Letter: The Batwa pygmies (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

The Batwa pygmies

Dear Editors

A new tourist attraction has been discovered here in South West Uganda. The tourist attraction is a group of Batwa pygmies living in the bamboo forests around Mount Muhavura and near Lake Bunyonyi.

There is a gentleman who mobilizes and organizes them, gives them a trip in canoes across and into the middle Islands of Lake Bunyonyi’s camping sites. The pygmies are then paraded in front of tourists. The tourists pay a fee for this service. The Batwa, like the mountain gorillas, are referred to as “endangered species”. In turn the pygmies are paid in kind by the proprietor of this enterprise – they are given second-hand clothes, food, especially local porridge residues and other cheap incentives.

Sometime back it was the Ugandan government which did a similar thing to this when it evicted residents of a place called Mpokya in Western Uganda to give room for apes and other wild animals which the government claimed to be a tourist attraction. The displaced people were not provided alternative sites to occupy. Eventually some of them migrated to join their relatives and friends in other parts of the country but most of them were eaten by the same wild animals.

The Ugandan government and some rich individuals claim to be trying to mobilize resources for poverty reduction but some of them at the same time call it “poverty alleviation”. But most of the mobilized funds and the money gathered in forms of taxes from citizens are squandered by those in government and some to their next of kin, relatives and friends. Uganda was recently ranked as the third most corrupt country in the whole world and also ranks below the 10th poorest country in the whole world.

But be it the case anywhere the poor are not poor because of lack of resources to utilize to eradicate poverty but because of the fact that there exists the rich – the poor are poor because the rich are rich. If you want to get rid of the poor; do one thing – get rid of the rich.

Then the question would be how can this be done. The simple answer becomes: The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. Goods and services would be produced for human good and not for sale and profit. Every member of society (present-day planet earth) would give according to their individual ability and take according to their needs. Then equality in human race would prevail. That’s how we could end dehumanizing acts such as those of parading the Batwa and displacing people for tourist attraction.

J. K. Tukwasibwe, 

Uganda.

Sting in the Tail: Plain speaking (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plain speaking

There has been an outbreak of plain speaking from politicians recently. That nice Mr Major has been calling some of his Cabinet colleagues "bastards". Now Mr Thorbjoern Bernsten has called Britain’s Environment Minister Mr John Gummer "a shitbag".

All this foul language is nothing however compared to Mr Gummer’s plain speaking in reply to Mr Bernsten:

"I don't think the comments of people in an election campaign . . . are worth making much about" The Herald (18 August).

Now that is plain speaking. Mr Gummer reckons you shouldn’t pay much attention to what politicians say at election campaigns. Well done, Honest John!

We certainly don’t put much store by what the professional liars say at election times; either in Norway, Britain or anywhere else for that matter.

Ghost riders

A plague of ’ghost riders’ has been fleecing public transport companies in America. There are people who climb onto buses which have been involved in accidents in order to claim compensation for non-existent injuries.

To counter this, some bus companies have staged fake accidents which they filmed. In one case:

"Video cameras inside the bus and outside filmed 17 people scrambling on to the bus before the police arrived. All later claimed to be injured in the accident". (Guardian, 19 August).

Doctors and lawyers also get in on the act by having "runners" who arrive quickly on the scene to hand out leaflets with phone numbers and and advice to passengers to claim for neck and back injuries which are hard to disprove.

All of this "enterprise" doesn’t meet with the approval of the bus companies and their insurers, but it shows that America is still "the land of opportunity"!

UN corruption

Allegations that United Nations soldiers in Sarajevo are involved in widespread corruption have provided the press with plenty of "shock-horror" headlines.

The idea that anyone connected with the UN should be above such things is ludicrous when it is seen to be comprised of nations all of which are part of the world-system called capitalism. For all of these soldiers to be unaffected by the corruption which is part of capitalism’s culture is impossible.

This episode also produced an illuminating example of the morality of capitalism. Sylvana Foa, the UN spokeswoman, commented:

"I don t think anybody should be too surprised that out of 14,000 pimply 18-year olds a bunch of them should get up to naughty tricks. It happens in every war — it's just sad they were wearing blue berets" (Guardian, 27 August).

Apparently it didn’t strike her as sad that "pimply 18-year olds" should be part of killing-machines called armies.

Sink or swim

The battle to dominate the package-holiday market is hotting up once more. The cutthroat pricing of recent years caused by falling bookings was replaced last year by a truce during which operators rebuilt profit margins by increasing prices.

At last the market is growing again: Thomson, Britain’s biggest operator, estimates that bookings are up 14 percent on last year and the industry expects 1994 to be even better.

Now the industry’s heavyweights have announced price-cuts for 1994 and Patricia Yates, editor of Holiday Which explains why. They are:

"clearly looking for a killer blow which will knock out some of their smaller competitors, at the same time carving out a bigger market share among major competitors" (Guardian, 17 August).

Is this sort of predatory behaviour simply down to greed? It is what every company in capitalism must do, if it is able, to ensure that the day doesn’t come when it will be swallowed up or forced out of business.

Satisfaction

What gives people most satisfaction in life? Supporters of the market economy say it is more and more money because it buys the goodies and the leisure which compensate for the pain of having to work.

Along comes Professor Lane of Yale University to challenge this view. He cites recent studies in America which show that what gives people most satisfaction are good human relationships, job satisfaction, and (something despised by marketeers) security.

This is what socialists have been saying all along, but we don't think these things can be universally available within the market economy. Prof Lane does and argues that "governments must intervene’ with policies that will ’convert markets to that purpose’.

The Prof is yet another one of those who criticise some aspect or other of capitalism but would never dream of getting rid of it.

Negative thinking

Why do people continue to place their trust in politicians when it’s obvious they’ve no answer to world problems?

Who really believes that crime, pollution, unemployment, the health service etc, would be worse if politicians weren’t in charge?

Most people know that politicians are “economical with the truth", and that many are careerists — yet continue to vote for one party against another on the basis that they are the ‘lesser evil". No wonder society is in such a state with this negative thinking!

The problem has now become so entrenched that anyone who challenges this apathetic status quo is immediately branded a crank. With this last thought in mind, therefore, the Socialist Party asks you not to believe a word we say! Rather we would ask you to consider what we say, and then make up you own mind. Fair enough?

The Passing Show: Holiday Reckoning (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Holiday Reckoning 1.

The residents of Clacton had hardly gathered their wits after the Easter punch-ups, when Whitsun brought fresh outbreaks of teenage violence, but this time at Margate, Brighton and that paradise of retired army officers—Bournemouth. Margate was the worst afflicted, as hoards of “Mods” and “Rockers” descended on Dreamland and other parts and laid into each other without pity, egged on by their girl friends.

One aspect of these outbreaks which has alarmed the authorities is the contempt in which the warring youngsters held the police. “Here come the coppers; let's do ’em! ” was heard at one point and seems to sum up the prevailing attitude. It’s little wonder, then, that the coppers got just as tough and waded in with truncheons swinging. Neither is it surprising that heavy penalties were imposed by the courts on practically all those who were caught.

Just about as sickening was the spate of comments, excuses, call them what you will, in the press and elsewhere. Some people had blamed the poor weather and the lack of teenage amusement facilities at Clacton for the trouble there, but the same excuse could not be used for those which occurred at Whitsun. Nobody seemed to have any real grasp of why the violence had broken out and everybody was shocked and angered by it, forgetting that this was not the first trouble of its kind—neither is it likely to be the last.

When it came to suggesting ways of preventing it, we were treated to a rich variety of uselessness. The Evening Standard featured brief impromptu interviews with people in the street One young woman thought that confiscating their scooters and motorbikes would “immobilise the little horrors and soon put a stop to them,” as if there were no such things as buses and trains. (Anyway, what is to stop them from fighting at home if they want to?) Stiffer penalties, prison, birch and the inevitable “put ’em in the army for a spell’’—all were trotted out, and all equally futile. The army, after all, exists to do just this sort of thing, only on a bigger and more highly organised scale. There is another difference, of course. The army has the sanction of the government in particular, and society in general. When it knocks other people about, it is done in “the interests of peace” or “to establish the rule of law” or “to protect the territorial integrity ” of some puppet state or other. Yobbos do not enjoy such privilege.

