Pomp, Pageantry and Privilege (1953)

From the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The coronation on June 2nd of a young woman by the name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of Windsor, as Queen of Great Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations, is an event which, it is safe to say, has received more publicity and been the subject of more propaganda than any other peace-time occurrence of the last fifty years. Since the death of her father, the Queen has been publicised to such an extent that there can hardly be a literate person in the whole world who is not aware of the forthcoming event.

For the first time millions of people will, as it were, be inside the Abbey witnessing the ceremonial, the religious service, and the rest of the mumbo jumbo with which a Monarch is crowned. They will be there by virtue of Television, and wireless which will relate every detail of the ritual. Every organ of propaganda has been geared to the event; schools, Churches, newspapers have given it every attention all with the design to make us feel that we are part of the coronation and that we shall all be the better for it.

There can be no doubt that the organisation will prove itself efficient. The collection of notabilities from every corner of the world; the display of heraldic symbols; the presence of dignitaries with such titles as Gold Stick, Bluemantle, and Rouge Dragon will provide a magnificent spectacle beside which the productions of Hollywood will pale into insignificance. We may be sure that the belted Earls, the Dukes and Marquesses, the Society ladies, the Dowagers, the Duchesses and so forth will appear dressed in their full regalia, their diamonds sparkling, and their coronets adding lustre to the occasion.

But when the cheering has died away; when the inevitable dustcarts which follow coronations as well as Lord Mayor’s Shows appear to clear the debris; when the “captains and the kings” have departed, what will remain? When the sightseers stands have been demolished; when the red carpets have been taken up; when the diadems and the crowns and the rest of the regalia have been returned for safe keeping to the Tower of London, what then?

If the historians and the publicists, the journalists and broadcasters are to be believed, Coronation day is to usher in a new period of glory and prosperity for this country. They assure us that whenever a Queen had ruled this land it has flowed with milk and honey, and its influence spread all over the earth. They cite the days of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria as evidence for their claims, yet even the most superficial examination of those two periods will show that they are either ignorant fools or deliberate liars who by promising us the fictional glories of the past, hope to blind us to the grim, sordid realities of the present.

The Elizabethan Era

What are these glories of the first Elizabethan age? It is true that then was laid the foundations of the British Empire and British mastery of the seas. It is true that British merchantmen sailed all over the world trading goods and bringing back to these shores unimaginable wealth. Colonies were established in America; pirates, cut-throats and swashbucklers flourished, prospered and were honoured by the Virgin Queen. Those not brave enough to fight the Spaniards indulged in trading in the human flesh of the African coast. Many fortunes were made in those days and it is interesting to note that some of the congregation at Westminster Abbey are there because their ancestors in the days of Queen Elizabeth were successful freebooters. But while all these things are true and while the rich and ruthless became ever more wealthy, the majority of the people of England had no share in that prosperity. For them there was work and poverty and starvation. For them the privilege of fighting to preserve the wealth of their Feudal Lords. (Strange how history repeats itself!) All the viciousness of the Elizabethan era is now glossed over with a tawdry coating of journalistic paint. But a writer of the period shows in a few words the hollowness of the claim that England as a whole was prosperous in the days of Queen Elizabeth:-

“The poor lie in the street upon pallets of straw, and well if they have that too, or else in the mire and dirt as commonly it is seen, having neither house to put in their heads, covering to keep them from cold, nor yet to hide their shame withal, penny to buy them sustenance, nor anything else, but are suffered to die in the streets like dogs or beasts, without mercy or shame showed to them at all.

“Truly, brother, if I had not seen it, I would scarcely credit that like the Turkish cruelty had been used in all the world.” (Philip Stubbs; The Anatomie of Abuses).

The truth is that in all ages and at all times in written history, prosperity has always been for the rich, never for the labourers, the “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

The Victorian Era

If we have demolished, as is the case, the claims made about the days of Good Queen Bess, what of the age of Victoria? The Industrial Revolution had already taken place. Railways had been introduced and England had become the workshop of the world. No other country could compete in the manufacture of goods, and the world’s markets were the preserve of British industrialists. Huge fortunes were built up and their possessors bought themselves titles forming a new aristocracy to replace the fast-dying old. At such a time then, surely the poor and oppressed were better off? Work there was in plenty for they were forced to toil sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Surely, therefore, the workers were amply rewarded for their toil? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Men, women and children slaved in the factories, their pay a miserable pittance, their homes hovels, their food cheap and adulterated. Epidemics, when they came, killed them off like flies. The child labourers became stunted and old before their time. There was no lack of priest or Bishop to condone this cruelty in the name of God. They praised the manufacturers for keeping children at work so that evil thoughts would not invade their otherwise idle hours.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, India became the “most precious jewel in the Imperial crown”; the Suez Canal came under British control, and yet a poet of that time could still write of Child Labour:-

“‘How long’, they say, ‘how long, O cruel nation

Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart–

Stiffle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?”

(“The Cry of the Children”, E. B. Browning)

And if a poet’s word is not considered evidence we can refer to many factual reports given by Government Inspectors, reformers and others. In a book published just before Queen Victoria came to the throne, and dealing with conditions which prevailed well into the Victorian era, the author, J. Fielden (“The Curse of the Factory System”) wrote:–

“Cruelties of the most heart rending were practised upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who were thus consigned to the charge of master manufacturers; they . . . were harassed to the brink of death by excess labour . . . they were in many cases starved to the bone while flogged to their work . . .

“The beautiful and romantic valleys of Derbyshire . . . secluded from the public eye, became the dismal solitudes of torture and of many a murder. The profits of manufacturers were enormous; but this only whetted the appetite it should have satisfied.” (Fielden did not know his capitalists!)

So much for the “prosperity” of the Victorian era, that age of ruthless exploitation when the wealth and power of the ruling class was literally built on the blood and life of the workers.

The Coronation and its Meaning

Not content with telling us that the Coronation will usher in this new period of glory and prosperity, we are told that it will be a dedication and a consecration. Bishops have prated on the holiness of the occasion, politicians, with their ability to seize every opportunity, have tried to fill us with patriotism, and the whole collection of lick-spittles, ink-slingers and columnists of Fleet Street have combined to convince us of the promising life which lies ahead.

What is this dedication and to whom in this day consecrated? Prayers for the safe keeping of her Majesty will be offered up to God; and all over the country, if the Archbishop’s suggestion is followed, people will join the choir at Westminster in singing “All people that on earth do dwell”. And in that sense perhaps it will be a day of dedication. But behind the facade of prayer and patriotism there are other interests involved which makes the Coronation a day of dedication to Mammon.

The late King’s body was scarcely cold in its grave, when every junk manufacturer in the Kingdom rushed to produce enormous quantities of shoddy souvenirs. Not one avenue for making money has been neglected. Even the “Gentry” tumbled over themselves to cash in on this “day of consecration”. They have advertised their homes to let at fabulous rentals, from which even American millionaires have recoiled. Hotels and boarding houses, restaurants and nightclubs have put up their charges, and anybody with window-space to let on the route of the procession has been courted, bribed and enriched.

Nothing has been overlooked in this money-making jamboree called the coronation. The Star fashion expert tells us:–

“If you’re fired with a desire to be patriotic through and through, so you can be . . . right down to your corsets. Berlei are showing—as the star item of their new summer collection—a strapless one-piece controlette in elastic net and nylon voile in a choice of red, white or royal blue”.

This then is the “holy” character of Coronation day, a day on which the money-makers will give their workers a day off on full pay. While they count their money they will join in the singing of the incantations at Westminster Abbey. And indeed they will have something to sing about for it is estimated that over twenty million pounds will accrue as a result of this “day of consecration”. Is it not strange how holiness is so often linked with the “things of this world”?

A People’s Coronation

Efforts have been made by means of propaganda to imbue this Coronation with a democratic flavour. For the first time, at least that is what we have been told, the people are to take part in this event. But again this claim is hollow. The only part that the “people” will have is to stand in the streets and at their windows, or crouch before their TV sets cheering the procession of as great a collection of parasites as have ever been seen together before.

