Running Commentary: Catch ’em young (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Catch ’em young

Everyone knows that all state schools are short of resources. Strathclyde Regional Council have found a way to alleviate the problem. Following in the footsteps of national and local press, programmes for charity, sports events or whatever, they are selling advertising space in the exercise books used by their 422,000 schoolchildren. For 500,000 books. £2.250 will buy the back page, inside covers are slightly cheaper, and a bargain £5,400 buys all three covers and a logo on the front.

Of course, not just any advert is accepted. Cigarettes, alcohol, sweets and BMX bikes are out. (So, we are sure, would be The Socialist Party or The Socialist Standard). Road safety and health education are in. So far, so good. "We also want to encourage thrift" said the Head of Public Relations and to this end they have approached banks and building societies.

The report appears in Super Marketing 11 July 1986. It is therefore no surprise to read a little further on that Lyons Tetley are "very happy with results" of their pilot scheme, which was "very cost effective" and intend to take further space. Of course, using exercise books in school at £2,250 a throw to persuade half a million mums to send their offspring to school filled up with Ready Brek is obviously a lot cheaper than those TV commercials where kids light their way through the fog with their Ready Brek induced halos. What better way to condition the workers of tomorrow to be receptive to the siren calls of consumerism — and after all, without those advertisements there mightn't be any exercise books . . .

More on poverty

In the August Socialist Standard we pointed out that at that time the last published official figures for people living at or below the government's poverty line were based on a count taken in 1981. Another count had been taken in 1983 and this should have been published last year but the government were prudently delaying this.

Just as that Socialist Standard was produced the later figures became available; in fact they were placed in the library of the House of Commons, just as the library conveniently closed for the summer. However, details have seeped out and are not comfortable reading for those who think that life in Britain under the Tories is as happy and abundant as we were promised it would be. when the alleged monetarists were let loose in Whitehall.

In 1981, the official figures showed 7.7 million living on or below the poverty line; by 1983 this had risen to 8.8 million. A House of Commons library estimate is that by 1986 this total has risen again, to 11.7 million

This comes at a time when the Child Poverty Action Group are celebrating — or perhaps it should be mourning — their 21st birthday Formed under another name in 1965. at the time they did not bother to arrange to bank any funds because they were sure that their campaign to abolish child poverty would succeed within one year A lot of their hopes rested in the election of the 1964 Labour government, of which one Labour MP (Frank Field, Guardian, 4 August 1986) now says: "At the end of the 1964-70 Labour Government the charge was that the poor had got poorer under Labour' ". The CPAG soon learned a little about the reality of working class poverty and what Labour governments are in power for By the end of their first year they had opened a bank account and had changed themselves from an advisory group into an action group.

Like so many apparently well-intentioned reformist bodies. CPAG have probed, exposed and agitated. But, typically, they overlooked the fact that working class poverty is basic and unavoidable under capitalism, whichever party is in power. When they were formed in 1965 there were less than 400,000 people living on Supplementary Benefit; now there are some thing like eight million dependent on it. The numbers out of work, grappling with the increased burden of poverty which unemployment brings, has risen during this time from 330,000 to over three million.

Working class poverty cannot be dealt with by piecemeal reforms, treated as if it were separate from the other problems produced by capitalism. The facts point to the irresistible conclusion, that the CPAG has devoted a lot of energy and a lot of ingenuity to raising hopes only for them to be clashed against harsh reality. It would have been better for them to have assessed the true nature of the problem they were facing and then campaigned for the abolition of the cause of poverty. For if capitalism is allowed by its poverty-stricken people to continue there will still be a CPAG, or its equivalent, in another 21 years time. And another. And another.

South American headache

"One of our team's first problems there was what to do with almost 100 orphaned children who had been trained in torture. Their speciality was pulling out eyes". These chilling words by Dr Nacho Maldonado Allende. psychoanalyst and co-ordinator of an international team of mental health workers in Nicaragua are reported in the June/July issue of Open Mind, journal of the National Association for Mental Health.

Getting across basic elements of mental health care in Nicaragua is a much more primitive and elementary matter than even the disgracefully inadequate facilities in this country allow. The team exchanged ideas and shared knowledge with the local peasants they were training, rather than trying to impose professional expertise. Alcoholism is a problem in Nicaragua as almost everywhere else. When asked what should be done about it. the locals replied "Do nothing. We are deprived and for the moment we need it to help us ". If they paused to work it out, workless, homeless and at times hungry workers in Glasgow. Belfast and Birmingham would give the same reply.

Dr Allende's team found many Nicaraguans suffering from what he described as "frozen grief". People who had. for instance, suffered the loss of a close relative, appeared cheerful but their suppressed sorrow and frustration surfaced in headaches, insomnia, numbed limbs.

While there are degrees of deprivation and suppression, workers throughout the world face the same problems of capitalism. Those who dispute this might well ask themselves the real reason the next time they suffer a headache or sleepless night.

Voice From The Back: A Thrifty Life (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Thrifty Life

“Even by Philip Green’s extraordinary standards, it is a handsome pay day – the retail tycoon has awarded himself Britain’s biggest bonus of £1.2 billion.” (Times, 21 October) Mr Green denies that this big cash pay-out is likely to fund more takeover bids. “I’m saving up,” he says. This is unlikely as he is not known for his frugality; in fact he spent £4 million earlier in the year on his son’s bar mitzvah. He also owns a 12 seater Gulfstream G550 jet and a 200ft yacht, each worth around £20 million. The salesgirls in Top Shop and Miss Selfridge, which Mr Green owns and who help produce the £1.2 billion that he wallows in, can only dream of such frugality.

 

Independence ?

For political reasons the US government pretend that Iraq is now a democratic and independent country, but the facts are somewhat different. “Iraqi President Jalai Talabani said he opposed military action against neighbouring Syria but lacked the power to prevent US troops using his country as a launchpad if it chose to do so. ‘I categorically refuse the use of Iraqi soil to launch a military strike against Syria or any other Arab country,’ Talabani told the London based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview on Tuesday. “But at the end of the day my ability to confront the US military is limited and I cannot impose on them my will.”  (Middle East Online, 1 November)

Democracy ?