We hold no brief for the Whitsun wild ones, but at the risk of being told to turn the record over and play the other side, we say again that they are the ugly product of an equally ugly society. In the main, they are members of the working class—that much is obvious, despite some of the inane suggestions about their supposed riches. Their homes are usually in the drabber and meaner parts of the big towns, and their everyday lives are generally in character with their surroundings. Like most of us, they have to face a monotonous, unfulfilling and insecure existence of going to work for a wage packet.

This faces them with all the associate problems, boredom not least of all. Not just the boredom of “nowhere to go in the evening” but the greater boredom which is part and parcel of the uninspiring life of a wage slave and which does, in fact, colour his every waking minute. If we are honest with ourselves, we will all admit this.

The remarks of some of the “ Mods’ birds” to Daily Mirror reporter Paula James the day after the fights, are illuminating.

Listen—it gives you a kick, a thrill. It makes you feel all funny inside. You get butterflies in your stomach and you want the boys to go on and on . . . You’ve got to get your kicks somehow. You’ve got to make up for all that boring time you're going to spend at work next week.

This, then, sums up their attitude. This, they think, will solve their problems— and the “kicks” have got to be extra hard to give them any pleasure at all. No use telling them that their problems will still be with them long after they are too old for kicks any more. Reefers, Purple Hearts, violence and noise are the empty pleasures they seek. No use telling them either of the broken health which lies only a short way ahead for many of them. The Mods’ birds have a reply to that, too:

We like life the way it is now. We want it to go on and on like this. . . . We want to live today. For here, for now, not next week.

They have yet to realise that they are really at the receiving end of the biggest kick of all, one that lands fairly and squarely on them, so long as they are members of the working class. All the bust-ups in the world won’t alter that. That is the real lesson they have to learn and until then Capitalism has the laugh which really matters.

Holiday Reckoning 2.

Whitsun was warm and sunny, the roads hot and smelly—and dangerous. It was estimated that about six million cars were on the move over the four days, mostly rushing to and from the holiday spots. A record number of cars and road deaths. At least eighty-four people lost their lives. In France the number was one less. Sweden, with seventeen, had its highest total for years.

There were the usual warnings and appeals from motoring organisations and Ministry of Transport Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chesham. Strange though it may sound, these might have had some effect. Apparently overall driving was better, but the relentlessly increasing volume of traffic has a counteracting effect. As The Guardian pointed out: “ The ultimate effect is that we are marching slowly backwards.”

This trite little statement seemed to illustrate neatly the mockery behind the whole problem of road traffic. In this and other countries, a great deal of motorway building has been going on, but the fastest road building does not seem to keep pace with the mounting number of vehicles. It is typical that only capitalism could produce such machines as the motor car, inefficient and unwieldy when viewed from the viewpoint of human interests and then plonk it onto a road system completely unable to cope with it. In addition, only Capitalism would have us all on a ball and chain, and then release us all at once for “a much needed break,” half of which is spent rushing “to get away from it all ” only to find that we have not really escaped, because everyone else has had the same idea.

Majorcan Holiday

Situated in the Mediterranean about five miles off the Spanish mainland, Majorca has become tremendously popular in recent years as a holiday centre. With its warm climate and beautiful rugged mountain scenery, it attracts tourists from many parts of the world. It is noted, amongst other things, for its cultivated pearls, its cathedral at Palma, and the Valldemosa monastery where Chopin stayed for just a few unhappy months.

Many workers manage a fortnight there by travelling tourist class on a “package holiday,” some spending most of the daylight hours lying on the beach frying themselves in the sizzling sunshine, concerned less with the benefits of sunlight than with getting a tan to take back home and show their friends. They may get heatstroke for their trouble, but the prestige of a golden brown skin is obviously considered worthy of the risk.

Despite the warmth and the comparatively relaxing atmosphere, it is interesting to note the number of people who, even there, never let down their guard for a moment. Here is the woman with pointed sunglasses and a loud affected voice, trailing an enormous dog behind her. Over there is the man who boasts constantly about his “good job” and high income and, most laughable of all, some of them even get patriotic about the English weather.

Their hotel is quite well appointed and perhaps this is what has gone to their heads a little. They seem to miss the point that it is by no means as exclusive as they like to think. For exclusiveness you go to another part of the island, such as Formentor, where the cheapest hotel room will cost you about six guineas a day, where the beaches are superb and serene in their peacefulness. It is the playground of royal families and other rich types.

Some of the better-off have settled in Majorca and live the usual life of ease associated with their wealth. But for most Majorcans it is the usual story of working for a wage packet as a means of living. This is the lesson which stands out just as much among the beauty of the Balearics as it does amongst the dirt and bustle of London.

Eddie Critchfield

Blogger's Note:

A short Panorama video about Mods and Rockers from 1964 gives you a flavour of the period. Failing that, you can always check out Sting as a Bell Boy.

World View: Seychelles: the strategic stakes (1998)

From the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Seychelles comprise 115 islands and atolls scattered over the western Indian Ocean, with Malé the largest island, 1,000 miles east of the Kenyan port of Mombassa. More than 90 percent of the population of 75,000 live on Malé.

The Seychelles were seized as a French colony in 1768, but were captured by Britain in 1794 and were incorporated as a dependency of Mauritius in 1814. They became a separate colony in 1903, achieved internal self-government in 1975, and gained independence as a republic within the British Commonwealth the following year.

Unlike many other British colonies, the Seychelles never had a strong nationalist movement before independence. The first political party, the Seychelles Democratic Party (SDP), was formed by a flamboyant lawyer, James Mancham, in 1963; two years later, another lawyer, Albert René, formed the People’s United Party (PUP). Mancham campaigned for integration with Britain, whilst Rene argued for independence.The SDP was considered to be left-wing, the PUP right-wing. Both were thoroughly reformist.

By the early 1970s, Mancham was persuaded, on advice from Britain, that integration with Britain was not acceptable, as it would not be tolerated by the former British colonies in East Africa, and would cause friction within the Seychelles. Mancham therefore opted for independence, but demanded that Britain help with the formation of the Seychelles’ security forces.The United States was allowed to construct a nuclear detonation monitoring satellite station on Malé island.

In 1976 James Mancham (who was to be knighted) became President and Albert René became Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Seychelles. Meanwhile Mancham had forged strong links with South Africa and René with Tanzania. Within months of Marcham’s election as president, René began plotting his overthrow.

When, at the beginning of June 1977, Mancham departed for the British Commonwealth Leaders’ Conference in London, René’s supporters, armed with AK-47 rifles and accompanied by 500 Tanzanian soldiers who had secretly entered the country, seized control of the principal government buildings, including the barracks and the police station in the capital,Victoria, on Malé. It was a walkover. By the following morning Albert René had complete control of the Seychelles.

René became president in place of Mancham. News was strictly controlled by the Ministry of Information; all residents were obliged to register their personal details with the government. President René took extreme precautions to ensure that he was not ousted from power. He initially recruited a small force of Tanzanian troops to protect the principal buildings and then later, acting on advice from his new Defence Minister, he replaced the Tanzanians with an elite detachment of North Korean guards. The Russian embassy increased its staff, of whom some were KGB and GRU officers, to about 50 “diplomats”. In 1979 René introduced a new constitution under which a People’s Progressive Front declared itself to the 23-member People’s Assembly of the Seychelles to be the sole legal party.

There have been numerous attempts to overthrow René and his government. Two plots involving French mercenaries were uncovered, in 1978 and 1979. In 1981 the infamous Mike Hoare, with a group of South African mercenaries posing as a rugby team, planned an attack on the Seychelles, but were pre-empted by the Seychelles security forces. Hoare and some of his men arrived at the airport of Malé but, after a fierce gun-battle, managed to escape back to South Africa.

In 1992, after the collapse of state capitalism in Russia, René recycled himself as a “democrat” and Sir James Mancham was allowed to return, protected by military bodyguards and, it has been alleged, members of the British SAS.