Not a dignitary involved but is a wealthy banker, landowner, Field Marshal or Major-General. There will be Black rods, and Gold sticks, and Knights Pursuivants in profusion. Most of them directors of large Banking or Insurance Companies. Many of them huge land-owners who are no more representative of the people than is the Queen herself, a by no means poverty-stricken personage. Surrounded as she is by these wealthy courtiers and nurtured in Palaces with a background of wealth and splendour she is cushioned off from the ordinary cares that beset the people who will stand and cheer her as she passes through the streets.

We have no personal quarrel with the Queen. As occupant of the Throne of Great Britain she has no power. The monarchy has become a mere facade of authority, a rubber stamp signature at the bottom of State documents. The Queen’s whole life is regulated by strictly-defined rules and a standard of behaviour is expected which would make even the humblest of us protest.

Surrounded at the Abbey by Bankers, landowners, Labour leaders and a “few representatives” of the Trade Unions her Majesty will perform her part, we have no doubt, with grace, charm and dexterity, and the Archbishop will intone at the right time and in the right places. The choirboys will contribute their “Vivats”, and the people whose coronation we are told this is, will stand outside and cheer. Thus it has always been; the people on the outside looking in, wearing clothes which cost less than one button of the gorgeous raiment that they have made and which they are allowed to see only at a distance. This is all the people will receive or can expect from this “People’s” coronation.

The ceremony to be performed on June 2nd has no meaning for us. It is of no consequence who sits on the throne, which flag or Royal Standard flies over Buckingham Palace; or whether her titles are Elizabeth II or I. We are not concerned with all the flummery and mediaeval mumbo-jumbo with which the event is to be celebrated. Nothing will have changed. The private ownership of the means of life will continue with all its consequences. The threat of war, the general insecurity will not be abated one jot or tittle by this glorified circus. Not one of the claims made for this event will be fulfilled as far as the workers are concerned. The promises and allurements of a brilliant future will be forgotten almost as soon as the procession has disappeared from sight.

In the Psalms, some of which will be read during the service there is a phrase which we commend:–

“Oh, put not your trust in Princes, nor in any child of man . . .”

adding only the counsel to trust to yourselves, to your experience, to your knowledge to build a better Society in which all mankind will live in freedom, peace and security.

“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

A. S.

The morality of slums (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has become fashionable of late to look back with a certain nostalgia to an age of "Victorian values". In fact, it was an age of often heartless cruelty and indifference. When it did not patronise the poor with a sickly sentimentality, it abandoned them to the cold calculus of market forces.

Underlying these attitudes there is a recurring theme: the sense of apprehension at the prospect of social disorder. Indeed, change was. to a great extent, induced by the need to evolve more effective strategies to defuse that threat as old solutions proved increasingly ineffective.

Before 1850 the threat of social disorder appeared to centre on the industrial north, not metropolitan London. The Industrial Revolution had given rise to large-scale factory production and the very methods of combination that industrialisation had promoted served in a sense to make the working class more amenable to control. It created disciplined structures through which conflict could be mediated at the same time as it enabled workers to mitigate some of the harsher consequences of industrialisation by means of mutual aid.

But just as the industrialised north seemed to project a more subdued image, so the Metropolis itself began to take on a more threatening prospect. The concern to which this gave rise needs to be set in the context of mid-Victorian optimism about the inexorable march of progress which coloured contemporary perceptions of poverty. It came to be seen as a residual feature of a bygone age. The poor, it was believed, owed their poverty to the subjective defects in their personality, rather than the structural inadequacies of the market economy. The solution to poverty, therefore, was to socialise the poor into an appropriate morality that emphasised thrift and hard work.

It was. therefore, with mounting alarm that the Victorian ruling class viewed what appeared to be a large and growing number of the underprivileged — especially the "casual poor" — slipping beyond its control. How had this situation come about?

Prior to the Industrial Revolution London contained a wide range of handicraft industries producing high value consumer goods. In addition, there was a significant semi-processing and capital goods sector. Relatively crude and costly methods of transportation ensured that proximity to the market was a vital factor and London was favoured precisely because it was such a sizeable market. As well as that it was a major port and seat of government.

The Industrial Revolution significantly altered the economic base of London. Firstly, it greatly reduced its attraction as a centre for semi-processing and capital goods production. Its distance from sources of coal and iron put it at a competitive disadvantage because of the cost of transporting these materials. In addition, London suffered from an acute shortage of space — and thus, high land values — which inhibited the growth of large-scale steam-powered factory production.

Secondly, London's role as an administrative. commercial and trading centre was considerably enhanced by the Industrial Revolution. The construction of an elaborate railway network radiating outward from the city sucked in people and products in ever greater quantities, magnifying London's importance as a market at the same time as it facilitated the relocation of low-value bulk production industries away from the city. The acquisition of colonies abroad emphasised the role of London as a port through which manufactures were exported and raw materials were imported.

Casual labour

It is against this background that the problem of casual labour in London emerged. Casual labour is closely associated with irregularity of production, with seasonality.

One way in which seasonality is manifested is in variation in demand for certain products and demand for consumer goods is inherently more volatile than that for capital goods. This poses a dilemma for the manufacturers. Production can be maintained at a steady pace but this would entail some stockpiling. Alternatively, production can be closely tailored to meet demand by reducing capital costs to a minimum and organising output on the basis of shorter production runs.

By and large, it was this latter option that London manufacturers were forced to accept. Consumer goods industries that were able to remain in London, despite intensive competition for space, were nevertheless prevented by that very competition from introducing large-scale factory-based methods of production, and the result was a particular method of production known as "sweating".

The substitution of skilled labour by sweated labour had the advantage for manufacturers of reducing labour costs. Moreover, the invention of relatively cheap hand-driven technology such as the sewing machine removed the need to employ skilled labour. Production could be concentrated in small workshops employing casual labour, thus reducing rental overheads as well. In the case of some industries, namely the clothing industry, this process was taken a stage further with work being carried out on a contract basis from the homes of the casually employed.

Another way in which seasonality manifested itself was in variation in supply. This was mainly a climatic phenomenon. Harsh winters, for example, could severely disrupt the activities of the port and the delivery of such commodities as grain and Baltic timber. This problem was largely overcome by the construction of steamships from the 1880s onwards. The building trade was also affected. By slowing down or bringing to a complete standstill all building work, bad weather not only aggravated the housing problem but caused extra distress in the form of unemployment.

The general increase in unemployment during the winter months, in conjunction with the inevitable rise in the price of fuel and foodstuffs, sharply intensified the plight of the poor. Moreover, superimposed on these annual variations was the more long-term cyclical pattern of trade itself affecting the wider economy. When a trade slump coincided with a bad winter the consequences could be catastrophic. Such a coincidence usually occasioned serious unrest, the most dramatic example of this being the 1886 Riot.

To sum up. the proportion of the workforce casually employed in Victorian London was substantial and this can be largely attributed to the fact that so much of London's economic base was subject to seasonal factors. Seasonality necessitated a large reserve army of workers which greatly undermined the bargaining position of the casually employed. Though poverty was by no means confined to casual labour, casual labour, without doubt, represented the sharp edge of poverty.

Most mid-Victorian social commentators, however, would not have concurred with such an analysis. Conventional belief affirmed, as has been stated, that poverty was simply the outward manifestation of certain moral failings. Yet such failings were themselves seen as the product of a bad environment. Above all. it was the environment of the slum that insidiously sapped the moral strength of an individual.

Victorian slums

Slum conditions existed in many parts of Victorian London. Some were reputedly the haunts of the "dangerous classes", the criminal elements in society. Law enforcement in most of these areas was minimal. To a large extent they existed as isolated islands beyond the reach of the authorities, seedbeds of vice that affronted the stern display of public morality. It was for these reasons that they were regarded as a social threat, symbolically reinforced by the festering, insanitary conditions that encouraged the spread of disease. That threat invited resolute action in the form of street clearances. Yet no sooner had a slum been pulled down than another seemed to materialise in the vicinity. It was obvious that the problem was not being solved but merely displaced from one area to another.

