Strikes: the Socialist Viewpoint (1978)

From the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because the Christmas holidays compel us to go to press early with this issue, the above articles were written at the beginning of December.

The Firemen

The Firemen’s strike which started in November provides an outstanding example of how capitalism regards the working class. The firemen, who had never gone on strike before, had a long-standing grievance over pay. Their demand was for a 30 per cent. increase. The Government’s response was that it would not agree to any rise of more than 10 per cent, in the “public sector” of employment; although rises in industry go above this figure, and though wages are now running substantially behind prices.

From the beginning of the strike, the principal question raised was the moral one: were not the strikers acting without conscience towards their fellow men? Firemen were repeatedly asked by radio and television interviewers to envisage children and old people in blazing buildings. Soldiers were hastily organized to use military fire-fighting equipment. When deaths did take place in fires, they were reported on the front pages of the papers.

This humane aspect is readily taken up as a weapon by the capitalist class and its government. Nurses, teachers, doctors and other workers who perform vital services always have put in front of them the consequences if they strike. The argument must be (and is) heeded; but it would sound better if it were not connected with our rulers’ desire for cheapness. And if they themselves put other people’s lives before their own profit and security. An illustrative comparison is the decision of governments not to “give in” to ransom-demanding hi-jackers, i.e. their preparedness to let any plane-load of people be killed rather than to suffer a political disadvantage.

Who has put lives at risk in the firemen’s strike: the firemen—or is it the Government? Callaghan’s stated concern was that one concession would pave the way for others and undermine the "pay policy.” The unstated part was that this could lead to the Labour Party losing political power. While this consideration over-rules the merits of the firemen’s case, it should be pointed out that it is not “life” in general that is jeopardized by the situation: it is working-class life. The fire-prone areas are industrial districts and close-packed housing in Glasgow, East London, etc., not where the well-to-do have their residences. The latter can, in any case, retire to their cottages in the country where the part-time fire brigades are outside the dispute.

All workers should see the cynicism of the ruling class in this matter. As employees, they have to struggle against pressure on their living standards; as the working class at large, they are the victims of every “situation” and crisis in capitalism—and then told it is their greed and lack of moral fibre that is to blame.

Robert Barltrop

Bitter end at Grunwick

The Grunwick strike was called off after more than a year of agitation because the strike committee decided "that there is no point in further mass picketing, and there is little hope of any other tactics bringing victory” (The Times, 29th November 1977). “Victory” meant reinstatement of the eighty strikers and union recognition in the Grunwick factory.

Thus ends a sad episode in working-class struggles. Its history was described in last month’s Socialist Standard; it is to be hoped that some lessons at least will be learned from it. The Times report said: “The strikers feel that the union is not on their side.” It would be better put that the union mismanaged the whole thing from the start, and ended having spent (according to the Financial Times, 8th November 1977) approximately a quarter of a million pounds of funds to no purpose.

In front of everything else, strikes practically never achieve their objectives when they are prolonged. Effective action is short and sharp; since the aim is to disable the employer, the most effective strike of all is the one which never takes place, i.e. the strikers’ demand is met because the employer is anxious that production shall not be held up. If this is unpredictable, the unions should (as Marx advised them to) test the situation. But when employers show that they are prepared to resist indefinitely, the unions should recognize that they have virtually no hope of winning. Grunwick demonstrates this.

Second, the strike must be united. A ballot of all the members or employees should be the condition for its taking place, and also a ballot on returning to work. Only a section of the Grunwick workers took part in the dispute, and the basis of the strike was weakened correspondingly. It was hoped that workers in other unions could be persuaded to cut off services such as electricity and postal deliveries (post office workers did so for a time). This again should be more than a hope. It should rest on a voted-upon decision by the other unions to act in sympathy, and should take into account the possibility of action by the government.

The performances of Labour MPs and left demonstrators, striving to make political capital out of the Grunwick dispute, were wholly discreditable. They distorted the issues, alienated public sympathy, and contributed to the eventual demoralization which an unsuccessful prolonged strike produces. We sympathize with the strikers whose action began as a revolt against the contemptible Grunwick employer Ward. They may have learned things about trade-union organization, and about wage-labour and capital.

Robert Barltrop

Seeing Red (1990)

Book Review from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seeing Red—Being Green. The Life and Times of a Southern Rebel. By Denis Hill. Iconoclast Press. £8.95.

This is a disappointing book. The advance publicity suggested it would be arguing a case for socialists supporting the Green Party, but it turns out to be a wordy (nearly 600 pages) autobiography of a former member of the Communist Party (left 1969) and Secretary of Brighton Trades Council (1960-1974) who, sadly, expresses views that can only be described as racist.

At one point Hill does write: “I do not myself think that we can achieve a truly equal and just society until we have abolished the wage-system altogether. This implies the abolition of money itself, for it is the existence of these token vouchers which distorts everyone's thoughts and values". But this is marred, indeed completely negated, by a passage in the following paragraph about the need to form “a classless national community . . . based on the original Anglo-Saxon/Celtic stock" and references to “our country’s racial stock” having been diluted by mass immigration and turned into a “hybrid mixture of non-European races". Hill now supports the Green Party but we can't believe that such views will be any more acceptable to them than they are to us.

Adam Buick

Against apartheid (1990)

Book Review from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Subverting Apartheid: Education, Information and Culture under Emergency Rule. By Jim Corrigall, Elaine Unterhalter and Gillian Slovo. International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1990. £2.

In a world of objectionable regimes South Africa is in the forefront of those states in which the blatant repression of the majority population is systematically pursued. Any publication that aims to present the facts about South Africa necessarily involves a catalogue of horror. Subverting Apartheid by a group of anti-apartheid militants is no exception to this rule.

It examines the effects on the media, education and culture of Emergency Rule introduced in June 1986 and only recently relaxed and provides detailed evidence of the extent to which the apartheid regime attempted to justify and maintain its position at whatever cost to the majority. The period of Emergency Rule magnified the measures that the state was prepared to undertake in an already repressive regime This study is largely descriptive in presenting information about repression in South Africa even if it was written before the release of Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC, but it also pinpoints the failure of the state apparatus to stifle unrest and resistance.

The other concern of the study is to draw attention to those groups and individuals pursuing what it calls "the goal of national liberation, creation of a united, non-racial and democratic South Africa". The attempt to suppress what the Pretoria government viewed as revolutionary movements by a counter-revolutionary strategy did not succeed:

In spite of inflicting thousands of deaths and detaining and arresting tens of thousands, it was clear that the forces of democratic resistance were not crushed or demobilised, but adapted to the conditions of extreme repression.

It is this failure to subvert resistance that is a positive aspect of a period and place in history often associated with the purely negative. It enables the reader to find some relief from the evidence of over 5.000 deaths since 1984, of the 40,000 people who were detained without trial, and of the host of regulations restricting the activities of anyone who sought to oppose apartheid.