When Michael Bloomberg won the election to be Mayor of New York in 2001 we commented that it was a strange sort of democracy that allowed a multi-millionaire to become mayor just because he spent $60 million on his campaign. He looks set to be re-elected because of his vast wealth. “Mr Bloomberg is expected to spend $85 million on his campaign, about eight times as much as his rivals.” (Times, 8 November) 

As they say in US politics: “he bought it fair and square”.

A Grateful Nation?

The British Legion has produced a report that shows that the owning class might pay lip service to the dead and maimed of their wars but that behind the fine words is the cynical reality of running the profit system. “As the nation prepares to remember the sacrifices of millions, exhaustive research by the Legion suggests that almost half of veterans and their dependants – 3.88 million – are living on less than £10,000 a year. Almost one million have to exist on less than half that amount.” (Independent, 11 November)

 

Died for “your” country? Well done, wage slave, your widow and orphans can cop £96 a week to survive on. We shall also give you a poem about “lest we forget”. Poems are much cheaper than pensions.

The Deadly Dust

An estimated 100,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed as having pleural plaques – internal scarring on the lining of the lung that indicates exposure to asbestos. “A landmark test case will appear in the Court of Appeal tomorrow in which the insurance industry on behalf of employers will argue that a potentially fatal condition caused by exposure to asbestos should not be compensated.” (Observer, 13 November) Earlier this year the insurers with the Department of Trade and Industry on behalf of British shipbuilders managed to slash the compensation from between £12,500 and £20,000 to £5,000 and £7,000. Whether on the battlefront or the shipyard the capitalist class will always put profits before human life.

Torturous Arguments

The US government is opposed to torture, isn’t it? Well, sort of. The US Congress recently passed an amendment to ban American soldiers and spies from torturing prisoners but the White House came out against such legislation. “This week saw the sad spectacle of an American president lamely trying to explain to the citizens of Panama that, yes he would veto any such bill but, no, ‘We do not torture.’ Meanwhile, Mr Bush’s increasingly error-prone vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been on Capitol Hill trying to bully senators to exclude America’s spies from any torture ban. To add a note of farce to the tragedy, the administration has had to explain that the CIA is not torturing prisoners in Asia and Eastern Europe – though of course it cannot confirm that such prisons exist.” (Economist, 12 November) 

Everything quite clear now?

The Lazy Man Objection

“About 73% of workers north of the border who replied to an insurance company study said they regularly failed to take all of their holidays. Workers in London fared worst, with 77% not using up their annual leave.” (BBC News, 15 November)

So what about the objection to socialism that it would not work because people are too lazy?

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review December 1971

At Home

It is impossible to sympathise with the howls of frustrated rage over the cynical semantics of the Compton report on the interrogation methods of the British in Northern Ireland. The military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph pointed out that the methods employed were also used on some British shock troops, with the idea of training them to resist pressure if they were ever captured. This was of course a poor attempt at justifying the methods used by the British but it did underline the fact that brutal interrogation is widely used, on all sides, in war. And anyone who really expected the inquiry to come up with anything other than a whitewash themselves need some sort of interrogation but on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Cynical semantics have also been used by government spokesmen about two of their most pressing problems. When he addressed the well-fed Institute of Directors at their annual conference, Chancellor of the Exchequer Barber forgot all about the mounting unemployment and claimed that we are about to experience the biggest boom for years, that the economy is expanding and that price restraint is working. Perhaps he was drunk—the directors always enjoy a good lunch, with a small bottle of wine. Shortly afterwards Barber’s colleague Peter Walker, not to be outdone, was burbling out the same stale old promises about housing which we have been hearing for so long. His new Housing Bill, he said, is the most important reform in the field this century and then, like housing ministers before him, he made the ritual promise about slums. Walker, who lives in a posh house himself, reckons that he will have cleared the slums up in ten years. There is no mitigating evidence, that he was drunk.

Abroad

Never before have the protests about Bomb tests been taken as high as those about America’s latest one underneath the island of Amchitka. If this indicates a heightening of the energy of the protesters, it also hints that their unrealistic hysteria is becoming acute. Surely they didn’t expect the Supreme Court to rule that human interests should come before those of the American ruling class? To overturn every priority, every assumption, upon which capitalism everywhere works? Perhaps in future they will realise the order of things under capitalism and then begin working against the system instead of against one of its effects.

Meanwhile, another of the world’s nuclear powers—and one where there is no opportunity to protest against its Bomb tests—was finally allowed to join the club. China’s entry into the United Nations, although a big diplomatic defeat for Nixon, showed the contempt with which the UN (which, we may remember, was once going to be the means to a securely peaceful world) is treated by the world powers. In the old days America would never have allowed such a defeat. For after all the fine words and the lies about it, the United Nations is little more than an international gangsters’ club. It is fitting that the latest recruit to the top league of international capitalism should at last be welcomed into it—bombs and all.

Politics

Despite the recent upheaval in the Labour Party over the Common Market, it was a fairly safe bet that Jenkins would beat Foot for the Deputy Leadership. Most of the press applauded the vote, as a sign that Labour is still interested in men of principle and honesty. In its present depression, Labour could do with a new hope; even the problems which the Tories are finding in trying to run British capitalism have not yet erased the memories of those six gloomy years of Labour rule. So once again we have a rising star, who is going to lead us to yet another promised land. In this one incident we have all the history of capitalist politics; promise and disillusionment, confidence and panic, hope and despair. This wearying process goes on year in and year out, with each successive leader being hailed as the answer to our problems then quickly exposed for a futile trickster. And none of them, yet, has been honest enough to admit it.

Honesty is a word very foreign to the Communist Party, whose recent national congress came well up to the expectations of those who always look to the Communists to provide some hilarious political double acts. This year, of course, they had to talk about Northern Ireland, and to hammer out a typical reformist line. They showed a touching concern for the catholic minority, then took the line that the best thing to happen was for the British troops, whose methods have been under such fire, to stay there. This was typical of the confusion and the trickery of the Communist Party, who as usual are dabbling their hands in the blood of the workers in the hope of fishing up a few miserable scraps of ignorant support.