Casual labour did not encourage geographical mobility. Workers had to be constantly on the look-out for work which, in turn, depended on an intimate knowledge of the vicinity. Also, low and irregular wages ensured that the only mode of transport available to the casual poor was walking. This in itself removed the possibility of commuting from the suburbs. Home work, mainly by married women, put them at the mercy of contractors and compelled them to remain in the locality at the same time as it denied them the opportunity to search for work elsewhere. The system of credit used also restricted geographical mobility. It was common practice for goods to be purchased on credit during the winter and the arrears to be paid off in the more prosperous summer months. However, this arrangement depended on a degree of personal trust which meant being known in the area. Moreover, in such areas there was to be found a strong working-class culture that made for a sense of cohesion in the face of otherwise unendurable surroundings. This met with the strong disapproval of the Victorian authorities: the mores of the working class often clashed with the need for a disciplined workforce.

Working class education

This conflict was particularly apparent in the area of education. There was, before the advent of state schools and co-existing with state-aided church schools, an extensive underground network of tiny cottage schools autonomously run by the working class for the education of children. Even a kitchen might serve as a classroom and instruction was highly informal. Victorian commentators, however, were appalled by this apparent laxity. They were also utterly bemused by the fact that parents preferred by and large to send their children to such schools rather than to the local church school which charged a comparable fee.

Yet this incomprehension stemmed from an ideological perspective that refused to acknowledge the realities the working class had to contend with. Thus one of the reasons working people chose to send their children to a cottage school was the flexibility it offered. It was attuned to the rhythm of life among the casual poor.

At the beginning of the Victorian era. central London was still largely residential in character. Suburbanisation had begun in the previous century but was confined to a wealthy elite, the "carriage folk". The growth of London in the course of the nineteenth century. created and sharply intensified a central contradiction.

On the one hand, that growth both stimulated. and was stimulated by. the outward expansion of certain activities that necessitated the conversion of residential land for other purposes. On the other, the nature of their employment and the lack of access to affordable and reliable transport from the suburbs, exerted a centripetal force on casual workers — and even most skilled workers at the time — compelling them to remain within the central area. The result was a dramatic rise in levels of overcrowding right up to and beyond the 1880s when cheaper forms of mass transport became available, facilitating a spurt of working class suburbanisation.

Several factors were responsible for the demolition of housing and the resultant overcrowding. in the central area. One of these were street clearances. Another was the construction of the railway network. Likewise, the extension of the docks, particularly before 1850, was responsible for the displacement of many thousands of workers. So too was the construction of offices and workshops.

Class divisions

All these factors — street clearances, the development of the docks and the railways and the construction of offices and workshops — indicative of London's changing economic base, profoundly altered the physical structure of the city. The pattern that emerged was an increasingly polarised one. Unlike the Georgian period when rich and poor often lived in the same locality, even the same building, class divisions to an ever greater extent coincided with geographical divisions. By the mid-Victorian period this process was virtually complete. Rich and poor lived in largely separate worlds cut off from one another by a no-man's land of commercial development.

This gave rise to growing disquiet among certain sections of the Victorian elite for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was felt that the quality of administration in the poorer districts was bound to deteriorate on account of the departure of the "professional classes" to the suburbs. This would result in a more lax application of the law particularly relating to the eradication of insanitary conditions.

Secondly, the segregation of the classes completely unsettled the delicate balance between Poor Law relief and charity. Under the Poor Law. each district had its own Poor Law union responsible for the relief of the poor in that district. But the displacement of the poor from the richer vestries lightened the rate burden there as it added to the burden on poorer vestries. Indeed, this provided a further incentive for vestries to embark on a programme of slum clearance. But such a state of affairs was effectively terminated by the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 which spread the burden of poor relief across the metropolis as a whole. Meanwhile there was a great increase in the flow of charity to the poorer districts to compensate for the additional rate burden they had to bear.

This in fact provided a third reason for the sense of disquiet. Such charity was distributed in a wholly haphazard fashion. This, according to its critics, made the system extremely vulnerable to abuse. The vast wealth of London exerted an irresistible attraction to vagrants from far and wide. The vagrant was seen as a social parasite, corrupted by a life on charity and able to manipulate. with the practised ease of a professional. the gullible giver of alms. He set a bad example to the "honest poor" and they would find it difficult not to follow that example. Whatever other motives there may have been for charity it is clear that a major consideration was to defuse unrest. The segregation of the rich and poor was perceived by the former as a loss of control over the latter. Indiscriminate charity failed to restore this control because it depersonalised the act of giving.

Philanthropy of 5 per cent

It was precisely in order to systematise charitable relief, to circumvent the alleged machinations of the "clever pauper", that the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity was founded in 1869 — otherwise known as the Charity Organisation Society (COS). Together with the new Metropolitan-wide Poor Law Board these bodies represented a much more centralised approach to the relief of the poor, an approach foisted on social reformers by the geographical separation of the classes. By putting charity on a "sound basis", it was hoped that the poor would come to gratefully accept their "dependence" on the rich. It was a hope that hardly squared with another Victorian ideology entertained — that workers should raise themselves up by their own bootstraps, become as bourgeois as the bourgeoisie itself.

Alongside such efforts to halt the "demoralisation of the poor", various attempts were made to improve the housing conditions they suffered.The "philanthropy at five per cent" movement represented by organisations such as the Peabody Trust was one such attempt. It led to the construction of "Model Dwellings" which were intended to house a substantial number of the poor. In fact, it failed miserably in this. By 1873. a mere 27,000 had been housed in these Model Dwellings. More importantly those who were housed were not the casual poor but the better off sections of the working class. Construction costs and the need to maintain a margin of profit, determined the level of rent which proved way beyond what the casual poor could afford.

Moreover, regulations laid down by the Peabody Trust such as an obligation on tenants to keep up with their payments or face eviction, made no allowance for the economic circumstances of the casual poor. In addition, at a time when occupancy rates were steadily rising throughout the poorer districts of London, residents were not permitted to take in lodgers — a traditional working class method of supplementing income.

Another method by which it was hoped to ameliorate the housing conditions of the poor was sanitary legislation. One example of this was the 1868 Torrens Act which enabled a vestry, on the advice of a medical officer. to declare a house unfit and order its owner to carry out the necessary repairs or have it demolished. In fact many vestries preferred by and large not to exercise such powers. Indeed, had they done so this would have aggravated housing conditions considerably by increasing local overcrowding in the remaining households.

Another piece of legislation, the 1875 Cross Act, also attempted to tackle the problem of housing. However the Act was based on the assumption that skilled workers would vacate the inner areas and move to the suburbs while the casual poor would take their place — the "levelling up theory". In the event the hopes of the reformers proved premature. Commuting from the periphery was still beyond the reach of most artisans. Of those who did relocate, many encountered intractable difficulties that forced them to return: the lack of work for spouses, unreliable trains and higher food prices. This highlighted another and much more disturbing development in the eyes of the Victorian ruling class: the gradual blurring of distinctions between skilled artisans and the casual poor.

Henry Mayhew, writing in the 1850s. observed that "in passing from the skilled operative of the West-end to the unskilled workman of the Eastern quarter of London, the moral and intellectual change is so great that it seems as if we were in a new land and among another race". It was the perception of such differences that helped to ease the passing of the 1867 Reform Bill amid the tensions of the 1860s whereby the franchise was extended to skilled workers in the towns. This was seen to provide a bulwark against social chaos. And in the 1870s it seemed as if the problem of the casual poor had been lessened by the beneficial influences of philanthropy and private enterprise.

By the 1880s. however, it was becoming apparent that something had gone badly wrong. The problem of the casual poor had not disappeared. On the contrary, as a Royal Commission on Housing revealed, it was much larger than most had expected and was steadily getting worse. Charles Booth, sceptical at first of the claims of Hyndman, the SDF leader, of widespread poverty, accepted his challenge to investigate the matter for himself and found that this was indeed the case.