There is a tremendous resilience which adapts to such nightmare conditions and perpetuates the struggle against repression even in areas specifically targeted by the total might of the state apparatus. Given the restrictions imposed on informa

tion emerging from South africa, this study provides valuable evidence of what actually took place. It also helps counter some of the propaganda of the South African Department of Information whose budget for 1988-89 was R31,600,000.

Questions can, and should, be raised about the nature of the society being pursued under the guise of "national liberation", particularly as it assumes that non-racial democracy in South Africa would eradicate exploitation and oppression. What cannot be underestimated, however, is the irrepressibility, organisational abilities and adaptability of individuals and groups surviving and putting forward ideas under the most horrendous conditions. South Africa may be a byword for repression but it should also be recognised as a symbol of the resilience and resistance of the repressed.

Philip Bentley

Between the Lines: Power Play (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

POWER PLAY

People with not very much to do at noon each day tune into Channel 4 and watch The Parliament Programme. It used to be a bit dull, filled mainly with actionless-packed shots of the House of Lords (a yawn an hour) and talk about the exciting events taking place in the lower chamber. These days the programme is not just a bit dull, but dullness unrestrained, with lengthy recordings of the Commons at work. This "work" takes two main forms: there are the big shows where the two chief dinosaurs shout names at each other across the room, while backbenchers make animal noises: and there are the fringe shows—which is what goes on most of the time—where the chamber is as empty as the bars are full and a few unknown losers sit around trying to make the poll tax or Scottish water supplies sound interesting.

In the big shows there are set postures which regular viewers of The Parliament Programme have come to expect. There is Kinnock's effort to sound like Thatcher and Thatcher's effort to to sound like Churchill, the Speaker's effort to sound like a real man even though he has on a wig. and Jeremy Corbyn's effort to sound like Fidel Castro, even though he is a pathetic reformist twit. MPs seem greatly concerned to know what Thatcher is doing today. One day she will tell them that she is devoting every spare hour to the efficient legalised robbery of the working class. Paddy Ashdown speaks every so often to let everyone know that he is still there, dead centre, dead boring and with the deadest of prospects.

The Parliament Programme not only records these mind-numbing scenes of debates between those who support capitalism and those who support capitalism (with occasional interruptions from those who support capitalism), but it also invites the mind-numbers into the studio to analyse what they have been saying. It is like watching Neighbours and then inviting Melvyn Bragg to host a studio debate on the dramatic merits of each episode.

Let's face it: people who enter parliament on a capitalist ticket do so with the intention of re-arranging the furniture in a museum which should long ago have been demolished. What have workers to gain from listening to their political justifications for such futile game-playing? For example, on The Parliament Programme today (8 March) there was an interview with Graham Bright, a Tory MP for Luton, who is dedicating his energies to passing a reform which will make it more difficult for acid-house parties to be organised. The merits or demerits of his stupid law are of no interest to this writer; what is of interest is that here is a man who has been elected by tens of thousands of workers who naively imagined that making Mr Bright an MP would make their lives better. Far from this being the case, he seeks to conserve a social order which treats workers with contempt, while using his limited powers of oratory to waste parliamentary time complaining that the proles are dancing too much.

GIVING THE GIRLS A GO

It used to be argued every so often that all of this parliamentary pomposity was a reflexion of the male egos dominating the Westminster gentleman's club. Now that a female presides over the show the argument is put less often. If she has proved little else. Margaret Thatcher has shown that you do not need to wear trousers to be a callous political opportunist.

Forty Minutes (BBC2. 1 March. 9.30pm) told the story of three Tory women who were trying to be nominated as candidates for the safe Conservative seat of High Peak in South Yorkshire. The good bit of the programme was that none of them won. The bad bit was watching them trying to win. Asked whether they supported capital punishment (strangling by the state) there was not the hint of a blush as one of the smiling opportunists affirmed her full support (as if there is such a thing as partial support for hanging). In the end the Tory-women hopefuls were rejected in favour of a chap who looked like a parson who had presided at too many funerals. The pro-hanging hopeful said that she would live to fight another day. Of course, the Guildford Four would not have been able to enjoy that opportunity if she had her way.

Steve Coleman

Anyone for change? (1990)

From the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dramatic social and political upheavals in Eastern Europe led to almost daily images of public demonstrations and popular uprisings against long-established dictatorial state regimes. Coming as it did over the Christmas period, the fall of the tyrant Ceausescu in Rumania presented the western news media with a golden opportunity to make the most of a normally slack period for hard news. We were told repeatedly that "democracy" was breaking out all over Eastern Europe; that workers there were finally tasting "freedom", and that "communism" was literally falling apart. The same newshounds were far less vocal in explaining what these terms meant, and why the changes in countries such as Rumania. Hungary. Czechoslovakia and East Germany had occurred.

The Socialist Party has a very clear and practical conception of what is meant by socialism or communism; to us, both these terms mean the same thing and have nothing whatsoever in common with what are called socialist governments, countries or states. By socialism we mean a fundamental change in the economic basis of society, that is, the way in which the members of society are organised to produce and distribute the things they need to exist. It means a world-wide social system where the entire productive and distributive resources of the planet are commonly owned, consciously controlled and democratically operated by the world community as a whole. It means a society where social wealth is produced solely to meet the needs of the community, on the basis of free and equal access by all, without money or any other medium of exchange taking place.

Class Ownership

This outline contrasts sharply with the present world social order of capitalism, which grew historically out of previous social systems and now dominates the world. Its underlying features are the class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution by a small minority of people in all countries of the world, and the exclusion of the great majority of people from any significant ownership and control of these means. Having little or no resources at their disposal, the working class majority are forced by economic necessity to sell their working abilities to the capitalist minority in order to live. Wealth produced by the workers takes the form of commodities which are sold on a competitive market with a view to profit for the capitalists. In return for selling their labour power—which itself becomes a commodity—workers receive payment in the form of wages or salaries. However, in the process of production generally, these payments represent less than the value which the workers as a class create, and the difference between them is surplus value, which the capitalists repeatedly accumulate and which is the source of their monetary profit, realised through sales.

So capitalism is a class-divided, profit-generating system governed by impersonal market forces and not the needs of the human community. The useful, producing majority are in a subordinate position of wage slavery, whilst the useless, non-producing minority enjoy a privileged unearned income from their economic exploitation of the workers. The capitalists wield power through their control of governments, together with the legal and military might of the state machine. This apparatus ensures that, firstly, workers are legally robbed when they produce wealth and, secondly, it conditions them by force and ideological persuasion to accept these social arrangements as necessary, inevitable and. indeed, natural.