The strategic position of the Seychelles is the main reason why so many governments interfere and try to control the islands. Their value lies in their proximity to numerous trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, there are more than 80 islands with coves, harbours and mountains that have great military and naval uses. The islanders are mainly concerned with small-scale agriculture and fishing. Many of them, over the last 30 years or so, have been employed in hotels and the ever-increasing tourist industry but, at the moment, due to the recent economic problems across the Indian Ocean to the east, there has been something of a downturn in tourism in the Seychelles as elsewhere.The future is uncertain.

Peter E. Newell

Tourism: sea, sand – and land speculation (2006)

From the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

We all need a break from time to time but do we ever stop to consider the impact and negative effects on the local communities where we choose to spend our hard-earned leisure time? Do we stop and consider what kind of holiday the people who are servicing our needs on our holiday get, if at all?

The majority of employment opportunities created by tourism worldwide for local populations is that of the low-paid service sector kind. Rarely regular work, and for a few months of the year only with no health insurance or pension contributions and no promise of job security. No thought of a holiday for them – just will there be enough money to last through the lean months, to feed the family, buy new school clothes and books for the kids, or fuel for the winter?

The following observations are based on eight years of being domiciled in a part of south west Turkey.

The small town in whose administrative area I live is but one example of what is happening at an ever-increasing rate in many areas of Turkey and other parts of the world too – a headlong rush to develop anywhere, anyhow, the primary criterion to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible and never mind the consequences. As everywhere, the few get richer whilst some of the poor sell family land during the boom expecting a one-time sale to provide benefits and long-term security for this and the next generation, expectations far exceeding realistic possibilities in many cases. Teenagers are sent to study at one of the many tourism schools or colleges in order to learn English well enough to enter the world of work in the service sector.

Traditionally, farming was the major occupation in this area, mostly small owner-occupier farms with a few animals. Crops are cotton, maize, sesame, citrus fruits and salad crops. Plus there has always been a small fishing community. Electricity arrived about forty years ago, at about the same time as a tarmac road from the nearby small market town. At that time tourism was virtually unknown, more a backpackers’ destination for those prepared to camp out or have access to only basic facilities. Now this has become a destination of choice. A week or two of guaranteed sun, cheap accommodation, food and booze, family holidays, adventure, discos and dancing. Tree-covered mountainsides with fabulous sea views are being cleared to be crowded instead with concrete holiday villages. Rivers, reed beds and formerly remote coves are being polluted by the influx of too many people too much of the time. Marinas, golf courses, all-inclusive hotels and the inevitable infrastructure needed to connect them to highways and airports; huge road widening projects, tunnels through mountains – great for GDP and jobs in the short term, catastrophe for the environment in the long term.

Now, however, the latest developments move in another direction. Prime farming land is being turned into housing estates for incomers as it is in other areas currently seen to be ‘good value’ (i.e. cheaper than Western Europe), e.g. Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania etc, etc. The western working class, or some of them, can now afford to saddle themselves with a second mortgage/home, can invest in property in order to cash in later or offer their property for holiday let and probably pay no tax on earned income in either country. There is a feeling of well-being, having succeeded in obtaining a level of affluence once only dreamed of, an affluence entirely dependent on the system continuing to keep them in paid work for years to come. The incomers are perceived as wealthy, their ‘second home’ here being much bigger and more luxurious than the locals’ single, existing and often shared, home. The difference in average wages between host country and the home country is such that it adds to the illusion of everyone in Europe being wealthy. Both sides are guilty of being unaware of the other’s actual living costs. The incomers aren’t familiar with the real (lower) monetary cost of things here or of the actual wages to be had and the locals think the visitors have unlimited money to throw around if they don’t question the prices quoted or constantly comment on how cheap everything is in comparison with western Europe; a mix which causes problems of rip-offs and frauds, imagined and real, followed by mistrust on both sides. Resentment is growing. In a national, daily Turkish newspaper there was an article recently referring to ghettoization which said, roughly translated, ‘Don’t be surprised to wake up one morning to find GO HOME BRITS scrawled on your wall.’

This aspect of ‘foreigners’, i.e. Europeans, letting their property through the internet or privately but admitting only to owner-occupation (although the truth is clear to others in the neighbourhood) has begun to be a bone of contention with local hotel, boarding house and restaurant owners who see their own business potential declining and income reduced as a consequence of unfair competition. Legitimate businesses have overheads not encountered by private individuals and undeclared income in the capitalist system is seen as theft and unfair advantage.

Outside the central area (where most development has taken place and little farmland remains) some families are keen to sell land to cash in before the bubble bursts but they can only sell it once. Once sold there is no possibility to farm it and herein lies another problem. Why would anyone want to sell good productive farmland? The farming sector is suffering from the unfair market place and falling prices for producers. Tomato crops are being ploughed into the ground. The area once prized for cotton sees less of it grown year by year. Foreign subsidised imports are cheaper for the textile industry. Unless they have a large family to work for free the farmers can’t afford to pay pickers (last year at £4 a day) and the crop is left to rot. Some farmers and/or their children are moving into the tourism sector and allied occupations, occupations with low pay and no security. Government, however, has policies regarding tourism numbers etc., as do governments the world over, all seen as large £, $ or Euro signs. It’s the fastest growing industry and therefore to be prized and commended. The money comes into the country; where it goes after arrival is not of primary importance. Laws have been relaxed allowing (encouraging?) the sale of land which was formerly protected from development, even in environmentally sensitive areas.

The rich get richer, the poor – well, we know about that one….

According to received wisdom, for ‘richer’ read ‘more money’, ‘more buying power’, ‘ownership’ and for ‘poor’ read ‘less money’, ‘less buying power’, ‘dependence’; a scale of measurement based on one factor only.

A brief scan of television advertising by the tourism agencies of a number of countries shows a large representation from those ‘poorer’ countries. As is to be expected, only the positive side is promoted, the advertisers seeking to trick potential travellers into seeing only what the advertisers want them to see and often carefully protecting them from seeing the ‘real’ country when they arrive by arranging suitable tours and escorted visits which skirt the worst areas, i.e. the areas where the majority of the population have to live and work. ‘Incredible India’ portrayed as rich in culture, diversity, history; ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ steeped in ancient culture with a rich variety of wildlife and welcoming nationals to serve all your needs; ‘Jordan’- history, architecture, wild, exciting landscapes and outdoor activity; ‘The Maldives’ destination for outstanding hospitality, crystal clear sea and mouth-watering cuisine. No mention or sight of the teeming millions living in abject poverty in huge slums with no access to clean water; or of undemocratic repressive regimes, or of sensitive environments being degraded to build first-world standard accommodation and golf courses, or of human rights abuses. Just bring us your money and let the ever-increasing divide grow some more.

Who’s to blame? The ‘rich’ working class of the West? No, they’re guilty of having been duped by the system they live under to believe that they have a good life, even while they’re complaining about working too many hours, worrying what will happen to their pension, trying to live up to the expectations thrust on them by the capitalist media. The poorer working classes of the countries now being subjected to tourism can hardly be blamed either for trying to improve their lives and living conditions. Why shouldn’t they have a piece of the pie?

Both sections of the working class are to be blamed for one thing though and that is for not recognising that they aren’t on different sides, they are one and the same. They all need employment, a job or a handout on a regular basis. Without this they are finished. No holiday. No home. No food. No clothes. No nothing. They are to be blamed for not recognising it is the capitalist system itself that is to blame, that causes the divide between rich and poor, of whatever level, that actively works to set one section of the working class against another, to prevent them from working together against the system. How else could such a pernicious system prevail? When the working class of the world eventually understand this we’ll be well on our way to achieving our goal.

Janet Surman

Action Replay: Visiting Time (2012)

JW Marriott Marquis Dubai

The Action Replay column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tourism is big business in many countries, and sports tourism is a sizeable part of it, as witness the profits made by airlines, hotels and restaurants during major sporting events. The country with the biggest reliance on sport to boost its tourism and international reputation, however, must be the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which means mainly Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

This is partly a matter of providing sporting facilities for visitors (another tourist-oriented strategy there is the provision of museums and art galleries). There are a number of first-class golf courses, built and maintained at great expense in such an arid area. Or you can indulge in boating, water-skiing, even rock climbing and ice-skating. Cricket and rugby are popular among expat communities. And Manchester City brought the Premier League trophy to Abu Dhabi recently, so it could go on display for two days in the club shop (The club’s super-rich owner is half-brother to the UAE President).