Even more alarmingly, the artisans were being increasingly subjected to the same insanitary overcrowded conditions with which the casual poor had to contend, which had had such a "demoralising effect upon their character". Moreover, with the onset of a trade slump, artisans too were being made unemployed in increasing numbers, were being pushed downwards into the ranks of the casual poor. As an employer remarked to a COS Committee on Exceptional Distress: "We have always found as to the artisan, that if he happens to be out of work for three months, he is never the same man again. He becomes demoralised".

Changing perceptions

The 1880s. however, was more than just a decade scarred by economic crisis. It was a period of structural readjustment in ruling class ideology driven by the need to avert "revolution". It was a period when the increasing challenge of "collectivist" ideas could only be met by evolving a more collectivist approach to social problems, by moving away from the free market doctrines of the mid-Victorian period towards state welfare. The economic crisis of the 1880s passed and in the 1890s the tempo of working class suburbanisation began to quicken. Improved methods of mass transportation and subsidised travel began to have an effect, gradually relieving the population pressures on the inner areas.

But the perception of the casual poor also changed. Urban existence had long been seen as inimical to health and morals while the enfeeblement of the urban poor was contrasted with the robustness of the agricultural labourer. Now agricultural depression threatened to depopulate the countryside and flood the towns with yet more of the nation's poor. The theory of the "survival of the fittest" which seemed to legitimise the weeding out of the less fortunate, was now suspended by the advances in medical science and even more importantly by the improvement in sanitary conditions about which the "privileged classes" had professed such concern. The fear of national “degeneration" to which this gave rise increasingly informed the thoughts of politicians and economists against a background of Britain's declining industrial supremacy. Such a fear came to provide a rationalisation for a more statist approach to the solution of social problems, an approach that the very development of capitalism had made functionally imperative.

In Victorian London the perception of the casual poor was systematically distorted by an ideology that took little account of their needs in order to justify the need for them as cheap labour. In modern London, the "casual poor" may not be as proportionately significant as a century ago. But poverty is relative and it takes different forms. Its reality cannot be adequately encompassed by statistics or sanitised by the rhetorical claim that we have never had it so good.

Robin Cox

Foolish Totem of a Hapless World (1999)

Theatre Review from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. National Theatre.

The National continues to boast proudly in its programmes that “The National Theatre is for Everyone”, whilst its newish director, Trevor Nunn, seems increasingly to pander to safe bourgeois tastes.

Last month Noel Coward’s Private Lives joined the repertoire, and audiences were invited to identify with two spoilt members of the “upper set” whose egotism and selfishness leads to the break-up of not only their own marriage but also threatens the well-being of their subsequent partners. The critics in the broadsheets had a field day affecting to see “significance” in the puerile machinations of the two combatants, whereas arguably the real significance lies in the fact that by producing such witless tosh in favour of other fare, the theatre offers an experience of stunningly irrelevance to the lives of most of their audience: Mills and Boon for the chattering classes. And this month Money by Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian son of a rich aristocratic mother, one-time Liberal Member of Parliament, novelist and playwright, Conservative MP for Hertfordshire and briefly Colonial Secretary, and latterly Baron Lytton of Knebworth.

If Bulwer-Lytton’s biography is hardly encouraging, neither is his play Money. In what seems a long evening Bulwer-Lytton is at pains to make what he sees as a crucial point: that money conjugates with success; poverty with failure. When Evelyn, the play’s central character, is in the funds he has friends by the score; once seemingly bankrupt his friends desert him like rats from a sinking ship. Bulwer-Lytton takes nearly three hours to ram his message home. Three hours in which to expose hypocrisy, but not a minute to question the economic and social structure which lies at its base. Cosy sentimentality in lieu of analysis. A triumph of escapism.

The talented cast do wonders with a turgid script. Bulwer-Lytton may well have been a successful novelist but on the evidence of this play he is an indifferent dramatist. His characters don’t so much speak as give voice to lines of prose. Close your eyes and you might be listening to someone reading a book rather than speaking.

Writing in the programme Peter Ackroyd paints a warts-and-all picture of Victorian London, and I wondered what the audience made of this. In easy, uncomplicated language Ackroyd describes everyday life in mid-century London “in terms which Lytton’s contemporaries would have preferred not to recognise”. Here is a real picture of Victorian London—”the streets filled with teeming and struggling life; the city as a prison, with walls and buildings towering above the people”—not the fay, prissy fantasies of Bulwer-Lytton.

Michael Gill

Running Commentary: Sports Aid (1986)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sports Aid

From "Sports Aid" to "Neil Aid", and the continuing story of the Labour Party’s attempts to win support on any basis apart from their policies. They have however, moved on from pop stars in an attempt to appear more sensible, as illustrated by their Partly Political Broadcast for the Regional Council elections in May. Elsewhere in Britain viewers were treated to Glenda Jackson among others, but in Scotland it was a much more serious affair with the appearance of the Labour Party’s new signing, that expert on housing and local government, John Colquhoun. Now for those of you who do not know already, John Colquhoun plays for Hearts FC and knows a thing or two about selling dummies, so naturally he is now trying to sell us the shadow cabinet in return for our vote.

Don't mention Albert Kidd . . .

And what did John Colquhoun. the only left-winger that Neil Kinnock doesn’t consider an electoral liability, actually say — “I’ll be voting Labour. I hope you do too", or some such pearl of wisdom. He could even have said he would be over the moon if you would vote Labour, but this viewer couldn’t say for sure — it's difficult taking notes when you are lying in hysterics on the carpet in front of the TV.

More important, though, is what is being suggested here by the Labour Party — forget about your problems of poverty, unemployment or housing, and don't bother trying to relate them to the promises of the Labour Party. Instead just vote according to how some guy who earns his living by kicking a lump of leather around a field, says. Well, they do say that footballers have their brains in their feet.

So what can we expect next? Ian Botham on the government's anti-drugs campaign? Frank Bruno on law and order. . .?

Victorian values

Sweat-shops have never really disappeared from Britain or other parts of the world. Now, however, they look set to be brought back from the fringes of legality into the fold of respectability. Just as Victorian values are once again in vogue, so it seems are Victorian working conditions. The government has just produced a White Paper aimed at the ’de-regulation'’ of small business. The aim is to make it easier for owners of businesses to make profit from the labour of their workers without having to be bothered with the inconvenience of the health and safety of employees or workers' legal rights to employment protection.

If the proposals become law then the following will be some of the effects:

• Workers will be deterred from going to an industrial tribunal after being dismissed "unfairly". by a requirement that they should pay a £25 fee before charging the employer with ’unfair" dismissal.
• Workers will have to have worked for two years with a company, rather than six months as at present, before the employer is obliged to give detailed reasons for dismissal.
• Firms with fewer than ten employees will no longer be obliged to allow a woman to return to work within 29 weeks of giving birth to a child.
• Restrictions will be introduced on the functions union officials are to be allowed to perform or to attend during working hours to only those trade union duties formally recognised by the employer.
• Part-time workers will have to work 50 per cent more hours a week before they are entitled to the main employment protection rights. Those working between 12 and 20 hours a week will only qualify for employment rights after five years working for the same employer.

These legal rights were not granted by the capitalist class without a struggle. That they can so easily be removed now, at a time of economic recession when trade unions are weak, shows the fragile nature of workers’ ’’rights" in capitalism.

Your life in their hands

Recently, as a result of a government report on efficiency in the Health Service, general managers have been appointed to run the NHS. The idea behind the move is that productivity can be improved by using measures not dissimilar to those that might be used in running, say, United Biscuits. The problem is that while cost-benefit analysis might work in assessing efficiency in a biscuit factory, it has somewhat bizarre, or even tragic, consequences when you try to apply it to human health. For example, given the limited resources available for health care under capitalism, how do you decide in strict cost-benefit terms how to allocate those resources? How is productivity to be measured? By the turn-over of patients each year? By the number of operations performed? Should you go for "quantity” — keeping as many people alive for as long as possible no matter what their state of health — or "quality" — maintaining people in good health in the short-term? Do you opt for expensive operations like heart transplants on young people who have still got a number of years left as potentially exploitable workers? If so, what about the huge numbers of elderly workers whose quality of life could be drastically improved by relatively simple and cheap operations like hip-replacement surgery even though they are no longer of use to the labour force?