Since its formation the Socialist Party has consistently opposed the profit system, no matter how its supporters or apologists have tried to disguise it as something else. In this country and the United States of America, for example, the classic free market form of capitalism developed. with the ownership and control of resources in the hands of predominantly private shareholders holding legal property rights backed up by the state. In Russia, starting with the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, another form of capitalism came into being: the state-managed variety. This soon spread to most of Eastern Europe and as far afield as Cuba and China. The rulers of these countries, using the rhetoric of Marxism and the theories of Lenin, labelled these countries communist or socialist, but in reality they were state-capitalist systems of class monopoly and control, where the state itself was the collective employer of wage labour. A minority of top officials in these '‘communist’’ parties personified the capitalist class: they directed the production of goods and services which did not belong to the "people" but were sold within a buying and selling framework. The majority of people were excluded from access to this wealth, and like their counterparts in the ‘free" west could only buy back what their wage rations would allow. The Socialist Party is just as hostile to this arrangement of social affairs as we are to the supposedly liberal free market with which we are only too familiar.

Reforms No Solution

Because it is not primarily geared to satisfying people's needs but with producing saleable commodities, capitalism inevitably generates insoluble social problems, like starvation, homelessness and war. the latter being the outcome of competitive economic rivalry between capitalist states over trade routes, raw materials and sources of profitable investment. For the working class this means lives of relative poverty, fear, insecurity and frustration, arising out of our alienation from real social power and control over our lives.

Socialists argue that these problems cannot be reformed away, as the various conventional political parties continually advocate. Whether capitalism is run by those on the right, left or centre, the problems arise directly from production for sale and profit, and will only disappear when workers in a majority become conscious of their class interests and abolish capitalism.

It is workers who keep capitalism in being through their misguided support for its political representatives, including the many misnamed socialist and communist parties which have done so much to obscure and distort the concept of socialism. Part of the ideology of capitalism is that society cannot function without government and leaders, and that workers at election times can register their votes to put into power the political party of their choice. In the state capitalist countries, workers do not possess this much vaunted "democratic freedom" to swap their political leaders around, even though this right would still leave them in the position of being wage-slaves.

When a majority of the world's workers understand what socialism is and want it, they can organise themselves to take the necessary democratic political action to abolish the capital/wage-labour relationship and bring in common ownership of all resources, democratic control by the majority, and production solely for use in accordance with their self-defined needs.

Socialism is an exciting vision of a world freed from artificial, market-based restrictions which will allow human beings to live in peace with each other. With the problems of social living solved, we will be able to determine for ourselves the kind of relationships and lifestyles most suited to our changed conditions, relationships not imposed from above but freely chosen by ourselves.

So the real choice facing workers all over the world is not between private and state capitalism but between production for profit and production directly for need. The scale and growth of modern technological developments make socialism a practical possibility now. and not some distant utopian fantasy—the missing element is the political awareness of the majority. The real utopian fantasy is capitalism working without its inherent problems, and we therefore urge you to consider seriously the revolutionary socialist alternative which has never been tried anywhere. Join us and help to make it a reality.

Valentine McEntee

Exhibition Review: 'The Lost Boys' (2016)

Exhibition Review from the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Parr was killed on 21 August 1914 in Belgium, and was the first British soldier killed by enemy action in World War One. He was only seventeen, and presumably had lied about his age in order to enlist when he joined the Middlesex Regiment in 1912. The lower age limit for service in the British Army was nineteen, but in reality an estimated quarter of a million underage soldiers fought in the First World War. Recruiters were not always as insistent as they might have been on verifying people’s ages, especially after the war had begun, and in fact often encouraged volunteers to be less than truthful about their age.

A small but informative exhibition ‘The Lost Boys’ has been on display in the library of Manchester Metropolitan University. It does not in fact contain a vast amount of material relating to underage soldiers, though an accompanying leaflet is helpful, but features a lot of other memorabilia, and related ceramics created by students from Stoke-on-Trent and surrounding areas. Two ‘potters battalions’ were raised by a descendant of the founder of the Wedgwood company. Some ceramic figures commemorate the football matches between soldiers from the two sides on the Western Front that took place on Christmas Day 1914 during an unofficial truce.

One display case features books aimed at young people that romanticise the war. Sample titles are With Haig on the Somme and Under French’s Command (the latter authored by ‘Captain Brereton’). Four lithographic prints by Muirhead Bone, the first official British war artist, illustrate the destruction visited on many French and Belgian towns.

Nowadays the British Army’s minimum recruitment age is just sixteen, though soldiers have to be eighteen before they can serve in operations; this was changed after seventeen-year-olds had fought in the Gulf War and Kosovo. Some people have objected to such a low recruitment age, but Tim Collins, an Iraq War commander, wrote, ‘If we stopped recruiting bright 16 and 17-year-olds, we would destroy the opportunities currently afforded to these young people’ (Mail Online 19 May 2013). This means the opportunity to kill and be killed for the ruling class, just as a century ago. 

Paul Bennett

Caught in the Act: Missing a stroke (1990)

The Caught in the Act column from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Missing a stroke

Forty years is a long time and anyone who hangs on in a job that long can expect to get a gold watch which they think is a reward but which is actually a stark reminder that in a commodity-producing society our lives are tyrannised by time, not least by the need to give our employers full value for our wages by never being late for work. A recent, rather different recruit to the ranks of the long-serving is Edward Heath, whose 40 years as an MP were celebrated, a touch ghoulishly. by a lunch at London's Savoy Hotel.

The 500-odd guests were presided over by Lord Home, whose brief and disastrous premiership more or less paved the way for someone with Heath's background to become Tory leader. But Home is not one to bear grudges; after all he is an aristocratic Scottish landowner who went to Eton and played cricket for Cambridge University. Perhaps because he had to claw his way up from his origins as the son of a humble shopkeeper in the tumbling Kentish seaside town of Broadstairs, Heath does bear grudges, which means that Margaret Thatcher's presence at his celebratory lunch could hardly have added to its warmth and gaiety.

Heath has never tried to hide his pique at Thatcher's victory over him in the Tory leadership election in 1975. From his regular seat in the Commons he glowers and simmers, a persistent critic of a government which in theory he should support. This causes much resentment among Tories who are more loyal— or more ambitious. Says Teddy Taylor, the MP for Southend who has upset quite a few people in his time, "he is just enjoying himself because the government is in trouble" Well Heath doesn't look as if he's enjoying himself; after all it must be pretty stressful for a politician to try to resurrect themselves in a form which history would hardly recognise. But yes. the Edward Heath of 1990 who mutters rebelliously about our poverty, the current economic crisis and Thatcher's head-on style of politics is the same man who was Prime Minister for over three years of muddle and conflict during the early 1970s.

Selsdon Man

In fact Heath was never really secure in the leadership for he was dogged by persistent doubts about whether he was sufficiently cunning to survive in the political jungle and to keep his party in the same state. His unexpected victory in the 1970 General Election meant that he was suddenly dominant in the Tory party—the more so because coming through all that internal enmity relieved him of the usual debts to supporters. Clearly, in his old age—he is 73—Heath has forgotten the policies he was pledged to when he came to power. The 1970 election had been preceded by the notorious mini-conference of Tory leaders at the Seldson Park Hotel, which marked the beginning of the end of 'liberal'' economics and the planning of an open assault on the trade unions' power. This was called the emergence of Selsdon Man. an atavistic being who would soon be swept into extinction by progressive votes. While the Labour Party chuckled Heath replaced "liberal" Edward Boyle as shadow Education Minister with Margaret Thatcher.