Blogger's Note:

See the article, 'Northern Ireland: The Gentle Art of Interrogation ', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Tiny (URL) Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some women who were raped at the US’s Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq were later “honor killed” by their families, says a Jordanian reporter who writes on women’s issues. “In Abu Ghraib, women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men,” Lima Nabil told The Independent. “One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped – some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women – because of the shame.” Nabil, who has reported extensively on the status of women in the Arab world and runs a home for runaway girls, made the comments to renowned foreign correspondent Robert Fisk in an article on honor killings in Jordan. Nabil did not expand on her comments in the article. Fisk reported that a “very accurate source in Washington” in close contact with military personnel has confirmed “terrible stories of gang rape” by US forces at the now-notorious prison:

[Dead Link]

Former CIA agents have confirmed for the first time that the agency tortured prisoners at a “black site” detention center in north-eastern Poland at the height of the war on terror. According to the Associated Press, a former CIA agent identified only as “Albert” tortured the terror suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri multiple times with an electric drill at the converted Stare Kiejkuty military base near Szymany in the Masuria region of Poland:

[Link]

The new “saddle” seat, to be unveiled at a conference this week, increases the number of seats an airline can have in its economy class. Shaped similar to a horse saddle, passengers sit at an angle, with their weight taken on by their legs. It allows seats to be overlapped. The seats would also offer storage space including a shelf for carry-on bags and hooks to hang a jacket or a handbag…The makers say the seat would allow budget airlines, such as Ryanair, to cram more passengers into their tight cabins:

[Link]

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has for years endured complaints from passengers about his famously no-frills Irish airline. Now a senior Ryanair pilot has taken the rare step of publicly challenging his boss after the outspoken chief executive said he was trying to convince authorities to let his aircraft fly with only one pilot. A flight attendant could do the job of a co-pilot if needed, Mr O’Leary said last week, because “the computer does most of the flying now”. Captain Morgan Fischer, who trains other pilots at Ryanair’s Marseilles base, says he knows the airline is dedicated to keeping its costs as low as possible, so why not go one better – and replace Mr O’Leary with a junior flight attendant? “I would propose that Ryanair replace the CEO with a probationary cabin crew member currently earning approximately €13,200 net per annum,” Capt Fischer has written in a letter to the Financial Times, which reported Mr O’Leary’s comments last week. “Ryanair would benefit by saving millions of euros in salary, benefits and stock options,” the captain said, and there would be no need for approval from the authorities.

[Link]

The Passing Show: You and Your Job (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

You and Your Job

Have you what is commonly known as a “good job”—one that has “gd. sal. to right person and excel. conds.” as the small ads put it? Even if you can answer yes to this, even if you are one of the more highly paid workers today, it's still a pretty certain bet that you have a struggle to get by at whatever standard of living you are accustomed to and are expected to maintain. And because you are a worker, you will always have to count the pennies at some stage or other before you can have things which you may particularly need. “Consumers choice” is a pretty empty term under these circumstances—the restriction of choice begins in your pocket, not in the shop window.

But accepting that we all live a pretty narrow sort of life with drabness and insecurity in varying degrees according to size of pay packet, what do you really think of your job? By that I mean just what do you think of the work that you have to do, the duties and responsibilities that it entails? If we are again to judge by the small ads columns, there is no such thing as a dull, monotonous, boring job; “interesting work” is always their claim, but they are usually careful to add “gd. hours”, which is a hint of what they really think of the mental attraction of the job. They know that no one will want to stick at it a second longer than necessary and that come knocking-off time, the factory or office will be deserted within minutes. And although many workers do work overtime, it’s not generally out of love for their work, but because of the extra cash.

Before the war, when jobs were scarce, you just had to put up with the monotony and make the best of it, but in a time of labour shortage like the present, this is one (but only one) of the factors which make for frequent job changes, particularly among younger workers. One young man still in his twenties was recently reported as having had some hundreds of jobs since leaving school. Despite the reformer’s prattle about “opportunities for youth”, the essential conditions of capitalism—the division of labour and the worker’s divorce from ownership of the means of production—will throw up this problem more and more as time goes by.

These thoughts are prompted by a small cutting from The Guardian of October 14th. Mr. J. E. Newton, general secretary of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers, has drawn attention to this very problem. He thinks that workers are getting less and less satisfaction from their jobs and wants Mr. Brown to set up a ministry of industrial psychology “to find out what workers think of their jobs” and “try to redirect personal interest to the workplace or provide the means for obtaining other satisfactions outside work.” Without wishing to be rude to Mr. Newton, I think we could well be spared yet another government ministry, especially of psychology (what a horrible thought). And why does he want an investigation to find out what he seems pretty certain of already, anyway?

But his other proposal is interesting. I think it suggests that he does not have much hope of workers ever being able to get fulfilment from their jobs. Indeed, he admits by implication that the search for it outside of working hours is here to stay, and of course he’s quite correct. I should say that it will last as long as capitalism; in fact, catering for pastimes and sports has become an industry in itself. Many of us have hobbies of one sort or another and we often work harder at them than we do at our jobs. Others vent their frustrations on old ladies, telephone kiosks and railway carriage upholstery—a particularly ugly trend which is really just the other side of the same coin.


In a Socialist World . . . ?

Yes, you have a right to ask that question. In a Socialist world we would work, but work would take on a new meaning. It would not be synonymous with employment, which is merely the means of getting a living wage, but since it would aim at the full satisfaction of people’s needs, it would be also a way of expressing and developing ourselves to the fullest extent. True we would work to live because that is essential in any society, but we would also live to work. I should think that monotony and frustration would be well-nigh impossible under such conditions, not least of all because the heavy specialisation demanded by capitalism would disappear. And we won’t need any psychologists to try and teach us how to kid ourselves we’re happy when we’re anything but.