These are the kinds of decisions that health workers and administrators are faced with, given the lack of priority accorded to people's health and well-being under capitalism. The appointment of general managers will do nothing to change this. Clearly the attempt to run the NHS along the lines of an efficient capitalist enterprise is proving too much for even successful entrepreneurs like Victor Paige, who recently resigned as "Chairman of the Board" of the NHS. But "middle management" is also showing signs of strain. Freddie Lucas has also resigned as general manager of Central Birmingham Health Authority. (A former army brigadier, one would have thought that he was better qualified to make decisions about killing people rather than keeping them alive but then again we don't know what his terms of reference were). He complained that members of the Health Authority didn't "have the good sense to stand back and let management manage" (Guardian, 7 June 1986). Health authorities contain too many vested interests to inspire much confidence and given the choice between the BMA and the army to decide health service priorities, we would obviously do best to opt for a social system based on human interests.

Victorian values or socialist freedom? (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Impotent and desperate in the face of the bleak, chaotic mess of Britain in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher grasped at the social values of the last century—the “values” of naked capitalism. It is a sick morality of a rotten system, dressed up as a glorious past and served on a plate to the impoverished: yesterday's ideological garbage recycled for modern consumption.

Let us sift the ideological muck-heap in the Thatcher mind and see what kind of values our rulers would like us to live by:

  We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself (sic). We were taught self-reliance. We were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to godliness. You were taught self-respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. (Interview with Peter Allen. LBC, 15 April. 1983)

Thatcher's tutor evidently has much to answer for. In what ways do these values help to perpetuate the capitalist system?

“Work jolly hard"
Plenty of jolly hard work for the propertyless nine-tenths of the population means plenty of jolly big profits for the jolly old parasites who monopolise the means of producing and distributing wealth. The work ethic is inculcated into the majority of people because labour power is the only commodity of any value that they have to exchange. But the rich and powerful minority who control the means of life are not in their positions because they worked hard. The richest one per cent of the British population, who own between them more of the accumulated wealth than the poorest 80 per cent, live in luxury because the propertyless majority "work jolly hard to keep them".

"Prove yourself’
How are children born into poverty, brought up in slums, educated in comprehensive schools and often destined to years on the dole queue, supposed to “prove” themselves? Capitalism is unable to provide the majority with any genuine incentive to rise above the mediocrity of daily existence. Those young workers who are persuaded by the advertised illusions of the system and try “to go for the top" are usually forced in the end to submit to the norms of traditional poverty. Capitalism is packed with junkies, alcoholics, broken gamblers, prisoners and cynics who tried to “prove themselves” and failed. For many unemployed kids, “proving yourself' means beating up blacks in empty streets — or doing it the legal way, and pulling triggers in the service of someone else’s interests.

“Live within your income”
For millions of people it is simply not possible to live within the pittance they receive. Ten thousand pensioners died of hypothermia last December alone: could The First Lady of the Treasury teach those careless spenders how to keep alive within their incomes? Let Thatcher and the capitalists try “living” on the basic supplementary benefit, a disability allowance or £70 a week with three children to feed and clothe. For the majority of British workers, whose annual incomes would not buy a decent new car for a member of the parasite class, existence is some way short of living.

“Cleanliness and godliness”
It’s easy to be clean when there are servants to do it for you. But what hypocrisy it is for a class which pollutes the air we breathe with its industrial waste, because it is presently cheaper to have a dirty urban environment than a clean one, to deliver lectures about cleanliness. What is “clean” about war, which throws grown men into the filth of bloody combat so that the perfumed gentlemen of leisure can expand their economic power? Thatcher may have clean fingernails, but she has blood on her hands.

“Self Respect”
Capitalism teaches its wage slaves to respect others: teachers, experts, leaders, generals. priests, politicians — even invisible gods. The self-respecting slave is a rebel; he or she will be branded by Thatcher and her cronies as subversive, wreckers and revolutionaries. Capitalism demands deference, because only those willing to remain on their knees can be deceived into believing that the ruling class is mighty.

“Give a hand to your neighbour”
Is that why armies and weapons of mass destruction are pointed at our global neighbours? The politics of international militarism has nothing to do with loving thy neighbour and everything to do with the competitive jungle of the profit system where all who are not part of “the group” must be seen as economic rivals.

“Tremendous pride in your country”
All very well for those who have a country; but having means possession, and most workers in Britain own about as much of “our country” as they do of any other: none at all. Why be proud of mansions that you have built, but cannot afford to live in; cars you have made, but cannot afford to drive; newspapers you have printed, but have no control over; food you have manufactured but cannot afford to buy? As Marx and Engels wrote, when accused of desiring to abolish countries and nationality: “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got” (The Communist Manifesto). Workers are taught to have “tremendous pride in your country” because, without a massive campaign of patriotic indoctrination, men and women would recognise their common interests.

The London Standard's front page headline about Thatcher’s LBC interview stated “THE GOOD OLD DAYS". The days in question were those between 1837 and 1902: Victorian Britain. It was an age in which there was a consolidation of power by the ever-confident industrial capitalist class; an age of massive economic development; an age when the British ruling class had an Empire and the City of London was seen, in more than one sense, as the Capital city of the world. Historical distortion has created more than a few myths about those “good old days”. There was little crime, we are told; everyone knew their place and the masters looked after the employees well; public charity provided for people's needs, for the Christian rich could not allow the poor to suffer without aid; morals were good and pure, and thoughts of sex were neatly repressed until god had given the legally sanctified green light. Let Thatcher continue the fairy story:

  Many of the good things, the improvements that were made, were made voluntarily in those times. For example, people built hospitals, there were voluntary hospitals. Many of the Church schools were built during that time. You don't hear so much about those things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.

These “eternal . . . perennial values” are the ones Thatcher holds dear. Let us examine them not as professed ideals, but within the context of their practical, historical implementation and in the light of what we know about history. The "good old days” of Victorian capitalism were days of unrestrained ruling class oppression and widespread working class deprivation. This "golden age" of the capitalists, which was a bleak nightmare for the workers, is recent enough for there to be abundant evidence of what Victorian values meant.

Giving testimony before a Royal Commission on the condition of workers in Manchester in the late 1830s, Dr. Hawkins stated that

  I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes . . .

Class exploitation was not discriminatory on the basis of sex, as may be seen from the Factory Inspector's Report of 1844:

  Among the female operatives there are some women who, for many weeks in succession, except for a few days, are employed from 6 a.m. till midnight, with less than two hours for meals, so that on five days of the week they have only six hours left out of twenty-four. for going to and from their homes and resting in bed.

Indeed, far from preserving the institutions of the family, K.A.Gerlach has written that working conditions in Lancashire "often caused husbands to take over the duties of the household, and wife and children were the breadwinners at the factory”.

The same process of turning humans into the appendages of machines whose sole function was the production of surplus value, was going on in many parts of Europe in the last century. Villermé, in France, described “the good old days" in terms that reflected the harsh reality rather than idealised memory:

  One should see them coming into the town every morning and leaving it every evening. Among them are large numbers of women, pale, starving, walking barefoot through the mud . . . and young children, in greater numbers than the women, just as dirty, just as haggard, covered in rags, which are thick with the oil splashed over them as they toiled by the looms.

Children of ten and under were sent down the mines to pick and haul coal. It was on the exploitation and dehumanisation of defenceless children that the economic success of "the good old days" was based. William Cobbett, a capitalist reformer, stated poignantly in the House of Commons that

  . . . at one time he had thought that the navy was the great support of England, at another time her maritime commerce, at another her bank. Now it was to be admitted that our great stay and bulwark was to be found in the labour of thirty thousand little girls, or rather, one eighth of that number. Yes, because it was asserted that if those little girls worked two hours a day less our manufacturing superiority would depart from us.