But the voters found Selsdon Man rather attractive and for a while after the Tory victory in 1970 he ruled with his theories about the market economy and worker/employer confrontation. It was the government's intention that there should be no more support for ailing industry; companies which were “lame ducks"—in other words, unprofitable—should not be kept going simply because they made something useful or because a locality depended on them for employment. They should be abandoned to die. The abolition of the Prices and Incomes Board set up by the Wilson government signalled that in future both sides in industrial disputes would be left to slug it out without any interference from the government (the Industrial Relations Act which became law in August 1970 did not count as government interference). The idea was that if the employers were thrown on to their own resources they would more keenly resist wage claims and this would eventually make British industry more efficient and competitive and profitable.

U-Turns

To some people this all sounded gloriously simple and intelligent—the kind of policy some Tories had been waiting for for a very long time. But as a rehearsal of Thatcherite politics it was a disaster, at times farcical. Heath's ambition to take on the unions foundered when the Industrial Relations Court did what Parliament had told them to do and imprisoned five dockers who refused to appear before them. Quite apart from the dock strike and other protests which this provoked, this was extremely embarrassing for the government who escaped from their predicament by discovering an obscure functionary called the Official Solicitor to challenge the court's decision. Having succeeded in this, an equally obscure person called a Tipstaff went along to Pentonville prison and knocked three times on the door—or whatever Tipstaffs do when they want a door to open to relieve a government of an embarrassing blunder—and got the dockers released. Whereupon the Industrial Relations Court subsided into death.

Even more farcical were the government's attempts at controlling the economy—at one time tightening the screw, at another time loosening it only to frantically tighten it again. A recession came rumbling in. unemployment rose towards the million mark and prices—which Heath had said could be reduced "at a stroke" continued to rise The panic at Westminster became obvious for all to see when the government performed its U-turn, implementing policies which it had so recently opposed on the argument that they were destructive of the economy of British capitalism. Huge sums of money were made available to industry in investment grants with two world- class lame ducks—Rolls Royce and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders—being especially grateful to be allowed to walk again. A statutory restriction on prices and incomes was introduced and a Price Commission and a Pay Board were set up to ensure the government intervention in pay negotiations which Heath had said had been so damaging.

Three Day Week

The curtain began to come down on this rollicking farce with the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil states making hay while their skies were unclouded by competition from the North Sea, restricting production and hiking up the price of what exports they allowed. For British industry the crisis was aggravated by their deliberate policy of relying on oil rather than coal, which was always under threat from those nasty disruptive miners . . .  At the end of 1973 the government were in conflict with, apart from the miners, the electricity supply workers and the train drivers. Their response was the measure for which Heath will always be remembered: the Three Day Week and its restrictions on power consumption. As a way out, Heath chose to fight a General Election on the theme of Who Runs Britain—the Unions or the Elected Government? His defeat was by the narrowest of margins but. more importantly, his most cherished policies, through which he was to go down in history as the Saviour of the Nation, had been ignominiously abandoned.

No one can argue with Heath about the waste of the past ten years except that there is nothing better to say about his own time in power, which exposed his claim to be able, not only to control capitalism but to do it At A Stroke.

Ivan

Editorial: Poll Tax battles (1990)

Editorial from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the time for the first payment of the Poll Tax in England and Wales approaches, the battle of words that has been going on for the last couple of years about the government's decision to impose this in place of the existing system of local rates is reaching a crescendo.

Though there are new features, this battle is a continuation of the century-long struggles by sections of the propertied class to pass the burden of rates and taxes on to some other sections. For instance, there was the campaign of the landowners to secure full or partial exemption from rates for agricultural land which went on throughout the 19th century. As local rates fell heavily on them they also pressed for some items of local expenditure to be transferred to central government. This is again being proposed today with one Tory MP for a rural constituency saying that the government could greatly reduce the amount of the Poll Tax and therefore its unpopularity by more such transfers (The Times, 17 January). Other group interests obtained reduced rates for industrial and transport companies and for offices and shops.

As the cost of central and local government has increased enormously (in relation to total production it is now more than five times what it was a hundred years ago) this struggle between sections of the propertied class has intensified. And, as the workers now have a clear majority of votes in local and parliamentary elections, so have the efforts to persuade them that their interests are involved in the question of rates and taxes.

We have always urged workers to resist such efforts. As we wrote in 1912: ‘‘Right through the history of taxation the spectacle has been seen of one section of the propertied class trying to shift the burden of taxation on to another section, and the question in many minds is . . . Can they shift it on to the working class?' We answer no! The working class does not own property. They exist alone by selling their energy (their power to labour) to the employing class the owners of the means of production" (Socialist Standard, March 1912).

The economist David Ricardo wrote in 1817 that “a tax on wages is wholly a tax on profits". Adam Smith had presented the argument earlier still, in his Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith showed that if, in given market conditions, an employer could only get the workers he needed by payment of £100 a week before a tax on wages was introduced, he would have to pay a wage sufficiently larger to leave £100 a week take-home pay after the tax was imposed.

The ability of workers to maintain or improve their standard of living does not depend on whether taxes or rates (or prices or interest rates, for that matter) are rising or falling. The standard of living of the working class depends on their ability to get employment, on the amount of their wages and salaries, and on the level of expenditures they have to meet.

Material improvements of the standard of living can be gained by effectively organised workers during periods when production, sales and profits are all rising, as has taken place in the last eight years where wages have steadily risen more than prices (this despite the continued protests of government ministers). When the next depression approaches and profits fall sharply, the resistance of employers to wage claims will strengthen and the recent rate of increase of wages will be halted.

Under the new system of local government finance introduced by the Tories to replace the rates nearly all individuals over 18 will have to pay a local poll tax at full or reduced rates, and business ratepayers will pay a standard business rate. How the working class will fare will depend as in the past on conditions in the labour market, and not on whether those opposed to the Poll Tax succeed in preventing it being implemented or in getting it repealed or replaced by some other local tax. What we said in 1912 is just as relevant today: ‘‘The working class, therefore, should not waste their time seeking lower rates and taxes. The question for them is How long shall the slavery and robbery of our class continue?"'

Sting in the Tail: Spare Parts For Sale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare Parts For Sale

Those who take the view that profit has nothing to do with health must have been startled by the reports of the General Medical Council hearing on the "kidneys-for-sale" allegations.

Four doctors were in the dock accused of serious professional misconduct. They were charged with buying kidneys from four Turkish donors for use in transplant operations.

The defence produced Geoffrey Alderman, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at Holloway and Bedford College. University of London, who told the hearing: "I think it should be open to living donors to give or sell their kidneys."

The report in The Independent (18 January) stated:

  He claimed the decision to give a kidney would always be an altruistic one even if money was received. "No money could compensate for the loss of a kidney".
  Nor should arguments about exploiting the poor prevent the sale of kidneys, he said. "In a liberal democracy there are bound to be inequalities. This is the way of the world".

