Trade Union Leaders in Confusion (1935)

From the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sixty-seventh Annual Conference of the Trade Union Congress met in the shadow of war, and its President, Mr. Kean, opened the proceedings with a touching, if incoherent, appeal for peace. Italy, he said, must be coerced into keeping the peace, by means of economic and financial embargo and, perhaps, by closing the Suez Canal, even if such action led the League Powers into a war with Italy. That is, we must have peace at all costs, even if we have to go to war for it. The logic is shaky, but the meaning is clear enough. Another war to end war! And the T.U.C. and the Labour Party are as blandly ready to send the workers to the shambles as if the last war had never happened.

Mussolini, cries Mr. Kean, "knows no moral principle”—so “we” should bring out “our” poison-gases and long-range guns, to convince him how much loftier are “our" principles. Mussolini has made an “unjust and rapacious assault” on Abyssinia; so Great Britain, upheld by the comfortable conviction of moral superiority, given her by the tale of her just and generous acquisition of world empire, must teach him to play the game according to the rules. The subject races of the British Empire might inquire eagerly just what those rules are; but, of course, ignorant black men cannot be expected to comprehend civilised society. The British T.U.C. apparently does not comprehend it either. They spent days reading the riddle: “When is a war not a war?” and reached the solution, “When the other side call themselves Fascists.” Thus the Fascist is being used to fill the place occupied by the “Hun” in 1914; and the T.U.C.—together, be it noted, with the Communists, with whom they refuse to associate—tell the workers that it is their interest to take up arms against Fascism.

Leaders Mislead the Workers

What a highly convenient catchword is this “Down with Fascism” rallying-cry! Just the slogan needed to disarm the “Left-wing” resistance to war, and transform anti-militarist campaigns into frantic clamouring for the defence of Abyssinia. And these “leaders of the working class” are so muddle-headed in their principles and policy that they are voluntarily playing the game of the National Government—the very Government they have in the past so often and so bitterly attacked. Give them a war they can condone, a slogan obscuring the basic issue, and they readily, unreflectingly, follow the example of the Social-Democrats and others whose 1914-1918 war record will not bear examination.

The S.P.G.B. maintains that the “Fascism” aspect of the matter is the superficial excuse necessary to render war acceptable. The underlying issue is an economic one—the workers of all the countries involved are to be used as tools to make possible the extraction of profit from Abyssinia. Great Britain is inextricably concerned, since Abyssinia is surrounded on almost all frontiers by British territory; since the Blue Nile, source of Egypt’s essential floods, rises in Lake Tana; and since Eritrea and the Somalilands are on the route to India. The British capitalist group are not anxious for war at present; but neither do they want Italy to corner all the profits they foresee in the development of Abyssinia. Therefore, the politicians at Geneva and elsewhere have been treading the knife-edge of diplomacy, endeavouring to give Italy concessions large enough to stave off war, without actually giving Italy a monopoly of Abyssinian exploitation. The workers of the world have no interest in these jugglings. What reason is there for them to support one section of their exploiters against another? Whichever side wins the wage-slaves will still be wage-slaves; the basic problem of present society will remain unsolved.

The S.P.G.B. maintains, as it has done consistently throughout its thirty-one years' existence, that the workers' interests are inescapably opposed to those of the capitalists, whatever political and national trimmings the latter may use to mask their ends. When the workers open their eyes to the facts of their exploitation, and cease to be taken in by the multifarious propaganda of the capitalists and their tools, they will see that their own interests lie simply and only in an entirely new system of society—Socialism—and will struggle indefatigably to establish it. Under Socialism the entire absence of the profit motive will once and for all eradicate the cause of war. When the workers have set up Socialism, then, and only then, will war be impossible.

Equality for Women Workers

Not a word of this did we hear from the T.U.C., and equally indefinite and non-socialist was their attitude on Britain’s internal problems. The economic position of women, the plight of the depressed areas, and the battle for shorter hours were all discussed from a purely reformist standpoint. All these problems are inherent in capitalism, but the T.U.C. conveys the impression that they can be solved piecemeal, without touching the basis of society. This impression is false: some improvements may benefit sections of the workers for a time, but the working class as a whole can never escape from exploitation by such painting the sores of capitalism. The first essential of capitalist society is an army of wage-slaves, people dependent for their lives on the sale of their energies in the labour-market ; and the commodity labour-power commands only the price necessary, for the labourer to continue his existence and reproduce his kind. That is, the workers as a whole—whatever differences and fluctuations may occur in particular sections at particular times—receive as the price of their labour-power little more than enough to keep them alive. This is an integral part of capitalism. Suppose women succeed, as the T.U.C. hope, in obtaining equal wages with men. Are they any the less exploited wage-slaves? By all means let them, in common with all their class, fight against the encroachments of their masters, but let them not be deluded into believing that their principal task. They must realise that these encroachments can be made impossible only by doing away with the private ownership of the means of life, which produced their enemy, the master class.

The Workers a “Depressed” Class

The T.U.C., with penetrating insight into social cause and effect, further disclosed to an astounded world that “the stricken areas owe their lamentable position to the decline in their main industries.” We have heard also that the circular movement of the globe on its axis may be explained as being due to the rotation of the earth. The T.U.C. was full of warm-hearted sympathy about the “shame and pity" of the depressed industries' situation, but spent no time analysing its true causes, or pointing the obvious way out. We state that these areas are “stricken" simply because the capitalists of this country cannot at present envisage making profits from them, owing to foreign competition and to more attractive investing fields elsewhere. Moreover, the whole working class all over the world is ”stricken" and lives in a state of permanent “depression.” The difference between these areas and others which receive less publicity is one of degree, and not of kind. It has been often and authoritatively stated that most workers, whether employed or not, have neither sufficient food, adequate clothing, nor sanitary homes. Such conditions are an integral part of capitalism.

Similarly, the question of hours is one which can never be solved so long as the human race is divided into two opposing camps, one owning the means of life and the other divorced from ownership, the one buying and the other selling labour-power. The buyers and sellers of labour-power have irreconcilable interests, and until private ownership and the buying and selling of labour- power is stopped for good, the haggling and wrangling over its price and time of its use must inevitably continue.

Down with all the War-makers

Finally, the T.U.C. decided to exclude Communists from holding official positions in Trades Councils. At about the same time the Communist Party announced its readiness to affiliate with the Labour Party. The T.U.C. officially stigmatised the Communists as a disruptionist element. Yet on the Abyssinian issue the Communist and T.U.C. policies are identical. So they blow hot and cold and make confusion worse confounded. The S.P.G.B. has indeed every logical reason to claim that it alone, in this maze of capitalist politics, is treading the direct path to Socialism. The Communist Party’s attitude in the Abyssinian crisis must have demonstrated unmistakably to many of its erstwhile supporters how capable that Party is of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Why further the declared policy of a capitalist Government? Why differentiate between national sections of the world capitalist class? To dam up Italian colonial expansion in Africa, which is so attractive to Italian capitalism, is merely to bring a European explosion so much nearer. To defend Abyssinia against Italy is merely to hand it over for capitalist exploitation by the native ruling class in alliance with Britain or France, or to split it up among various Powers. Abyssinia is due to be “civilised” by some capitalist group in any case. But the Communist Party is willing to lead British workers to slaughter Italian workers under the banner “down with Fascism and war." They remind us of Butler’s “Hudibras,” whose

    "Brain 

Outweighed his rage but half a grain, 

Which made some take him for a tool 

That knaves do work with, called a fool.”

Once again we must reiterate that these internecine squabbles, for all the fine phrases used as top dressing, are no concern of the working class. The paramount issue in the world to-day is the struggle for Socialism. The S.P.G.B. calls on the workers throughout the world to realise their class position, and to determine to end class-society and all its evils by organising consciously and politically for the one end, of establishing Socialism.

D. S.

Laundering people: the Catholic work machine (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Irish state has never stopped warehousing women it deems sexually inconvenient. It merely changed the branding.

Feminism as a tool of repression

On the surface Ruhama is a feminist charity helping women affected by sex work and trafficking. Founded in 1989 by the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, Ruhama operates today as a secular organisation with state backing and trades in the language of women’s liberation. These same religious orders are the institutions that operated Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. The continuities between the two systems are not cosmetic. They are structural.

