Power to the people (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard apologises for being a little late with the news but last month Margaret Thatcher became the longest-serving Prime Minister of the century. The great, national sigh of gratitude and relief which greeted the fateful day when she passed the record of Herbert Asquith was quickly blotted out by the sound of frantically hammered typewriters, as political scribes launched into yet another assessment of her time in office, now compared with that of Asquith.

Modern capitalism demands that its executives in the state machine work a great deal harder now than they did eighty years ago. Thatcher, for example, rises at 6am and carries on throughout the day until the small hours of the next one. Only under protest does she take one brief holiday a year. Asquith, who was accustomed to taking several leisurely breaks, would have been horrified; but Thatcher revels under the pressure, drawing energy from the sense that she is at the centre of decision-taking, where policies are laid down and changes are wrought. She is, the scribes were agreed, politically dominant now; amid the column inches of awed admiration for her, a certain phrase began to creep in more and more often elective dictatorship. It means that Thatcher, having won power through the votes of millions of workers, uses that power as if she has an eternal grasp of it — as if she is a dictator. Her method is to ensure that British capitalism is run as she wants it to be by purging her government of all doubting or dissident influences and surrounding herself with people who, although nominally her advisers, rarely if ever question what she is doing.

An example of this was in the appointment of the new Cabinet Secretary, to replace Robert Armstrong who will be remembered for his squirming euphemism about being "economical with the truth" long after all his other work is forgotten. Poor Armstrong, going faithfully into the jaws of a ruthless cross examination on the other side of the world and, as always seemed inevitable, ending up an international laughing stock. But at least it proved one thing; it laid to rest the old myth that it is the Civil Service which runs capitalism rather than the people who are elected to be the government. Armstrong's successor, Robin Butler, is renowned as a Thatcher devotee, having been her principal private secretary. An all-powerful Civil Service would hardly have allowed such an appointment, so soon after Armstrong s humiliation.

But as the myth of the omnipotent Civil Service faded, it was to some extent replaced with concern over the influence of the lobbyists. These are the people who operate behind the scenes of government, with the object of influencing decisions in favour of the organisations who have hired them. Lobbying is a growth industry — if that word can be applied to it — which has expanded over the past few years from a few small firms competing for a small total annual fee into a business with some big companies, often subsidiaries of advertising agencies (of course Saatchi and Saatchi has one) able to command fees in tens of thousands for their services. The lobbyists need to know their way around the corridors of power; many of them once worked as senior civil servants or advisers to politicians. Recent events where they were active were the Westlands affair, the Guinness bid for Distillers and the SAS attempt to take over a slice of British Caledonian. While there is no reason to accept the lobbyists' estimates of their own influence — they have an obvious interest in exaggeration — it is true that they are an addition to what seems to many people a mass of confused influences, all operating on the government, which effectively blanket out any democratic content. There is Thatcher behaving as if she is a dictator; there is the civil service, through their position of the permanent factor whichever government is in power; there are the lobbyists, working behind the scenes to distort and frustrate governmental decisions. In all this, what happens to the wishes of the voters? To the promises on which the government was elected? Is there any point in ever voting again?

Anyone who suffers nightmares about a Britain in the grip of the faceless mandarins of Whitehall, or of the slick operators in the public relations business, can be re-assured. Whatever influence these people may be able to exert they can operate only within a certain system (after all, no recalcitrant civil servant has ever sabotaged a minute so as to help along the case for abolishing capitalism). We live under a social system based on a class division, into owners and non-owners — into capitalists and workers. This society cannot be democratic — it has to have its secrets, whether they are military, commercial or governmental (as Robert Armstrong knows only too well). The owning capitalists hold a privileged social position — privileged in their access to wealth, to information, to power and to the process of decision taking. The working class are never asked about decisions like the take-over of British Caledonian; it is simply not within the scope of their social position under capitalism.

This situation exists because the working class allow it to. At present the capitalist class — the ruling class — hold power but they do this through the fact that the working class agree to it. The workers are the majority; they are the useful, productive people who design and produce and operate all that society needs. As the majority they have the potential power; at present they surrender this power to the capitalists by voting in their millions for one or other of the parties which, whatever their incidental differences, are agreed that capitalism should continue. People who are concerned about the subversive distortion of governmental decisions should consider where the responsibility lies — how it is that an undemocratic system can be energised, again and again, through millions of democratic votes.