The professor's “liberal democracy" is of course really capitalism. Inside capitalism everything is for sale. We leave the reader to judge the "altruistic" nature of poverty-stricken desperate workers selling vital organs, and the "inequalities" that let people die because they are too poor to buy a life saving transplant.

As far as capitalism is concerned "this is the way of the world". As far as socialists are concerned it is time we got rid of the whole rotten system.

Caring Capitalism

From time to time we hear from the government that they care about the plight of the poor, the ill and the handicapped.

They point to such things as attendance allowance for those who look after terminally ill people.

A report in The Independent of 23 January 1990 illustrates what this "caring" amounts to in practice.

  But Community doctors at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine argue that many ill people die before their carers receive the allowance because of a six month qualifying period.
  Dr. Irene Higginson and colleagues discovered from records of nearly 500 cancer patients who were sufficiently disabled for their carers to be able to claim, that 92.8 per cent died within three months and 98.8 per cent within six.

Some "caring" - some system!

After Dinner Waffle

The Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd recently visited East Berlin. After a very good dinner he gave his host the East German Foreign Secretary the benefit of his views on free elections.

It was all very impressive stuff - dealing as it did with fair access to the media for all political parties. It must have been a very good dinner indeed for according to The Independent (23 January) he said:

  For in order to hold legitimate and successful free elections it Is not enough to assert a principle or even to fix a date. There have to be rules of fair and open administration of elections.
  There has to be equity in the opportunities open to the political parties. There has to be fair access to press, radio and television.

We applaud Mr. Hurd's sentiments, but we fear it was just another of those empty after dinner speeches much loved by politicians.

He surely doesn’t mean that in Britain at the next election the Socialist Party will have equity of access to the press, radio and TV.

This Gun for Hire

The fall of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe has not been greeted by universal joy. One group who are less than thrilled are the former spies and secret police who now face unemployment.

A number of Middle East regimes have started recruiting these security experts, thrown on the scrapheap by recent events. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Israel are now recruiting this pool of spooks, spies and thugs.

The Saudi intelligence chief, Turki Bin-Faisai is reported as having a 3 million dollar budget to start hiring secret agents, it says a lot for the "freedom and democracy" so beloved by the media, that every government in the world has a secret police.

Big Burger Business

27,000 people applied for a job in the latest McDonald's fast food restaurant according to Time magazine (February 5).

The American culinary empire - which some say has more to do with gastro-enteritis than gastronomy - already stretches from Seattle to Singapore. The newest offering, besides being the largest in the company's 11,300 chain, is also the first of 20 planned outlets in a $50 million deal that took 14 years of negotiation and which will see Big Mac boldly going where no burger has gone before.

Meanwhile, the lucky 605 youngsters chosen for exploitation at wages of S2.40 an hour are busy learning how to say "have a nice day" with the appropriate ingratiating smile. They can also look forward to dressing up in silly hats and scurrying around at top speed. After all, fast food demands staff who're fast on their feet.

That should be no problem for the new starts according to George Cohon, President of the Canadian subsidiary of McDonald's.

"These kids win a lot of medals in the Olympics," he says. "We can train them to work in McDonald's"

So where is this new 700 seat restaurant? It's in Pushkin Square, Moscow, just a few streets from the Kremlin.

Is there anyone out there who still thinks capitalism isn't a world wide system?


Only Human

If you ever watch "The Money Programme" or "Business Daily" on TV you will see some of society's great men being interviewed.

They are industrialists, bankers and financiers. How assured and articulate they are. and how they seem to have all the answers to every question. Here, surely, are brilliant men whom workers should admire and regard with awe.

But are they really so brilliant? Many of them who were lionised only yesterday don’t look so clever now. For example Ernest Saunders, ex-chairman of Guinness, is in disgrace and awaiting trial on serious charges. Then there's Alan Bond, the Aussie who could do no wrong but whose vast financial empire now lies in ruins. And what about all those so-shrewd bankers who threw away billions by lending to countries the rest of us wouldn't have trusted with a fiver?

Now we learn that Ferranti was taken for £215 million by a con-man who sold them a dodgy American company. What does this make Ferranti’s chairman and board?

So all of these men are clearly as fallible as anyone else and probably owe their exalted status to a combination of ability, luck, having the right connections and, in many cases, not having been caught yet.

Scorpion. 

Between the Lines: MURDOVISION (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

MURDOVISION

Would you pay Rupert Murdoch to let you watch his cheap, shoddy Sky TV network? Most TV viewers in Britain have answered very clearly. They have refused to buy satellite dishes and show little sign of being prepared to give their money to Murdoch so that they can watch bad game shows and old movies. One year after the launch of Sky TV the enterprise has been a failure, reaching far less than its original target audience. Murdoch appeared on The Media Show (C4. 8pm. 3 February) to defend his TV network He appeared to be a man who not only owned The Sun but also read it, and it is clear that if the control of culture is to be left to money-worshipping billionaires like him the future looks pretty bleak. As the Australian controller of Sky TV explained, when asked whether he thought that the channel was a threat to media quality, after working on satellite TV for a year now. I don't think I know the meaning of the term quality" Quite so.

PLAYING WITH NATURE

Notes In The Margin 1980-1990 (BBC2. 8.20pm. 1 February) was presented by Rosalind Coward. Her look back to the Eighties surveyed the growth of public concern about the environment. As a feminist, whose writings have tended to expose the claims of those who suggest that Nature determines what is normal. Coward has good reason to be cautious in the face of some of the current greenish noises about the need for humans to live in harmony with nature. She is not opposed to the principle of ecological balance Far from it. she seems to agree with the view of the Socialist Party that humans will only have a future if they see themselves as part of the environment rather than as its destructive masters. 

Coward's concern is about those people who have suggested that there is some kind of Nature—normally depicted as a person (Mother Nature) and as female—which humans must obey and that failure to obey Mother Nature means that we shall be punished. Coward showed the example of the advocates of so-called alternative health therapy who tell people that illness is a result of failing to have the right mental attitude to Nature. Therefore, if you have cancer it is because you have had the wrong attitude to living; if you adopt the right lifestyle Nature will be kind to you. This sort of eco-fascism. which suggests that Mother Nature is some kind of tyrannical and punitive goddess who will hurt those who fail to fall in line with Her laws, is dangerous nonsense. Of course, it is a material fact that if you live in conflict with your environment you will harm it as well as yourself, but Rosalind Coward was quite right to point out that it is idealistic self-deception to imagine that illness and mortality are the products of bad thinking. Certain radical Greens adopt a rather smug attitude concerning proper lifestyles. They leave out of account the material pressures upon millions of workers which leave them no option to live healthily. They also fail to see that much of what they imagine to be "natural" is only the norm in a society which puts money before people Coward did a good job in warning us of the philosophical baggage carried by many well-meaning greenish folk

TV AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

We pointed out last month how TV played a key role in spreading ideas during the recent workers' upsurge in Eastern Europe It is interesting to note, in support of this claim, that when Azeri workers tried something similar, one of the first actions the Russian army took was to disable the TV station in Baku to stop it playing the role it had in Eastern Europe The Azeris were motivated by politically unsound nationalist sentiments, but once workers have the right ideas in their heads it will be just as well for Rupert Murdoch and his gang to book themselves a room reservation on the next space shuttle.