A history of enthralment of women

The Magdalene laundries operated from the eighteenth century until 1996. Women and girls deemed fallen, wayward, or simply poor were confined in institutions that functioned as commercial laundries. They worked without pay, washing linen for hospitals, prisons, churches and hotels. Exhausting work in brutal conditions. The reason? To discipline women’s sexuality through productive exploitation. The state outsourced its moral regulation to the Church, and the Church turned a profit.

In 1993, building work at the former High Park Magdalene laundry in Dublin, previously owned and run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity (sic) revealed the vile nature of those god-botherers when 155 bodies were recovered from an unmarked grave at the site. Most lacked death certificates. Some remain unidentified as they had previously passed through institutions that included Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools, and psychiatric wards, all devoutly segregating and controlling women and children who violated the Catholic sexual moral code or lacked social power.

The modern rebranding

Ruhama emerged from this same institutional matrix. Its founders were not peripheral figures in the laundry system. They were its operators. It’s argued that historical continuity does not matter because the organisation has since secularised, but institutions survive by adapting their methods, not by abandoning their function. The Magdalene laundries would have you believe their inmates are fallen women in need of moral rescue. Ruhama frames its service users as traumatised victims lacking agency, who have false consciousness or are at risk of exploitation. The vocabulary has been updated. The categorisation of women as problems requiring institutional intervention has not.

Ruhama’s Bridge to Work programme ‘engaged with’ 102 women in 2022, with 37 reportedly gaining job placements. Only five of those placements were paid. Women were once again working without wages, this time under the banner of rehabilitation rather than penance. The institution that emerged from a system of unpaid laundry labour is now placing women in unpaid work placements and calling it empowerment.

Money in the temple

The funding structure reveals where the money goes. In 2024 Ruhama received €2,015,271, with 91.5 percent coming from the state. Of this, 99.64 percent was spent on salaries and administration. Despite taking in €96,945 in donations, the organisation directed €71,799 towards actual service users. A resource distribution model that’s not liberating women from economic precarity. It is a model that sustains an institutional apparatus while keeping its subjects dependent and unpaid.

Ruhama’s own reporting acknowledges that poverty is a primary driver pushing women toward sex work. The logical material response would be substantial direct economic support: rent assistance, debt relief, emergency grants, childcare funding, and guaranteed paid work. Instead, the organisation expands a category called ‘at risk of exploitation’, which is sufficiently elastic to include migrants, single mothers, homeless women, women in informal economies, and young women whose sexual behaviour is considered immoral. This is not targeted intervention against identifiable trafficking. It is preventive institutional capture of a broad population of economically vulnerable women.

Historically, women did not need to have committed a crime or suffered a defined abuse to be confined. Suspicion, poverty, perceived moral danger, or simply being inconvenient to family or state was sufficient. Contemporary anti-trafficking frameworks reproduce this logic but with humanitarian language. ‘At risk of exploitation’ functions as the modern equivalent of fallen or wayward: a classification to justify intervention, surveillance, and unpaid labour regardless of the woman’s own assessment of her situation.

The Magdalene laundries were never abolished. They were incorporated into the state apparatus.

What exists today is an organisation founded under a regime of moral control through unpaid labour, now continuing to place women in unpaid work placements under the promise of moral reform and freedom from sexual exploitation. The women are not being economically liberated. They are being redirected into socially respectable forms of precarity while the institution that processes them absorbs state funding and reproduces the same carceral feminism it claims to oppose.

(Figures on Bridge to Work placements and Ruhama’s 2024 funding and expenditure are taken from research by Grace, Artist and Activist, Ethical Hoes.)

A.T.

Spotlights on Capitalism (1936)

From the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

China—Scene of the Next War?

Now that the whole of Africa has been parcelled out, there remain very few areas of the world’s surface which are not subject to the political domination of advanced capitalist countries. China, however, is one of them, and so we find the birds of prey gathered around for the final picking. The one secure source of revenue in China is the Customs, and the Daily Telegraph mentions (May 14th, 1936), that they are the one point of economic security for Chinese loans, which are largely held by British capitalists. The Japs, however, have established a demilitarised zone in the north of China, where Chinese troops are not allowed to penetrate, and set up a local Government, known as the “ Independent East Hopei Anti-Communist Autonomous Council.” As a result of this, they are able to obstruct the Chinese Customs in such a way that goods can be brought across the Great Wall of China, or landed on the coast, either duty-free or on payment of only a quarter of the normal duties. This naturally diverts goods from such ports as Shanghai, where full duties have to be paid, and so the amount of both trade and duties at these ports declines, and the actual loss to the revenue has amounted in one week alone to as much as £120,000. As the interest on the loans has hitherto taken “only” one-fifth of the Customs dues, there is still ample cover for the service of the loans. Nevertheless, the bondholders are very much upset, and so the Governments of both Great Britain and the United States have made strong official representations in Tokio.

For nearly a hundred years now, the capitalist powers have been nibbling at China; one of the most notorious occasions was the Opium Wars, fought with the object of forcing the Chinese to buy Indian opium—a harmful drug which they were quite capable of producing themselves. Twice have British troops marched on Pekin, and as long ago as 1860 they burnt the magnificent Imperial Palace, just outside Pekin, to the ground. The French pinched Annam and Tongking—once Chinese provinces, Japan long ago stole Taiwan, and more recently Korea, whilst her present intrigues are setting the teeth of the other capitalist powers on edge. Great Britain holds Hong Kong, whilst land in the vicinity has been obtained for fortification purposes. At every available opportunity the Chinese have been forced to agree to the opening of certain of their ports—called “treaty ports”—to foreign trade, and these even extend to the interior of China up to the limit of navigability of the Yang-tze-Kiang. Modern internal transport is now almost entirely in foreign hands. The majority of the railways are owned by British capitalists, whilst in the latest sphere— that of aviation—a new scramble has commenced. Here the British are behind—due doubtless to the British Government's present embargo on loans to foreign Governments and companies—and so we find the more important towns in this vast country —16 times the size of the British Isles—linked by a network of regular services, the most important being the American (China National Aviation Corporation), whilst the Germans have not been slow and their Eurasia Aviation Corporation flies from Shanghai to Hanchow and from Pekin to Canton. Chinese capitalism is, however, fast developing, and so we find the national South-Western Aviation Corporation operating American machines from Canton to Hangchow and Pakhoi in the southwestern extremity, and even now a dispute has arisen with the French and American lines over the carriage of mails.

Those who watch for the next war may well turn their eyes to China.

#    #    #    #

Beauty in the Stores

F. W. Woolworth & Co., Ltd., who last year made a profit of over £5,000,000, believe in leaving no stone unturned to increase their turnover, and so we find them issuing The New Bond. Unlike Chinese bonds, which produce a revenue for the purchaser, this “Bond" costs twopence and is designed to benefit the seller, rather than the buyer. The buyers are Woolworths' girl slaves, and the purchase of The New Bond is quite optional. We understand, however, that it is a brave girl who would refuse to buy. Like all “house” publications of this nature, the object is to produce a “team spirit” amongst the employees and to make them feel that they are at j one with the firm.

An issue before us contains a beauty chat— . “ Our Beauty Chat ” it is called, and we read— 

“It is the discreet touch of Rouge and Lipstick that makes or mars a face. The lighter shades of Rouge, such as Orange or Cherry, make your skin appear clearer—eyes brighter; but should you have blue-black hair and brown eyes, a slightly darker shade is necessary, such as Rosée.”

Concluding, they say—“ We shall recommend the well-known cosmetics which can be obtained at 'your' Store, so let us vote for a Bigger, Brighter, Beauty Movement!M

And, of course, Bigger and Better dividends. In return the firm will give the employees a paltry Christmas box and a vote of thanks!

  R. M.

Blogger's Note:

Original spelling in the article retained. A year to the day, Japan invaded China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Pathfinders: Human factories (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

With cinema takings falling in recent years due to online streaming, Hollywood has resorted to transparent attempts to lure in the lucrative female demographic through ‘girl-boss’ films, which show women in history dramas wielding huge swords and beating up men twice their size, outshining, outsmarting and indeed humiliating them at every turn. This has been widely derided as ‘wokism’, but women are unlikely to be fooled by such patronising efforts to ’empower’ them for the sake of box-office revenue. Unlike media executives spinning fantasies, they know what reality looks like in capitalism, where the pay gap is as wide as ever and domestic violence against women is at epidemic levels.

