio West, when it was experiencing economic difficulties.

His new job as Chair of the BBC governors is just one of the many appointments that are in the gift of the Prime Minister. Rumoured to be even closer to the Tories than his predecessor he is likely to ensure that the diet of television offered to us by the BBC gets even more bland.

Observations: Hooked on the opium of the people (1986)

The Observations Column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever Marx's description of religion — "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the soul of soul-less conditions. It is the opium of the people", most religious people would probably deny that they are oppressed or live in soul-less conditions. But there is obviously something missing (even if it is only logic) from the lives of people who will go to great pains to live their lives in the way that is approved by their particular god, but will never be able to explain just what god is. or why he should be so concerned about the use of contraceptives by catholics, or why it is so imperative that muslims and jews slaughter their animals by slitting the throat and letting them bleed to death.

In an attempt to make some sense of the Christian faith, the Bishop of Durham has probably come as close as anyone to telling us what god is:

We are faced with the claim that God is prepared to work knock-down physical miracles in order to select a number of people into the secret of his incarnation, resurrection and salvation. but is not prepared to use such methods in order to deliver from Auschwitz, prevent Hiroshima, overcome famine or bring about a bloodless transformation of apartheid. Such a God is surely a cultic idol.

(From a speech to the York Meeting of the General Synod - 6 July 1986)

Understandably, the bishop is out of favour with some of his colleagues who prefer not to mention these contradictions in god's character. This is not the only thing rocking the boat in the Church of England at the moment. Another problem that the hierarchy are wrestling with is whether women should be able to become priests. This should be much easier to solve however. The Bible itself gives clear guidance on this - 1 Corinthians 14. verses 34-35:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the Church.

Another rather sexist passage, which Margaret Thatcher, as a Christian, will have read, is I Timothy 2. verses 11-14:

Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a women to teach, not usurp authority over the man. but to be in silence For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Christianity of course does not have the monopoly on nastiness, racism and sexism. The Koran also has its fair share. For a religion which claims to teach universal brotherhood. it's hard to see what the angel Gabriel was getting at when he passed on this, from Surah V. verse 51:

O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are the friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

"Opium of the People" is possibly a more appropriate description than Marx intended. The junkies of religion who graduate to the stage where they are taking regular injections of this kind of mind blowing salvation share the symptoms of the heroin and the crack addict. Both realise that they have been hooked but have no desire to escape from the power that has gradually taken over their lives. Indeed, they both look for hope for the future in a never-ending supply of their own particular drug.

Nick White

Observations: At the social (1987)

The Observations Column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the social

One place not to spend your holiday is your local office of the Department of Health and Social Security (for such is its full, resplendent name). That is where, every day, hordes of people wait, in states of varying panic or patience, to try to get a hand-out from the state which, if they are lucky or frugal — or preferably both — will keep them alive at the official poverty line.

Waiting at the DHSS office is usually one of the most depressing and undermining experiences of a worker's life. Very often a person who is in desperate straits will hang about there all day. having queued to get in in the morning, to be told at closing time that is has all been a waste of time - they don't qualify for benefit, or there hasn't been time to process their claim, or their file has been mislaid in the system . . .

A predictable reaction to this sort of frustration is violence — against the furniture, the fabric of the building, the staff themselves. In the cheerless waiting areas the well-nigh indestructible chairs are bolted to the floor, the staff protected by screens, the police make regular visits to throw out or arrest claimants whose protests have been too forceful.

The misery and frustration of the "clients" is mirrored in that of the people on the other side of the counter. Morale among the staff is depressingly low and absences for stress-related sickness alarmingly high. Turnover (a nice word to use about human beings) among DHSS employees is so swift that anyone who survives the job for a year may find that they are the most experienced officer in their section.

The DHSS machinery has been overloaded by conditions which the experts, the planners and the politicians said would never happen. The post-war Welfare State was supposed to take care of everyone's needs, from our birth to our death and then to see us comfortably into the grave. Of course there would be the few who would be embroiled in some unpredictable crisis and for them there would be the safety net of National Assistance - now renamed Supplementary Benefit, as if that made any difference. But the growth of unemployment and the tightening of the screw on working class conditions has changed the Supplementary Benefit claim from the exception to the rule. For millions of people and their families it is now not a safety net but their only life-line.

But the DHSS is no exception to the capitalist rule that everything must operate as cheaply as possible; the staff unions estimate that in London alone some 3000 more staff are needed to catch up with the backlog of claims.

Poverty and repression can be witnessed every day at the DHSS. on both sides of the counter. The claimants are often too bitter, the staff too harassed, to recognise it but they have a united interest in getting rid of a social system which must produce such miserable indignities.

Half way there

An article in the July 1987 issue of GDR Review — a glossy journal issued by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) — surprises but disappoints. It is by Professor Adolf Kossakowski, Chairman of the GDR Society for Psychology and deals with an offshoot of the GDR Peace Council called "Psychologists for Peace".

Dr. Kossakowski claims that from the work done they can prove that children are not naturally aggressive and war-minded; indeed, they have a deep desire for peace and a fear of war. They conclude that this is true of all age groups and that it is their duty to "activate the masses".

However, in activating people it is extremely important to make clear to them the real causes of war. the true targets against which they should address their fight. In the past and also today those circles with an interest in the arms build-up have exploited and continue to gladly exploit some theories advanced by certain psychologists, ethnologists and biologists in order to mask the true causes of war and to paralyse the forces for peace . . .

The myth that war is instinctive and that mankind is evil by nature makes it easier for states to pursue a militaristic policy, because it can be suggested to their peoples that militarism is a natural phenomenon . . .

However, I also consider it equally important . . . to point to the real, the economic and political causes of the arms build-up and the war preparations by the forces of aggression. Many scientists . . . are still of the opinion that both sides are to blame for the arms race . . .

. . . as scientists we have a duty to discuss with our colleagues the economic and political background behind the policy of aggression pursued . . .

But that, unfortunately, is where he ends and his omissions are at least as important as what he says.

Wars are not fought for principles but, as Kossakowski does mention, economic advantage. Wars are fought either to increase or protect spheres of influence and markets — American action in the Middle East and the Gulf and Russian action in the latter just now make that abundantly clear. The dictatorship of South Korea, Chile, El Salvador and, until quite recently, the Philippines, are acceptable to the Western Allies. In western political circles the invasion of Grenada by the United States was "OK", that of Afghanistan by the Russians was not.

So the Psychologists of the Council for Peace are right in saying that wars are fought for profits. However the profits made by the armaments manufacturers are not the cause of war but are due to the need for maintaining and increasing the profits of the capitalist class as a whole.

Eva Goodman

Observations: Housewife's choice (1988)

The Observations Column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current advertisement, designed to convince the young, white male that he should become an Army Officer, is merely the latest in a series of misrepresentation, and deceit. Headlined, “Detergent or Deterrent” the ad goes on to make a comparison between the boring job of Junior Account Executive engaged in “persuading the nation’s housewives to switch from one make of soap powder to another, “and the exciting life of an Army Officer,” “safeguarding the way of life that offers them”, (the housewives I think they mean), "a freedom of choice in the first place”.