But primarily the local elite are keen to attract top-class athletes and stage international competitions, thus enticing tourists and TV coverage. For instance, there have been top tennis tournaments, such as the Dubai Duty-Free Championships (prize this year of over $400,000 to the singles winners). There are also top golf tournaments and horse racing fixtures, including the $1m Dubai Gold Cup. Pakistan played England at cricket there earlier this year, and may play Australia in August/September.

And as we said, the tourism industry does very well out of all this. The 2013 Matchplay Championship Golf final will be hosted by the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai: it’s a hotel, and will be the world’s tallest when it opens later this year with its sixteen hundred rooms. On 2003 figures, one-fifth of the UAE population live below the poverty line.

Paul Bennett

Mount Everest: Top of Whose World? (2013)

From the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Because it is there’ was the unbending response of mountaineer George Mallory when he was asked why anyone would want to climb Mount Everest. In that sense Everest had been ‘there’ since the 1850s, when it was first identified in the Great British Trigonometric Survey of India as ‘singularly shy and retiring.’ The fact that this was something extraordinary – the highest in the world, then measured at 29,002 feet – was acknowledged in 1856 when it was considered proper to name it after the retiring Surveyor General of India. Not that Sir George Everest, infamous for his volcanic temperament, was especially impressed. And Mallory? His body was left on the mountain in 1924, tantalisingly close to the summit. Thereafter Everest was inviolate until June 1953, when Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay allowed themselves to spend just fifteen minutes there, burying in the snow some small tokens of their achievement. The news of their triumph was delayed so as to arrive here on the same day as the coronation of queen Elizabeth, resulting in coinciding sixtieth anniversaries which may be used by crazier patriots in a campaign of delusion to play down the fact that neither of those two pioneering climbers was British.

Curzon

It was some time after Everest had been noted and measured that the prospect of climbing it, which involved first crossing the formidable surrounding landscape, was seriously discussed. And when there was such a discussion, it originated among an expensively exclusive elite that prided itself on being driven by what was known as a ‘mystic patriotism’ – but which in reality had notably less exalted motives. This was a cause enjoying the passionate support of Lord Curzon, supremely imperialist Viceroy of India: ‘It has always seemed to me a reproach … that we, mountaineers and pioneers par excellence of the universe, make no sustained and scientific attempt to climb to the top…’ In 1906 the proposal was taken on by the Alpine Club on the assumption that the cost would be borne by its more prosperous members who in return would qualify for a place on the expedition. In the event, the entire concept was swamped by the outbreak of war in 1914, when many of the aspiring conquerors of Everest – including Mallory – were persuaded by what they regarded as their obligation as Englishmen to the essential idealism of the human spirit to take their place in the trenches, where they witnessed such horrors as would prepare them for the worst that Everest could offer.

Bell

The foredoomed peace of 1918 allowed the surviving climbers to turn their obsessive attention to the detailed organisation of an Everest expedition. One immediate problem was to ensure that a party would be allowed by the surrounding countries to get at the mountain. This was complicated by the question of whether the British would send arms to Tibet for that country’s continuing dispute with China. There were also religious objections to the invasion of sacred ground. An influential figure in settling this problem was Charles Bell, the British political officer at Sikkim, whose knowledge of Tibet, its people and their traditions was impressively extensive. He reported: ‘…there are several sacred places in the vicinity of Mount Everest…Tibetans would not like Europeans moving about those places…(and) do not believe that explorations are carried on only in the interests of geographical knowledge and science… Until the Tibetan question is settled with China these expeditions to Mount Everest should not be allowed.’ Eventually Bell’s considerable influence persuaded the British government to supply arms, ammunition and the necessary training and technical advice to the Tibetan army. In December 1920, as part of a more complex initiative in diplomacy, this brought Tibetan agreement to a British Mount Everest expedition.

Hinks

The plan was to send a party in 1921 to assess whether it would be possible to climb Everest and get down again safely and to settle on the most likely route for doing so. This would be followed by yearly expeditions from 1922, setting up a chain of camps from which a select pair of climbers could strike out for the summit and quickly return. Among the most urgent matters for the Committee was to select the mountaineers. Arthur Hinks, one of the joint secretaries, was responsible for this although his temperament was not the most promising for so delicate a task. Among an ocean of volcanic eccentrics he was a sarcastic, intolerant, vituperous bully contemptuous of anything he considered ‘modern’ such as a telephone in his home. There was a strict requirement for all members of the expedition to be British, which allowed Hinks to compose a response to an ex-officer of the German Army: ‘I have hitherto put straight into the wastepaper basket all applications from ex-enemies.’ Not that all cases were judged on climbing ability: in 1923, Richard Graham who offered pretty well everything needed to commend him and who had a number of influential supporters – including Mallory – was at first accepted but then quietly rejected when an anonymous Committee member objected to him on the grounds that during the war, as a Quaker, he had been a conscientious objector.

Finch

When the mammoth task of organisation was completed the expedition arrived at its base camp early in May 1921. Among the matters to be settled was whether the use of oxygen should be allowed or whether it would be ‘unsporting.’ Especially keen on oxygen, making himself somewhat unpopular in the process, was George Finch, an accomplished climber who in the next expedition in 1922 reached to a record 27,300 feet – during which he saved the life of his partner. A party led by Mallory then failed to improve on this and as they were descending they were hit by a massive avalanche in which Mallory narrowly escaped death but seven native porters were killed. A lack of money prevented another effort in 1923, but on the following year two climbers – Norton and Somervell without using oxygen – reached 28,126 feet, less than 1,000 from the summit. But they were in a very bad state, with Norton snow blind and Somervell fearing he was on the point of death. They both survived and Mallory prepared himself with Andrew Irvine for his third attempt on 8 June, leaving the geologist Noel Odell at Camp V to keep observation.

Odell

Early on 9 June as the mist cleared Odell saw, on a ridge near the base of the final peak, what he later described as ‘two black spots.’ As he watched, the two figures surmounted a great rock step before the mist clamped down again and they were lost to sight. ‘There was but one explanation,’ he later wrote, ‘It was Mallory and his companion moving, as I could see even at that great distance, with considerable alacrity…’ He kept watching and hoping for some hours before he gave up. But Mallory and Irvine were never seen again, and the climbers assembled below had to face the agonising truth that they had perished somewhere on the slopes. In effect it was the end of the expedition. But a great deal, in several senses, had been invested in its result, which stimulated some reluctance to admit to failure. So Odell was subjected to strong pressure to refashion his memory of what he had observed, even to supply evidence that the climb had been successful. But what concession he made on this was no more than vague and conditional. Subsequent events offered nothing more: for example when Hilary and Tenzing got to the top they did not find anything to suggest that anyone had been there before.

With the return of the expedition the angry frustration at the failure did not prevent an awareness that this was a potentially profitable situation. Odell was promoted as a rising star, soon speaking at as many as three lectures a day, which yielded him some £700. A lot was expected of the film The Epic Of Everest, made by the official photographer John Noel, on which rode an investment of £8000. Noel was not optimistic about the prospects for the film and questioned whether these might have been more promising had there been a female star to inject a romantic interest. Already it featured a type of carnival including dancing and seven performing Buddhist monks, which caused the Dalai Lama to ban Noel from Tibet and forbid any more plans to climb Mount Everest.

Crime

In what are known as these more enlightened times the travel industry has expanded into mountaineering, with offers to conduct willing tourists to the summit – at a suitable price. One agency promises to provide ‘…the very best leadership, equipment, oxygen systems, comfort, food and Sherpa support…’ for some £35,000; another charges $65,000 because it claims to be better than cheaper companies. One effect of this is to create serious congestion on the route up the mountain; recently one experienced climber took a photograph of a huge queue standing for hours on the slopes, waiting its turn. In all he summarised the situation as ‘mass hysteria.’ There have been accounts of the mountain being disfigured by masses of litter including empty oxygen cylinders and of hurrying climbers in the Death Zone stepping around others who have been overcome. And crime flourished in a setting where it would once have been inconceivable. In his book High Crimes Michael Kodas, who had climbed the mountain twice, listed a series of thefts from the tents of climbers, in many cases involving equipment which was life-preserving, later to be found hidden among other team members’ property: ‘…some of my own teammates… in their efforts to stand on top of the world and make money doing it, behaved more like mobsters than mountaineers.’