Late last year a Cornell University study looked at why so few women were found in senior job roles, and suggested that women had two strategies or ‘pathways’, one that gave them status, and the other that gave them power. The study concluded that women achieved status but not power through ‘gender-congruent’ behaviour (ie, being ‘ladylike’ and nice to men), whereas ‘gender-incongruent’ behaviour (ie, being assertive like men, aka ‘pushy’), might achieve power but was less likely to succeed.

Small wonder, perhaps, that writers from Charlotte Perkins Gilman onward have speculated about past or future feminist utopias. Back in October science writer Laura Spinney authored a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Guardian piece entitled ‘Was prehistory a feminist paradise?‘ Predictable answer: no. She discusses the ‘Marxist idea’ that the roots of patriarchy lay in the agricultural revolution, without once mentioning the word ‘property’, and with a hand-wavy vagueness that suggests she’s never read Engels on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, or possibly even heard of it. That might be why the book does not appear in her ‘Further reading’ section.

One book that does appear, however, is The Patriarchs, by Angela Saini (2023) reviewed last January. This author clearly has read Engels, though initially she seems oddly dismissive. Some property-based communities in India and China, she points out, are known up to comparatively modern times to have been matrilineal (inheritance via the female line) and matrilocal (brides staying at home, husbands relocating). In these communities, women knew each other whereas the men didn’t, giving women the greater collective influence, and girls tended to be taller than in patrilocal groups, suggesting they were better fed. Given these examples, Saini proposes that Engels overstated the crucial importance of the property mechanism in bringing about the ‘world historic defeat of the female sex’. Essentially, she says, it was never that fast or that simple.

It becomes clear, in the second half of the book, that far from dismissing Engels, she is seeking to further develop the implicit consequences of his argument. Property may have provided the mechanism for this historic defeat, she says, but it wasn’t initially decisive. What was decisive was the growth of the ‘state machine’. Power, she argues, relies on a big army, and this in turn depends on population size. To increase the one, you need to increase the other. How to achieve this? Ruthlessly enforce strict gender roles, as either soldier or mother. Use disposable males for farm labour and the military, and turn women into baby factories and stay-at-home textile workers. Ancient wars, Saini says, were as much about grabbing extra women as extra land. Women were the first known slaves in Mesopotamia, and obedience to men was baked into ancient cultures and religious texts, including the Bible and Koran.

There is a contemporary resonance. Population size today may not equate to military might as it once did, but it’s still important to capitalist states. More workers, potentially, equal more productivity and more profits, properly staffed infrastructures, healthy tax-funded governments, thriving towns and small businesses, high house prices and high demand for construction, transport systems, energy use, and so on.

Globally, the opposite is happening. Almost everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are well below replacement levels and falling. While voters in many countries are hypnotised by the populist fever-dream of the ‘immigration problem’, the better-informed know the truth. Capitalism is facing a demographic crisis. When population falls below a certain critical mass, things start to fall apart. Profits shrink, offices are deserted, whole towns are abandoned. Pension and health costs rise inexorably with the median age, paid from a shrinking tax fund and understaffed via a shrinking workforce. The European Commission predicts that by 2070 there will be barely two working-age people for every one person over 65 (Economist). China is thought to be massaging its official figures to disguise a catastrophic population decline. The reasons for all this are well known, to do with better education and access to contraception, and the rising costs of living, housing and parenthood. And states have begun to fight back.

The USSR in 1920 was the first country in the world to legalise abortion, but Stalin reversed the ruling just sixteen years later, when birth rates started falling. Now pressure is being applied to women in many countries to have more children. The right wing is morphing in sinister and cult-like pro-natalist and Christian trad-wife directions. In 2022 the US Supreme Court reversed the Roe vs Wade ruling, effectively banning abortion in many states. In 2024, US republicans voted against contraception as a federal right. China’s president Xi Jinping ‘told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing”’.

If Saini’s historical analysis is right, the global outlook for women is not encouraging. Capitalist states need more babies, and never mind what women want. And never mind what men want either. The market system makes everyone suffer. For socialists, there’s really only one way to permanently destroy the forces that make us all into human factories, of one kind or another, for the benefit of the rich. And that’s by joining forces to bring down, not just glass ceilings, but ruling class power.

Paddy Shannon

Blogger's Note:

Laura Spinney replied to this article on the SPGB website.

Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 5) (1910)

From the April 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from previous issue)

On the Generosity of Capitalists.

We will lump several of Mr. Fairchild’s sections together under this heading, partly because in some of them there is no very definite argument, and partly on account of exigency of space.

Our opponent says it is often argued that a Socialist party need not ask for measures to alleviate poverty. “The assertion that improvement in the workers’ conditions under capitalism is impossible,” he says, is “changed into an admission that good housing, maintenance of the children or the public provision of employment, are of benefit to the people, but we are told that it is unnecessary for us to ask for legislation dealing with these matters, because the governing class will give concessions of their own free will.”

It is difficult to know who Mr. Fairchild is girding at. The only persons claiming to be Socialists who still believe in that hoary old supertition, “free will,” are (as might be expected) just those who believe in asking the capitalists to make “public provision of employment” and the rest, “of their own free will.”

The attitude we take up is the proper and logical attitude of those who deny the whole theory of “free will.” Moreover, it is the proper and logical attitude of those who assert the preponderating influence of economic forces upon the human will. How obscure our author’s ideas in this connection are is shown by his assertion (p. 13) that the feudal baron was “surrounded by an atmosphere which contained the elements of magnanimity, but there is nothing generous in the nature of the man who introduces a mechanical time recorder to check the entry of his employees and when they leave.” What rubbish ! Had Mr. Fairchild said that the man who introduces a mechanical time recorder is “surrounded by an atmosphere” that contains no element of magnanimity, environed by economic forces which tend to thwart, restrict and penalise every generous impulse of employer toward employed, he would have been right. But to declare that the capitalist can have no spark of generosity in his composition is not only folly, but is peculiarly grotesque on the lips of one who charges his opponents with regarding “the capitalist in business as devoid of all sentiment and deaf to human appeal.” It is capitalism that has no heart, not the capitalist.

But to get back to the argument, no one in his senses would deny that some improvement in the workers’ condition is possible, even under Capitalism. Capitalism itself may conceivably demand such an improvement, and then it will take place. This, however, is no confession that it is possible for the “palliator” and his “palliatives” to improve the workers’ conditions. Of course we must confess that “good housing, maintenance of the children or public provision of employment, are of benefit to the people,”—if other things remain constant. But other things have a knack of changing. Thus it is significant that the Board of Trade reports that during the first year of operation of the Old Age Pension “palliative,” the total wage income of that section of the workers covered by its returns decreased by £3,599,024, and this in a year when the slight decrease of unemployment might have tended to a rise of wages, and the abnormally high price of necessaries in no way encouraged a fall. Again, it has been shown that any attempt to relieve the congested labour market, such as by the public provision of employment, lessens the relative redundancy of labour-power, hence tends to raise wages, and hence again encourages the adoption of more economical machinery, which in turn displaces further workers, and refills the depleted ranks of the “palliated” unemployed.

Now let us turn to the question of the “maintenance of the children.” Capitalism provides wages for one object only—the production of labour power. Capitalism, moreover, never ceases its efforts to reduce to the lowest possible limits the cost of producing that labour-power. In this direction, indeed, capitalism abhors waste. Yet, from capitalism’s viewpoint, the production of labour-power, at least in respect of the raising of children for the continuance of the supply, is proceeded with in a very wasteful manner. For instance, there is no way of distinguishing in the labour market between the man who is bringing up a dozen children for future exploitation, and the man who has only himself to keep, hence the wages of the latter include a margin which to Capitalism is a lamentable waste. Of course it may be argued that the single or childless man having smaller needs, is an instrument in lowering wages, but on the other hand, having less responsibility, and having moreover a margin in times of employment his power of resistance is greater.

Then under the present system of “parental responsibility,” mothers are largely prevented from entering the labour market by the fact that they have children to look after. Nor does it end here. Since the support of these children’s attendants must, broadly speaking, be included in the fathers’ wages, and as the childless married man cannot be distinguished in the labour market, he is generally able to keep his wife at home. This is a further leakage. Again, the single man, whom Capitalism was forced to credit with a certain share of “parental responsibility,” is not only the gainer in as much as he has no children to keep, but also in that he has not to support a wife to look after them.