Agog to discover what other incentives beside the spurious one of defending the right of capitalists to continue to produce for profit, and not for need, I read on. What macho male could resist the opportunity to engage in battle manoeuvres with NATO in Germany? Learn jungle warfare techniques in Belize? Indulge in a camel trek across Australia? Go deep sea diving of Ascension Island? Obvious innit? Beats selling washing powder any day of the week. Where do I sign? But doesn’t the Advertising Standards Authority tell us to complain about any advertisement that isn’t decent, honest and truthful? What would an honest advertisement — a contradiction in terms under capitalism — say? Members of the working class are needed, as soldiers, by the British ruling class to act as a public power of coercion, and to fight to protect their markets, raw materials and trade routes against other capitalist states.

When socialism is established, it will be up to society as a whole to decide whether it wants to produce myriad brands of washing powder. However, one thing is certain, with the abolition of class antagonism, soldiering will become unnecessary, no longer needed to do capitalism’s dirty work.

Dave Coggan

Blogger's Note:

This is the 14,000 post on the blog. Fingers crossed I can hit 15,000 by the end of the year.

Observations: Class struggle and social revolution (1988)

The Observations Column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a leading article in the Guardian (4 May), the writer arrogantly admonished both the NUS and the P&O employers for getting involved in what the writer termed "19th Century Class Warfare”. However, the class struggle exists because a minority have social and economic power over the majority. The class struggle is the conflict of material interests existing between two antagonistic classes — capital and labour — and is not the figment of a Marxist’s imagination. Nor is it an apparition of the past at odds with the so-called "New Realism” of the 1980s. Under Capitalism the class struggle is unavoidable.

Indeed in the very next column the Guardian editorial highlighted the strikes and civil disturbances currently taking place in Poland. The writer even drew attention to the factors involved: a government forced by economic necessity to remove food subsidies and on the other hand workers struggling for higher wages against state enterprises trying to hold down wages in a bid to increase productivity and become more competitive. So the class struggle also exists in state capitalist countries. State capitalism and private capitalism are after all two sides of the same coin.

Unfortunately for politicians and journalists alike the class struggle is not going to disappear by wishful thinking; nor will it go away by the introduction of economic or social reforms nor by draconian anti-trade union legislation. The state coercion at the disposal of the Polish state, where strikes are in the process of being made illegal, did not stop workers striking there. Nor did it stop building workers in Nicaragua striking against the ruling class there for higher wages and better working conditions.

So whilst capitalism remains, the class struggle remains. The solution to this struggle between capital and labour, a solution propounded by socialists throughout this century, is that workers must organise politically to abolish capitalism. Trade unions, strikes, and other manifestations of the class struggle can only go so far. They are always limited by the class position of the workers and the vagaries of the trade cycle which capitalism periodically passes through. In the end, workers must realise that it is in their immediate interests to push the class struggle to its limit and abolish capitalism.

Richard Lloyd

Observations: Counting on your support? (1988)

The Observations Column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a pleasant spring evening. I am sitting in the garden. It’s quite a nice garden. I’m grateful to the building society for allowing me to live here. And for a very reasonable rate of extortion too. I am contemplating an election leaflet that had been posted earlier. The leaflet appears to be canvassing support on the issue of local crime. Bring back George Dixon, it implies, and all will be well. So bland is the leaflet that the word “Labour” could have been replaced with that of any mainstream party. Do they end Labour conferences now with a rendering of “the slightly pink flag”, I wonder idly?

My musings are interrupted by a man at the door. The smile on his face is a fraction of a second late. He’s come to sell me double glazing, I think. "Good evening, Mr Voter, I’m your Labour candidate in the local election. May I count on your support?” We engage in conversation. The word ‘socialism’ is one that he uses liberally. (What would Walworth Road have to say about that?) However, he may just as well be talking of double glazing because he obviously has no clear idea of what socialism is.

During the course of the exchange the Labourite sees red. “Examine the record of both the Wilson and Callaghan governments,” I say, “and you will see that both failed to do anything for the working class.” But, he is now clearly impatient to know exactly who will be getting my vote. “I shan’t be supporting any of the candidates,” I say, “but I shall certainly be voting. I am a member of the Socialist Party.” Recognition dawns. "You’re the SPGBer,” he says accusingly. “You’re the one who always writes ‘World Socialism’ across the ballot paper.”

Whilst regretting that I appeared to have failed to convince him of my argument, I am not wholly despondent. After all I have still to be canvassed by the Conservative, the Liberal, the Independent, the Green.

Dave Coggan

Observations: Two steps forward; two steps back (1986)

The Observations Column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two steps forward; two steps back

Well over twelve months later, and the Band Aid-Wagon keeps rolling on . . . US Aid for Africa, Live Aid, Fashion Aid and Classical Aid have all occupied a lot of publicity, not to mention time and energy. In the course of this they have raised a sum of money immense to the average reader of the Socialist Standard, but insignificant when placed alongside the priorities of capitalism. For example, the amount of money raised (over £100 million), is still a fraction of the one billion pounds spent in Europe every year to keep the food mountains frozen and stored. And what else could you spend the whole proceeds from the various charities on? How about one-and-a-half Buccaneer fighter planes, such is the logic of capitalism.

The lunacy of the buying and selling system is such that while Live Aid is trying to get more food to Africa, a similar fund-raising concert. "Farming Aid" is trying to reduce the amount of food being produced.

Bob Geldof recently warned that two-and-a-half million people will run out of food in the Western Sudan, and that the situation in Ethiopia is as bad as it was before Band Aid started. And just as the problem will not go away, neither it seems will the spectacularly futile attempts to deal with it. The latest event, which of course, must be sufficiently entertaining to satisfy the media's hunger for good pictures, is Sports Aid. which has had everyone running round in circles to raise money to send food to Africa while it is money and markets which stop the food from reaching the hungry in the first place.

In the course of such campaigns as Sports Aid — which try to deal with the problems of capitalism while leaving the cause intact — reformists always end up tying themselves in knots: the Save the Children Fund ended up at the end of last year asking that food should not be sent, as it would cause "economic chaos" in Sudan . . . it 's all very well peasants suffering but not the market, seems to be the suggestion. The Oxfam report on "Sudan: the roots of famine" gives the same shortsighted solutions with the ludicrous request to Western governments to prevent "the dumping of surpluses such as sugar on to world markets', when it is in fact the buying and selling system that can produce poverty amidst plenty. starvation alongside "surpluses”.

Now most people are aware of the contradictions between starving millions and the food mountains like the beef, cereals and skimmed milk in two hundred warehouses around Britain. But, so the argument goes, we must "do something now". The same was said for the famines in the Seventies in Biafra and elsewhere, and now, ten years on, the charities, the politicians and the bureaucrats are back where they started. Whether we shall be in the same position in another ten years' time — with a world of even greater productive capacity, and world hunger falling in the TV ratings depends on whether we start running society sanely, or just end up running on the spot.