Steve Coleman

Who are the dreamers? (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is crying out for change. Routinely, millions of children die each year of starvation while billionaires spare themselves no indulgence. Meanwhile, ever new weapons of death are produced for our "security". Yet people say that we socialists are utopian because we hold to the view that a new society is the only lasting solution to the mess we're in. and that this must be achieved democratically. Yes", they say. "the world is heading for disaster, but it's better to try to make smaller changes than go all out for socialism and perhaps change nothing",

We are called Utopians because we dare to suggest that we could run our lives in a much more harmonious way, instead of succumbing to the prevailing view that things must carry on more or less as they are. At root, the critics see socialism as just an idea, perhaps even a nice idea, but one that is not likely to materialise. From their perspective we are mad even to sketch out what a better society could be like and should limit ourselves to short-term changes such as bringing down interest rates, or getting rid of a certain type of missile, which might improve things— somehow.

Utopians and Socialists
Part of the confusion about the meaning of the term utopia comes from its first use in Thomas More's book of the same name The word is a pun: eu in Ancient Greek meaning "good". (o)u meaning no", and topos meaning “place". This definition implies that a utopia is a good place that doesn't exist, much like the land described in the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Many books other than More's have outlined utopias, the most famous socialist utopia being News from Nowhere by William Morns where he painted a picture of a classless. stateless, moneyless society, something like the one the Socialist Party is talking about. Many political books have utopian elements, features that the writer sees as desirable in a good" society. Even a book of Mrs Thatcher s speeches might have utopian elements in it, for some people.

There has been a tradition in socialist writing dating back to Marx and Engels of avoiding going into too much detail about what socialism would be like (although there was a great deal of agreement about socialism meaning a moneyless classless society). When Marx and Engels labelled earlier socialists (like Saint-Simon and Robert Owen) utopian, they simply meant that their ideas were before their time. Earlier socialists wanted a world of abundance and co-operation before there was a sufficient level of political consciousness and technology to support such a society: so the more completely plans of a new society were worked out in detail, the more they drifted into fantasies with no basis in the real world. It wasn't that Marx and Engels thought that you should never talk about what socialism was, but rather that talking about it made no difference until the other requirements had been met.

The idea of socialism stopped being utopian (in the sense of an unrealisable dream) for Marx and Engels once capitalism had developed sufficiently to allow the working class to become politically organised, and when the level of industrial technology brought the potential to produce an abundance of goods to meet everyone's needs. It is more than a hundred years since Marx's death and the advanced level of technology that now exists is a very real basis for a truly free and co-operative society. There's certainly nothing unreal about suggesting that we could organise a better world now. The real dreamers are those who refuse to describe the sort of society that they're after but rather muddle along hoping that this or that reform will somehow make the profit system behave humanely—something it has never done so far.

The Real Dreamers
So who is being unrealistic? Some people on the "Left" won't even say what socialism is, because they think that any account of a future society is a waste of time and that we should concern ourselves with present-day struggles. But unless you do talk about where you're going, how will you know when you've arrived? Others even try to convince themselves that socialism already exists in Russia or could be brought about by a Labour government twiddling with capitalism for a few years.

Some of those who accept the aim of socialism still argue that we must go through a "transitional society" which will only later lead to socialism. These "transitional societies" always seem to bear some resemblance to post-1917 Russia and look nothing at all like a truly liberated world society. Even Trotsky (who never stood for the society that we're working for) recognised how the reality of such a supposed transition in Russia dragged the name of socialism through the mud and gave people a wholly false idea of what a socialist society would be like. Workers today still feel that if this is socialism, then you can stick it.

Even so. despite this vilification of the term socialism, more and more people today recognise that the present system of production for profit makes our lives needlessly stressful and is ruining the planet. Given all this, the real dreamers are those who refuse to outline a viable social framework in which the routine catastrophes of capitalism will stop recurring month after month, year after year. It's naive not to say exactly how a better society will differ from the present one. The real Utopians are the people who won't even talk about utopias.

A Very Different Alternative

Socialism has never been tried. This is why we have a clear answer to those who say. "look what socialism is like in Poland or China". We can counter the nonsense of Thatcher who sees socialism as "a life of debilitating dependence on the state". Every day socialists balk at the terms “state socialism", "market socialism", "socialist France", or even "National Socialism”. All these assume a political spectrum that stretches only from so-called free market societies on the right to state control of industry on the left. Our ideas have nothing to do with these variations on a grey theme.

We support a very different alternative. We do not say that socialism is a democratic. moneyless world society just because it sounds nice. Our ideas are part of a political tradition which views these social conditions as the only viable framework for stopping the inevitable consequences of continued production for profit. Socialism takes the skills developed under capitalism and puts them to truly co-operative use for the first time. Our outline of socialism is no more than a description of the social conditions in which human talents can truly blossom.

Unless you do have a clear idea of socialism then anyone can claim it, defame it and say it doesn't work. And unless we keep the idea of working directly for a worldwide co-operative community on the agenda people will always be sidetracked by each month's new worry—armaments, starvation, disease, urban decay, or pollution. All of these are tragic, but trying to tackle them separately is to fight an ever more difficult battle. These problems are all part and parcel of the sort of society in which we live.

Almost a hundred years ago William Morris saw the dangers of treating the problems of capitalism separately by reforms and insisted on the need to work for a socialist society and nothing else. He argued, with Belfort Bax in Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, that "it is essential that the ideal of the new society should always be kept before the eyes of the working classes, lest the continuity of the demands of the people should be broken, or lest they should be misdirected".

Since this time much sincere political effort has indeed been misdirected in attempting to deal with social problems by reforms Meanwhile the real enemy still wreaks havoc; more than ever the inhuman forces of capitalism dominate the world, throwing up ever new problems each day.

The rules of the game need to be changed from producing what makes a profit to producing what we need. At the moment time and resources are wasted on advertising, marketing, the financial systems and weapons while millions die because they don't have a few coins to pay for the food to fill their stomachs. A competitive society clearly does not meet real needs: by describing how socialism would operate we simply point out how our potential could be realised if we used current know-how in a different way. None of this is utopian in the unrealistic dream sense of the word. "We have the technology", as they used to say on TV.