An Old Story

My father is an old age pensioner and belongs to the local old age pensioners association. The other day he handed me a copy of Pensioner’s Voice, the official publication of the National Federation of O.A.P. Associations. “We speak for the older generation,” says the caption at top right on the front page, and it’s a good job that somebody speaks for them, but let’s see how effectively Pensioner's Voice manages to do this..

Right off, it denies any political affiliations and claims it has always advised its members to “support any candidate who will support us.” Now that should pose quite a question. After all, you have only the election address and speeches of your candidates to go by and the one who does not promise support for the pensioners must be a rarity indeed. You could of course try eliminating from your support list those who had a poor record on the pensions question, but then that would mean eliminating the lot if you were really honest with yourself.

Actually, I was struck by the naivité of this journal. The National Federation was formed twenty-five years ago and represents millions who have a lifetime’s experience of working class existence behind them. Yet it still puts the view that Parliament is an impartial body—taken as a whole—and that “all the political parties should be willing and anxious to see that justice is done.” Now let us assume you are a pensioner and acted on the Federation’s advice during the last election. Perhaps you voted Labour, in which case on Page 3, you will find the Rev. T. E. Nuttall complaining vide the government’s national plan, that:—

  . . . We cannot find anything in the white paper about the electoral promise on an entirely new policy to provide an adequate income for each pensioner . . .

Pensioner’s Voice has an interesting editorial comment comparing the lot of a £4 a week pensioner with that of a shareholder in I.C.I. It mentions that their £50 millions capital issue in early September was heavily over-subscribed. Not only was this a well written commentary on the glaring inequality that is capitalism, but by this very comparison the writer spotlighted the indignity which is built into working class existence. Yet is there any real questioning of such a world, or even the faintest spark of anger? Not at all. Just a pathetic appeal to put “all hands to the pumps to make his (the pensioner’s) life a bit easier.”

In looking at the pensioner’s movement in Britain over the last few years I have noted this attitude, which runs like a thread through its literature. Always it is an appeal, rather than a demand, for better income and social services. Granted that old workers do not have the same vigour to push their interests as youngsters have, but the really big factor behind their failure is their lack of bargaining power because they are now out of the production line. This is the biggest slap in the face that capitalism gives them.

So to them, the need for Socialism should be of particular interest, and it is especially sad that many of them will die without ever having considered it.

Gaspers 

  “. . . We are under the constant survey of foreign friends . . . Any back sliding on our part, which lays us open to accusations that we are . . . putting social needs before financial responsibility, would very quickly cause the leaves on the plant of confidence to shrivel.” (Lord Cromer, 21/10/65)

   “It is a remarkable thing how in the last quarter of a century the doctrine of Socialism as a way of life . . .  is everywhere, even in Russia, thoroughly discredited.” (Lord Shawcross, ex-Minister in the 1945 Labour Government. 4/11/65)

   “One MP suggested the skinning alive of hanged men and the use of their skulls as beer pots.” (The Guardian, 11/11/65, reporting the debate in the Malawi Parliament on the Penal Code Amendment Bill)

Eddie Critchfield

Mixed Media: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution by Caryl Churchill

Earlier this year the Finborough Theatre in London staged the world première of Caryl Churchill's 1972 play The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution.

Churchill's play is partly based on the chapter, Colonial War and Mental Disorders in Frantz Fanon's study of the Algerian war of independence, The Wretched of the Earth, described by Sartre as 'the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself' '. Fanon's title is taken from the opening lyrics of The Internationale. Fanon was a Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher, self-styled Marxist, revolutionary and writer who was head of the Psychiatric Department at Blida-Joinville Hospital, Algiers in French Algeria. He resigned to work with the FLN, Algerian National Liberation Front in their guerrilla war for independence.

Churchill's play portrays Fanon treating the schizophrenic teenage daughter of a French civil servant (involved in 'interrogations' of Algerian rebels), and a French police inspector hearing screams in his head who has been beating his wife and children as a result of his 'work' torturing captured Algerian rebels. We also see three Algerian 'patients' in the hospital who are paranoid, delusional, suicidal, or catatonic as a result of the colonial war in Algeria. The bloody conflict for Algerian independence claimed the lives of 100,000 French soldiers and 'colons' and probably 1 million Algerians. The war is vividly brought to life in the 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo film The Battle of Algiers.

Churchill uses ideas from RD Laing's Sanity, Madness and the Family in her portrayal of the French couple and the schizophrenic daughter where a child is subject to the 'double bind' of contradictory commands that places a child in an existential checkmate of an 'untenable position' in the closed family nexus thereby causing madness.

Churchill wrote this year about the play; 'unfortunately it feels more relevant now than for a long time' which is true considering the American use of 'extraordinary rendition' of 'terror suspects' to countries that use torture, not forgetting the torture of 'terror suspects' by the USA at Guantanamo Bay, torture and abuse of Iraqis by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison and the British Army torture and abuse of Iraqis in Basra.

Churchill has explored issues of power since Owners, her critique of capitalism through to the sexual politics and colonialism of Cloud Nine to her 1987 attack on financial capitalism in Serious Money. From The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution to her 2009 Seven Jewish Children, a charity piece for the Palestinian people of Gaza, Churchill is evidently sympathetic to the struggles of oppressed peoples under colonialism.

Steve Clayton

Voice From The Back: Capitalism In Europe (2014)

The  Voice From The Back column from the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism In Europe

Despite press reports of some sort of economic recovery the job situation is still grim for millions of unemployed workers. Greece, of course, has been hit the hardest: Its unemployment rate is still hovering above 27 per cent, but the whole European situation is still dire. ‘In the broader 28 nation European Union, 25.9 million people remain jobless, out of a potential labor force of about 244 million. Data released last week showed no change in the euro zone’s 11.9 per cent unemployment rate in February. Spain’s jobless figure was 25.6 per cent, and Italy’s was at a new high of 13 per cent’ (New York Times, 8 April). This so-called efficient social system is denying potential productive workers of contributing to society.