And that brings us to the important question of what can be done about it. How do we bring Thatcher's elective dictatorship to an end? How do we unmask the shadowy figures behind Whitehall's desks? How do we see off the subversive lobbyists? Well it is possible to have a society in which all people stand in equality in the sense that they all have the same rights of access to what society produces, whether it is wealth or a service or information. This will be a society which will work on majority consent, in the interests of the majority. It will have a universal, human unity in its objects and its achievements. Minority class interests will not exist and neither will the mess of deceits and cynicism which they entail. So there is no need to be down-hearted at Thatcher's record; like all the events of capitalism, it puts some important questions and offers some illuminating answers. We can change things; as soon as the society of common ownership and free access arrives, the Socialist Standard will not be late with the news.

Ivan

Running Commentary: If Thatcher goes (1986)

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

If Thatcher goes

It may take some time to accustom ourselves to the idea that Michael Heseltine wants to take care of us all — to protect the weak, the sick and the poor — but that is what we may have to face, if Margaret Thatcher should cease to be Tory leader. If it comes to that, not so long ago it would have been difficult to accustom ourselves to the idea of Thatcher losing her grip but now, as the Westland affair swells from a cloud no bigger than an ex-Defence Secretary's hand to a darkness stretching to the far horizon, the unthinkable becomes readily believable.

The opposition to Thatcher within her party is. we are told, to do with her style of government— her ruthless and overbearing pursuit of her ends and her preference for a cabinet full of unquestioning toadies rather than suffer a single stimulating critic. This has left her back benches crowded with what is called ministerial talent who were not however talented enough to prevent themselves being quietly snuffed out or to remember that Thatcher's adopted style was what once, in those heady days after the 1979 and 1983 elections, endeared her to the party.

How gleefully, for example, they all once grasped at the Russian award of that title of the Iron Lady; how approvingly they regarded her forays into EEC negotiations, showing those nasty foreigners that they could not pull the financial wool over her steely eyes; how gratefully they applauded her implacability over the Falklands war: how rapturously they laughed when she scornfully denied to a Tory conference that she wanted to be another Edward Heath: "This lady's not for turning".

If the Tories are deserting her now. this can be for only one reason. Exposed as no different from the rest, as a cynical and deceitful politician whose principles are those of day-to-day opportunism. Thatcher suddenly looks like a disaster. There is panic in the Tory ranks; how else can we explain Heseltine's audacious claim to be a compassionate politician?

And if Thatcher goes, what then? Will she be replaced by a Tory government pledged to introduce the politics of One Nation? Will the Tory wets come squelching back into the cabinet? Will British capitalism become managed by a bunch of landed gentlemen from the shires — Pym, Gilmour, Prior — rather than upstart advertising executives and small business people? Will all of this be bolstered by the sulking Ted Heath and by Willie Whitelaw, desperately plugging the holes in the dykes of party unity?

Such a government would be presented to us as offering new hope for a more humane and secure future. There would be whispers about reducing unemployment, reviving the National Health Service, smoothing the rougher edges of the deepest poverty. It might be a propitious time to overlook the fact that these leaders are already associated with wretched failure, in the governments of Heath, Douglas-Home and Macmillan. There is no reason to believe that they will be any more successful in the future.

One Nation is in any case not an exclusively Conservative idea. Every Labour government comes to power with the same sort of promise, to unite the interests of everyone into a great drive for competitive British exports, full employment, a controlled economy, efficient state services and so on. They may call their policies by different names the National Plan, the Social Contract but essentially they are the same as One Nation and they suffer from the same basic fallacy.

Capitalism is not a society of unity. It is based on class ownership of the means of life and therefore on class conflict. It cannot be controlled or moulded by politicians or economic experts into something which it is not. It cannot operate in the interests of the majority of its people. It must continue as a system of anarchy, poverty, disease and war.

All of that is taught to us by experience and by an analysis of capitalism. Unless the working class act to abolish capitalism, the prospect is dismal — a succession of ineffective governments distinguishable only by their style of empty promises and of the excuses they give for their impotence. We have had time enough to accustom ourselves to that idea — and time to act on what we have learned from it.