KA

Workers' Paradise? (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Unemployment has become a topic of discussion and even the Soviet party newspaper Pravda admits that perestroika has caused people to lose their employment. On 31 October 1989 Pravda stated that three million people have lost their job as a result of the reform programme and that this figure could rise to 16 million by the year 2000. In particular, 500,000 men are due to be demobilized from the Soviet armed forces during 1990 and 1991, following Gorbachev's speech to the United Nations in December 1988, adding to the pool of unemployed. In Central Asia youth unemployment has increased sharply rising to 25 per cent in certain districts and this has contributed to ethnic violence among the different nationalities.
  As well as unemployment the Soviet Union now concedes that a proportion of its population lives in conditions of poverty. The minimum level for material security is reckoned to be 75 roubles per month but 43 million people or 15 percent of the Soviet population are reckoned to fall below this level. There is no state plan for poverty and no government agency with the task of providing for those who are below this level as formerly poverty was not supposed to exist. Soviet officials resort to a euphemism and designate such people as 'underprovisioned' but the youth communist party newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda has stated that 'poverty is a reality, our national tragedy'. It is possible to see people begging on the streets or more commonly in the underpasses of major Soviet cities.

—Geographical, January 1990.

Land of the Free? (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no universal definition of hunger, but a concept generally accepted in the medical community is that a hungry person is chronically short of the nutrients necessary for growth and good health. Asking how many Americans are hungry by that definition, one encounters an astounding statistic: 12 million children and eight million adults, or about 9 percent of the population.

—Scientific American, February 1987.

The price of caring (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The overwhelming majority of British workers support the industrial action taken by the ambulance workers. Despite all the efforts of the bosses press to depict them as money-grubbing troublemakers, few workers fail to see that when ambulance workers are offered a pay award which is less than the rate of inflation (a relative pay cut) there is something badly wrong. 

When that miserable embodiment of well-fed callousness. Kenneth Clarke, the Minister of Health, says that ambulance workers are only van drivers, he insults the medical skills of ambulance crews as well as the hard work of van drivers The reality of our rulers economic priorities are plain to see: if you are a seventeen-year old police officer, trained to protect property, you are worth considerably more money than if you are a fully-trained life-saver in the ambulance service: if you are a nurse in an NHS hospital you are worth ten—sometimes one hundred—times less than a money-vandal in the City who wastes away his days playing the Stock Exchange game for his parasite employers.

To most workers it seems unfair that useful work should receive low wages. There is something wrong. Maybe it is the government and that heartless woman Thatcher. If only we were led by Neil and his well-meaning team. To be sure, the Labour government-in-waiting is making the most of the ambulance dispute. Smiling Labour politicians adopt postures of the most self-righteous indignation and sermonise against the government's indifference to human need. They forget to mention their own NHS cuts when they were in power, and keep conspicuously quiet about the last Labour government's plans to use troops to break a threatened ambulance strike in the winter of 1978.

It may seem "unfair", but what is fairness under the present social system? It is getting the best price for what you sell. The price of labour power (wages and salaries) is no different from the price of cat food when it comes to "fairness". If there is a profit to be made by putting one tin of pet food on the market for 30 pence and the other for 50 pence, that is going to happen, regardless of the fact that the 50 pence commodity may taste no better than the 30 pence brand. Similarly, if a junior doctor can be purchased to work in a hospital for up to eighty hours a week for, say, 40 per cent less than it costs to buy a military research scientist, then this has nothing to do with the greater usefulness of arms production than working in a casualty department.

Illusion of Fair Wages

The market does not exist to measure or reflect social use. but only supply and demand in relation to what can be bought and sold profitably. There is a big market for new ways of killing people: skill in giving medical assistance to those who are ill but poor has lesser market significance. That is why we live in a mad-house society where killing is rewarded more than caring. The soldier trained to shoot and kill is given a medal: the ambulance worker stands in the high street with a bucket asking for a few pence to sustain the struggle for better pay.

There are stickers being handed out by the ambulance workers calling for fair pay. The only fair pay is no wage at all. We agree that the government would be more than ready to concede to such a demand, but let us take the matter a little further.

Let us suppose that nurses were paid well. For this to happen the market would have to be ignored. Why should workers be given fat salaries for looking after the sick when only a minority of the ill can afford to pay for their treatment? But let us imagine that a capitalist utopia has come about, as the left-wing reformers hope will happen. Ambulance workers are taking home big salaries and so are all of the most caring occupations. A problem would still exist. What about those workers who are doing necessary work for society, but receive less pay than the ambulance workers and nurses? They will then be demanding greater "fairness". They will say that it is unfair that they, whose contributions to society might be just as useful, if less visibly caring, are not equal to the well-paid health workers.

If health workers are extremely highly paid there will be queues of wage slaves wanting to do these jobs (rather than a rush to leave such jobs, as is the case now) and those who are surplus to requirements might well complain that it is unfair that just because there is no room for them m the health service the price of their standard of life poorer. So. there would still be inequality—still there would be cries against "unfairness".

Of course, the scenario outlined above is a daydream. The most useful workers will never be the best-paid people Under the market system labour power is valued in terms of production for profit, not social use. It is pointless for workers who feel under-valued" to ask to be recognised and paid a "decent'" wage Like it or not. they will be paid the market rate. The degree to which they struggle against the downward pressure upon their wages will help them a little, but in the end it is not going to enable them to escape from the tyranny of the profit system and its anti-human priorities.

There is no such thing as a decent wage or salary. The worker on 100 a week would rightly prefer to be on 1000 a week, but if all workers were paid 1000 a week we would still have to sell ourselves to the boss and still have to spend our earnings buying back some of the goods and services which we, the workers, have produced.

Abolition of Wage Labour

There is only one alternative to this situation and that is to abolish wage labour altogether. Instead of seeking "fair" wages, workers should realise that all wages are less than the value of what they produce. It is the difference between what the workers produce and what they are paid that is the basis of the unearned profit which the capitalists legally rob from the working class. The wages system is a system of legitimised exploitation. Those who do useful work can never win under such a system.

In a socialist society we shall work because it is useful to do so. People will contribute according to their abilities. In return, they will take freely from the common store of wealth in accordance with their self-determined needs. There will be no need to sell human care. Women and men who work in hospitals or on ambulance crews will do so simply because they are needed. They will have free and equal access to the wealth of society, not a bag of metal tokens called money wages.

Free access to all wealth will be the right of all people in a socialist society, regardless of whether they perform visibly caring work or less obviously important work or if, as a result of age or illness, they are unable to work at all. In a wageless society the sole rewards for work will be the satisfaction of utilising your mental and physical faculties and the appreciation of others. Ambulance crews will have the pleasure of knowing that they served their fellow men and women, who in many other ways will be serving them.