Asian Billionaires

Every day on the TV and press we are made aware of the appalling poverty that exists in Asian countries, but that is only part of the picture. ‘There are three times more Asian billionaires in Britain than there were five years ago while total wealth of the 101 richest Asians in the country has risen 14pc to £51.5bn over the past 12 months alone. The latest Asian Rich List is topped by the Hinduja brothers, Gopichand and Srichand, who have added £1bn to their wealth over the past year and now estimated to be worth £13.5bn’ (Daily Telegraph, 12 April). Millions starve in Asia but Asian billionaires increase their immense wealth -that is capitalism worldwide.


A Brutal Society

It is common for the media to depict the USA and its allies as always behaving in a humane fashion unlike its evil opponents who indulge in torture and other brutal tactics. Recent events seem to give the lie to such a notion. ‘Senate committee found CIA interrogations and detentions to be ‘brutal’ and urges administration to release the report as quickly as possible. A leak of the major findings of a landmark Senate inquiry into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees led, on Friday, to intensified pressure on the White House and the CIA to release the inquiry speedily and with a minimum of redactions’ (Guardian, 11 April). Capitalism is a brutal competitive society and all its governments reflect that brutality in their actions.


A Belligerent Society

Of all the millions of words that have spewed from the mass media about the centenary of the First World War it is probably those of the humorous writer of the Horrible Histories Terry Deary that get nearest the truth. ‘Soldiers on both sides were brainwashed by propaganda. They were told to go out and kill for their country. All these arguments over who started it are pointless—they all joined in enthusiastically’ (Sunday Times, 13 April). The inevitable outcome of a social system based on economic competition is military violence.


A Poverty-Stricken Society

Politicians are quick to assure workers that either we are experiencing an economic recovery or that good times are just around the corner, but a YouGov poll suggests otherwise. ‘Millions of families are in such a perilous financial state that they are just one pay cheque away from losing their home, research shows. Nearly four million families who pay rent or a mortgage have so few savings that it would take only a month’s missed salary to lose their home, YouGov polling for Shelter reveals. Of these, 2.4 million have no savings whatsoever and would not be able to survive a full month’ (Independent, 14 April). Hardly an economic recovery, is it?


The Big Con Trick

Politicians have a very good opinion of themselves but the Prime Minister has excelled himself here. ‘David Cameron has claimed his concept of a ‘Big Society’ is merely following in the work of Jesus, more than 2,000 years ago. The Conservative leader’s vision of Big Society was a cornerstone of his 2010 General Election campaign. But, speaking last night, he said the idea was just a continuation of Jesus’s work. ‘Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago,’ the Prime Minister told Downing Street’s Easter reception. ‘I just want to see more of it’’ (Daily Express, 10 April). Certainly the British unemployed would be delighted if Cameron could perform that biblical trick of the multitude with a few loaves of bread, perhaps to supply his Big Society’s food banks.

Voice From The Back: A Wasteful Society (2015)

The Voice From The Back column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Wasteful Society

The mad wastefulness of capitalism is staggering. Take the expenditure of the USA in their recent military efforts. ‘President Barrack Obama will ask lawmakers on Friday for an additional $3.2 billion to pay for the war against the Islamic State group in Iraq officials said Thursday …. The air war in Syria and Iraq – which commanders say could last years –  has involved thousands of sorties and hundreds of bombing raids, at a daily cost of $8.3 million, according to the Pentagon’ (Hindustan Times, 2 December). This immense expenditure represents a lot of human effort and energy. Think what that could mean inside a socialist society producing food, clothing and shelter for all. 

Troubles Ahead

Despite the picture the government is trying to draw about how they are coping with the economic crisis, some economic institutions are drawing vastly different conclusions. ‘The plans set out by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday will require government spending cuts “on a colossal scale” after the election, an independent forecaster has warned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said just £35bn of cuts had already happened, with £55bn yet to come. The detail of reductions had not yet been spelled out, IFS director Paul Johnson said’ (BBC News, 4 December). The reason for the vagueness about future welfare cuts is of course the approaching election.

Capitalism And Cuts

The increasing rationing of state-funded care, as councils attempted to slash costs, has left growing numbers of elderly people without access to the care system. In turn it has forced millions of family members to step in, many of them giving up their own jobs. ‘The acute shortage of care for older people in Britain is exposed in official figures showing how the population of care homes was left virtually unchanged during a decade which saw the biggest expansion in the overall elderly population ever. According to a study published by the Office for National Statistics the number of people in care homes in England and Wales rose by only 0.3 per cent in the decade between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, standing at just short of 291,000. But the overall number of over 65s jumped by 11 per cent in the same period – 37 times faster’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 December). Having suffered a life of exploitation and poverty old workers’ misery continues.

God And Mammon

The Christian churches are adamant that they care nothing for the material aspects of this world and concentrate on spiritual values. The Roman Catholic Church, with its new Pope is particularly concerned about its recent past history. ‘The Vatican’s bank – which he threatened to shut down – is now closing hundreds of suspect accounts as it tries to shrug off its scandalous reputation after decades in which it was a by-word for money laundering and tax evasion’ (Times, 5 December).

A Torturing Society (1)

Torture according to the press is something carried out by unscrupulous foreigners but just isn’t British. So how come a letter discovered in Downing Street at the National Archives has placed Britain in the dock at European Court of Human Rights accused of torturing detainees in Northern Ireland in the 1970s? ‘The confidential memo written in March 1977 by Merlyn Rees, then Labour Home Secretary, states that, six years earlier, Tory ministers had authorised the use of torture in Ulster. Mr Rees told Prime Minister James Callaghan that he thought individuals or soldiers should not be prosecuted because “a political decision was taken” to use the so-called deep interrogation techniques’ (Times, 6 December). These techniques included wall standing in stress positions, white noise, hooding, sleep deprivation and withholding of food and water.                                

A Torturing Society (2)

It is not only Britain of the so-called free nations that carries out torture as the US has recently confessed. ‘The CIA carried out “brutal” interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US senate report has said. The summary of the report compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said that the CIA misled Americans about what it said it was doing’ (BBC News, 9 December).