Police accountability

The Labour Party has frequently offered "accountability" as a solution to the problem of abuses of power within the police force. Currently this is being down-played a bit as Labour tries to rival the Tories in its attempts to court the Police Federation (who are playing hard-to-get), woo the electorate (with promises of gifts of burglar alarms and window-locks) and convince us that they too are "a party of law and order ", in time for the next general election.

The limits of accountability as a strategy for curtailing the activities of the police were made plain recently when Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, announced that chief constables could over-ride the decision of their local police authorities and obtain stocks of plastic bullets, water cannon, and CS gas. At present police forces are, in theory, local in that they are answerable to a police authority which oversees spending. Police authorities have in some areas (especially Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire) been reluctant to allow the police to increase their para military hardware through the acquisition of these items. Chief Constables are now going to be able to side-step the authorities to which they are supposed to be accountable in order to get the equipment that they want and which the Home Secretary clearly wants them to have. So much for police accountability!

Whose house?

More and more workers have been persuaded to buy their own homes because of offers they can't refuse: no more council house building and existing council houses being sold to tenants at knock-down prices; building societies offering 100 per cent mortgages to just about anyone who wants one; and the lack of privately rented housing forcing people to "buy" whether they really want to or whether they can really afford it.

Owning your own home has long been sold to workers as a mark of status, a sign that they've made it to the ranks of the "middle classes". But those workers who bought that line when they "bought" their home are in for a nasty shock. The government is about to give them a reminder that they are workers after all with the same interests and problems as all workers under capitalism.

This blow to "middle class" pretensions comes from a proposal announced by Norman Fowler, Social Services secretary, that unemployed home-owners will lose their right to claim Supplementary Benefit to cover half their mortgage interest payments. These changes are likely to affect 90,000 claimants at any one time, forcing them to renegotiate mortgage repayments with their banks or building societies. This comes at a time when the numbers of people in arrears with their mortgages has increased rapidly (as have repossessions of houses by building societies because of non-payment of mortgages) as a result both of unemployment and the policy to force people through lack of choice to take out mortgages they can't really afford.

This change, if it is accepted, can only lead to more workers being evicted from the homes they thought they owned — a sharp reminder of how little workers really own under capitalism.

Postal code

An item in the Mail on Sunday on 1 June 1986 reveals that the Post Office is recruiting two stress counsellors to combat illness amongst harassed staff. Professor Cary Cooper of Manchester University Science and Technology Institute, who is helping to select the counsellors, believes improving the general well-being of the work force will help boost productivity and overall performance at work. He adds "When you overload people it has an adverse effect on production and leads to bad decisions and absence through sickness". What you might call putting capitalism's stamp on your health.

Observations: Nuclear nutrition (1987)

The Observations Column from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuclear nutrition

During the coming year it is likely that the government will announce that, in addition to permitting the contamination of the environment by radiation from nuclear power stations, it will also allow our food to be so contaminated. Since 1967 there has been a ban on the use of irradiation as a method of food preservation but it seems likely that that ban will soon be lifted — which should delight the food industry.

Submitting fresh food to short-wave gamma rays has the effect of killing off bacteria. thus enabling it to be stored longer without rotting. A committee of "experts" set up by the government claims that irradiation is safe and effective but others have argued that it can reduce the nutritional content of some foods and is also open to misuse since there is no way of testing whether or not food has been treated. Critics of the process say this is important since there is a risk that irradiation will be used by the food trade to "clean up" contaminated food so that it can be sold even though it has begun to rot. It is also feared that irradiated food will be treated as if it is sterile and therefore not refrigerated, even though radiation does not in fact kill off all bacteria. So the risk of food poisoning may actually increase.

It seems that once again people's health will be sacrificed so that the food industry can increase its profits still further by passing off as wholesome food which is rotting and contaminated.

Shareholders’ lesson

England's longest running industrial dispute, involving just 88 workers, has a lesson for the millions who bought shares in the privatised state industries and in particular for those who thought that thereby they recast their social standing.

For almost two years, the Silentnight company in Lancashire has been picketed by a group of increasingly beleaguered strikers. The dispute began over pay. it progressed to the sacking of 346 workers and now drags bitterly on, with that handful who have lost the support of even their trade union.

The company's founder, Tom Clarke, is one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite bosses. "Mr Wonderful" she once called him — perhaps because of the firm's family atmosphere under which Silentnight once tried to obscure the realities of class society, employment and exploitation. According to one of the pickets, everyone was once on first-name terms and if an employee was sick Tom Clarke would send a card and some flowers. Perhaps this chumminess was carried on when the crunch came:

  Sorry. Steve but you know how things are. I own this firm, you only work here. I can't have you laying down the law about what you're paid. There's plenty outside who'll be glad of your job. You're fired.
   I'm sorry too. Tom. And I'm not taking this lying down. I'll get together with the other lads and lasses and we'll all down tools together. The union will back us. I know that.

The point about this situation is that among the strikers are two people who own shares in Silentnight. One of them discussed the dispute with Tom Clarke at the last shareholders' meeting: "He was sorry at the way things had turned out, but that doesn't give us our jobs back” she reported.

Which brings us back to buying shares in British Gas and the like. Owning a few shares in some concern, perhaps winning a few pounds by buying and selling them at the right time, does not elevate a worker into the capitalist class. The class we belong to is determined by our economic interests, which means what we rely on for our living. In the case of the capitalist class, who are the real owners and the real shareholders, it means the monopoly of the means of production and distribution; in the case of the workers it means the sale of our labour power — working — for wages.

So the striking shareholders at Silentnight are not a contradiction in terms. They attest to the class division of capitalism, what it means and how it operates; they show the essential poverty of workers and of how deeply they suffer when they do not command a wage. And, shivering around their brazier in their lonely struggle, they do their bit to expose one of today's pernicious and popular fallacies.

Open houses?

One of the host of celebrities attending the UK launch of the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless was Rod Hackney. Prince Charles' mate, who is President of the RIBA. Hackney wants housing "to become the centre of public debate in what is likely to be an election year". Well that might provide an extra page or two in newspapers that the homeless can use as blankets when sleeping on the streets.

Hackney is also an advocate of "community architecture'. The idea behind this is that, given the right advice and access to resources, communities can build their own homes. This sounds like quite a good idea until you realise that it is precisely because people don't have access to resources that homelessness is a problem. Because local authorities and the government need, for political reasons, to be seen to be doing something about homelessness, then it's possible that a few highly publicised community architecture schemes will get off the ground as a token gesture. Community architecture, because of its “self-help" image, will no doubt appeal to many Tories — after all the labour power necessary to build the houses will be free — but it will not solve the problem of homelessness and slum housing. That will only happen when people have, not just access to resources to build and repair homes, but free access to those resources.