The wages system is still here. If Tories and Labourites have their way it will be forever. Even the few leftists who favour the abolition of wage-labour regard it as such a long-term aim as to be on a par with the Popes preparation for the second coming of Jesus Christ. While there is a wages system workers must unite to get the most possible out of it. As fellow workers. socialists offer the hand of solidarity to the ambulance men and women. But as revolutionaries, seeking a new and saner way to run society, our immediate objective is to be contrasted with the parrot cries of pseudo-radicals who cannot see beyond the illusory horizon of “fair wages" for all. The Socialist Party stands alone in the political arena, united by Marx's revolutionary slogan, “abolition of the wages system”

Steve Coleman

Caught in the Act: Punishers and Moonlighters (1990)

The Caught in the Act column from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

PUNISHERS AND MOONLIGHTERS

One thing to be said about the governments latest plans for the reform of what is still called Criminal Justice is that they are not designed around any nonsense about eliminating crime. This is something of a historical curiosity since all such reforms in the recent past have pretended to be moving towards a discovery of the key to the understanding, treatment and cure of crime. The White Paper Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public puts a simpler and perhaps more popular case: some criminals must be punished more severely while many of the rest can be punished more cheaply. Whatever effect these plans may have on the criminal statistics (where all progress or stagnation in the "fight against crime" is mistakenly measured) they are sure to give a thrill of satisfaction to the more seriously haunted sections of the Tory Party, whose appetite for savage vengeance would be sorely frustrated if crime were ever to disappear.

Although he came too recently to the job of Home Secretary to take any significant part in preparing the White Paper, David Waddington is likely to heartily approve of the main drift of what it proposes. Waddington is already in the tradition of Tory Home Secretaries—Leon Brittan was a recent example—who appear to be living in a different age. Brittan was like a Dickensian workhouse master while Waddington's looks, voice and arrogance are reminiscent of an eighteenth century magistrate reading the Riot Act to starving peasants before unleashing the dragoons to teach them that while it is permissable to be poor they are not allowed to protest about it. A QC who was a Crown Court Recorder, he is not abashed to parade his philosophy that anyone who goes outside capitalism's laws, with their plentiful licence for legal theft and disorder, to do a bit of the illegal sort, has got it coming to them. Waddington remains an obdurate supporter of the death penalty: he would have been in favour of hanging the Guildford Four and all the other people whose conviction for murder was later discredited. His proposals for reform of the criminal law display a similar disregard for evidence and logic.

SUN READERS

The White Paper originates in the fact that putting offenders in prison is ineffectual and—the most persuasive argument of all—very expensive. The answer to this problem is to legalise a new range of penalties to enable courts to deal with offenders in other ways whenever possible. It is then assumed that the courts will not be attracted to the new penalties unless they are not only tough but are seen to be tough by the average reader of the Sun. There is very little evidence to support this case.

But popular attitudes to crime, which help to determine how many people vote, are not normally based on uncomfortable reality. As anyone who has been burgled or assaulted will tell you, crime is an emotive business and if you are one of its victims you are likely to be interested in revenge before any criminological niceties. Except that in the case of the Tory hangers and floggers it is not necessary to be a victim to be motivated by vengeful lusts. That is why the proposals in the White Paper are likely to become written into law in the near future.

RUTHLESS TORIES

Whatever this does to the courts and the criminals it is not likely to harm the reputation of the likely author of the proposals, who has watched over them practically since their inception. John Patten is a Minister of State at the Home Office, a man whose ambition is as plain as his bouffant hair style. Viewers of the Commons proceedings may already have noticed him out of concern for the fact that, as he sits behind David Waddington. he seems to suffer from an uncontrollable tic. In fact it is even more serious. Patten is nodding vigorously at everything his boss says, uncaring that as Waddington has his back to him his displays of devotion go unnoticed.

Let us hope, for the sake of his friends and family (he lists his only recreation in Who's Who as "talking to my wife") that Patten realises, as he struggles up the rungs of power, that the Tory political machine can be excessively ruthless. There is no more instructive example of this than the sad case of Nigel Lawson who. as far as is known, was never caught out nodding in agreement with anyone apart from himself. For those with a defective memory and for the more dangerously sycophantic Thatcherites we should explain that Lawson was once Chancellor of the Exchequer. He held the job for a long time and was widely praised as the man responsible single-handedly for a miraculous revival of the British economy and so for enabling the Tones to win a couple of General Elections. Such was the reverence in which Lawson was held that he was said to be the one minister Thatcher dare not sack, so he helped her out by resigning.

MOONLIGHTING

And what has happened since then? In a propaganda feast of startling skill and audacity the Tories have undermined Lawson's reputation as the miracle man. They have been unstinting in their efforts to publicise the fact that British capitalism is not in miraculous ascendant but declining into one of its periodic crises—that prices are rising too fast; that the balance of payments is badly out of true (or what the British capitalist class regard as true): that the unions are beginning to flex their muscles again . . .  Let us give thanks, runs the message, that the Treasury is no longer in the hands of that overweight buffoon with the untidy hair and the ready sneer and is instead run by nice, trim Mr. Major who can be trusted to really work the economic miracle and who will at least not argue with Margaret Thatcher.

Those who so recently clamoured to praise Lawson now eagerly bury him. As he nurses his bruised reputation he may take consolation in the fact that, like so many other discarded Tory Ministers, he has got himself a couple of well-paid jobs on the side. In case Lawson's constituents in Blaby have forgotten, he already has a job which is supposed to demand all his time— he is their Member of Parliament. His new job with an off-shoot of Barclays Bank is a two- day-a-week commitment but that does not mean the ex-economic wizard will miraculously be putting in a nine-day week. He will, in words familiar to the Sun reader, be moonlighting except that it should be called sunlighting because he will be at the Bank during the day when he should be on the benches of the Commons nodding like John Patten at his leader s words.

HYPOCRITES

Moonlighting is something which Tory Ministers have been pretty scathing about in the past—at least when it involved the sort of extension of their working day when many workers have to resort to m order to bump up their wages. Norman Tebbit once got very annoyed about the alleged (not an inappropriate word since he regarded it as akin to a crime) moonlighting of a group of workers who were pressing for more pay a bit too effectively for Normans comfort. Tebbit argued that it was dishonest to pretend that the miserable pay they got for their basic job was all those workers had to exist on. This was a typical Tebbit blunder, in the class of his reminiscences about his cycling father, because the workers were nurses. When he left the government Tebbit was immediately moonlighting himself, accepting so many directorships that he couldn't possibly do a proper job in all of them let alone be a full-time MP as well. Of course he was only doing what other Tory ex-ministers had done, like John Nott, Jim Prior and Francis Pym for example. Like them, he was only being as hypocritical as he needed to be as an administrator of the capitalist system. 

Which brings us back to Nigel Lawson, John Patten and David Waddington. All of them claim to be reformers, to apply radical change to sweep away problems which have festered for too long. Lawson said he would bring about a fundamental change in the system of taxation and had been chipping away at it for some time, which impressed workers who mistakenly believe that taxation is a concern of theirs. Waddington and Patten are proposing changes in criminal law the like of which have not been contemplated for some forty years, which may impress workers who are deluded that they have something to gain from the states protection of property rights.

LOSERS

But effective, pre-designed reform is not possible unless the reformers have some control over what they are trying to change. As the Tory machine is now at pains to point out, Lawson had no real control of the economy of British capitalism. The history of crime and the laws made in response to it (if it should not be the other way round) indicate that this problem, typical of the social consequences of capitalism's class society, is also uncontrolled and uncontrollable. This might be seen as an amusing, trivial game except that it is always the same people who are the losers and who are punished by the law for being so.

Ivan