Policeman’s brawl

The role of the police is primarily one of institutional coercion on behalf of ruling-class power. Anything else — helping old ladies across the road, for example — is entirely incidental. This being the case, it is plain to see that activities such as we have witnessed on. say, the miners' picket lines, or at Grunwick, are not in any way exceptional but rather conform to the normal expectations of the class that recruits and pays the police. In exchange for these relatively lucrative services the police in turn can normally expect to be shielded from prosecution or conviction should their activities kill or maim. The cases of Jimmy Kelly and Blair Peach are only two of the many instances where this has proved true.

So what about the latest example of protection from the consequences of brutal thuggery for which, in the knee-jerk terms of the Director of Public Prosecutions, there exists insufficient evidence on which to prefer charges? We refer, of course, to the vanload of policemen looking for a punch-up in Holloway who gratuitously attacked five boys, two of whom — the black ones, significantly enough — ended up in hospital.

On this topic, somewhat surprisingly, the Guardian has managed to serve up something a little less bland than its usual jesuitic fare. Its second leader of 5 February. "Police beyond the law", contains much that is unquestionably accurate, including the clear recognition that the government is protecting the police. Of course it is. But what sticks in the Guardian's craw is any nasty revolutionary notion that such partisanship is class-based. The inescapable truth is that capitalism's police, "right" or "wrong", have a bounden duty to close ranks in tribal complicity on behalf of their and our masters.


Kick start

In the month that saw politicians stabbing each other in the back and rival groups of capitalists fighting it out for a share in Westland helicopters, life for the working class went on pretty much as usual.

The number of people registered as unemployed rose to 3.4 million. Shortly before the figures were announced, the Job Start scheme was launched by the government. This is the latest attempt at cosmetic surgery to conceal capitalism's failure to provide people with employment and hence the means to live. It is to be run in nine key areas (not necessarily those with the highest unemployment) and involves unemployed workers being offered £20 a week to "top up" their wages if they take a job which pays less than £80 a week. In other words, the government is subsidising bosses who pay low wages. The rationale is that the long term unemployed lose confidence and need encouragement to go back to work. Of course what they are really worried about is that unemployed workers who realise that they will only be a few pounds a week better off by taking a job that pays very little may decide not to bother. But having bribed workers to take on low paid work with the extra £20. the government will withdraw the grant after six months.

Capitalism depends on workers selling their labour power for the lowest wage or salary that employers can get away with paying. Workers are educated, trained and conditioned into believing that wage slavery is freely entered into and necessary to human dignity: to work for a living, no matter how badly paid the job, is better than "living off the state". But if workers see through this myth and decide that it is not worth going to work for a few pounds more than they can get in benefits, then the state has a variety of ways of coercing people into going to work for low wages. YOPS and YTS schemes have been used to try to instil the work ethic into young unemployed people and now Job Start is to be used for the same purpose with older unemployed workers.

Lies, leaks and "authorised disclosures" (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Which is the most depressing spectacle - the pious penitence of Leon Brittan, forced to resign over a "genuine misunderstanding” about the correct way to leak a letter, the flamboyant exit from the cabinet of Michael Heseltine, the man who did the "honourable thing" because he couldn’t take the Prime Minister's autocratic manner any longer; the pathetic protestations of Margaret Thatcher that she didn’t know that any of these underhand events were going on; or the sanctimonious bleatings of the opposition?

Who do they think they're kidding? Anyone with an ounce of common sense realises that Leon Brittan resigned because he was caught in the act and his fellow Tories regarded him as a liability. He didn't resign voluntarily because of a breach of trust, but because he was forced to by his fellow Tories. Heseltine, the man who couldn't "remain with honour" in Thatcher's cabinet, took a bloody long time to make up his mind that he was such a principled politician. After all, it has not been only during the Westland business that the Prime Minister has run her cabinet like Attila the Hun; the sacked cabinet ministers who litter the Tory backbenches bear witness to the way she has usually dealt with dissidents. No, Heseltine probably thought he could get some political mileage out of his resignation, which might help in his bid to be the next Tory leader. And as for Thatcher s innocence - how stupid does she think we all are? Are we honestly to believe that members of her own office decide to leak a letter to discredit a member of the cabinet and then forget to tell her about it? Kinnock, Owen. Steel or any of the other politicians would never of course have engaged in such political machinations, would they? And, no, of course they're not really gloating at the possibility that they might, after all, be in with a chance at the next election.