Now assuming that the S.D.P. attain their pet and chief “palliative”—State Maintenance of Children—in all its “stupendous magnitude” and gaudy magnificence, what happens ? In the first place, parents having been relieved of the cost of maintaining their children, their wages will suffer equivalent depreciation by competition. In the second place the childless married men, standing now on the same footing as the fathers of families, share in the wage reduction without being relieved of any burden. In the third place the mothers are freed for and forced into the labour market, to accentuate the competition there. Fourthly wives who are not mothers, being now in no favoured position, are also forced into the struggle for work. Fifthly the male workers, released now from the necessity of supporting their women-kind, being, indeed compelled to compete with them for the means of subsistence, quickly find their wages reduced accordingly, so that Capitalism gets the labour-power of the women as well as of the men, for the sustenance of the two sexes, instead of only the labour-power of the men. Sixthly the advantage of the single men, who have no wives or children to keep, vanishes. 

As regards the children, it is argued that they would be better looked after and more of them would survive. As for the first argument, and better conditions after birth might be more than outweighed by the less favourable prenatal environment due to their parents' increased struggle for subsistence. As for the second argument, it is an insane sentiment of humanity that would preserve children for the labour market conditions that would arise from launching the whole body of working-class women into the industrial arena. A word as to the effect upon the working-class movement. It is fatuous to argue that the measure would strengthen the workers' hands in case of strike. The children would be returned to them in order to smash the strike. Nor could the workers prevent this unless they had strength to end capitalist domination for ever. Then when we hand our children over to the capitalists for maintenance, we hand their education entirely over to the priest and the capitalist moralist, who would blur the class line, teach them to lick the hand that fed them, and so place mountainous obstacles in the way of the growth of class-consciousness. 

And now my space is exhausted, and I can only say in conclusion

FOR THE WORKERS THERE IS NO PALLIATION, BUT ONLY SOCIALISM.

A. E. Jacomb

.

Concluded.

Pot Pourri. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

I did not go to the Business Exhibition, but I have done the next best thing — read the newspaper puffs of it. One needs not to be a master of deductive philosophy to read the lesson writ large over the pages of booming devoted to it. The features of this year consist of calculating machines for eliminating clerks ; a machine (the Dictaphone) for doubling one’s output ; another that addresses envelopes at the rate of 2,000 an hour, and so on. Competitions for speed and accuracy are again a leading item, marked this year by the large number of women who have entered for the first time. One firm will teach you (for a consideration) how to develope your powers, how to manage men, increase efficiency and such like.

* * *

The Dictaphone is best described in the maker’s advertisements : “enabling one person to do the work of two, saving 50% time and labour in any office. The work of the principal is simplified, the output of the typist doubled.” Wages, we understand, will remain stationary. When the envelope addresser and the Dictaphone get thoroughly going, throwing half the clerical workers on the streets, making the unfortunate remainder work doubly hard, I suppose the Tariff Reformer will still have no difficulty in proving to them that a tax on Dutch cheese and a preferential tariff in favour of Colonial sardines will solve the problem. The Free Trader, doubtless, will glibly assure the beaten competitors of the Dictaphone and the mechanical calculator that as soon as the Budget has had a chance, and when the 99 year leases fall in, and when the great schemes that the Liberal party has up its sleeve (at present only darkly hinted at) get in full swing, “then !” he’ll say, “then !—” Ah ‘then !

To the clerk, as to every other labourer for hire, it should be clear that the good things of life are not for him whilst the present system of “managing men” is the vogue. If you believe in a step at a time (most of them backwards), join the Liberal party, or its adjuncts, the I.L.P. or S.D.P., and work for State Christmas Trees for your great-grandchildren and municipal ice-cream barrows. If you want freedom now, not in 99 years, join the S.P.G.B.

* * *

I would like to say just here that we Socialists don’t ask for any license, poetical, political, or of any other variety. When we say the I.L.P., Labour Party, S.D.P., Fabian Society, etc. are capitalist agencies, please don’t assume that pique or arrogance actuate us. Just to show you what is meant, here is an instance.

* * *

The Railway Clerks’ Association has recently affiliated to the Labour Party. The latter, of course, accepted it on the usual terms. The character of the.R.C.A. is succinctly outlined in. the October No. of their official organ, p. 202 : “The policy of the R.C.A. is not only to secure justice for its members, but also to urge and assist them to make themselves worth more to their employer.” Of such is the kingdom of Henderson & Co.

* * *

Whilst we are on the subject I may have a jab at the Fabians. Now look at this !

“I came to the conclusion that just as it is in the interests of Capital to keep the rolling stock and the permanent way in good repair, so it must be to the interest of Capital to be constantly raising the standard of living for the men in order that the human factor may be improved.”

Who said that? None other than Mrs, Sidney Webb, at the opening of the new A.S.R.S. offices. That’s the sort of fool’s errand the Fabians are on. Don’t join them.

* * *

A few lines from a poem by Mr. James Stephens are worth repeating.

"For I’ve sat my life away with pen and rule,

        On a stool,

Totting little lines of figures, and so will

        Tho’ the chill

And the langour of gray hairs on my brow

        Mock me now.

And sometimes while I work I lift my eyes

        To the skies,

To the foot or two of heaven which I trace

        In the space

That a grimy window grudges to the spot

         Where I tot.

And I ask the God who made me and the sun

          What I’ve done

To be buried in this dark and dreary cave

           Like a grave,

While the world laughs in scorn now and then

          At my pen."

You see, that’s just where he is silly, asking God anything. You can sit on a stool asking conundrums of space and gather nothing but a harvest of wasted years and a heap of worn-out trousers. It may be easy, but it is quite profitless. Get off your stool and get to work on your slave-irons. Gazing through a couple of feet of smoky window-glass wont help you any. If you have any spare brain your employer has not a lien on, we’ll tell you what to do with it. Come in.

Wilfred.

From the front. (1912)

From the December 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in dealing with the “labour unrest” at the Church Congress, suggested that in order to achieve industrial peace, the employers should get in personal touch with their men, see the conditions of their work and of their home lives with their own eyes. Also that the workmen should try and understand the conditions under which business in these days of international competition has to be carried on. But why not an actual change of places ? The worker would then understand the real function of the capitalist—luxurious loafing—while the capitalist would be able to enjoy the benefits that are said to be inseparable from “honest toil.” Both suggestions are equally practical—and nonsensical.

* * *

Referring to the attitude of the Church towards “labour unrest,” his Grace said: “There is above all the disputes and passions of men, a will of ‘God’—that conscience knows it, and that obedience to it is, and keeps all things, right.”

Conscience knows it—God’s instructions are so unmistakable—yet the Archbishop says the Church “has no commission from its master to take sides, or to invest any particular scheme or policy with his authority.” And this in spite of the fact that, in his own words, “capital is responsible for the condition of the labour it employs—in railways and factories at home, or in rubber plantations abroad,” and that “even now multitudes of children are born into an environment where the only chances are downward.” And the Church still claims to be on the side of the oppressed.

How pitiful these high humbugs appear in their futile endeavours to reconcile their interested attitude with their creed !

* * *

Bernard Shaw has at last told why he “left off lecturing on Socialism.” He says : “Nine-tenths of the art of popular oratory lies in sympathising with the grievances of your hearers.” When his audiences were no longer of the working class he changed his tune.

The lesson is clear. Shawism is for the shirkers, while Socialism is for the workers.

Bernard Shaw is not by any means the only one to adapt his principles and bend the truth to suit his audience. Prominent Labour men have said more than once that “those who pay the piper call the tune.” As this is said in tones of reproach, because the workers do not pay, we can only infer that all “Labour” men are capitalist agents.

The Welsh Messiah, too, subscribes to the Shavian creed. When advocating social reform—greater economy in administration—he tells his audience that “seven per cent. of the people in the great cities live in a state of chronic destitution. Thirty per cent., or nearly one third, live on or below the poverty line.” Or: “There is something wrong—where the labourer, working hard from morning till night in spring, summer, autumn and winter, in rain and sunshine, only to receive his eleven shillings a week in vast areas in England—in a country where you give thousands of pounds to men who do not labour at all.”

These are extracts from his speeches, called to mind by their publication in “Better Times.”

When the question is one of taxation, however, he claims that all sections profit equally by good government, and all should, therefore, contribute.

* * *

For downright contradiction the above is hard to beat ; but the same gent goes one better than his previous best. His “good government,” on another occasion, becomes a class government guilty of legislating in their own interests. He says : “There are about six million electors in this country at the present day, and yet the government is in the hands of one class. It does not matter up to the present which party is in power, you have practically the same class governing the country.”