Observations: Santa on the spot (1986)

The Observations Column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Santa on the spot

Playing Santa Claus can be an extremely disagreeable way of contributing to a Christmas party. It's not just that all those robes and false whiskers make you feel like the pudding in the steamer, nor the physical assaults which must be uncomplainingly absorbed from impatient, disappointed or inquisitive children. There's also the fact that you're being set up to work a deception on people who, by their age, are assumed to be nicely vulnerable to it.

Whatever the hazards faced by the amateur Santa Claus they are as nothing compared to those of the professionals, those derelict actors who seem ready to take almost any risk for the sake of a bit of work in the Christmas spending spree. This year it promises to be even worse; if there are any Santas getting job satisfaction by resisting the idea that Christmas is a vast festival of commerce, 1986 should make them change their minds.

The pressure is on, in all the big stores, for the jolly Santas to turn in higher sales figures and some decidedly unromantic methods are being used in the process. Harrods, where Santa has always wandered freely about the toy department chatting with the kids, are now confining him to his enchanted castle because, the store say, the old method was too random to ensnare all the possible children. Hamleys, where they have never had a Santa before, now have three of them working shifts in a magic forest where the time and motion people roam among the clockwork animals. Each child is allocated 25 seconds to state their dearest Christmas wishes and the Christmas sport of mishearing the child's name, traditional but time-consuming, has been eliminated through a system of name cards.

It is worse outside London. In Glasgow and Manchester Santa had to bid perilously for publicity by shinning up a 100-foot ladder, amid exploding fireworks, onto the roof of the store. In Chester he was winched up to a high window by the fire brigade. For all this, of course, youth and fitness are needed; Santa, like so many other jobs, is no longer for the older man.

None of this is calculated to bring a magic sparkle to a child's eyes, but to enliven the sales figures. Selfridges are planning to process a quarter of a million children through Santa's grotto this year — a quarter of a million spenders, that is. Maximising customers, to use the stores' jargon, means maximising profits, which is a nice seasonal present for the shareholders.

It gives a new meaning to the old saying about Christmas being for the children.


Bus de-regulation

The recent de-regulation of buses is absurd even by the warped standards of capitalism It is the latest outcome of the Tory Party's central economic tenet: "If it's profitable then privatise it”. The result: total chaos in many towns and cities outside London as hundreds of private bus operators compete for a limited number of profitable routes; inner city streets in towns like Glasgow congested with hundreds of almost empty buses looking for passengers, while on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas people stand at bus stops waiting for buses that no longer run. paying the price for living on "uneconomic" routes.

For such people some form of public transport will still have to be provided: employers will still expect their work force to get to work on time. So the local council will be obliged to lay on public transport on these "uneconomic" routes. In other words the state will still be involved in public transport provision, albeit on a more limited scale.

The reason why utilities and services like transport, gas. electricity and water were nationalised in the first place was because it was recognised that it was more efficient and cost-effective for the state to run certain essential services than private capitalists. But it looks as if the Tory obsession with privatisation now means that that lesson must be learned all over again. In the meantime it's workers who will suffer as a result of the chaos — capitalists may run bus companies, but they certainly don't have to travel by bus.


Undeserving poor

In the nineteenth century the Poor Law made a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. The "deserving" poor, people like widows and the long term sick or disabled, were granted Poor Law relief: the "undeserving", especially the able-bodied unemployed, were subjected to the workhouse test to see if they were really desperate or just shiftless scroungers. The idea was that only the really desperate who had no other alternative would put up with the brutally punitive regime of the workhouse.

That same mentality has always been present in the modern system of welfare benefits (hence the different benefit rates for unemployed and other claimants). So the government's latest "available for work" test is just the last in a long line of methods for sorting the "deserving" from the "scroungers" (with the added bonus of bringing down the embarrassingly high unemployment figures before the next election).

The unemployed are to be required to fill in a new questionnaire when they claim benefit to enable (according to Lord Young) "a proper assessment to be made of a person's entitlement to benefit". The claimant will be asked a series of trick questions: if they give the wrong answer then they are likely to have their benefit suspended. Questions like:

• Are you immediately available for work? (Correct answer: "Yes")
• What wages will you accept? (Correct answer: "I'll take anything, no matter how low, that is offered me").
• Do you have children or a disabled relative to care for? If so can alternative arrangements for their care be made immediately? (Correct answer: "A neighbour or relative has promised, that in the event of my being offered a job. then they would be prepared to step in to look after baby/granny/disabled relative").
• Are you prepared to accept work in another town? (Correct answer: "I'll get on my bike and go anywhere just so long as you 'll give me a job").

Although the government has dismissed claims that they are merely trying to fiddle the unemployment figures Kenneth Clarke. Paymaster General, said that if the new scheme reduced the number of claims allowed by less than two per cent then it would pay for itself, including the £14 million cost of employing 1,400 extra benefit staff. A senior civil servant wrote a letter to all regional benefit managers saying: "We may be able to deter two to four per cent of fresh claimants who are not serious about looking for work and disallow another two to three per cent who are not available".

Observations: Oily Shore (1982)

The Observations Column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oily Shore

Peter Shore does not usually have the effect of confusing and splitting his opponents. A more familiar experience for him is to unite them in a common contempt and irritation at his transparently ambitious suggestions for the more efficient exploitative operation of British capitalism.

So perhaps Labour's Shadow Chancellor was surprised at the effect of his recent talks with the big brass of the employers’ organisation, the Confederation of British Industry. Many Tories were angered at what they saw as the CBI consorting with the enemy. Taylor Woodrow, the building firm which is a hefty contributor to Tory funds, resigned from the CBI in protest.

In fact Shore’s talks were all very proper and necessary. If there is ever another Labour government. Shore will hold a very high post in it; indeed, as a likely future Labour leader he may even become Prime Minister. The Labour Party will presumably eventually lose patience with Foot’s unerring instinct for losing votes and look around for a leader with a slicker, craftier approach.

It has always been a preoccupation of Labour governments to promote the greater profitability of British industry and commerce, and this has fashioned their policies of contesting with the workers over wages and conditions of work. They have also gone to great lengths, in both words and deeds, to reassure the British capitalist class that there is absolutely nothing for them to worry about in the event of a Labour government in this country. And in power they have been as good as their word. Under Labour the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer.

As the employers’ trade union the CBI is naturally interested in such policies. That is why they are concerned to discuss and negotiate with Shore, perhaps to make promises and pacts for the more intense exploitation of the British working class if Labour gets back to power. It might all have saved the need for those embarrassing speeches, aimed at giving comfort to the City of London, soon after a clutch of Labour ministers have gone to kiss the queen’s hand or whatever they do before they get down to the business of making her even more secure in her class dominance.

And while the Tories and the CBI members were protesting, what of the Labour Party? What outrage seethed in their ranks at this blatant example of fraternising with what is supposed to be their bitterest class enemy? It was all silence. Are the Labour Party so paralysed at the prospect of losing yet more votes? Or are they so keen to have Oily Shore as their leader?