On the sweated labour of helpless infants the British capitalists consolidated their unearned privilege. Many of those who are sitting in comfort today do so only because of the wealth inherited from the legalised exploitation of those children.

The Victorian wage slaves passed what parts of "the good old days” were their own in dwellings generally unfit for human habitation. Lord Shaftesbury described Frying Pan Alley in Holborn, London:

  In the first house that I turned into there was a single room; the window was very small and the light came in through the door. The young woman there said, "Look there at that great hole; the landlord will not mend it. I have every night to sit and watch, or my husband sits up to watch, because that hole us over a common sewer and the rats come up. twenty at a time, and if we did not watch for them they would eat the baby up.”

Irish immigrant workers were usually forced by their poverty to live in even worse conditions than the slums reserved for the native English wage slaves; in his brilliant account of working class life in Victorian Britain, Frederick Engels refers to such housing conditions:

  It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity and wretchedness. Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two families in two rooms. All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen and dining room in common. Often more than one family lived in a single damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were crowded together (The Condition of the Working Class in England).

Like the housing, “the clothing of the working people, in the majority of eases, is in a very bad condition . . . The Irish have introduced . . . the custom, previously unknown in Britain, of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.” (Engels, pp. 99-100)

Worked like horses, inhabiting slums, clothed in rags, the urban majority in "the good old days" of Thatcherite values could only afford access to food that was cheap, unhealthy and unvaried. Then, as now,

  those who sold and produced cheap food had increasingly taken the opportunity to make larger profits by adding other substances. Milk and beer were watered down, boiled potatoes mixed with flour and baked into bread, chestnut or ash leaves added to tea, sand to sugar and so on. Pure cheap food was a rarity in the leading towns by the 1850s because so much was adulterated in ways like these (D.T.J. Arkell, Britain Transformed).

Many thousands of workers perished, victims of the so-called free market. In the age of Victorian values, what options were open to those who could not earn a wage or could not keep themselves on the wage they earned? For many workers, begging in the streets was the only chance of an income:

  Such a man usually goes about with his family, singing a pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by . . . Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and without uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it (Engels. P-119).

And was it from the fat wallets of the Christian ruling class that the destitute beggars received their pennies? After all, Thatcher did say on LBC that "part of the sense of duty was if you were getting on better, you turned yourself to help others." Alas, the Victorian capitalists did not exhibit the benevolent values attributed to them by their admirer; they employed police to kick the beggars off the streets, just as the Indian capitalists do with their beggars today. Dr. Parkinson, the Canon of Manchester in the 1840s, testified that

  The poor give one another more than the rich give the poor . . . the total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon one another surpasses that which the rich contribute in the same time (Quoted in Engels, p. 154). 

Violent crime was widespread in Victorian cities. Thousands of women and teenage girls were compelled by economic hardship to walk the streets and sell their bodies to those rich enough to buy their sexual services. The pretence of universal moral decency did not extend to the lives of the wage slaves. The only values the capitalists required from the working class were the surplus values which were the hallmarks of legalised robbery. Victorian values meant excluding a majority of the population from any claim to human dignity — an exclusion which allowed the rich to have “good old days” while the poor suffered, largely in pathetic silence.

Victorian values meant that if workers needed medical attention, education, disability or old-age support, or any other basic social services, they had only three ways of obtaining them. The first was by paying — which most workers could not do. Many a Victorian parent had to watch their children die of illnesses that could be cured simply because they were too poor to pay the market price for health care. Secondly, they could depend on “self-help” schemes, which ultimately amounted to a system of welfare where the less poor wage slaves subsidised the poorer ones. In the nineteenth century, trade union Friendly Societies helped to redistribute wealth within the working class. But workers' subsidies could only aid a fraction of the destitute in Victorian Britain. When Margaret Thatcher proposes “self-help” she is saying that workers' destitution should be a problem to be solved voluntarily by workers taking charitable collections. Perhaps she forgets that the class which she represents are the biggest recipients of charity in the history of humanity: the profits of labour don't add up to pennies, but to many billions of pounds.

The third option for the Victorian worker was to appeal to the exploiting class for charity. Some conscience-stricken capitalists did offer a fraction of their money to the poor, either through benevolent trusts or the Church. “Giving to the poor" was not such a generous act; after all, they were only throwing back crumbs from the cake which the workers had made. Providing charitable services to "educate” workers and keep them fit had a very useful economic purpose: by teaching skills to young wage slaves and ensuring that the wealth producing class was in a good state of repair the capitalists were investing in their own increased profits. Literate and numerate wage slaves produced more profits than ignorant ones; the fitter they are, the more you can work them; the better their housing the more rest they will get and the more efficiently they will work the next day; the more consumption goods they can be presented with the more incentive there will be to work hard. Furthermore, charitable crumb-throwing helped to defuse the threat of political discontent. The workers who benefited from the charity of their bosses were taught to be eternally grateful. The exploiters felt that they were living morally; the exploited were taught to admire such morality.

What is striking about Victorian Britain is not how different it was from now, but how similar it is. It is true that some of the worst features of working class poverty then are less widespread in Britain today, although they still prevail throughout much of the world, often in worse forms than those which existed in Victorian Britain. On a world capitalist basis, poverty is as great now as it was in the 1880s, and in many ways it is worse. But even in the more “affluent” areas of world capitalism workers are still deprived, are still often compelled to beg and steal and sell their bodies, are still forced to seek charity. Since the passing of the Victorian period the capitalist class has tended to organise public charity or "welfare" via its executive committee, the state. The social services which are now provided by the state are partly in existence because their absence would lead to working class political discontent but, principally, the function of the “welfare state” is to ensure the smooth flow of capitalist production. The Labour Party and other legislative reform bodies exist to convince the capitalists that it is in their interest to pay more tax into the state in order to redistribute poverty. The only grounds on which the reformists are able to justify increased state welfare expenditure is by equating "humane” policies with profitability. Frequently such an equation cannot be made, and that is why governments — including Labour governments, professedly committed to helping the poor — often cut back on state welfare spending, leading to tragic social consequences which are all too evident at present.

In supporting state-administered capitalism, the Left is not being particularly radical; it is certainly not working for socialism. The statists are simply responding to the old Victorian values of nineteenth century capitalism with new policies for running the same iniquitous system. The welfare state has been, and inevitably will be, totally unable to eradicate the poverty and inequality which is inherent in the profit system.

Neither Victorian values nor state "welfare" can make a system of exploitation run in a way that will be pleasant for the exploited majority. Margaret Thatcher, the mouthpiece of conservatism who cannot get to sleep at night without dreaming of “the good old days" when the old and unemployed were confined to workhouses, employees worked like horses and obeyed like slaves, and the rich need only pay to keep the paupers at the request of their consciences rather than the Inland Revenue, is the dreamer of a class which has lived on beyond the appropriate time for its death. Thatcher's vision is one of naked self-interest for the ruling class. Socialists will not waste our time criticising this vision on moral grounds: we urge the workers of the world to apply the principle of naked self- interest to themselves, as a class. There were no "good old days" for our class; for the wage slaves, the good times are yet to come. Only when the wages system has been abolished, along with the pernicious values on which it rests, will men. women and children be able to value one another as part of a united human family in which equality and freedom are the principles of social existence.

Steve Coleman

Not amused (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Human beings have the capacity for historical hindsight. We can look back critically at the slaves of ancient society and agree that they were misguided in believing that their situation was “natural” and “proper". We now know that there was nothing innately inferior about slaves, that they were simply born into servitude. We have also passed that phase of society where the social structure was a rigid hierarchy in which the serf looked up to the knight, the knight to the Lord of the Manor and everyone looked up to the monarch, though few would ever see one. We can watch Upstairs, Downstairs and laugh when Hudson the butler speaks about the need for everyone downstairs to be aware of their “station in life", so that a bedroom servant could be rude to a scullery-maid but not to the cook. If we look at our own period in history with the same awareness of change and the impermanence of social ideas, we can see that there is nothing natural or necessary about the wage-slave status of the majority.