* * *

Women’s Suffrage is the cry of the Pethicks and the Pankhursts, who want votes for propertied women. In their efforts to enlist the sympathy and support of working class women they tell them that their wages are lower than men’s because they have no political power. With political power, they say, women would become a force to be reckoned with, and would be able to demand higher wages and better conditions.

This bait, however, will not do for the women in the hosiery trade. They are actually afraid of higher wages. According to the secretary of the Hosiery Union, Leicestershire, “women are paid a lower rate than men in every branch of the trade. We want them to demand the same as the men, but they insist on the difference and say : ‘Oh, no, in that case we shall not be wanted.'”

Sir Alexander King, Secretary of the Post Office, has threatened to discharge women and employ men if the demand for the same wages is conceded. Women engaged in many occupations are in the same unhappy position. They dare not demand high wages, even when they do the same work as men, because they would be sacked and men would do the work. Men, however, demand higher wages and sometimes get them, only to find themselves, sooner or later, in the same position as the women, because machinery has been introduced.

Truly, almost every move of the workers on the industrial field is trumped by the masters.

* * *

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has discovered in a New Zealand Government report, striking confirmation of his own views on Tariff Reform. According to this instructive report the cost of living has risen because of Tariff Reform, 16 per cent. On this statement he builds up a case against Protection—a case which collapses like a house of cards when one remembers that the rise in the prices of the necessaries of life in Free Trade England, over the same period, is according to Professor Ashley, 24 per cent. Pity the blind!

* * *

The quarrel between Liberals and Tories over Banbury’s amendment, although not likely to make them forget their mutual interests and their opposition to the workers, nevertheless revealed the hooligan nature that is always one of the characteristics of those who live by plunder. As far as it went it should teach the workers that the so-called respectable and cultured class can be as vicious and vulgar as Parisian bandits. It is on record that Mr. Will Crooks did much to ease the situation by a timely rendering of “Auld Lang Syne,” while Mr. Barnes told an interviewer that the Labour Party would do their best to preserve the Parliamentary machine. Labour Members render yeomen service. They are especially good at dispute settling in the interest of the class that employs them at £400 per year—for Auld Lang Syne.

* * *

A censor of cinematograph films is the latest precaution taken by the representatives of the master class. Pictures that show the way “not to successfully burgle” are to be taboo, presumably because they excite the spirit of emulation in the minds of ambitious youngsters. By the manner in which such freaks are magnified, the worker is almost encouraged to believe that there is no such thing as unemployment and poverty leaving thousands only the choice between starvation, crime, or the workhouse.

* * *

But not only must property be protected—capitalist morals have to be safeguarded. The respect and veneration with which the workers have been taught to regard their rulers must be preserved. With that object in view pictures are to be excluded that represent royalty, aristocracy, judges or other State dignitaries in ludicrous or undignified positions. Yet with all their care, discontent becomes greater, and Socialism—the end of all things capitalistic—makes steady progress.

F. Foan

At Random. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Keel is an organ devoted to the exposition of “Tyneside Socialism.”

* * *

As thus : “Social Reform is inoperative. We want to change the basis of society.” (Oct. ’08.)

* * *

As a means to the end which the Keel vainly imagines it is working for, it warmly supported the candidature of Hartley at Newcastle.

* * *

Hartley, in his election address, declares himself “first, last, and all the time, a Socialist.” As evidence in support of this assertion he trots out six “questions,” every one singly, or all in their entirety, of which are exploited by Liberal or Radical politicians. These he considers to be of primary importance.

* * *

Every one of the six “questions” is concerned with a policy of more or less—chiefly less—effective patching of the vile garment which is doing duty to hide the obscenity of the Body Politic.

* * *

Clearly the Keel has lost its compass “Social Reform is inoperative.” Hartley’s “programme” is Reform, Reform, and yet again, Reform. Therefore we support Hartley. Shades of Q. E. D. !

* * *

A member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain recently expressed the opinion that a few millstones, the deep blue sea, and labour “leaders”—the ingredients duly and well approximated—were among the first essentials of the Social Revolution.

* * *

Recent utterances of the labour “leader” surely justify the opinion. Place for Philip Snowden ! Room for Gentle Jesusism and the Brotherhood of Capital and Labour !! Make way for Cant; strew the dead hopes of the deluded worker in the path of oily Sham and baleful Ignorance.

* * *

“He did not propose to rob the millowners of their property. No ; they would compensate them for their mills as they would compensate the landowners and railway companies. That was sound political doctrine.”

* * *

Instead of which a Manchester comrade writes “Seeing that the workers only receive one-third of their product (and have to spend this third in buying the necessaries of life) how can they buy out the capitalist class ? If the workers acquired political power—thereby robbing that power of the sting it has hitherto possessed, the power, namely, of the oppression of a class, they would not need to “compensate.”

* * *

While that power is not possessed the capitalist class would refuse to be “bought out,” even it the miracle of producing the purchase money were to be performed, since, if every avenue of investment were closed to them the said purchase money would be useless.

* * *

Compensate ? Listen !

* * *

“I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker ‘Is so-and-so not back yet’ ‘No.’ How long since she was confined ?’ ‘A week.’ ‘She might easily have been back long ago. That one over there only stays three days.’ ”

(Official Report on Mills, 1844.)

* * *

Again: “I have seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a fully developed woman, but pregnant, and it is by no means rare in Manchester for women (!) to be confined at fifteen years of age.”—(Dr. Robertson, 1844.)

* * *

Once more—this is YOUR SHOW, brothers of the working class, ye whose sisters were at the mercy of every millowner, ye who NOW provide the prostitute for the class to be “compensated”—”In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, little fingers and little feet were kept in ceaseless action. They slept by turns and in relays, in filthy beds that were never cool. Many died and were buried secretly at night in some desolate spot, and many committed suicide.”

(“Industrial History of England,” p. 180.)

* * *

Compensate ? In the name of the oppressed of all time, in the name of the maimed and the scrapped, the outraged woman and the joyless child, by the suffering and agony and the bloody sweat of OUR CLASS, who prates of compensation ?

* * *

THEY SLEPT BY TURNS IN BEDS THAT WERE NEVER COOL.

* * *

Compensate !

SNOGGY.

NHS dispute: In place of life (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the long-awaited and greatly feared industrial action by workers in the National Health Service began in South London. Hundreds of ward orderlies, cleaners, catering staff and hospital porters declared a one-day strike. Similar action was taken in Manchester, where three people were arrested after nurses clashed with NUPE pickets outside Oldham and District General Hospital. On May 19 over 600,000 NHS employees took the day off in various parts of the country; and on May 27 and subsequent Thursdays for several weeks two-hour stoppages by selected groups were staged. The action was stepped up in June.

In the months since the beginning of the dispute, hospital waiting lists have soared, admissions have plummeted and tempers have frayed. Rumours are rife that the strikes may be extended to accident and emergency services within the near future.

The aim behind this action is to improve the pay offer for 1982-3 made to nurses, midwives and ancillary staffs by the Department of Health and Social Security. Initially, the offer proposed an increase of 4 per cent on basic income for most ancillary workers, and an average increase of 6.4 per cent for most nursing and midwifery grades, “in recognition of their special skills”, with veiled promises from the Secretary of State for Social Services, Norman Fowler, of future additional payments to nurses “to be drawn from government contingency funds”. Ambulance workers, doctors and dentists and hospital electricians and maintenance staff, whose pay settlements are made separately, were offered average pay rises of 5, 6 and 8 per cent respectively.

In June, the offer to nurses and midwives was increased to 7.5 per cent; ambulance workers and hospital pharmacists were to receive 6.5 per cent and other ancillary workers 6 per cent. These offers were immediately rejected by all except nurses in the Royal College of Nursing, who have now also voted to turn down the offer.

The nurses' and ancillary workers’ claim was. and continues to be, for increases averaging 12 per cent on basic rates, with a reduction in hours of work and more annual leave, and future index-linked pay increases. For the first time, the ten TUC-affiliated unions representing health service workers were to co-ordinate the campaign for these increases through their membership of the TUC’s Health Services Committee. Of the ten, the most important would be the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) with 300,000 technical, ancillary and nursing staff members in the NHS, the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO) with 100,000 NHS members and the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) with 150,000 members employed mainly in psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals. The Royal College of Nursing, which is not affiliated to the TUC but has for some years flirted with the idea of limited industrial action by its 195,000 nursing and midwifery members, declared its support for the campaign in June, though without any change in its "no strike” policy. As it represents more nurses than any other union, the RCN’s support was of crucial importance to the success of the campaign.