Loose Nott

There was no perceptible dejection in the ’bus queues, supermarkets and factories when the news came out that will soon give up being Defence (sic) Minister and go back to being a busi(sic)man.

Neither was there any apparent gratitude for Nott, who in 1966 generously left the lush pastures of merchant banking to toil in the bleak fields of trying to run the Armed Forces, order new weapons, send workers out to fight in the Falklands and so on.

Merchant banks are strange, if often wildly prosperous, organisations. Strange because they are prone to criticism from public supporters of capitalism on the unlikely grounds of their excessive appetite for profits. Names like Lonrho (the cheekbones in Ted Heath’s '‘unacceptable face of capitalism”) or London and Counties sit uneasily on the City of London's memory.

Prosperous because they are often adept at taking advantage of the complex financial machinery which capitalism has made essential as one of the shackles on human progress and security. Taking this advantage can involve unpopular operations like asset-stripping, which usually stripped a lot of workers of their livelihood. But the merchant banks are devotees of their own sales talk. They regard their role — really as one of the band of robbers who share in the proceeds of working class exploitation — as vital, for which all workers should be grateful.

Nott is a lean man with a citric face and a smile like a Falklands winter. His public devotion to the exploitative, repressive disciplines of capitalism’s class relationships is as rigorous and relentless as a Dickensian schoolmaster. In his very person he demonstrates the connection between “business” and “politics”, that it is natural for someone who has made a lot of money from realising some of the results of surplus value to want to have a say in how the robbery is organised and legalised.

He will not be missed, and whoever his successor may be will not be welcomed, by anyone who is concerned to end the exploitation and cynicism of this miserable society.

Observations: Scroungers (1982)

The Observations Column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scroungers?

In early September you may have seen the headlines: “POLICE SPRING TRAP ON SOCIAL SCROUNGERS”. “Scroungers”? you may have pondered; “Ah yes, those people who consume wealth which they have played no part in helping to produce. Those anti-social elements who live on the backs of the rest of us. Recent examples of that sort of social parasite of whom you have read flash through your mind, mind.

There is the lady from central London, Betty Windsor, whose state benefits cheques for 1981 totalled £3,260,000 while other notorious spongers from the same family were on a similar dodge. Anny Philips applied to the Ministry of Agriculture for a 22½  per cent grant to improve the water supply at Gatcombe Park — the 1,200-acre estate bought for her by Betty for £750,000. The amount involved worked out to a cash payment of about £1.500 and the application was made weeks after Anny got a £19.600 pay rise in her own capacity as a sponger on the Social Security Civil List.

Then there is Mike Pearson, whose scrounged unearned income was sufficient to allow him to vacate his £2,000,000 home in South Kensington to become a tax exile in Ibiza where he will spend half the year, with the other half in Monte Carlo. Pearson inherited £7,000,000 on his 21st birthday and his personal wealth is now estimated at £20,000,000.

Scroungers, Ah yes, the top 2 percent of the population who own over 64.4 per cent of all the land in Britain and 70.5 per cent of all company shares (Inland Revenue Statistics 1980). So the police are springing traps on these sort of people are they? A row of lavish houses went on sale for £650,000 each in Knightsbridge after eleven of them had been sold. The agent said in an interview: “Everyone has paid cash for these properties . . . they don't need to bother with mortgages”. Perhaps it was reported to the police that these conspicuously rich people were never known to work and that they must therefore have been getting money by scrounging.

Then you stop wondering about who the scroungers are and pick up the newspaper. The trap, which was set up by police and supplementary benefit officers in Oxford, was part of a government crackdown on social security fraud; 286 people were arrested in swoop arrest tactics and each was questioned on suspicion of obtaining payments of £67 a week by giving false bed and breakfast addresses.

Wealth is created by labour. But those who own the most wealth do not contribute any useful labour to society. When we are not permitted to work for them in a recession and if we are accepting their paltry doles, they call us scroungers. Parasites of the non-human variety have got no worries about the willingness of their hosts to provide them with a living because non-human organisms cannot make choices about whether or not to accept the parasites. Members of the ruling class have got more to be worried about because the working class can make such a choice.

Gary Jay

Observations: Pop goes Norman (1986)

The Observations Column from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pop goes Norman

The British Record industry Awards (BBC 1, 10 February) consisted of the usual vacuous ego-tripping and facetious speeches from such useful members of society as the pop group Tears for Fears. The recipients of the awards were the same kind of safe, tedious performers as last year, and the year before, and so on. Phil Collins, the Eurythmics, Huey Lewis and the News, Bruce Springsteen — the list of commercially successful and artistically irrelevant "stars" is endless. Of course, there was the patronising "special award" to Bob Geldof and Live Aid but in general these awards showed that Nothing Had Changed. (Although, in the spirit of tokenism for which the BBC is famous, we even had a Best Classical Recording award.)

However, this award ceremony was special, because the guest of honour was none other than our old friend Norman Tebbit. The emptiness of the speech he was to make was presaged by Noel Edmonds' blatant appeal to naked emotion when he introduced Tebbit as "a man who has recently returned to public life after a long spell in hospital" — or words to that effect: Tebbit began by saying that he didn't know much about pop music (neither does Noel Edmonds, so he was in good company) and then sallied forth into a series of facts and figures showing that pop music was an extremely high-earning export (and therefore ideologically sound as far as Norm was concerned). He praised its "competitiveness" and the fact that it gives pleasure to so many people and went on to praise Live Aid for "helping people less fortunate than ourselves". An analysis of why they are "less fortunate" was too much to hope for, but the hypocrisy of first praising competition and then shedding crocodile tears for the inevitable results of the competitive system was blatant even for Tebbit.

But the awards only served to confirm what Tebbit said — those who are most easily marketable take the awards. Of course, in this twisted society it makes more sense to waste time and effort marketing the garbled vocals of Bruce Springsteen than to ensure the free distribution of resources which would ensure that disasters like the Ethiopian famine can never be repeated.

Socialism will be a world wide society of free access, in which everyone's needs are met. Then there will be no need for faded pop stars to organise fund-raising concerts; no need for hypocritical politicians to congratulate them for doing so and no need for ceremonies in which the musically illiterate are presented with awards for selling more records than their equally illiterate competitors. Pop music will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold — it will simply not matter whether or not a record is Number One. Maybe music will then give real pleasure rather than a temporary respite from the misery of life under capitalism.

God spot

"Gawd", you mutter, as our Brian, busily buttering up his latest Establishment worthy, rolls over invitingly to have his belly scratched. "What about some genuinely aggressive questioning for a change?" But Scargill's out in the cold these days; Brenda Dean's dangerously popular, and Hughie ("terrible twin") Scanlon s sleeping it off in the Lords alongside Joe (Lord) Gormley. We'll just have to wait until there's a nice juicy striking bus-driver for him to sink his teeth into.