The details of who said what, when and why, have been endlessly rehearsed and it seems unlikely, in the face of Cabinet minutes being tampered with, different versions of the same meeting being put about, and the government's reluctance to allow key civil servants to give evidence to the select committee, that the truth will ever be known. But what does it matter: the essentials of the Westland story are damning enough already.

So let's start at the beginning. A small company in Yeovil is unable to make sufficient profit from helicopter manufacture to continue its operations. Offers to buy into the company and prevent it from going to the wall are received from two rival groups of capitalists: Sikorsky-Fiat in the mainly American comer, and the European Consortium. Nothing unusual so far - all part of the normal process of big capital buying out little capital. The chairman of Westland, John Cuckney, and the board of directors prefer the American offer and decide to recommend it to the company's shareholders.

Meanwhile the two rival bids are championed in the Cabinet by Heseltine, the Defence Secretary who favours the European bid, and Brittan/Thatcher who favour the Americans. Heseltine tries to play the "national interest" card (usually a winner) - do we want to lose control of a vital part of our defence industry to the Americans? But he is trumped by Brittan/Thatcher who publicly play the non-partisan, market forces, leave-it-to-the shareholders card, while privately leaning very heavily on British Aerospace (part of the European consortium) to try to make them leave the field open for the Americans.

The motives behind this political partisanship are immaterial: maybe Heseltine does genuinely believe that the "national" interest will be best served if Westland is taken over by the European consortium. Maybe Thatcher and Brittan do have good reasons for wanting the American bid to succeed. Who knows; who cares? Squabbles between rival groups of capitalists trying to grab a bigger share of the cake go on all the time and given the close links between capital and politicians it's not surprising that their case should be taken up by rival groups in the cabinet, especially since Westland provides military hardware.

It's not surprising that politicians take sides in arguments between capitalists; what is unusual is that they should be seen to do so. Governments are not supposed to appear partisan. So the Thatcher/Brittan faction in the Cabinet tried to silence the renegade Heseltine by making him promise to abide by the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility, which means that he should agree with the rest of them, in public at least. At this point Heseltine discovered that he was a "man of principle" and walked out of the Cabinet.

Meanwhile selected bits of a letter from Patrick Mayhew. the Solicitor-General, to Heseltine. complaining of "material inaccuracies" (lies) in a letter he had written to Lloyds, advisors to the European consortium, were leaked to the press. Mayhew complained. The Prime Minister set up a leak enquiry which told her that there hadn't been a leak but an "authorised disclosure" - authorised in fact by Brittan in consultation with the Prime Minister's own staff at Downing Street. So the finger was pointing at Brittan, not because he had authorised the leaking of a letter - authorised leaks occur all the time - but because he had bungled the job and got caught. The Tory back-benches immediately closed ranks and left poor Leon out in the cold - none of them wanted to be tainted by his failure. Thatcher has lived to fight another day although her reputation looks a bit battered. She's obviously still got a lot to hide, which is why she's against letting the civil servants directly responsible for the leak appear before the Select Committee. Trying to explain the increased unemployment figures (which, we were assured. were on the way down) no doubt now appears an easier task than trying to explain her own part in this saga of political dirty tricks.

So what conclusions should we draw from this sordid political episode?

Firstly, it doesn't really matter to us, the workers, who runs Westland. Whether it's Sikorsky, the European Consortium or Colonel Gaddaffi (who managed to get a look in, too, at one point): they would all run it according to the laws of capitalism, namely that if there's money in it, make it; if there's not, then don't. Secondly, the politicians involved have been lying, distorting the facts, using the media to put across mis-information, all for their own political ends. Thirdly, despite their attempts to appear whiter- than-white, the opposition politicians have gloried in the apparent demise of Thatcher and Co. because it serves their political ends. Finally, even if Thatcher had not demonstrated the most amazing ineptitude in her handling of the whole business - even if cabinet government had worked as it is supposed to, even if the letter hadn't been leaked but released to the Press Association through the "usual channels", what difference would it have made?