Torture (2016)

Book Review from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Torture: Does it Work?’ By Yvonne Ridley: Military Studies Press, 2016.

To most people the idea of torture is a Hollywood fantasy, a fictional beast reserved for high budget screen plays starring the likes of Bruce Willis and Jason Statham. To Yvonne Ridley, however, the idea of torture is a very real prospect. After being captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, Ridley was held captive for ten days and, despite not experiencing physical torture, the mental strain she endured certainly qualifies her to write about such a subject. In this book, Ridley uses her experiences to produce a well-researched piece, discussing many of the key aspects of torture from the philosophical origins of the practice, to a spike in the use of torture since 9/11.

The book especially focuses on the methods used by the United States to circumvent the Geneva Convention rules and particularly the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002. Despite the official stance of the United States against torture, a workaround was found by changing the definition of torture following the September 11attacks in New York, and renaming torture methods such as water boarding as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. The classified nature of what truly occurs at Guantanamo Bay, Ridley suggests, allows for the United States to practice torture on terror suspects in private, whilst also holding a public stance against the issue.

Ridley discusses the arguments for the use of torture, with the notion of the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario and the introduction of ‘torture warrants’ for extreme cases, as well as the idea that suspected terrorists should not be treated as prisoners of war, not deserving the rights outlined in the Geneva Convention. These ideas are debunked by Ridley, pairing her experiences to interviews with ex-Guantanamo detainees and finding a range of negative connotations to the use of torture. Included in these points is the alarming fact that false intelligence fabricated by torture victims was a catalyst in the United States’ invasion of Iraq.

Overall, this book offers a great insight for those interested in the phenomenon of terrorism, with a strong and highly referenced argument against the use of torture. Ridley’s argument is perhaps summed up best by an analogy to close, in which she describes torture ‘as about as effective a weapon in modern warfare as a substandard Thompson submachine gun would have been for a soldier embattled on the front line during the Second World War’.

William Horncastle

White Law (1983)

1965 cover.

Book Review from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation under the South African 90-Day Detention Law by Ruth First (Penguin. 1982).

Originally published in 1965, 117 Days has been reissued following Ruth First's death last year in Maputo, Mozambique. She was killed by a letter bomb which, according to Ronald Segal in his preface to this new edition, was issued by “those guards of the South African regime . . . not swaggering in their uniforms but in a seemingly safe package which had been treated to blow her apart". Ruth First was well known to the South African authorities before her imprisonment in 1963 because she had published accounts of the use of forced labour on the farms of the Transvaal and exposed the conditions under which migrant labourers worked in the gold mines of South Africa.

First was arrested under the General Law Amendment Act of 1963. A person could be arrested without warrant if they were suspected of having committed or intending to commit any offence under the Suppression of Communism Act (1950), or if suspected of sabotage or in possession of any information relating to such an offence. The person could be detained for a period not in excess of ninety days or until that person, in the opinion of the Commissioner of the South African Police, had satisfactorily answered all questions during interrogation. The act became known as the "90-Day Law".

Ruth First was arrested under suspicion without warrant and without facing trial. After her initial arrest she was released just within the period of ninety days, only to be immediately rearrested. She spent a total of 117 days in solitary confinement undergoing repeated interrogation. She had already been banned "from writing, from compiling any material for publication, from entering newspaper premises . . . I had worked for five publications and each had, in turn, been banned or driven out of existence by the Nationalist Government". She had in her home, at the time of her arrest, a copy of Fighting Talk, a publication she had edited for nine years and possession of which was punishable by imprisonment for a minimum of one year.

First was originally imprisoned in Marshall Square. The conditions under which she was detained are described in horrific detail and with touches of irony:

   I, a prisoner held under top security conditions, was forbidden books, visitors, contact with any other prisoner; but like any white South African Madam I sat in bed each morning, and Africans did the cleaning for the “missus".

Even the bucket of hot water for washing, a concession for “Ninety-Dayers". was brought to the cell by the African inmates until a shower was finally installed in the prison during her two months at Marshall Square. She was then moved to Pretoria Central Prison for the next twenty-eight days before being returned to Marshall Square.

Although never charged. First was aware that the Security Police knew of the magazine at her home and that she had attended meetings at Rivonia with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others. Interrogation took a number of forms and ranged from threats such as "this is the first period of ninety days; there can be another after that, and yet another" to cajolements such as “we’re not holding you, you’re holding yourself. You have the key to your release. Answer our questions, tell us what we want to know , and you will turn the key in the door".

Ruth First’s portrait of prison is not limited to her experiences but covers the experiences of many others including Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle, who committed suicide during imprisonment, and Isaac Tlale who revealed evidence concerning his own torture during “90-Days" imprisonment and of the torture of Ngudle:

  Looksmart by his death and Tlale by his courage had lifted the lid for the first time on the systematic resort to torture of Ninety-Day detainees by the Security Branch.

First focuses attention on the South African prison system’s concern with vengeance. She herself attempted suicide during her second period of detention. Her conclusion is that "these amateurs in political sleuthing who seized books because they had ‘black’ or ‘red’ in the title had developed into sophisticated sadistic mind-breakers in the matter of a few years”. This is a savage indictment of the South African policies of apartheid and the suppression of any ideas conflicting with the status quo in that country.

Philip Bentley

Northern Ireland: The Gentle Art of Interrogation (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anybody living in Northern Ireland today who doubts the assertion that the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary are waging a vicious war against that section of the working class who are Catholics or who question the allegation that part of the weaponry of that war are brutality and torture can carry out his own inquiry.

There are a number of approaches.

For example, one could go into a Catholic district almost any night and linger in the vicinity of a street corner until the inevitable military patrol comes along. When one has been called a “fucking Irish pig”, or a “fenian bastard” or when one has been put against a wall and had one’s ankles or knees kicked or, even, a baton deflected off one’s testicles, one can quote “the Law”—which, along with “Order", the military are defending for one’s protection—and the consequences will complete a definite stage of one’s inquiry! It is a simple test which we would urge on marble-mouthed gentry who speak down to us from Westminster or Stormont—though, if they were to get the full benefits of such a test, it would have to be carried out incognito!