But what's this? Thought for the Day. Aarrgh! Here it comes again! You'll know the sort of thing. Some vicar, attired in the gear of an archangel, arrives at the studio clutching a couple of frying-pans, a brace of walking-sticks. and a chalice of font-water. Like as not he'll be sporting six yards of striped woollen scarf (run up, hell confide unctuously. in celebration of advent) and a crash-helmet. In true evangelical style he's off to Killamey to skid down the Paps while singing the Greater Doxology to the tune of the well-known popular ditty, My Old Man's A Dustman.

“Heavens", observes Master Redhead. "Precisely", murmurs our impassioned divine. You haven't even a free hand to turn the damn thing off as you mop the blood from your lacerated face, or as you scrape the porridge from the kitchen floor. You may remind yourself that, after all, it's only three minutes. But then, it's three minutes every morning. There you are. struggling to interpret the customary BBC Newspeak, fuming, perhaps, at yet another gratuitous assault on yet another group of disaffected trade unionists when — Wham! — you're suffocating in yet another nebulous cloud of sanctimonious codswallop.

They've mugged you again. (This time it's a holy cook who manages to punctuate his pietistic diatribe with entirely disgusting recipes for goatsmeat stew.) But they won't catch you next time — will they?

The great and the good

"I have built many roads and sewers in my time"
(Employment Secretary. Lord Young, on BBC Radio 4. 20 February)

My, my! How about that, then? Of course, Lord Young is not exactly unique in his truly prodigious endeavours, is he? Take the Great Wall of China. You may have heard a broadcasting hack assert (Radio 2, 26 February) that this mighty rampart — all 1500 miles of it — was built by one Shih Hwang-ti. the first of the "universal emperors'. Swiftly on to 5th century Athens BC. Phidias builds the Parthenon. Admittedly, he enjoyed a little help from Ictinus and Callicrates, but it was a brave effort for all that. North-Westward to Rome and the Colosseum. The Emperor Vespasian rolled his sleeves up for this one. Unfortunately he was "summoned by the Gods" before he could complete it — overwork, no doubt — and his successor. Titus, to the cheers of his admiring people, finished the job — all on his own.

But what about the home scene? There have been many instances of selfless hard work and heroic devotion to duty. One in particular springs to mind: the example of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunei built anything and everything bridges, railways, ships, canals . . . One very fine example of his handiwork is his tunnel at Box. on the old Great Western line from London to Bristol. Imagine, if you will, all those spotless navvies and their wenches, sitting round their roaring fires, tankards of foaming porter clutched in their soft white hands, howling encouragement to Isambard as, shovel in one grimy fist, pick in the other, he hacks his way through miles of rock and clay. A heartening sight indeed!

Or — and here you rub your eyes — can it be possible that the nearest Lord Young of Graffham ever got to building sewers was when he presented his aristocratic backside to them?

Observations: What's a terrorist? (1987)

The Observations Column from the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What's a terrorist?

One person's terrorist is another's guerilla hero. When a bomb is planted in a street, or an aircraft hijacked, the leaders of the state on the receiving end are quick to denounce such acts as cowardly, indiscriminate attacks on innocent people. The media agree (while making money out of bloodthirsty sensationalism) and so do the courts:

 . . . if men plot and plan to kill indiscriminately, or to in any way endanger the lives of citizens, they can expect only the severest punishment from this court. If that bomb had gone off, untold damage would have been done to innocent citizens . . . (Old Bailey judge, recently sentencing an 1NLA bomber to life imprisonment).

But we should not allow politicians and the media and judiciary to obscure the facts. In the last war the German occupying forces were resisted by bands of partisans whose actions were not dissimilar to those of today's terrorist — very often indiscriminate destruction and killing. They were applauded by the allies as courageous freedom fighters, supported with arms and personnel.

Guerilla fighters regard themselves, as did the wartime partisans, as being at war — and war is an indiscriminate business. It permits no innocents: all of us — civilians, the sick, children — are legitimate targets. Much of the allied bomber offensive during the last war was directed, deliberately, at killing the maximum number of "innocent" civilians; it was. the planners said, an attack on the enemy morale. So which is worse — to plant a 30lb bomb in a street. like the man sentenced at the Old Bailey, or to drop a 1,000lb bomb on the street from an aircraft? If you get the answer right, you may be given a medal instead of a gaol sentence.

This is not to support, or to condone, workers killing each other in the disputes of the exploiting class in society. Workers have no interests at stake in capitalism's wars; in that sense they can be said to be innocents for whichever side wins they will remain in poverty and repression. Terrorists are to be condemned — like those in the forces opposing them — because they take part in capitalism's conflicts, not because they do so in any unusual or specially gruesome way.

Capitalism is a brutal society, which sets worker against worker and cynically manipulates and exploits the emotional responses which inevitably follow. The real struggle is to replace this society with one based on communal interests. That struggle cannot be carried on with guns and bombs for it is about workers' ideas and they are the authentic key to human progress.


That’s bloody life

That bloody woman! Always on the TV. That bloody hair and that bloody patronising voice! No, not Margaret Thatcher for a change, this time it's Esther Rantzen. taking time out from presenting phallic carrots on That's Life, to introduce the latest in a long line of social concern slots from Crimewatch UK to Drugwatch and now Childwatch. What's next after that? Dolewatch? Or with the cold winter months on us Grannywatch? Or for a real hit in the ratings how about Blind-Puppy Watch? But we have something to tell Esther if she is intending dealing with any more of capitalism's problems — there are only 365 days in the year.

Mind you it's a shrewd move, because not only is it good in the ratings but the raw material for the shows will never disappear; no one will get bored and turn over.

But while Childwatch brought the problem of child abuse into the limelight (at least until the ratings fall) the reasons, or much of them, remain in the shade. A small item in the trial of Andrew Neill, the father of Tyra Henry went unnoticed:

• before her death, the father of the little girl was suspected of abusing her. and so was ordered to live elsewhere and have no contact with either mother or child;
• the mother was cut off after being unable to pay an electricity bill;
• with no real option, mother and child were forced by simple economics to move in with the father.

A few months later the little girl was dead, one victim of a complex but common chain of events that starts at the balance sheet and ends in blood.

Capitalism throws people together with the force of economics, into a family. It bonds them with the need for respectability, and calls it the natural basis of society.

Andrew Neill is now serving a life sentence. He can see his bars and he can beat his prison walls in frustration. Outside, we've only got each other to knock about.

Brian Gardner

Observations: Capitalism for sale (1988)

The Observations Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to the privatisation of British Steel, the Shares Information Office sent me a letter inviting me to participate in the return of BSC to the private sector. I had been targeted as a likely share buyer because I had previously, in my pre-socialist days, been seduced into laying out money for British Telecom shares. I had subsequently become one of the 900,000 who, between November 1984 and March 1987, disposed of their BT shares. Like many others I discovered that the benefits of popular capitalism applied only to those who already owned the means of production and distribution. To discover whether you belong to the working class or the capitalist class, give up your job and see how long you can afford to live on the dividends from a few shares in British Gas, British Telecom and British Airways.