The Tories have been particularly vocal about denying this idea. They say that there must always be rich and poor. Many supporters of the Conservative Party claim that they have “no political philosophy”; they insist that if you desire change in one form or another you are “political" but if you merely happen to agree with the way things are, and accept the prevailing, popular ideas, then you are apolitical. But look at the political ideas on which conservatism is founded.

Conservatives believe in “Self-reliance". This amounts to equating poverty or insecurity with inadequacy, being unable to make your own way. Margaret Thatcher has spoken about her support for “Victorian values". What does she mean? The values of a society where the abject destitution of the majority and the sickening conditions of the workhouses were kept in being by indoctrinating the workers with docility and humility from birth? The values which said that it was the job of the masses to work hard and keep quiet and the right of the minority to enjoy great wealth and remain idle?

In its 1979 Election Manifesto the Conservative Party said:

  No one who has lived in this country for the last five years can fail to he aware of how the balance of our society has been increasingly tilted in favour of the State at the expense of individual freedom. This election may be the last chance we have to reverse that process, to restore the balance of power in favour of the people.

It was Disraeli who referred to a Conservative government as an "organised hypocrisy” and that may be a fairly appropriate term when it comes to this business of democracy. You could perhaps imagine Margaret Thatcher choking on her champagne if there was any immediate prospect of the people actually taking power away from the wealth owners who now exercise it. And you can't help but think it peculiar, that the government which has recently guided the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill through Parliament (dramatically to increase police powers of arrest and forced searches) should be so concerned with weakening the power of the state. “Individual Freedom” is a phrase which often sounds good, but in fact boils down to the freedom of the poor to suffer their lot, the freedom of the unemployed to get a job if they wish, and the freedom of the majority to fantasise about becoming millionaires while the wealth owners are left free to enjoy their parasitic status.

What else are the Tories in favour of? They listed “five tasks" in their 1979 Manifesto and we can see now how far these tasks have been completed and what the consequences have been.

The first task was "to restore the health of our economic and social life by controlling inflation and striking a fair balance between the rights and duties of the trade union movement". Although price rises have tended to flatten out, wage rises have been largely below this rate and workers have sustained a drop in their standard of living. We have seen this government give a smiling thumbs up to the Polish workers who were trying to augment their trade union powers against the wishes of the bosses of Polish state-capitalism, while at the same time introducing the Employment Act to restrict trade union power. What was it Disraeli said about hypocrisy? During the water workers’ strike at the beginning of this year Thatcher, speaking in Glasgow, said that “honesty, thrift, reliability and hard work and a sense of responsibility for fellow men are not simply Victorian values but part of the enduring principles of the Western World". She urged the striking workers to respect a “puritan work ethic" instead of trying to “deprive the community of one of life's essentials". You might wonder whether Thatcher ever pokes her head through the doors of Buckingham Palace, or the Hilton lounge or the gentlemen’s clubs to lecture the inhabitants about the puritan work ethic. When the government spends money on bombs, telling us that nurses and kidney machines are not as important, does she berate herself for attempting to "deprive the community of one of life’s essentials”? The similarity between the right-wing Conservative and Kremlin attitudes to free trade unions is, if you'll pardon the expression, striking. The recent report of the Tory Centre for Policy Studies recommending legislation to prohibit strikes in essential industries is just the recipe for keeping the workers down which is favoured by Andropov and Jarusekski.

The second task was to “restore incentives so that hard work pays". As you know, working hard for the boss all your life means not only that you are left with next to nothing to spend at the end of your days, but that you are usually too exhausted to enjoy what little you have. The only way hard work pays is when you happen to have a lot of people working hard for you. Hard work pays? Elizabeth Windsor gets £3,260,200 a year. She must work hard. R.V. Giordano, the director of BOC, gets £450,000 as a salary. He must work hard. The Duke of Buccleuch owns 258,000 acres so he must have worked pretty hard, plus he’s got all that gardening to do.

It is an old dodge of politicians to blame the cause of social problems on the government of the day and then, if those carping politicians ever themselves become the government, to switch the blame (correctly) on the uncontrollable forces of the market. Tory politicians are no exception to this rule. We find them in 1979 blaming the Labour government for social problems in Britain: “Their favourite but totally false excuse is that their appalling record is all due to the oil crisis and the world-wide economic depression.” After a couple of years they were themselves using exactly the excuse they had found unacceptable coming from Labour: "There’s been a world recession, not our fault — Germany, France. Europe are suffering as well — some suffering even worse . . . there are other countries that have even worse unemployment than we have, some less, all are struck by world recession” (Guardian. 7 March 1983).

The third task was to "uphold Parliament and the rule of law”. The upholding of the law usually has different results depending on your class. Take two examples: “An unemployed woman who stole a purse containing 50p was jailed for eight months” (Daily Telegraph, 28 February 1980), whereas "The Duke of Westminster’s cousin William Grosvenor was given a 12-month suspended sentence and fined £1000 for conspiring to defraud the Inland Revenue . . . he admitted helping to hide the £8.500 cost of champagne and whisky, grouse shooting party at Glenfiddich in otherwise genuine tax-deductible bills" (Daily Express, 24 January 1980). Wealth is produced by labour. Yet those who are most productive own least. This society works on the basis that those who produce do not possess and those who possess do not produce. All legal systems legitimise the massive institutional theft of wealth by the ruling class. The wages system is legalised robbery because we get back less than the value of what we put in. Apart from this primary purpose, the law has to be used to control the frustration which is a daily occurrence in capitalism. With a worsening recession and austerity the Tories are condoning greater police violence to cope with riots and a proliferation of brutal robberies. But a point which is not fully comprehended by those salivating Tories at their annual Conference who speak about the need for harsh punishments and more discipline is that you cannot create content with a truncheon.

The fourth task was to “support family life, by helping people to become home owners raising the standard of their children’s education and concentrating welfare services on the effective support of the old, the sick, the disabled and those who are in real need". This sounds sincere. In fact it does not altogether match up with what the Tories did in practice. Family life. well yes, unless you are in an Asian family in which case you may come a cropper of the Nationality Act which limits the entry of parents, grandparents and fiancées to live with the rest of their family. Own your own home. yes. but they forget to mention that paying the mortgage does bear certain similarities to paying the rent. Last year 27,000 people lost their homes as a result of being unable to keep up the mortgage payments. Today 87 per cent of the population own only 9 per cent of the land. 60,000 families are officially homeless and about 1.5 million families are waiting to be rehoused (Shelter). We are living in a society where property company boss Sir lan MacTaggart can sit in one of his £1000 a week marble-floored penthouses (Daily Express, 24 June 1981), pick up a newspaper and read about 18-year-old Linda Jackson who gave birth to a stillborn baby because of freezing conditions while she was having to live in a tent on the banks of the River Dee in Chester (Daily Express, 4 December 1980). You cannot have such a thing as a property-owning democracy because the idea of property (“This is mine, the rest of you cannot have it”) is opposed to the idea of democracy. By the same token, “equal opportunities" in a property society do not count for much. Anyone is free to send a child to Eton (for about £4,000 a year) for that child to have a prosperous life. Anyone is free to pay £250 a day for private hospital treatment. It is just that the majority of us begin this unnecessary competition for "success" with the handicap of being in the working class.