Official union plans were to reduce the health service to an emergency service within a few weeks, beginning as early as possible after April 26, organisation being initially by local union branches. TUC policy prevented the withdrawal of emergency cover and there has been no change in this at the lime of writing, although spokesmen for individual branches have asserted that the policy is not sacrosanct.

Since the strike began to bite, with a lull at the height of the Falklands escapade (a propitious exercise for the government from more than one point of view), the propaganda war between unions and DHSS has been vigorous and almost unbroken. The government has naturally gone to great lengths to sugar the pill which its workers are expected to swallow, promising “new arrangements" (unspecified) for nurses' and midwives’ pay in the future, based perhaps on a "comparability scale” of the sort mooted on August 18, and talks on new arrangements for ancillary staff. It has also descended to the unusual tactic of publishing blatantly misleading advertisements to NHS staff in national newspapers (of which more below). But the DHSS campaign has concentrated on the message that, owing to the nature of their work, health workers are morally not entitled to strike or take other action which. in the words of Norman Fowler, "must damage patient services and lengthen waiting lists”.

This judgment has posed a considerable dilemma for health service workers. Indeed, it was thought at first that public outrage against the withdrawal of one of the most vital services — outrage assiduously stimulated by the national newspapers — might seriously weaken the strikers' resolve. In fact, unexpected support for the 12 per cent claim received initially from hospital employees in the National Association of Health Authorities of England and Wales, and from doctors of the usually very conservative British Medical Association and in Scotland and Yorkshire, have greatly improved the NHS workers’ public image. (The Lancet, one of the two most respected medical journals, on August 13 1982. actually called for Fowler’s resignation over the matter. But doubts remain among the strikers about the "justice" and efficacy of their action.

The NHS is the largest employer in Britain, with nearly 800,000 workers, and is the tenth largest employer in the world. NHS pay policy, while it is in the end controlled by the government, is influenced, for some groups of workers, by "independent assessors" like the Doctors' and Dentists’ Pay Review Board. (Senior hospital doctors also retain the archaic right to confer “merit awards" upon one another, which may add around £18,000 to an annual income of £21,000 at top consultant rates, without any party to the exercise being accountable to Parliament or the DHSS.) No independent bodies exist to assess the pay of nurses, midwives and the majority of ancillary workers; the nurses’ and midwives' Whitley Councils are merely negotiating forums. Pay increases in the NHS have not been index-linked and are consequently subject to the vicissitudes of government policy, and have tended to be very low.

The 1974-9 Labour government, pledged to rectify this situation, increased NHS wages and salaries in their first year of office. By October 1975 wage rates were approaching those in other industries, but in subsequent years they again fell behind. The present rate for an unskilled male worker in the NHS is about £65 a wreck. After a 12 per cent increase, the basic rate would still be below the net family income at which supplementary benefit becomes payable (currently £82 a week). So a high level of overtime working is necessary for ancillary workers with families — if it can be had. But there are still workers like the laundry attendant interviewed in the Observer of August 15, who earns £71 take-home pay for a 40-hour week plus 18 hours overtime, and who must support families on that. A first year nurse working full-time on the wards receives £63 (gross) a week, after working frequent night shifts and “unsocial hours" as part of the job contract. Board and lodging costs for nurses in hospitals have risen by between 18 and 33 per cent in the past year. According to COHSE, many of these people would be better off on the dole.

On August 6, the DHSS paid about £85.000 for an advertisement in the main national newspapers “to ensure that all NHS staff are aware of the facts". It stated that a ward sister’s “estimated weekly gross average earnings” would be raised by the current pay offer to between £132 and £170 a week. For a staff nurse, the increase would bring in from £107 to £131 a week; for a male ancillary worker (position unspecified) £91-£146 a week, and for a female ancillary worker, £82-£139.

The following day, health workers staged protest strikes in several Scottish hospitals, and COHSE announced that it would report the DHSS to the Advertising Standards Authority. For, as a NUPE official commented, the higher figure mentioned in relation to ancillary staff would apply to no more than 160 top-grade employees, and then only after working up to 20 hours overtime. All the other figures similarly assumed maximum rates of overtime and additional earnings. In fact, most ancillary workers in cleaning, catering and other general service fields are women working part-time, who would be quite unable to earn such amounts.

The DHSS has since admitted that surplus payments were included in its calculations, but insisted they were “statistically valid". Union statistics clearly show that this was not true, whatever “estimated weekly gross average earnings” may be taken to mean. Need we be surprised? Lies and distortions are constantly fed to us to try to persuade people to smoke cigarettes, to insure for private health care, to support the armed forces, so why should the government not use the same tactics in wage-bargaining?

The way in which the health workers’ scruples about striking have been used by successive governments to hold down wages is demonstrated by the recent awards of between 14.3 and 18.6 per cent to top civil servants, the judiciary and senior officers in the armed forces, of 9 per cent to gas workers and 7.5 per cent to public sector manual workers outside the NHS. For the health workers, according to Norman Fowler, 6 per cent should suffice and 12 per cent is "unrealistic" — as if 12 per cent on a pittance made for anything other than a slightly larger pittance.

The question of pay is not the only one to trouble NHS staff. In recent years the loss of small hospitals and the concentration of beds and ancillary services in large district general hospitals, the reduction in patient turnover time and the cut-back in recruitment have greatly increased the work-load on existing staff. In Brent Health District in London, it has been calculated that earlier discharge of patients (five days earlier, in some cases) and a reduction in the time for which a bed is left empty between successive patients have allowed a 25 per cent reduction in beds without affecting waiting lists. As there has been no increase in the number of staff employed in Brent, either in the hospitals or in the community where patients now do most of their convalescing, this has imposed a heavy extra burden on hospital workers. The day-to-day running of a hospital is very labour-intensive; it is difficult to reduce this by introducing machinery. And it must be remembered that 75 per cent of NHS employees are women who, besides their traditionally lower earnings, tend to have pressing commitments and a full job of unpaid work at home.

Women's average earnings now are 37 per cent lower than men’s; 87 per cent of part-time workers and 75 per cent of lower-paid workers are women. Promotion prospects for women in the NHS are poor, and many are forced to take on agency (private) nursing — a notoriously unreliable source of income — in their off- duty hours. On those precious days when they are not working unsocial hours and night shifts for the NHS, they may be doing so for the agency. In truth, they are a peculiarly exploited group of workers.

The long hours are made even more intolerable by the conditions in which they have to be spent. Many hospitals are still situated in old and wholly inappropriate buildings, particularly geriatric, psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals and small general hospitals in underfinanced and inner city districts. Less than a quarter of existing hospitals have been built since 1948, as against half of the existing schools and houses; 40 per cent of hospitals in England and Wales were built before 1918. and 6.5 per cent before 1850 (In Sickness and in Health — David Owen). The task of caring for sick human beings in such decayed surroundings may be a particularly frustrating and at times a revolting one, and not without risks. Occupational accidents are by no means uncommon: orthopaedic injuries constitute a particularly grave risk for nurses, through proper lifting aids not being installed.

Even in the best-run hospitals workers may be exposed to infections, air-borne drugs, chemical toxins and radiation at a high level. Among the identified effects of this exposure are miscarriages, which occur twice as commonly among women with an occupational risk of inhaling low levels of anaesthetic gases than among others. Occurrence of tuberculosis is five times as common among microbiological laboratory staff in hospitals as in the general population (Hospital Hazards —leaflet produced by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1981). It is true that the NHS commonly gives its staff priority over other patients when they are in need of medical advice or treatment; but that can hardly be regarded as a perk. People clearly do not join the health service for the sake of their own health.

In an attempt to play down the penalties of employment in the NHS, Fowler referred to it in Parliament as a “service which enjoys secure and growing employment”. This hackneyed argument no longer holds water. It is true that the number of people employed by the service is expected to rise by around 10,000 in 1982-3 but it certainly is not true that individual employees arc secure in their jobs. In such a labour- intensive industry, the tightening of belts demanded by successive governments over the last two decades has meant lay-offs, either through hospital closures or as a result of the policy of reducing staffing levels by “natural wastage”. The resulting increase in work loads for remaining staff has been partially offset, at least in the short term, by the conscription of student nurses and police cadets, who can be made to work hard for little pay, and by steadily increasing numbers of voluntary workers. These people effectively mask the effects of job losses, and even of strikes; the fear that voluntary labour may be used for strikebreaking has often inhibited workers from taking industrial action in the past. This is not to deny the useful work performed by voluntary workers, particularly in geriatric and psychiatric care, and care of the mentally handicapped. But the extent to which voluntary labour has replaced paid labour in hospitals of all kinds puts in doubt both the future standard of care in these hospitals and the good-will extended to voluntary workers by employees whose livelihoods they threaten.