It was consistent with these events that in 1999 a party from the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition should find, at 27,000 feet, Mallory’s frozen body. Photographs were then on sale for considerable sums of money; at one stage the price for a single shot reached $40,000. As Mallory’s body was hacked and levered out of the ice the clothing was torn, yielding artefacts which were later catalogued as rare specimens. From the diggers could be heard comments such as, ‘There’s still some more shit here’ and ‘This is something…I think it’s fucking closed.’ One vastly experienced climber who gave vent to his feelings at this was Chris Bonington: ‘Words can’t express how disgusted I am. These people don’t deserve to be called climbers.’

Priorities

After the failure of the 1924 expedition, leaving its bodies out on the frozen slopes, there was a suspension of any more such ventures until 1933. In the meantime there was the preoccupation with glorifying it all as an historic example of purely British endeavour. At the memorial service in St. Paul’s cathedral the bishop of Chester intoned about ‘…the last ascent, with the beautiful mystery of the great enigma… stands for more than an heroic effort to climb a mountain.’ These words may have defiantly soothed some ruffled patriots but said nothing about the essentials of what had happened. The drive to climb Everest was at first energised by the pressure to compensate for the failure of British expeditions to be the first to reach either of the Earth’s poles. And then, in what was called, after 1918, The Silence as the world was in preparation for another great war, there was the need to assuage the grief over senseless disasters such as the Somme, Passchendaele, Gallipoli… Behind it all the political and military urgency of the tensions in the area sprouted from the priority to assert the British rule of India and stifle any potential threat from Russia. These matters were not unrelated to the fact that marketing the opportunity for people to climb Everest emerged as another investment, essentially no different from all the other degrading examples of the commodity demands of capitalism. In face of that, no human being, no mountain, can stand free.

Ivan

Climbing All The Way To The Bank (2013)

From the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent incident has brutally illustrated the fact that even when it concerns Mount Everest the profit motive counts above everything.

Towards the end of April three European climbers – Ueli Steck, Simone Moro and Jon Griffith, all-well hardened on the slopes – were at Everest Camp Two, at about 21,000 feet, working to find a new route to the summit. They were not using ropes or oxygen – they regard climbing with these aids ‘like walking.’ However, on the same slope there was a party of Sherpas laying out fixed lines – permanent ropes for the ‘commercial climbers’ who are not planning to ‘walk’ up Everest. It is usual to leave Sherpas free to do this work, but on this occasion the three European climbers crossed the Sherpa lines. They said they did this in order to reach their tent but Griffith despised the restriction as against the ‘freedom of the hills.’ The Sherpas objected and there was a fight in which rocks, a knife and an ice axe were used, and later some 100 Sherpas came to attack the three men at their tent. The dispute was settled at least for the present, when the Europeans fled back to the Base Camp.

Since then the Nepalese government have intervened, mindful of the financial importance of the Everest climbing trade. Along the trail to the Base Camp, tourists have spent tens of millions of dollars. The accommodation at the Camp can be luxurious with hot tubs and bedding and food flown in from the rest of the world to order; there is also a helicopter champagne breakfast for those with the right appetite and money. This is no longer sacred ground, protected from the rest: now the tourism authority collects a £6,450 fee for every climber and the normal basic cost of a climb is £22,500, but for the right person this can reach as high as £65,000, even for those who, according to Tenzing Norgay's son, need instruction to put on crampons. The average annual wage in Nepal is around £128, which is known to be a cause of some resentment among the locals who work to keep those snugly wealthy people happy. All this in the interests of keeping the mountain earning the profits. Which raises the question, unlikely to be asked let alone answered among the celebrations this year: Who Owns Everest?

On the beach (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone — that is, every City Editor, every investment analyst — loves a growth industry. It usually doesn’t matter what the growth is about; the firms which supplied the ovens and the gas to the Nazi concentration camps must have been a growth industry. What matters is growth — the vision of an ever-developing, ever-expanding and therefore, it is assumed, an ever more profitable business.

One of the great growth industries of recent times is the tourist trade; sometimes, as if it were a political theory, called tourism. Six per cent of total international trade is attributable to tourism — more than iron and steel and surpassed only by motor vehicles, chemicals and fuel oil. The World Tourism Organisation, who may be supposed to be not entirely impartial in the matter, claims, “Tourism is no longer a cottage industry . . . today [it] has developed into a major industry".

Britain, advertised as a place where the scenery varies from the simply pretty to the dramatic and where there are buildings dating back to the Roman occupation, is one of the world’s big tourist attractions. Last year 11.72 million tourists came here, to stare at the scenery, photograph the buildings and dazedly shell out their cash to the riotously charging barrow boys of London. During that same year, 12.86 million people travelled abroad from Britain. Those who came in here spent £857 million more than those who went out spent abroad a bias on the balance of payments such as to please any City Editor.

For a favourable balance of payments, like a growth industry, is everyone’s favourite. This (although there are arguments that even by the standards of capitalist accounting the advantages are often more apparent than real) is one of the inducements for the ‘developing’countries to build up a tourist trade. In these cases, the state takes a close interest in the trade; there is usually a Ministry of Tourism and some impressive government subsidies and investment as well as other help. Sometimes the capital for the development has other sources. One American travel firm planned to take over an entire African country, with “no economy, no nothing” and to “merchandise it . . .  so the entire country is run as a beautiful place’’. (The money was to come from Rothschilds.)

Lego
This drive to ravage some defenceless part of the world into a paradise for the tourist trade gives tourism a bad image. The industry has its apologists, whose efforts sometimes have a note of desperation:

  Anyone concerned with the motivation of travel has to realise first that he is reaching deep into one of the major conflicts of the human mind; a desire for sameness, the return to the womb, if you wish; conflicting with the motivation to reach out and discover the world. In a sublimated fashion, a trip is therefore a form of birth or rebirth. (Dr. Ernst Dichter, Address to the Department of Travel, Kashmir, October 1967.)

Rather closer to the reality of the balance sheet the trade says it aims to supply hopeful people, on their annual release from the job with a little money to spend, with the Four Esses — Sun, Sea, Sand. Sex. And in pursuit of the profits to be made from that, the tourist trade has invested millions into ships, aircraft, motor coaches, airports, roads, beaches. It has raised hotels which all appear as if they have been built from the same Lego set, where among the palms and the sunbrellas workers can lie roasting like fowls on the spit, hoping to take a sun tan back to the office.

Behind the illusions, tourism has had a dramatic, even drastic, effect on the social fabric of the places it has invaded. In 1955 Torremolinos was a tiny, poverty-stricken village on the south-east coast of Spain. Then the developers’ eye fell upon it and now the Lego is everywhere, the Thomas Cook brochure describes it as ". . . exuberant [with] all the essentials of a modern resort: bars, boutiques, restaurants, beer cellars, clubs, golf courses, yacht marinas . . . One observer has summed up this trend:

  Tourism . . . is no less an industry than steel manufacture and its introduction into Alpine valleys has been no less destructive of total population patterns and traditional culture than if each hotel had been a blast furnace. (The Geography of Recreation and Leisure, Cosgrove and Jackson.)

Pollution
This aspect is beginning to worry the tourist trade, and much of the writing on it is now concerned with a call for something called a Tourism Policy, by which is meant a controlled development of tourism. It also worries the ecology lobby. The summit of Mount Snowdon is literally being worn away by the millions of feet which trample over it. In the season, a city like London suffers exhaust fumes made even denser by the fleets of taxis, cars, buses, coaches needed to move the tourists from one box office to the next. Outside the city the big jets scream to and from the airport on their carpet of noise, a 707 at take-off generates the same sound level as all the world’s population shouting in unison — and this can happen every few minutes, nearly every hour of every day.