If one has escaped the needs for hospitalisation at this stage of the test, it can be carried further by indulging in some simple and minimal act of self-defence. Irrespective of one’s age or sex this is guaranteed to provoke the “security forces” into a flurry of security excitement which will ensure that in future one will have no difficulty in appreciating why so many people who, a short time ago, laughed at the military posturings of the I.R.A. are now, tragically, finding their way into its ranks.

There are, of course, no gas chambers in Ulster. Unlike the ghetto Jews in Nazi Germany, Ulster’s ghetto Catholics are not herded into gas chambers and murdered. They may be gassed in their bedrooms or living rooms but then they have the satisfaction of knowing that a group of humane medical people, acting for the British government, have said that the gas used has no long-term effects—unless, that is, the concentration is heavy, in which case permanent brain damage may result. Again, maybe, they could be disturbed by other medical opinion that asserts that inhalation of the gas does produce permanent and damaging side-effects or they could be apprehensive about the fact that the power determining the concentration of the gas is the same power that shot an unarmed man outside his own door, further up the street, last night.

One can understand the brutal reaction to taunt and provocation. One can appreciate the anger of a member of a military machine, embracing the most awesome devices for killing, to the death of comrades at the hands of amateurs who must compensate for lack of numbers and weaponry with stealth. What continues to surprise is the fact that politically ignorant members of the working class, with normal emotional appetites, can be induced into the trade of killing at all; but worse, that there can be a process whereby such men can be brutalised into a condition that allows them to engage in acts of savagery against homes that look like their own homes, women who look like their own wives and mothers, and children who look like their own kids.

When we go up the scale to the professional torturers, the mind simply boggles. Here’s one person’s reaction:

. . .  I knew I was in a torture chamber. Yet my mind could not conceive that I was living in the twentieth century . . . Surely these men could never bring themselves to torture me in cold blood. Looking around at their faces I saw neither passion nor compassion in any one of them.

The writer in question details the ensuing physical and psychological torture to which he and his fellow-prisoners were subjected:

. . . Corporal Walters had been compelled to stand to attention for over forty hours before he collapsed. Fusilier Kinne had been kicked so savagely during a beating-up in jail that he sustained a double-rupture . . . Denis’s hands were secured so far up behind his back that he had to stand on tip-toe.

The quotations are from The Edge of the Sword a book written by Lieut-General Farrar-Hockley, who recently commanded British Land Forces in Northern Ireland. The writer is describing the experiences of himself and his comrades at the hands of the Chinese and Koreans when, as Captain Farrar-Hockley, he was taken prisoner in Korea in 1951 and he digresses at length on the mere beatings and kickings meted out by his captors as well as the foul system of psychological tortures devised to break them.

It was after Korea that the British Army began to develop its own techniques for the interrogation of prisoners and the specialisation in brutality and torture devolved on men whose personality and behaviour showed aptitude for the trade. Such men were seconded from their regiments and “elevated” to the Special Air Services (SAS) where the entire curricula of known brutality was imparted to them in “schools” such as that at Bradbury Line, near Hereford. The activities of these heroes is the subject of a permanent “D” notice imposed on the British press. Apart from their employment as torturers, killers, and specialists in counter-espionage activities these worthies are sometimes employed in the business of toughening-up and brutalising ordinary troops.

Despite denials by Lord Balniel, the British Minister of State for Defence, and the protests of Lord Carrington—sometimes known in Ireland as Himmler Carrington—of SAS presence in Ulster, some Irish newspapers have given quite detailed information about the activities of SAS Unit 22 in the province. It is possible, however, that Balniel’s honesty may be vindicated in the suggestion that the SAS unit concerned got around the dilemma of plying their foulness in the UK by seconding their Ulster contingent back to their old regiments. Certainly, if they are not in Northern Ireland, there is a lot of evidence to indicate that the brutality of the army and police dealing with political detainees makes the work of the SAS superfluous!

After being given the overall I was taken outside the room and along the corridor into another room and made to stand against the wall as one is made for frisking only I was made to stretch my legs and arms as far apart as I could get them. My feet also had to be as far from the wall as possible. I was to remain in this position for at least two, and at most four, days with the hood on. I lost all track of time, but there is no doubt that 1 remained in this position for days. If I did not keep my head straight I was hit with a fist in the small of the back, the genitals, the arms. As the duration of my stance against this wall grew longer, the collapsing and falling became more frequent, until I began falling every twenty or thirty minutes.

No, we are not back to Lieut-General Farrar-Hockley and his Edge of the Sword; this time we are with a Mr. Michael Donnelly who was arrested in Ulster by Crown Forces on 9 August 1971, “on suspicion”. The extract above is from his sworn statement made eleven days later.

There are many other statements that speak of beatings and kickings, the “disorientation treatment” which involves putting a hood over a prisoner’s head and putting him in a confined space where he is subjected to a constant high-pitched or throbbing noise for days on end, the discharging of firearms, using blank cartridges, at the prisoner’s head, sexual assault, electric shocks, and the use of injections. Many of these statements are attested to by medical evidence of the victim’s condition after “treatment”, by the corroboration of other prisoners (and it is noteworthy that prisoners who did not know one another and had no chance to devise corroboration after their experiences, relate the same details), by the “disappearance” of prisoners for periods up to eleven days after arrest (during which the police, the military, and the local Home Affairs Ministry pass the buck about the prisoner’s whereabouts until he subsequently turns up in a prison hospital).

Following on the adverse publicity which the Authorities have been subjected to as a result of the well-documented revelations of torture and brutality, the Westminster government yielded to pressure and set up the inevitable inquiry. That such serious allegations should be answered by an inquiry confining examination, by its terms of reference, to a mere fraction of the total complaints, that it should be presided over by a paid British government official, that it should have no powers to compel witnesses to attend or to order the production of any records relating to the complaints, gives rise to the suggestion that it is a mere whitewashing exercise.