For cabinet government, a pillar of our own so-called democratic system, is anything but democratic. Democracy, if it is to have any real meaning, if it is to be anything more than a propaganda buzz word for politicians, must, at the very least, include the following:

• equal opportunity for everyone to participate in decision-making;
• equal access by all participants in that decision-making process to the relevant information. facts and resources;
• review and scrutiny of decisions made, with those given responsibility being held accountable to the whole community.

What happens in Britain today? We elect "representatives" - MPs - from a limited choice of a few candidates whose parties can afford to sponsor them and who have a virtual monopoly of access to the media. They campaign on a broad platform of promises which they may or may not keep once elected. As MPs they vote on a legislative programme put forward by the party with the most seats in Parliament (although not necessarily the most votes in the country). They decide which way to vote, not on the basis of the wishes of the constituents who they claim to be representing, but in accordance with the wishes of their party as dictated by the party whips. If their party is the largest, and if they make a good impression on the leadership, then they are appointed by the Prime Minister to ministerial office and those with the top jobs form the Cabinet.

The theory behind cabinet government is that ministers collectively discuss issues, the Prime Minister takes their advice and eventually a policy is hammered out, or decisions are taken. Once arrived at, those decisions are publicly defended by the whole cabinet in a show of unanimity which disguises the fact that there were probably disagreements between them. However, not all decisions are taken by the Cabinet. In fact many of the most important of them are taken by the Prime Minister in consultation with a few chosen ministers, or in secret cabinet committees. So in many cases decisions are taken without even the full cabinet knowing about them, let alone "our" elected representatives. And the more important the decision is, the fewer people are likely to know about it. Senior civil servants are also important since they brief ministers, draw up agendas, minute meetings, listen to the views of important pressure groups and generally control the flow of information.

Decisions made by the government are, in theory, subject to scrutiny by the whole of Parliament through MPs' questions, the work of select committees and government inquiries. In practice the government is able to hide behind the Official Secrets act, "national security" and the fact that it will be at least thirty years before anyone will get access to government papers, which even then are weeded to remove items deemed to be injurious to the "national interest". MPs are often unable to question ministers effectively because they lack access to information on which to base their questions. How can you ask a minister why he or she made a particular decision if you don't even know a decision has been taken?

So, representatives sitting in Parliament, cabinet government (whether or not the Prime Minister listens to her ministers), and Parliamentary scrutiny, do not add up to democracy as socialists understand it. Government on behalf of the capitalist class means no representation of workers' interests and no control over the decision-making process.

It is significant that although unemployment is higher than ever before, although education, welfare and health provision are being cut and our limited civil "liberties" are being still further eroded, it was none of these factors which shook the government. No, it was a conflict between rival capitalists and members of the ruling class a conflict that has nothing whatsoever to do with workers' lives.

Janie Percy-Smith

Capitalism and aircraft (1986)

Cover cartoon by George Meddemmen.

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the history of capitalism comes to be written, there will be very little mention in it of Michael Heseltine or Leon Brittan. The dispute between these two ambitious politicians may be represented to us now as a momentous clash of the titans, vital to us all, and that may well be how they themselves like to think of it. Perhaps in the end one or the other will find himself in Number Ten. None of these things changes the fact that this whole affair is of no real concern to the vast majority of people - which is what the history of capitalism will be all about.

That is not to say, of course, that there are not a lot of people who are presently interested in the contest between these two. Spurred on by the assiduous efforts of the capitalist media, there can now be very few members of the working class who have not heard of them. Whatever difficulty they may have in following the serpentine proceedings of the Cabinet, the ministries and the civil service, has not prevented many workers taking sides. Some argue that Heseltine deserves support for his opposition to an American take-over bid for a British firm, for his exposure of some dirty tricks in the government and of Thatcher's overbearing style of leadership. Others may have sympathy for Brittan’s adoption of a lofty refusal (he has claimed) to use his position as a minister to influence the take-over and to insist that the matter be left to the Westland shareholders, who know best how to protect their dividends.