But for the present the pollution which it causes is a lesser worry for the tourist industry. Of more immediate concern, because it offers an imminent threat to profits, is the bogey of saturation. If too many people visit the same place and overwhelm the available facilities, they may have the kind of experience to persuade them not to buy that holiday again. London, which lies fourth in the league table of saturation, measured by tourist nights spent per 100 residents, is getting near that point. Moving around the city in the summer is difficult, almost impossible, as the visitors from abroad add their weight to the rush-hour miseries of the travelling workers. In Westminster Abbey the crush is so great that an admission charge has been imposed, and after paying to go in the visitors are channelled along roped-off routes with no waiting allowed to look at anything.

This illustrates a contradiction of tourism which (although it may not occur to the Ford worker inflicting his Spanish on some hapless English-speaking bartender on the Costa Brava) is typical of capitalist society. Tourism has grown from the pressures of industrial capitalism. It was the concentrations of urban life — factories, close-piled slums, relentless exploitation — which spawned the need to get away from it all as well as the faster and more efficient means of doing so.

It took some time for the workers to establish that a holiday is an essential part of the recreation of their labour power. As this need is now accepted, and as many workers now get three or even four weeks break each year, the tourist industry has grown to market that recreation. This can assume some startling forms but who cares, as long as it sells? So holiday camps marshall their millions into obedient queues and into nerve-wracking competitions to find the funniest face in the place. Package tours take care of everything except stomachs abruptly overfull of unusual food and booze. Jet planes pack in their economy passengers as tight as a bus, easing the discomforts with the plastic smile of a leg-weary hostess. Somewhere among all this gusty enjoyment, say the industry’s salesmen, batteries are recharged; the line at Ford’s flows freer for it.

So big business is interested in an efficient holiday industry and the tourist trade has answered this by itself becoming big business. It is becoming increasingly harder for the small firm to survive. The British hotel industry is dominated by companies like Trust House Forte (who try to promote a cosier image by advertising that all their employees wear unctuous smiles) and Grand Metropolitan (who also own Express Dairies, Watneys and the Express Newspapers). Behind them is some of the latest, most expensive technology, Holiday Inns has a central computer link-up which is said to be the world’s largest private communications network.

In package holidays, three firms — Clarksons (the largest in the world), Thomsons and Horizon account for over half the business originating in Britain, leaving the rest to seventy-odd smaller operators. Governments offer a wide range of subsidies (in Britain a grant of £1,000 was available for every hotel bedroom completed before 1973), tax allowances, low interest loans and so on. They also invest a lot of money directly in the trade; two-thirds of the airlines in the IATA are wholly or partly state owned. At the same time, governments impose laws on safety and consumer standards, many of which can be met only by the bigger operators. The 1971 Fire Precautions Act, which laid down regulations about fire safety in hotels, caused thousands of small hotels and guest houses to close or to change their use.

Jaws
These laws are designed to prevent the profit motive running riot to the point of being counter-productive and to encourage a more orderly investment of capital in the industry. A bad experience, caused by a rush to get a quick profit, can damage the industry overall; and that is the sort of thing governments are supposed to prevent. The film Jaws showed how tills operates, and there are many examples of it in real life. In 1962 the Swiss ski resort of Zermatt suffered an epidemic of typhoid caused by its neglect of the water supply in favour of building hotels, ski lifts and the like. In 1973 the typhoid bacteria was found in the water in Miami. The authorities could not ignore the problem, as had happened at Zermatt; they advised everyone to boil all their water but refused to use words like ‘contamination’ which, although accurate, might have damaged their holiday bookings.

Workers who spend their lives on the treadmill of exploitation need to buy a holiday once in a while, to restore themselves. The industry which sells these holidays is now big business and operates under all the contradictions of any capitalist enterprise. The rush to invest in tourism has proved environmentally damaging — although the ‘environment’ is usually an essential part of the commodity which the industry sells. In some ‘developing’ countries the tourist trade has been built up at the expense of other industries which, by the standards by which capitalism judges profits —might well prove to be more worthwhile. A mess which is typical in a society where wealth is turned out to make profits and not to satisfy human needs.

There is a final irony. Holidays are about illusions, about forgetting reality for a while. But the trade which markets those illusions is itself being forced up against its own reality. And it is not always having a lovely time.

Ivan

World View: The African tourism trade (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tourist industry is increasingly playing a significant role in the economies of many African countries. This is evidenced by the innovative programmes that are, day-in-day-out, being introduced to attract tourists. In Ghana there is what is dubbed PANAFEST (Pan African Festival) and in Gambia the Roots Homecoming Festival is of premium importance. In fact many governments claim that the tourist industry is one of their major if not the main foreign currency earners. Huge sums of money are therefore spent to develop historical and exotic monuments and spots.

It is important to understand that in this part of the world tourism is seen by the authorities to mean Americans and Europeans coming to Africa for a few weeks or months for holidays. The official view of tourism being a mainstay of the economy, however, crumbles in the face of the massive evidence of negative consequences of the industry on the people of Africa. Governments maintain that the tourist industry generates employment for their citizens. But a closer look at the so-called employment opportunities reveals a lot. Many of those considered as employed are tourist guides or "bumpsters". In most cases these youth are not salaried.

They hang about the hotels and beaches and if lucky they find a tourist who wishes to be shown about town. At the end of the day the "lucky" bumpster gets a tip. There are a few who get employed in the hotels and restaurants as cleaners and cooks. Others more fortunate than the two latter groups, carve and sell artefacts to the tourists. Unfortunately, tourism is a seasonal affair and so during the off-season most of these "employed" youth are unemployed and many resort to petty crime to survive.

Consequences

Another detrimental effect associated with tourism in Africa but which government officials turn a blind eye to is the introduction of the young ones to "heavy spending". This particularly affects those living in and around areas of high tourist concentration. In their search for pleasure and heavily loaded with pounds sterling, dollars, marks, etc, they easily entice the youth—male and female alike—to be instruments of sex. They pay generously as the youth fast become spendthrifts. When these partners leave for home the children, used to big spending, resort to petty crime.

It is also known, especially from the high frequency of arrests at local airports, that a good lot of these tourists and tourist agents are drug traffickers. The industry provides a favourable climate for the drug business. Serving as safe havens and transit points these poor African countries, which have elevated tourism to the status of major sponsor of government programmes only expose their youth to hard drugs. Though not originally meant to be consumed here, drugs easily find their way into the local market.

Thus, contrary to what the governments claim, the cumulative adverse effects of the activities of tourists and tourism on the people far outweighs the scanty revenue derived. Having gotten used to "big money", many youth prefer running after tourists to going to school. There is a growing culture of begging among the people as everyone has mastered the tricks of squeezing "something small" from tourists. Tourist infrastructure—hotels, casinos, restaurants, bars, etc become breeding grounds for prostitution, gambling, drug abuse, petty thievery, etc. These, coupled with the heavy cost of treating people with STDs, the refusal of the youth to attend school, arming the security forces to fight crime, etc certainly indicate that governments lose rather than gain from this type of tourism.

Who profits?

If African governments do not derive as much as they claim, who then does? To answer this question one needs to answer a second, more pertinent question: is tourism today organised for people to enjoy their leisure or is it organised to make profit? If it is organised purposely for people to enjoy, then no tourist would need to pay money to come to Africa, nor would they need to pay for hotel accommodation and food. Therefore one can safely conclude that tourism is organised for the sole aim of making profit.

Tourism is a business venture undertaken by the owners of the means of production—in this case the aircraft, hotels, bars and restaurants, etc. Governments only come in to play their historical role of making sure that the owners of the means of producing the pleasure of tourism reap their profits in a peaceful environment.

Thus this exploitation of the workers and youth of African countries is made possible because they do not own the airlines, hotels, etc-—the means of producing the wealth of tourism. To ensure that such exploitation is halted the means of production must be commonly owned. Now since this system where a few people are able to exclusively possess the means of production is global, destroying it cannot be an African affair. The struggle to do away with the profit system (and make, for instance, the tourist industry benefit everyone) must be fought on two planes. On the one hand it should be an overall struggle encompassing all aspects of life—healthcare, feeding, clothing, education, protecting the environment, tourism, etc. On the other hand such a struggle must involve the concerted action of all workers of the world. There is the need for workers to understand the class struggle; to get actively and consciously involved in it; to persuade others to join in; and with a majority of willing members the struggle will be won.