It seems likely that the government will take advantage of the present chaos in the public service to urge increased openings for private contractors in NHS ancillary services and for medical insurance schemes. Even before the dispute, the growing proportion of the NHS workforce hired from private companies was a source of concern to workers who feared it would divide and weaken the unions at times of industrial action, as well as masking the effects of redundancies in the regular workforce. In Sweden. 70 per cent of ancillary services are contracted out to private operators; and such an arrangement would be favoured by the present government, since contract workers are easily hired and fired, and are often more flexible than permanent workers.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the dispute is the distinctive attitude of the nurses and midwives. Until now, these workers have been well known for their willingness to perform an exceptionally demanding and highly responsible job, often under totally inadequate conditions and for the most punishing hours, in return for very low rates of pay. They have been eulogised on paper and on the screen as earthly angels with unshakeable traditions of discipline and dedication. It has often been assumed, both by governments and by the public at large, that in keeping with their singularly “feminine” (because caring) role, nurses should also be politically weak, and should do the feminine thing by obeying the (predominantly male) authorities, just as they are expected to obey the (predominantly male) doctors. Nurses have tended to accept this and have therefore become among the most conspicuously exploited of all workers. Offers of sympathetic strike action from non-nursing trade unions often reflect this all too clearly. Such support may come across as tactless or patronising and may actually reinforce the popular prejudice that a "caring profession" must inherently be vulnerable to exploitation. Even when their union colleagues can turn this prejudice to their own advantage — as during this dispute, when health ministers confessed that only popular sympathy for the nurses prevents them from taking a tougher line with the other health service staffs many nurses feel like weak and therefore second-class union members.

PC

Blogger's Note:

I'm not 100% sure who 'PC' was. My initial thought was that it could have been an early pen-name for Carl Pinel, but I've since been told that it could have been (Doctor) Peter Cook. Fingers crossed that one of them reads the blog, and clears the matter up for me.

The true meaning of Welfare Supervision. (1916)

From the September 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Signs are not wanting that at the cessation of hostilities on the Continent and the other fronts a return of the old industrial struggles will once again be the order of the day. Even now politicians and the Press vie with each other in an endeavour to gloss over the struggle of the classes, and here and there ladle out to both employers and employees the need for a “give-and-take” policy.

The old wheezes of “co-partnery” and “profit-sharing,” which have been tried in certain businesses, have not worked out as satisfactorily as was anticipated, owing to the flood of light shed thereon by Socialist thought and criticism. And so to-day we find an agitation springing up on every hand for “Welfare Supervisors.” It is somewhat significant how fresh devices are introduced one after another in order to give a new lease of life to capitalist production and to further rivet the chains of wage-slavery around the workers.

With the institution of the ministry of munitions further official notice was given to this question of “Welfare Supervisors,” and at the same period “The Times” newspaper pointed out how, in the German workshops, this ministering to the inner man and attendance to the congenial conditions of workshop life greatly facilitated the method of production. The Health of Munition Workers Committee which was appointed issued a report in which they stated : “The provision of facilities for obtaining a hot meal at the factory are often inadequate, especially for night workers. Frequently the arrangements made for heating carried food are also wholly insufficient. Yet the munition worker, like the soldier, requires good rations to enable him to do good work.” The last clause of the report goes on to say : “The rapid growth of commercial undertakings, and in particular of munition works, makes it difficult or impracticable for the management to deal, unless by special arrangement, with the numerous problems of labour efficiency, and the personal welfare of the employee. Yet without some such special arrangement there cannot fail to be “diminished output, discontent, and unsmooth working.” Thus we see that ” Welfare Supervisors” are necessary in order to ensure that the workers shall at certain intervals, take in just sufficient fuel and oil to keep the machine running smoothly !

In this connection also “The Stratford Express” for August 12th and 19th published two articles entitled “The Human Element in Factories” by B. Seebohm Rowntree. To reverse the order of things, I venture to quote the concluding paragraph first. It says : “After more than 20 years experience of welfare supervision in my own factory, I am thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of appointing welfare supervisors where large numbers of girls are employed. They not only promote the well-being, the health and efficiency of the girls, but they save the management an enormous amount of trouble. And it must be remembered that an increase of efficiency is important, not only to employers, but also to the workers, for there cannot be progressive improvement in wages unless there is progressive improvement in methods of production.” Here we have the frank confession of a member of the employing class who freely admits that it pays to look after and improve the general conditions of factory life. The phase “it must be remembered that an increase of efficiency is important, not only to employers, but also to the workers, for there cannot be progressive, improvement in wages unless there is progressive improvement in methods of production,” merely demonstrates the fact that the more efficient the workers become, combined with the elimination of wasted energy and better conditions of labour, the greater is the surplus-value produced for the employer with a lesser number of wage-slaves required to produce a given quantity of commodities. The sop offered as an inducement to greater effort on the part of the workers—that they will get a “progressive improvement in wages”—further emphasises the measure of their exploitation.

Our author in his opening remarks tells his readers that “Welfare supervision is simply the creation in a factory of those conditions which enable each individual worker to be and to do his best.” He then goes on to say that so long as factories were small there was no need of any special organisation to secure this end, for with the close relationship of master and employee every worker could be put to the work best fitted for him ; but as factories grew larger and larger this personal relation was crowded out. “The employer no longer knew his workers even by name. They came to be impersonal ‘factory hands’ to him, who were treated in the mass, without individual consideration.” To most of our readers this will be commonplace.

Moreover, Mr. Rowntree says “some employers may think that welfare supervision is merely a fad. This is quite a mistaken view. It is not only good . . . but it is thoroughly sound business from the standpoint of the employer ;” and “it is stupid to treat workers in the mass.” Then, he goes on to ask : “What should we think of an employer who treated his machinery in the mass ? As a matter of fact he watches his mechanical equipment with extraordinary care. It is continually tested to find out if there is any overstrain. A man goes round with an oil can all day long to see that there is no unnecessary friction anywhere.” After pointing out the care and attention which is paid to the machinery the writer suggests that a similar method should be applied to the human beings who are infinitely more complex and delicate, and adds : “If only employers would treat their employees with as much consideration as they do their machines, they would have less difficulty in getting satisfactory output.” With regard to the hours of labour for girls and women a suggestion of a 48 hour week is put forward, and we are informed that the employer “is wise who adopts this course.” A little later one observes the following remark : “I question whether it ever pays to keep on working girls for more than 54 hours a week.” With regard to the question of workers partaking of lunch it is put forward with all seriousness that “a short break of, say, ten minutes in the middle of the morning is a distinct advantage.” On the subject of canteens the writer is equally emphatic, and he goes on to say that the Americans recognise “much more fuJly than we do the advantages of good canteen arrangements in the works, adding that unless girls (and the same is equally true regarding men) in a factory can get a comfortable midday meal and a restful dinner hour, they cannot be expected to do a good afternoon’s work. He also mentions that some employers look upon comfortable mess rooms and canteens as luxuries and an expense which brings in no return. “Nothing is further from the truth,” is his rejoinder to these people. Even such things as lighting, heating, and ventilation are touched upon, with the further remark that we (the bosses) are quite alive to the importance of these things in our own offices.

The method of engaging the newcomer to the factory is next dealt with at great length, it being suggested that the applicant should be engaged by the “welfare supervisor” instead of by the foreman. The supervisor would then have a talk with the applicant and ascertain her qualifications, and having decided to recommend her for employment would “try to interest her in it, making her feel both that the firm intends to do the ‘square thing’ by her, and that she must do the ‘square thing’ by the firm.” This reminds one of the old idea depicted on Trade Union banners showing the two hands clasped representing Capital and Labour ; and strange to say, these relics of the earlier days of trade union activity are still to be seen dragged through the streets on occasions when there is no possibility whatever of obscuring the class struggle ! The identity of interests, forsooth ! The robbed and the robbers doing “the square thing” ! What balderdash !