It is impossible to say how many rush-hour bus queues have been disrupted by violent arguments between workers who don't have shares in Westland, or in any other company, about how best to look after the dividends of those who do. This is not an entirely fanciful notion, for workers do persistently take sides in such matters, in which they have no interest. They do this every time they complain about cheap foreign imports competing "unfairly'' with "their" goods on the British market, or when they get worried about a fall in the exchange rate of the pound or when and this is probably the most tragic example of all - they join in militarily protecting the investments and other interests of their ruling class.

Those types of uninformed prejudice will have been warmed by Heseltine's stand against the American bid for Westland. British workers are inclined to be a touch paranoid about invading American capital. It is difficult to unravel the reason for this; after all, American capitalists are no different from any others, who all have the same function - to organise and apply the most intensive possible exploitation of the workers they employ. Perhaps it is not unconnected with that period of Labour government just after the war. when British working class poverty was abruptly renamed post-war austerity which was, we were told, partly caused by the economic, commercial and financial domination of American capitalism. But that particular propaganda was no more than a convenient, opportunistic explanation for that particular period of capitalism in crisis. There have been many such crises since then, each one with its one spurious explanation the gnomes of Zurich, inflation. Arab oil sheiks - to divert attention from the basic fact that crisis is endemic to capitalism and that the system can't operate efficiently or to the benefit of the majority.

At the time of that Labour government there was, of course, still a British aircraft industry with ambitions to outsell American products. For some years British aircraft were successful competitors (and some were disastrous flops the Britannia, the Princess flying boat) until the massive power and investment of the American industry made itself felt. The last significant clash was in the 1950s between the DeHaviland Comet and the Boeing 707. Patriotic British workers sneeringly contrasted the Comet's sleek lines with its rival's chunkiness and assumed that the aircraft's appearance would have some effect on its profitability. But, as time has shown, the American industry had in fact developed the most economic - which meant, for the airline owners, the most profitable - design and the matter was settled when the Comets began to break up in the air. with such calamitous results for the passengers as well as for the aircraft industry in this country.

There were other spasms of life after that, such as the shorter-haul Trident and the VC10 and desperate governmental intervention brought about mergers in an effort to build a more concentratedly competitive industry. None of this worked, against the remorseless power of the American companies. principally Boeing. In any world sense, the British aircraft industry no longer exists and what there is of it is a truncated, cobbled-up patchwork of mergers and joint design projects with foreign companies. Westland is the latest example of this; unable to live much longer through its own competitiveness, it had to merge or go down.

British workers may not enjoy this, bombarded as they are with persistent propaganda about the "national'' interest, the need to keep "our" exports outselling all others and so on. Those who are convinced that they have a stake in the enterprise which buys their labour power, who therefore feel a common loyalty with the owners of the enterprise which actually exploits them to produce surplus value, are prey to all manner of social delusions. But the story of the collapse of the British aircraft industry bears witness to the capitalist reality that wealth, whether it is food or clothes or helicopters, is produced with the motive of sale at a profit. If there is no prospect of that sale then the motive for production disappears; the factories shut down and workers are thrown out of employment. There is much woe in the land and much cursing of scapegoats like American investors or foreign currency speculators. All of which misses the point. Westland's problems have nothing to do with any lack of human need for helicopters which, although at present extensively used as weapons of war have many obvious values to human beings and will be used in these ways when we have a society operated on the basis of human interests. The problems reflect the limited capacity of the market, which is the overall scope for the profitable sale of the machines. It is the market which interests the shareholders; they have invested capital in Westland in order to realise profit, not to produce things which are useful to human beings. If profit comes more readily from making helicopters as killing machines, so much the better for the investors; at present the big market is the military one. which goes some way to explain the government's inevitable interest in any take-over plans.

Which brings us back to that odious pair Heseltine and Brittan. In representing their clash as of great moment to us all they have avoided all mention of the basic issues about why and how helicopters are made, about how this society operates, about the class division between the useful producers and the parasitic owners and about the role of politicians in keeping this whole sordid deception whirling round and round. No, they will not attract a lot of mention in the history of capitalism. That can be written only when we have a saner, more humane social system, which means when the world's people have seen through to the realities of capitalism and the cynical posturings of its leaders.

Ivan