Suhuyini

Sun, sand, sea . . . and slavery (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The holiday season is here again and for a short while workers can escape from the realities of life into the illusion of freedom. Thus ends a process which began last Boxing Day before that other great commercial event, Christmas itself, was half over, when the television screens, backed up by the newspapers and magazines—not to mention the glossy brochures— began to sell holidays. For today holidays are big business and the form which they take reflects the society of which they are a part.

The modern holiday is divorced from everyday life, for people drop everything and go away. This reflects the way in which life in industrial society is departmentalised with work, pleasure and personal interests all in separate packages. It was not always so, for holidays in the medieval world were different. They were numerous, but they fitted into normal life and were not the complete stoppages that we know today. Work had to be done, animals had to be fed and everyday tasks performed. What is more, holidays fitted into the natural pattern of the year. Christmas lasted for twelve days, but came at a time of year when very little work could be done on the land. Lent was a time of fasting, but by that time supplies were anyway running low and the new season’s growth had not yet begun. Holidays were mainly religious, often pagan with christian overtones—ancient rituals to placate the gods or earth spirits to bring clement weather and good harvests. Only the gods and spirits had been updated as saints or demons. Thanks for a good harvest, successfully gathered, were both offered to the same deities and it was a pretty rowdy affair. As early as the ninth century the Saxon King Edgar attacked the drunkenness and debauchery and commanded that all should pray devoutly. This cry was repeated down the ages, so it could not have had much effect. Every Sunday after mass was a holiday largely given up to sports, which were often cruel.

The growth of towns and cities gave holidays a new form which has some resemblance to the modern Bank Holiday. But they also had a serious purpose, were often centred around sheep and horse fairs, wool and cloth fairs— the mediaeval version of a modern trade exhibition. The greatest and most famous of these was the cloth fair of St. Bartholomew, held every year in London’s Smithfield which brought clothiers from all over Britain. Funfairs began as a sideline to the main show but as time passed the funfair took over as the main attraction. Games of all kinds were played but the most popular of all entertainments was a public execution and if it were of a famous person, such as Charles 1 or the Earl of Strafford, it would command vast crowds.

With the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution the old holidays were gradually whittled away until today only two ancient holidays—Christmas Day and Good Friday—remain. Puritan attacks on all forms of enjoyment spearheaded this, but the grim poverty produced by the new factory system made the taking of time off financially impossible for vast numbers of workers. Even Christmas declined. A favourite scene on Christmas cards and in magazines is the stage coach with snow-covered inns and jolly landlords by blazing log fires. In fact, during the 18th and 19th centuries the celebration of Christmas

reached its lowest ebb and it took the efforts of people like Charles Kingsley, Dickens and Prince Albert to reverse the trend. Dickens’ sentimental novel A Christmas Carol, with its servile hero Bob Cratchit, was pro-Christmas propaganda, promoting the idea that if people loved each other on this one day they would carry on throughout the year. There is no need to comment on the success of that one, but it did have the effect of restoring Christmas. Most of the ancient customs and ceremonies now celebrated actually died out in the last century, only to be restored when the world of which they were a part had completely vanished.

While the working-class holidays declined the wealthy began what was to become the modern holiday. First they went to the Spas, to take waters which were supposed to have medicinal qualities, successors perhaps to the holy wells of earlier times. The spa’s virtues were usually exaggerated, but the wealthy flocked there to drink and bathe in the waters, mainly in an effort to offset the effects of over-eating and over-drinking. As a result the spas boomed into fashionable resorts: assembly rooms, coffee houses, libraries, concert halls and, of course, shops, grew up around the pump rooms and baths. Elegant and expensive houses with parks and gardens were laid out. Fashionable society congregated there, followed by others hoping to cash in on the scene. The next step was the development of a new kind of spa. the seaside, with sea water taking the place of the medicinal springs. It was thought that to drink and bathe in sea water was beneficial to health and the sea, which had been shunned as hostile and dangerous slowly became attractive. Revolting concoctions like sea water mixed with milk, or with port, were advocated. The claims were even more exaggerated than those for spa water, but they were believed.

Today people go abroad to the Mediterranean or the Bahamas in search of the sun although it was not on sun-drenched beaches that the practice of sea bathing began but here, at Scarborough and Brighton, where the wind can cut like a knife—and not only in summer, for there was bathing as late as November. The original aim was not pleasure but health. (Sunbathing was not then popular; begun by the Italian Fascists in the 1920s, it has become a mania as great as any which has gone before. To the Georgian sunburn was vulgar.) Small ports and fishing villages, whose main industry until then had been smuggling, began to spread and expand. All the facilities to be found at Bath and Cheltenham began to appear in the new seaside towns.

The early seaside resorts were refined and expensive, but first the steamboat and then the railways began to change all that, as working class holidays became possible and workers in the rather better jobs could use Sunday to go to the sea. The day tripper arrived on the scene, much to the disgust of the wealthier visitors who moved on to other places. The rapid expansion of the seaside towns brought the inevitable rackets. It was in the mid Victorian period that the great landlady joke began, a godsend to comics everywhere, which was largely justified as conditions in boarding houses were often bad. The rapid expansion of these towns also brought sanitation problems, with raw sewage spewing into the sea. The more refined resorts fought back against the tripper; Bournemouth banned Sunday trains and Sunday steamer trips, and Bridlington put restrictions on street musicians and band concerts on Sundays, even considering closing public houses on Sunday. The early resorts had been refined but lively, but now they divided into two types—brash and vulgar but lively, and refined but dreary—a label many resorts later found it difficult to lose. The heyday of the seaside resort was in the years leading up to the First World War. The horror that was to begin on that Bank Holiday Monday in 1914 marked the end of an era.

After the war the seaside resort revived but by then the old boarding house set pattern of meals at regular times, with holiday activities in between, gave way to a more restless approach. The car and motor coaches enabled people to travel more widely. A rash of bungalow growth spread for many miles along once unspoiled coast, while miles of the River Thames were faced by cheap shacks. Farming was in a bad way and farmers were happy to sell off poor quality land for development and to go in for catering for holiday makers. The Thirties saw the rise of the holiday camp in which accommodation, catering, swimming pools, entertainment and sports facilities were in one establishment, usually at an all-in price. These were usually away from the old resorts and in competition with them. It was fashionable to sneer at holiday campers, as it had been to sneer at day trippers before them and is with the package tourists of today. The inter-war years slump were the time of expansion of the cheap recreations of hiking, cycling and camping; the Youth Hostel Association came into being as a result.

Since the last war the holiday trade—or tourism to give it its modern title—has become international. Greater planning powers, as well as public pressure, has prevented a further spread of cheap development and has cleared away a lot of it, but in its place has come the caravan sites which, although they can be ugly, arc generally better sited and better controlled. The holiday trade has grown out of all recognition of its origins. Longer holidays and the five-day week have enabled many more people to travel. Every town has its Tourist Information Office providing books, guides, maps, calendars and souvenirs. The recession has affected the trade but tourism today is not just big business: in line with the development of capitalism it is a major industry.

Les Dale

Tourism: can it be green? (2008)

From the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

For those ‘green consumers’ who have adopted the principles of a green lifestyle eco-tourism fits neatly with the now familiar slogan to ‘Think Globally – Act Locally’ as a counter to environmental destruction. The adoption of a green lifestyle can include: Buying only organic food; keeping a record of your carbon footprint; using bio-degradable products; ensuring your savings and pension fund is ‘ethically’ invested in bio-diversity products or sustainable projects; supporting ‘fair trading’; participating in recycling schemes; be sparing on the use of plastic bags; and even endorsing the Body Shop empire. The solution is presented as an individual act rather than the collective action of individuals struggling for social change to put a stop to environmental destruction. Of course you can do all of these, but you shouldn’t think that such activities will necessarily lessen the impact on the environment.