One could go on and quote more extensively from these articles, but I think sufficient has been culled to show that the whole purpose underlying them is simply an object lesson to the employing class on how, under the pretence of an interest in the welfare of their slaves, they can better exploit them. Fellow-workers, let it be an object lesson to you also.

T.

Peru and England. A Comparison. (1912)

From the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has lately been startled by the publication of sensational reports of the methods by which a British rubber company, operating in Peru, obtains its rubber.

The nauseating details which have found their way into the papers do not by any means exhaust the catalogue of atrocities inflicted upon the company’s Indian victims, or sap the infinite variety of the tortures used to terrorise these poor people into superhuman exertion in the collection of rubber ; nor do those widely publicised details touch the limits of ferocity laid bare in the Government Blue-Book.

This, however, is not meant in the sense of the degree of physical suffering involved, for it is inconceivable that the agonies of roasting the feet over a slow fire (as quoted by the newspapers) can be transcended, even where the torturers go the length of smashing up a man’s organs with a stick, or inserting burning brands in a woman’s body in a part which even a Blue Book only dares hint at. But these details which the British Press even cannot lift the veil on, add to all the other horrors some inkling of the filthy-mindedness that goes hand-in-hand with British capital, to win dividends for British Christians and the like.

It is not the purpose here, however, to treat the public to a recital of the sickening story of mutilation and murder reported by Consul-General Casement, but to direct attention to horrors no whit lees sickening which are mere everyday affairs much nearer home than the forest glades of Peru. Those who are so startled and shocked to find that the inhumanities which make the names of the old-time Spanish “conquerors” stink in the nostrils, still survive in British capitalism; those who are horrified to discover that the tale of the Congo has been re-written with but varied detail in the solitude of Western forests, those who have observed with pained surprise, the agonised convulsions of a harmless and innocent people being done to death in Southern America, transforming themselves into the sensational throbbing of rubber shares in Throgmorton Street at the time of the great “rubber boom,” do not need to throw their imagination half way round the world in order to find something to move their “bowels of compassion” or stir their righteous—very righteous—indignation.

As a matter of fact murder and brutality—like charity, according to the account of those who know all about it—begin at home. Not only, mark you, the murder of the Peruvian Indians, whose doom is pronounced in the London board rooms by silk-hatted directors and cosmopolitan financiers. We do not have to turn to the diocese of the Bishop of the Falkland Islands (who is now in England trying to raise funds to further the interests of British capital in Peru and the vicinity, instead of being in his diocese supervising the decent burial of the corpses British capital is providing there), one does not, I say, have to go to that Bishop’s diocese to find matter for “thrills” and “shocks.”

No, there is not one of the atrocities related in Blue Book Cd. 6266 that cannot be paralleled in the diocese of the Bishop of London, or in the diocese of any other English Bishop. There is not one page of this voluminous report, reeking with bloody tragedy, that might not have been made to carry as tragic and as bloody an inscription by any faithful hand that should have set itself the task of chronicling the history of any single day in any of the great manufacturing towns of highly civilised, free and Christian England.

Capitalism is very much the same thing in all its operations and in its every sphere of influence. What is good or evil under it is determined only but its result upon profits—by its effect upon ruling interests. Capital, as Marx says, comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. And one Dunning many years ago wrote :—

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere ; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness ; 50 per cent., positive audacity ; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws ; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged, if turbulence and strife will bring profit, it will freely encourage both.”

So outrage is inherent in the system—nay, that is but half stating the case : outrage is the foundation and corner-stone of the system. The great primal outrage is the seizure by those who rule under the system, of every means by which men might support themselves in any form of independence. Upon that great, tragic outrage—the closing of every avenue of life against the worker, the whole system of robbery, violence and violation rests. And that robbery, that violence, that violation, is as complete, cruel, and shameful here in England as anything Consul-General Casement travelled so far to put on record.

Violation of Indian girls ! It is common enough in any factory district in England for girls to have to submit to the bestial attentions of their foremen and male overlookers. They have to choose between that and starvation. It is a fact well known to the employers, who do not interfere (as has been admitted) because it smooths the way to prostitution, which is the necessary adjunct to the low wages paid by the factory masters. It is a fact also well known and confessed by our legislators, as is proven by the provision made for its interdiction in a projected Bill.

In offices things are much the same, and in large drapery establishments every “encouragement” (such as locking the girls out in the street all night if they are not in by a specific time) is held out for their girl assistants to resort to certain means of augmenting their scant wages.

Notwithstanding that the method is differed the violation at home is as brutal and shameful as that in Peru. In the latter case the weapon made use of is physical force: in the former starvation In the one case the tormentor has possession of the woman’s body, in the other case of her means of livelihood. The compulsion is pretty complete in both cases.

We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by the old capitalist defence that “this is a free country.” The freedom of these girls to leave their employment is merely the freedom to starve. That is the freedom which belongs to every wage-slave. It is the freedom which followed naturally upon the enclosure of all land and the seizure of all the means of living. The capitalist has no need to hunt the forests of this country for workers : he has shut them out of the fields and forests, and left them only the freedom to starve. This freedom the capitalist would not interfere with if he could. It is the greatest asset he has. The slave has not got it, hence the slave must be fed, cannot be trusted with delicate machinery, cannot be speeded up to the requirements of the modern factory system. The lash never has been able to compel anything but the quality of labour most nearly approaching that abstract conception, the “purely physical”—it cannot induce the exercise of “gumption.” Only when the workers are free to starve, and liable to be thrown out on the street to do it, do they become fit and proper instruments for the economical manipulation of the modern machinery for producing commodities.

Hence the masters cherish the workers’ freedom to starve even more than do the workers themselves. It is the basis of all their exploitation, their standby in every difficult situation.

And similarly it is the basis of the whole awful position of the workers. Because this freedom is their only alternative, they present themselves for sale in the labour market. Because they have only the freedom to starve they face death in the mine and torment before the battle-ship’s furnaces. They give up their whole lives to unrewarded drudgery in sordid and bestial conditions, submitting to the vilest prostitution of their labour in the performance of slave tasks, all because they may starve if they don’t.

And at every turn they are offered the same alternative by which it is pretended the women may save themselves from violation, but which, nevertheless, cannot save any workingman from handing over his body, nay, his life, to exploitation, cannot afford one of them escape from a prostitution as vile (if we could only see it thro’ the unaccustomed eyes of the savage) as any that women are subjected to through their sex.

The other atrocities reported from the rubber districts all have their parallels in any capitalist country. The police brutality at Liverpool and Manchester and year ago, when scores of people of both sexes and all ages were maimed for life; the murders at Tonypandy, Belfast, and other places, the kicking of pregnant women quite recently at Canning Town, show very plainly that when it comes to dealing with resistance to their plundering, the master class know not the slightest difference between the Indians of Peru and the working class of England. Rubber is not more bloodstained than coals. Dying Indians are not more contemptuously thrown into the bush to expire than are our miners bricked up in the blazing pits to burn. The Waste of Indian life is no more extravagant than that of shunters on British railways, and callous brutality cannot anywhere outdo that displayed in certain capitalist hospitals, where healthy working-class children are innoculated with filthy diseases and reduced to noisome masses of corruption—because they are cheaper than calves. And where, in the whole of the Consul-General’s report, can a more stupendous crime, a more ghastly butchery, be found recorded than has been recently witnessed in the streets of London, where the shipping masters have deliberately set themselves to crush a hundred thousand men into submission by starving their wives and children ?

Let us be clear in our comparison. Let us get the true perspective. The Indians, the evidence in the report tells us, are so used to being flogged that they do not so much mind it. Let us make sure that our familiarity with the brutality of our daily existence does not blind us to its real horror. The Indians, while they have their forests, have to be hunted and captured. This, as we understand it, is illegal. But generations ago the workers of this country were captured by depriving them of their means of living. Hence if they won’t submit to the masters’ terms they are legally free to starve. It is this illusive difference in the aspect of the cases which blinds us to their essential similarity. Under the cloak of legality the workers of the whole civilised world are enslaved and starved and bludgeoned and raped to satiate the lusts of a parasite class, and when we see our own condition reflected in a savage race, and only revealed because the savage, having his means of livelihood in his native wild wood, has to be exploited by “illegal” means, we are astonished and shocked.

The only remedy, both for ourselves and for the Indian, is to take away from the capitalists the means of life and make them the property of the community, first capturing the political power by which they hold their sway.

A. E. Jacomb