Founded in 1860 in the heart of the Black Country to manufacture wrought-iron tubes and fittings, the steel works expanded and amalgamated until, in the mid 1960s. it employed over two thousand people and covered an area of forty-nine acres. We lived in a row of terraced houses belonging to the steel company. The amenities were rather basic. Across the yard we had a brewhouse-cum-coalhouse. and an outside lav. Our house was directly opposite the main gates. Close enough to tumble out of bed and be at work when the bull hooted the starting time. My dad spent all his working life in the steel industry. They gave him a gold watch. It was, I supposed, inevitable that I would follow in my dad's footsteps. I well remember that callow but cocky youth who, in the mid sixties, became a wage slave for the first time.

One thing my dad couldn't stand was a bragger. The glossy sales brochure produced by BSC to market its sale gloatingly describes its success as a capitalist enterprise. Potential share buyers are regaled with smug facts and figures relating how within eight years the workforce has been reduced by two-thirds. Great joy surrounds the announcements of improved employee production and reduced employee costs. "Our priority is to develop an informed, motivated and skilled workforce." we are told; By which they mean that they are fully committed to ensure that their employees continue to produce for profit, not for need.

Nationalised or privatised, it makes no difference to workers blue collar, white collar, shop floor or management. Their position remains that of wage/salary slaves forced to sell their labour power in order to live. Despite the glossy brochures and the promise that a few shares give workers some sort of control over their livelihood, the basic wage labour/capital relationship remains unaltered.

Which would you prefer — a gold watch as a "thank you" for a lifetime spent creating wealth for the minority property-owning class, or a classless, moneyless, wageless society where goods are produced for need, not profit. Don't buy capitalism. Take up your option on socialism.

Dave Coggan

Observations: Carry on motoring (1988)

The Observations Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there are any members of the working class still under the impression that capitalists operate for the benefit of us all and that making profits is purely incidental, then they should hear what a Mr Tom Farmer has to say on the subject. Farmer is Chairman of Kwik-Fit Holdings, the multi-million pound company which fits tyres, exhausts and batteries.

I would like about half an inch of snow [this winter], just enough to flatten the batteries, and not too much to stop people getting out in their cars. (Times, 21 September)

When interviewed. Mr Farmer complained that the previous mild winter had cost the company about one million pounds in profits. It seems that as a result they were only £9.8 million for the six months ending August 1988.

So, if your battery goes flat this winter, or your exhaust rusts through, or the MOT Inspector is not satisfied with the tread on your tyres — at least you will know that Kwik-Fit and their shareholders will be happy. And should a flat battery result in your having to walk home in Mr Farmer's preferred half inch in snow, you may like to ponder on the fact that 9.8 million pound coins, placed in a row. would extend for just over 135 miles — just to give you some idea.

John Moore

Observations: Wimps or shrimps (1988)

The Observations Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Washington DC there are now more than 5,000 jobs on offer. They include the Cabinet, executive officers, top people at the various agencies; ambassadors and judgeships. US attorneys and federal marshalls. Less prominent, but escaping Congress vetting, there are executive officers and 1,404 other government jobs, senior executive service members and 1,646 other grades.

However, you need not apply; you don't have the right qualifications even if you could muster the fare. In this instance qualifications do not mean academic achievement or previous experience but either the amount the applicants — or their parents — contributed to the newly elected President's campaign coffers or other favours done to help the new incumbent of the White House. You could say that at least in the United States, unlike in many even more obviously corrupt regimes.

But the election of a new President has wider repercussions in the US capital. The social scene changes; the Hollywood-style entertainment given by the ex-B actor and outgoing President is not that of either Bush or Dukakis. The impact of the new President will be felt by the whole Washington social scene as "society" apes the habits, likes and dislikes affected by him and his First Lady. Quoting Aram Bakshian. one of Reagan's — and recently Bush's — speechwriters, the Sunday Mirror of 17 October tells us that with Dukakis a "pseudo-prole" fashion of sweaters. ethnic clothes and leather patches will replace present glitzy fashions, whereas under Bush Country Club and “class and old money" will be the thing. Top restaurants will win or lose as Presidential preference will be faithfully aped. Under Bush sophisticated bistros will prosper; Dukakis' image would have brought prosperity to "homely" restaurants (with very unhomely prices!).

Ironically one of the jibes made against socialist society is that there would be a sameness about everyone. Yet here we have — more obviously projected than elsewhere — the cream of society in God's Own Country preparing slavishly to imitate the habits, clothes and manners of their President.

Eva Goodman

Observations: Turning the screw (1982)

The Observations Column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Turning the screw

Among the more eager practitioners of the Falklands-style militancy in industrial relations are the management of British Rail. The determination with which they stood their ground in the battle with the NUR and then with ASLEF was an inspiration to all employers who are seeking, in slumping capitalism, to degrade workers’ wages and conditions.

Even more notable has been the policy of the associated sea ferry service Sealink. Faced with declining traffic and mounting competition, they have simply imposed wage cuts and threatened to close their services down if the unions resist.

This worked for Sealink in the case of the ships running from Newhaven, where the seamen accepted the cuts. But in other ports there has been resistance. Sealink assert that their aim is to reduce wages by some £28 a week in Harwich (which is bad enough, when prices are still climbing week by week) but, according to the Guardian of 9 July, the cuts are more like £40, or even £80. a week. A Sealink spokesman has spelled out the situation: ". . . this is the only way we can make the service pay. If the NUS do not accept it, there will be no service”.

It is doubtful that there will be cries of anguish in the media about the suffering caused to passengers by the closing of the service by the management — the kind of protests they make when a service is disrupted by a strike. Cuts made in the interests of defending profitability are regarded as common sense while those stemming from workers’ defence of their standards are put down to bloody- mindedness.

There is an equally enduring lesson for workers to learn in this episode. This militancy is being displayed by the management of a nationalised industry; and all in the interests of economic operation — of working in such a way as to make profit, or at least not to make a loss.

This is exactly the kind of situation which the advocates of nationalisation assumed would be eliminated by a state take-over. Real experience has exposed the fallacy of those hopes. State owned industries have to be run in basically the same way as their private predecessors. The profit priorities of capitalism continue; the interests of the wealth-producing workers are low in the order of concern; the privileges of the non-producing owning minority are paramount.

For the ruling class, nationalisation can be a good deal. For the workers it is a fraud.


Pats and kicks

After all their hard work preparing the ships for the Falklands Task Force, the dockyard workers at Chatham and Portsmouth thought they deserved a pat on the back from the government. They were very upset when in fact they got a kick in the teeth.