For instance, despite the claims of the eco-tourism operators that their priority is sustainability and biodiversity, the green consumer lifestyle facilitates the opening up of a new market where environmental concern is transformed into a commodity. When the market is presented as the saviour of the environment then green consumers, and eco-tourists in particular, need to be aware that they cannot disregard the logic of production for profit. Nevertheless, for socialists the idea of adopting a green lifestyle is not to be derided, because – despite these shortcomings - it is a tentative step towards working with nature, rather than against it.

By increasing our understanding of the interaction between the natural environment and the impact of human activity society will be in a better position to minimise the damage on natural resources, and be able to arrive at rational judgements on whether or not any interference in the natural environment is justified and warranted. But be warned that such environmental concerns are not on the capitalist agenda. For the priority under capitalism is to make a profit by exploiting the environment through market forces.

We travel for relaxation. We travel for adventure. We travel to escape the familiar and venture into the unknown. Tourism brings in money and creates employment: one in 16 jobs worldwide is directly or indirectly related to tourism. In Thailand, tourism is the leading source of foreign exchange. And although tourism can help to maintain a country's interest in its own cultural and artistic heritage and, at it its best, can foster genuine friendships between different members of the human family this all comes with a price attached.

Increasingly, 'alternative travel' as eco-tourism is known in the tourist trade, is being marketed as the only way to see the world these days. And as more and more people venture off the beaten track to experience unique cultures and unspoiled nature, ecotourism is considered the fastest growing market in the tourism industry, with an annual growth rate of 5 percent worldwide. According to the World Tourism Organisation this represents 6 percent of the world gross domestic product and 11.4 percent of all consumer spending.

Whereas, previously, you enjoyed the values of the natural environment by joining the Ramblers or Youth Hostel Association, now its considered more adventurous (and expensive) to take part in white water rafting down remote rivers, or to go native in the Australian bush, stay with the indigenous people in the Amazonian rainforest, enjoy the delights of the local wildlife and the taste of organic food at an eco-lodge in India. These eco-travellers are setting out on foot safaris in Africa, camping in the Mexican rainforest, and trekking to hill tribe villages in Thailand. You can also have a holiday in a tree-house in Costa Rica and enjoy the delights of a ropeway through the jungle canopy. And if none of these at to your taste what about some whale watching in Victoria B.C. where you can disrupt the breeding habits of the grey whale and walrus?

There are many more such holidays on offer and they are increasing by the day. At the last count taken in 2007 ten percent of the global travel market is now eco-tourism. And though the 21st century is considered an era of environmental sensitivity and climate change remains firmly on the global conscience, with remote locations becoming more and more accessible many countries are beginning to promote their natural wonders to bring in the eco-minded tourist. But in doing so the market system is faced with a conundrum of trying to preserve natural resources and also try to accommodate the vast numbers of tourists they will attract.

The ideal of eco-tourism, as defined by Martha Honey, the executive director of the International Ecotourism Society, reads like a travel agents dream:

"Travel to fragile, pristine and usually protected areas that strives to be low impact and usually small scale. It helps educate travelers; provides funds for conservation; directly benefits the economic development and political empowerment of local communities; and fosters respect for different cultures and human rights."

However, this ideal in many instances fails miserably to achieve its aim and in fact contributes to environmental destruction. For the reality is that in terms of human impact eco-tourists are no different – other than in scale – to the everyday tourist on a package holiday to the Costa Bravo. This is what an official for the World Wildlife Fund told Leo Hickman about on the impact of tourism in Thailand:

“The tsunami was nothing compared to the impact of tourism. It is a much larger, long-term problem. . . . I was born in 1972 and when I was eight or nine it was still largely virgin rainforest here on the island. By the late 1980s, though, it was mostly developed. We have now lost so much of the biodiversity and primary forest and the soil is destabilising in many places. The construction of hotels upstream is creating a lot of sediment in the water and this causes damage to the coral reefs when it washes out to sea. It also affects the mangroves on the east coast. A lot of our waste water – about 40 per cent – is still being pumped out to sea on the west coast where all the resort areas are.
Land is now so expensive here due to tourism; the cost of living is even higher than Bangkok – it has meant that many local people have been forced to sell off their ancestral home and have now lost their only real asset. There is even competition for schools here for the first time. And there is a lot of overfishing here; this is for export rather than for the tourists per se, but lobsters are now being brought in from Burma to meet the tourists’ appetite for these vulnerable creatures. The corals are also damaged by tourism. Snorkellers actually cause more damage than divers because they touch the coral more often….”

(Leo Hickman, The Final Call – In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays, 2007).

In Costa Rica, whose parks are wildly popular with the millions of people who visit the country each year, the behaviour of some wild animals has been altered - some monkeys attack and bite tourists when not fed. Along the trail to the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal, deforestation is getting worse as locals cut down trees to heat meals and to provide hot showers for foreign eco-trekkers. And Mount Everest itself is becoming infamous for the amount of discarded rubbish left on the routes towards the summit. Some estimates put it at over 2000 tons which don’t include the remains of a helicopter. And in the lower regions of the Himalayan foothills the popularity of backpacking is not only causing serious soil erosion but water pollution.

And what has happened in Nepal is only one example where eco-tourism is becoming transformed into eco-vandalism through the insanity of the profit system. Another example is what is happening in Kerala in India which is marketed either as, ‘God’s own country’, or as, the ‘Gateway to Paradise’. Kerala is a unique water region famous for its lakes, rivers and back waters and distinct wildlife and fauna and is also an attractive stopover or base for the eco-tourists who visit the nearby National Reserve. However, what is not marketed by the Kerala Tourist Board is the lack of sewerage facilities and rubbish collection for its thousands upon thousands of houseboats and hotels and so called eco-lodges. Before Kerala became invaded by tourists the indigenous population ensured their impact on the natural environment was sustainable or recyclable. Now water courses are becoming heavily polluted with sewerage and the plastic debris of a throwaway society.

Besides environmental damage there can be profound social and cultural consequences to travel as well. For example, what is occurring in Northern Thailand, home to many different 'hill tribes,' is a case in point. Uniquely individual in language, customs and dress, these semi-nomadic peoples share a history of ancestor worship and a close relationship with the land. However, with the introduction of eco-tourism they also share the experience of being in something akin to a human zoo. Hill tribe trekking operations sell 'authentic visits’ to see 'primitive peoples`. But what the eco-tourists are not told is that much of the so called culture on show has a tenuous relationship with the actual culture of the people they are visiting, for in actual fact the ‘traditional’ culture has been transformed into a commodity to meet the demands of the tourist market. In short the eco-tourist is being sold an illusion that the culture on display is ‘authentic’.

The ravages of eco-tourism and tourism in general are becoming so self-evident it raises the question what can we do to lessen the impact of human activity but nevertheless still enjoy a holiday – both at home and overseas? Firstly, it is essential to acknowledge that when market forces literally encourage an irrational human impact on the environment and natural resources, how can you also realistically expect those self-same forces to solve the environmental problems they created in the first place? Therefore, in the search for solutions it’s become vital that we look outside of the capitalist box where the social relationships of private ownership of the means of living constrain and restrict our constructive abilities to remedy environmental destruction.

In socialism where the principle of free access underpins the common ownership of the means of living our options and choices on travel and holidays would be extended and influenced by what positive contribution we can make to the country we are visiting. And with package holidays and mass tourism a thing of the past it is most likely holidays in socialism would not be restricted within a timescale of 10 to 14 days of hectic hedonism but transformed into an unique opportunity to stay in a particular location for as long as it takes to understand the history and culture of that region. In effect the transformation in the social relationships from private property ownership to common ownership will radically alter our perception of travel.

Under such conditions eco-tourism will come into its own with visits to particular regions becoming combined with studies on the wildlife, fauna and local culture. On the other hand you may wish to take part in making housing improvements by demolishing shanty towns or transforming a former holiday hotel into flats for the local population. Alternatively you could help out in a health clinic, or even give a hand to clean up polluted waterways. In effect whatever your particular choice of holiday the aim will be to combine it with an understanding that the framework of socialism will assist everybody on the globe in meeting their needs for shelter, food, clothing, education and health. Indeed it’s time to start thinking of trashing capitalism not the planet.

Brian Johnson