The fifth task was to "strengthen Britain’s defences and work with our allies to protect our interests in an increasingly threatening world”. What the Tories, like the other pro-capitalist parties, fail to make clear here is the precise nature of "our interests”. The only interest most of us have in Britain is that this is where we pay rent, receive dole, or sell ourselves to the boss. Where we consume the culture of Terry Wogan, Crossroads and baked beans. The economic interests of Charrington-Coalite, who virtually own the Falklands. were scarcely mentioned during or after all the unnecessary bloodshed in the South Atlantic. The Tories are emphatic about the need for bombs "to keep the peace" and about the need to protect ourselves against our enemies. Norman "on-your-bike" Tebbit is a man who cannot really count logic or consistency as among his strengths. While spending much energy arguing against the heavy-handed interference of the state, Norman recently urged parents to keep their children away from school when plays about the Hiroshima bomb and the need for peace were due to be performed. He presumably considers that young minds should not really become acquainted with what happened at Hiroshima and why we should take steps to avoid travelling down the same road again. Negligently overlooking the government propaganda anti-Russian leaflet for schools, How to Deal with a Bully, Norman then further confused his opposition to the peace plays by saying "I prefer politics to be kept out of schools”. With such a clear liking for having his head in the clouds, Norman would have perhaps done better to have remained an airline pilot.

The solution to the social problems of the majority is a dramatic change of social organisation to socialism. This is not the decoy duck which the Tories set up to shoot down. It is not “Less freedom . . . Nationalisation . . . Levelling down . . . high spending . . . high taxes . . (Fifty Questions & Answers, What Socialists Believe In. Conservative Research Department). Neither is it Labour’s "new” plan to re-organise capitalism, with "a priority to create jobs (more exploitation) ... a five-year national plan (Stalin would have been proud) . . . and plans to abolish the legislative powers of the House of Lords" (Labour's Plan, The New Hope for Britain).

Socialism means the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth. It means acting to put an end to the need for wars and starvation. An end to eating synthetic food, living in inadequate accommodation. An end to the culture of tension, television-trances and Tcscos. Thatcher says "stand firm” as she harangues us about Victorian values. We are not amused.

Gary Jay

Running Commentary: Silver spoon (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Silver spoon
Clean-cut prefect type that he is, the thought could never have entered the Brylcreemed head of Cecil Parkinson that he would one day be the subject of nationwide salacious jokes. As usually happens, there was much misunderstanding about the affair between Parkinson and Sarah Keays and the lucky child who as a result will find itself born into the British ruling class.

Parkinson's extra-marital activities were denounced as inconsistent with the Tories’ well-advertised concern for what they called Victorian values, particularly with the sanctity of the monogamous, nuclear family. Should he, repentant, leave the government? The party? The country? All of this on the assumption that politicians operate on consistent, absolute principles.

But of course the Thatcher concern with the capitalist family was designed as a vote-winner and in any case applied only to that class in society (which does not include Parkinson) which has a subservient role and must be disciplined into it, by one method or another. Now this is perfectly in line with the values of capitalism, whoever is on the throne. It was so in Victorian times and it is so today. Capitalism now, as then, is a society of two conflicting classes, one of them socially superior and privileged and the other socially inferior and disadvantaged.

Parkinson and Keays enjoy a life-style, and assumptions about their futures which result from the exploitation of the working class. It is instructive to compare the treatment of Keays with that of a working-class female who conceives a child without being married. Keays negotiated through her solicitors — which means with a lot of legal protection and comfort — for what Parkinson assured us would be an adequate financial arrangement for her and the child. A spacious cottage near the home of her rich family in the lush Cotswold countryside was renovated for her.

Meanwhile, in magistrates courts throughout the land unmarried female workers apply for maintenance orders against similarly impoverished fathers of their children. In most cases, the courts award them a few pounds a week — which is all the father can afford — which is promptly deducted from their Social Security "benefit”. The working class should attend to the repression and the indignity represented by that rather than to the personal peccadillos of their arrogant masters.


A black hope
Jesse Jackson is tall, handsome, energetic and he believes in the American Way, so nobody should be surprised that he is a possible candidate in the next Presidential election.

In fact, the mere possibility is driving thousands of American workers into a frenzy of enthusiasm because Jesse Jackson is not only tall, energetic, etc. etc, but also black. Even more; he says he was there on the balcony when Martin Luther King was shot and that King died in his arms; he kept on a bloodstained T-shirt for a highly-charged TV appearance soon after the assassination. American blacks love him; “Run, Jesse, run" they urge him onwards to the nominating conventions.

Jackson is being lauded, not just as the new hope of American blacks; he is said to have something to offer whites as well — an unprecedented insight into their problems and a unique ability to come up with the answers. “In America,” he said during a recent visit to Brixton, "our struggle has shifted from a focus on freedom to the drive for real equality”.

It would be most remarkable if a politician who aspires to power did not try to arouse passion and enthusiasm by claims to have a novel solution to the problems which have been troubling the enthusiasts for such a long time. It is only when the power is won and the reality of trying to run capitalism strikes home that the ardour dies and the hero wilts, sometimes into obscurity.

Even before he gets near the convention there are questions hanging over Jackson. In particular, his claim to have been with King when he was shot is denied by fellow black Andrew Young, who undoubtedly was on the balcony. But it is important to consider more than questions. It is time the workers, in America and all over the world, refused to be misled into hysteria by the promises, the deceits and the charisma of leaders. Real experience shows that capitalism cannot be other than a divided, repressive social system of impoverishment and fear. No leader can change that.

Run Jesse run? Where to?


Method unimportant
After their defeat in 1979 the Labour Party went through a Benn-inspired reassessment of their constitution which was supposed to make them a more democratic and more effective organisation. This was as agonising for them as a bad illness and after the treatment they decided, among other changes, on a new method of electing their leader. No longer would this be through the preferences of only Labour MPs; now the whole party, affiliated trade unions and all, would have a vote on the issue.

Triumphant left wing Labourites claimed that they now had a serenely democratic party, better fitted to take power and. in some unexplained way, to force socialism on us. Some of their leaders, on the grounds that too much democracy was a bad thing, left the party to take their place at what they hoped would be the foot of Labour’s death-bed. And out of this marvellous new method has emerged Neil Kinnock, who has not so far been justified on the grounds that he is the fruit of a more democratic method of election but because his party hopes that he has the formula to win them back into power.

Whatever system the Labour Party used, the leader who emerged would have carried the same hopes. Kinnock, for his youth and his carefully constructed reputation, would always have been a very strong candidate for the succession. Labour's new constitution, born amid so much pain and dispute, has really changed nothing.

Labour's elected leader is expected to be enough of a crafty opportunist to play the electoral game of deceiving the working class to such effect that it results in a Labour win. As long as the workers — who vote for Labour and Tory governments over British capitalism — continue to acquiesce in this cynicism the problems of modern society will remain. The method through which leaders emerge is unimportant; what matters is the social system which they serve and which they try to control — and the urgent need to abolish it.

Begging bowl (1989)

From the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

When those who seek to dismantle the welfare state are asked what will happen in future to the most destitute, they reply with calm reassurance that a return to the good old days of private charity is in order. As part of this tendency. Sir Hector Laing, chairman of United Biscuits, has been busy trying to persuade some of his fellow multi-millionaire business colleagues to join him in throwing some scraps at the hungriest among their class enemy. These are the workers whose normal poverty has been exacerbated by Sir Hector and his friends, who threw them on the scrap heap as they were not generating enough profit to make their further exploitation worthwhile. No doubt it was Sir Hector’s presidency of the company that makes McVitie's Digestives which made him especially suitable as chief crumb- thrower. The company, which is also responsible for Wimpy hamburgers, KP nuts and many other cultural delights, has been kind to old Hector: in 1984. for example, his shares entitled him to a dividend of over £3,000 every week, in addition to his salary and the steady increases in the value of the shares themselves.

Laing founded the Percent Club two years ago with the support of Margaret Thatcher. It is a grouping of businesses with pledge to donate at least half of one per cent of their profits to the local community. and it is linked to another organisation called Business in the Community. Interviewed in the Guardian on 8 December last, Laing explained that "industry” (by which he means the capitalistic class) has to take on the role of the old charitable wealthy families or “city fathers", especially since the government began to take “a big step back from industry". He ended with a resounding confirmation of our long-held view of such begging bowl routines. It is not, he says, a question of conscience:

A decaying society means decaying profits. What's in it for us is a better society, more people in jobs, more entrepreneurial flair in communities, and therefore more chance of making worthwhile profits.

Clifford Slapper