By the time these lines are in print the official inquiry will be complete (the complainants, predictably, boycotted it) and will have published its report. It is safe to say that while it may make scapegoats out of some minor thugs for some slight overstepping of the mark—doubtless “as a result of the regrettable circumstances of the occasion”—it will not, and could not, find the political flunkeys of capitalism guilty of the charges levelled against them. If you reflect on the effects of such a decision on the British government and its Stormont rubber-stamp you will understand what we mean!

The “Security” Chiefs themselves are revealing. As part of the general propaganda drive against the IRA which includes finding “large caches” of arms conveniently deposited on vacant lots and empty houses and killing gunmen who are carted off by their comrades and, presumably, buried secretly—despite the fact that anyone conversant with IRA tradition knows that the denial of a patriot funeral to an IRA man killed in action would be an affront that his family and comrades would regard as blasphemous — the “Security” people are now justifying the internment of men without trial by claiming that it is bringing them the necessary intelligence to take the initiative against the IRA. The proposition is worth pondering; surely if a suspect’s arrest is justified in the first place the authorities must be well satisfied that he is an IRA activist and, indeed, the claim that they are getting information from those arrested would appear to bear this out. But if there is no brutality, no torture, why do these vicious enemies of the State who must be arbitrarily incarcerated in the public interest, suddenly decide to give helpful information to the Authorities?

There are those, of course, who will claim that whatever methods are being used are justified. It is a convenient stance when one is not included among the innocent—and the Authorities have released considerable numbers of people who claim they were victims of torture and brutality after relatively short periods, showing that even in their own recognition they had “made a mistake” and have even admitted that some of those detained were victims of mistaken identity.

One can be sickened by it all; can say impotently “I must do something”. But what to do? That is the question . . . the question that chokes on emotion. On pity, on sadness, on hatred, on a blind desire to strike wildly at the perpetrators of the foulness. By all means, we must strike back at the evil but not wildly, not emotionally, not stupidly. There is no solution in wanting to strike back at the leering face of the soldier or widow the wife of the cop. Certainly violence, riots, killings, bombings etc., could decide the issue against those who use the weapons of torture and brutality. Enough deaths and destruction of property and the British government may decide that the job is not worth the candle and, if one is a Republican, one may have the joys of victory and the pleasure of imposing one’s notions of freedom on those in Northern Ireland who don’t want a Republic.

It could happen then that those who presently support the British connection in Northern Ireland could become the rebels and one could become a member of the new Irish Republican “Security” Forces—it’s even possible, and it has happened before, that one could be seconded to a British SAS “school” to learn the techniques of brutality and torture in order to put one’s talents “in the service of Ireland”.

It could happen because the material conditions that now allow it to happen here would continue to exist in the Irish Republic of one’s ambition despite the vapourings of the IRA and similarly-confused pundits regarding the establishment of “a Workers’ Socialist Republic”. It did happen when the British withdrew from the south of Ireland in 1922 and left the Irish Free State Army to deal with the unfortunate idealists who thought that among other things, freedom meant more than changing flags. It continues to happen now in the various state-capitalist “Socialist Republics” throughout the world where freedom is mortgaged for the State organisation of poverty—“Socialist Republics” established by the efforts of IRA-like idealists who were strong on the poetry of freedom and weak on the economic and political conditions required to establish it. How often does theirs become the face that leers behind the riot vizor? Theirs the finger on the executioner’s gun? Theirs the macabre brain of the torturer: Cuba . . . Russia . . . China . . . Israel . . . Egypt . . Kenya . . .

Just think of a country, any country, where a minority—a group who identify their economic privation with some common ethnic or religious distinguishing feature —resist their condition by real or alleged extra-constitutional means and there you have the Northern Ireland situation. What is happening in Northern Ireland today is happening, somewhere in the world of capitalism, every day. It is yesterday’s news from Czechoslovakia, or Aden, or Vietnam; it is today’s news from East Pakistan and Ulster; it will be tomorrow’s news from somewhere else in the crazy world where trade and profit take precedence over human beings. The news deals only with the death, the shootings, the bombings and organised barbarities. The poverty, frustration, bad housing and utter social despair that causes the eruptions rarely breaks through the veneer of religious bigotry, racial prejudice or political hatreds they have created. For poverty and human privation is not news . . . they are too general ... too mundane ... too constant a feature of capitalism.

It is only in capitalism, with its market economy and its need to deceive the overwhelming majority of those who produce wealth that the wages and money systems are essentials of production and distribution, that the material conditions for friction and violence can continue to exist. It does not matter what political party presides over the system of wages exploitation, whether it calls itself “Socialist”, “Communist”, “Republican”, “Democratic” or any other name; the capitalist system, identified by its broad masses of wage workers, its production of wealth for sale and profit and the continuing existence of poverty and want on the one hand and privilege and power on the other hand is an anachronistic foulness that cannot exist without war, violence and brutality. It is a foulness that not only deprives the great majority of the material means of a full and happy life, but degrades and brutalises people to play the role of soldiers, “freedom fighters”, gaolers, torturers and murderers.

How can we then strike back at such a system? Not surely of degrading ourselves with the same foul weapons of murder and torture simply to drive out the present administrators of the system and the flag that identifies them in order to submit to the same system under a different gang of political administrators?

It is essential that we should understand that capitalism is a world system, a world problem to which a world solution is required. Wealth today is produced by social labour from the resources of the world and the abundant evidence of those countries that have attempted to counter the effects of world capitalism by tampering with the economy at national level has demonstrated the truth of the Socialist contention that only the total abolition of capitalism as a world system can end the problems of society in general and the working class in particular. Even more, perhaps, experiments in State-capitalism, as proposed by the IRA and other political groups in Ireland, and as practiced in many countries of the world today, have shown that not only do the old miseries of poverty, etc., remain but that, faced with the disillusion and frustration of a working class that believed State ownership could solve its problems, the new regime resorts to the worst excesses of capitalism and denies its subject class access to the very political avenues essential to its emancipation.

Richard Montague