Before the war in the Falklands. the government had decided to reduce Portsmouth drastically and close Chatham. As the first ships left Portsmouth for the South Atlantic, they were waved away by 180 workers who had already had their redundancy notices. In all, about 13,000 were to be sacked. But during the war, the yards were working night and day to prepare and convert other ships for the fighting. Some people did literally work night and day; perhaps it was overtiredness which led them to think that the government would be so impressed with the speed and quality of their work that they would be rewarded for a job well done by changing the planned cut-backs.

Now the Falklands war is supposed to have proved that this is a government of inflexible resolve, that Margaret Thatcher is always right, always eye to eye with reality. The post-Falklands “Defence” Estimates revealed that there was to be no change of plan, although John Nott subsequently promised some slight adjustments in the case of the yards at Portsmouth. Chatham will close, as planned. So the dockyard workers were very angry, sick, rejected — and jealous of the workers at the Devonport yards where, they grumbled, they don’t make the killing machines half as efficiently.

Any workers who think they arc employed as a favour, or as a reward, are gravely misunderstanding the facts of capitalist life. Labour power is a commodity — something to be sold — wherever and however it is expended. If it is not economical to buy it, workers will be laid off; factories, mines, dockyards will close.

The armaments industry has an economy with some distinctive, even peculiar, features but these do not allow it to evade the basic laws of capitalism. The very fact that they expected a pat on the back means that the dockyard workers deserved the kick in the teeth.


Charity is cold — official

In case anyone ever had doubts on the matter, it has now been officially announced that charities are completely helpless to ease the problems of capitalist society.

Amnesty International recently took the Charity Commissioners to the High Court after they had refused to register AI as a charity. Amnesty International, of course, busy themselves with battles against what they call injustice; they sponsor prisoners of conscience, they struggle for “prisoners' rights’, whatever they may be. But Justice Slade was not impressed. “The elimination of injustice", he droned, “has not ever been held to be a purpose which qualifies for the privileges accorded to charities by English law.”

Following their victory, the Commissioners issued some “guidelines", presumably hoping to deter any well-meaning bunch who think they are doing something about some of the world’s ailments and that this deserves to make them a charity. But the Commissioners are quite clear on the point. They will not register any organisation which:

  tries to influence any causes of poverty which are lying in the social, economic and political structures of a state;
brings pressure to bear on governments to change their policies on issues like land reform, trade union rights;
tries to abolish social, political or economic injustices.

What this means is that charities have to exist in a society in which there is is poverty and "injustice" of all kinds and which imposes repression on organisations like trade unions.

Now the fact is that there is only one way in which to rid the world of problems like these and that is to organise for a democratic revolution to abolish the social system which causes them. That aim is far beyond the scope of any charity. The tragedy is that its achievement is hampered by many obstacles, one of them being the delusion that capitalism can be transformed by charitable acts. Well, now we know. Let alone abolishing the problems, charities can not even claim to protest about them. There has always been a hollow note to the rattle of the collecting box; it is the note of futility.

Observations: Special needs? (1986)

The Observations Column from the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Special needs?

In capitalism it is money that determines whether or not people's needs are met. This principle applies to the "welfare state" as much as it does to the market for goods. But in the case of the welfare state it is the government which has the power to decide whose needs are to be met (through the allocation of resources) and at what level.

Take, for instance, draft regulations recently drawn up by the DHSS which will restrict the availability of single, or "special", needs payments to supplementary benefit claimants. At present single payments are intended to cover the cost of such essential household items as beds, cookers, heaters, basic items of furniture, and bedding. It is already extremely difficult to obtain this assistance. But the government now intends to make it even more difficult, through the new regulations which will exclude payments for such things as hot water bottles for the elderly and infirm, curtains, cleaning implements. light fittings and other basic household equipment. Certain claimants, such as squatters, will not be eligible for any such payments at all.

The reason given for the new restrictions is contained in a DHSS memorandum (Guardian, 10 June 1986) which states that "there has been since 1981 a rapid and continuous growth in single payments" and "in these circumstances the Government now proposes to bring expenditure back to around the 1984 level . . . and to ensure an orderly administration of the single payment system in the two years before the Government reform proposals take place". (The "reform" referred to is the abolition of single payments and their replacement with a "Social Fund" which will apply even more restrictive criteria to applicants).

So more people are clearly in need and are seeking extra assistance from the DHSS. What is the government’s response? Those needs are first defined as "special needs” and met on a highly selective basis, and later redefined out of existence. And this is called "social security” — part of the "welfare state".


Diagnosis

There is a man in Broadmoor, sent there for killing his wife, who is a brilliant scientist. At the time he was working in the development of guidance systems for inter-continental missiles. An obsessive man, he was liable to bouts of morbid jealousy. One day his wife could stand no more and left him. After a while he gave up his job and walked, brooding, the hundred or so miles to where she was living and there he killed her. The missiles he had been working on are each capable of wiping out hundreds of thousands of people. At his trial the judge listened to social workers, police officers and psychiatrists and it was decided that killing his wife proved that the brilliant scientist was ill and must be locked away in a hospital until he is better.


Fair cops

There is enough for the people of Greater Manchester to worry about in the colourful menace of their Chief Constable, James Anderton, without all this shock-horror-probe stuff about his deputy John Stalker.

Like most of these sordid affairs, the Stalker scandal becomes more outrageous and ruthless with the dragging out of one piece of evidence after another, which hint at corruption and intrigue at what is called A Very High Level.

It all began when Stalker was given the job of looking into the shoot-to-kill policy of the Ulster police, under which some embarrassingly innocent victims had been mown down. If Stalker took this seriously he is at variance with most of the people who have any experience of these matters, who expect as a matter of course that such enquiries are really designed to sweep a scandal under the carpet.

Whatever the truth of this, there is evidence of a campaign to undermine Stalker's standing as a high ranking policeman by showing him up as an associate of criminals and of other people with a reputation for sailing rather too close to the legal winds.

There are many people who have been arrested and harassed by Anderton's and Stalker's police who coknow what it means to be subjected to a sustained persecution. They will probably appreciate the irony in the fact that the same sinister techniques are said to be now applied to Stalker.

How outrageous a scandal is it? A social system based on the interests of a small but powerful minority cannot be open about much of what goes on in the cause of protecting the standing of that minority. Secretiveness (and the British government is noted for its obsessive concern with secrecy and an elegantly worded suppression of the truth) is endemic to capitalism. When it is demanded, the welfare — even the life — of an individual is of no account; even the most devoted servants of capitalism are expendable.

There was, to put it another way, never the slightest chance that Stalker would be allowed to lift the lid off the RUC.

Meanwhile, the workers of Manchester and of the rest of capitalist society should concern themselves with such events only to take what lessons they can from them. The police are employed as a part of capitalism's coercive, privilege protecting machinery. Their role is repression, of people and of the truth when they need to. They do this to sustain a social system which, even were it morally immaculate, without a taint of evasion or corruption, would still be unsupportable for its impoverishment, degradation and murder of millions of human beings.

We must get on with working towards the abolition of this sordid mess, leaving that odious bunch of thugs and twisters to grass each other up.