Is Labour Cracking Up? (1968)

From the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour government’s betrayal of its own policies has caused increasing disillusionment amongst its supporters. We recount here the effect this has had on a Labour Group in the North London borough of Haringey. Haringey council covers three parliamentary constituencies (Tottenham, Wood Green and Hornsey) and is Labour controlled.

For the 1966 Conference of the Labour Party in Brighton, Hornsey CLP chose M. Caffoor, from their youth section, as delegate. He intervened in the debate on economic policy to say that the Labour government seemed little different from a Tory one:

  We have a Labour Government which supports the rich shipowners against the poor £11-a-week, 57-hours-a-week seamen, and we have a Labour Government, comrades, which is now supporting a wage freeze . . .  By saying there must be a wage freeze they are saying to the employers, ‘You can have the money which the workers would have got' . . . We have economic policies which are going to result in unemployment; we have economic policies which are going to create a recession in the economy. These are not the sort of policies we supported in Opposition. These are not the sort of policies which we said to the electorate they should elect us on.

Then in February last year the council decided to cut its spending on buying houses (to rehouse people from the slums) by £472,000. Three councillors opposed this. One (Page) had the Whip withdrawn; another (Mrs. Dines) resigned it. The third (Norris) wrote in Labour Worker:

   Only a ridiculously small number of councillors opposed the cut, pointing out that if the Labour party fails to get satisfactory results on housing, which is the main social problem in Haringey, how long will the working class carry on supporting them at the polls? . . .  If socialists cannot achieve even small reforms and progress on vital issues through working on local councils, then they will turn their efforts to more rewarding political activities. This frustration, and from a relatively progressive borough shows just how bad the situation is (April 1967).

In April the council announced rent increases for its tenants. Twenty nine Labour party members, including three councilors (Page, Norris and Wigley), wrote an open letter of protest:

   We have always opposed the Labour Government's incomes policy and wage freeze. As long as the Labour Government intends to hold back wage increases such rent increases can only lead to a cut in the living standards of working-class people in the borough—just at a time when many families are facing redundancies and changes of job (Hornsey Journal, 21 April 1967).

Some of these later helped organise the Haringey Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations to resist the Labour-imposed rent increases. In a local by-election the HFTRA distributed leaflets which happened to bear the name of E. Wheeler. For this the Wood Green Labour Party expelled him.

In October two councillors (Page and Parker) resigned. In November another (Wigley) joined them:

  I entered politics to play my part in helping society to progress towards a life of security for all. However, subsequent events have shown me that our Labour Council does not share my enthusiasm (Hornsey Journal, 10 November 1967).

Wigley stood as a “People’s Candidate", with tenants backing, in one of the subsequent by-elections. Page was his election agent. He polled 498 votes against 831 for the Labour winner and 399 for the Tory.

In February this year two members of the Hornsey party's general management committee (Mr. and Mrs. Wells) resigned from the Labour party. Said Mrs. Wells:

   The last straw really was the recent economy measures, particularly the prescription charges which seemed to be the final proof of non-socialism in the Government (Hornsey Journal, 16 February 1968).

Meanwhile, those still left in the Hornsey party were considering a suggestion, pushed by the chairman (Caffoor) and secretary (Hinchliff) of their youth section, to break with the national party. Caffoor and Hinchliff wrote:

  The time has come when Labour Party members must stand and fight for democracy inside the Labour movement. This will not be done by passing anaemic resolutions, but only by the constituency Labour parties organising collectively against the repeated betrayal by the Labour Government of specific electoral policies of the Labour Party, and fighting for the implementation of these policies. This is why we shall be moving a motion at the Hornsey party meeting next month which calls for disaffiliation by all the constituency parties from the national organisation in the event of the National Executive Committee refusing to dissociate the Labour Party from those Government policies which contravene the declared policies of the Labour Party (Hampstead and Highgate Express, 23 February 1968).

But the night this was to be discussed another morale-shattering blow fell—Labour’s colour bar Commonwealth Immigrants Act. The meeting adjourned to lobby the Tory MP for Hornsey. To no avail. The racist measure went through. As a result two more councillors (Mrs. Dines and D. J. Ding) resigned both from the Council and the Labour party. Mrs. Dines pointed out:

   The Immigration Bill introduces two classes of citizens, one white and one coloured, and for this country that is the most foolish thing the Government could have done. Lots of people think the immigrants are inferior to start with, and this Bill is endorsing their views (Hornsey Journal 8 March 1968).

One of Labour's local council candidates, Ulric Thompson, an immigrant from Guyana, also withdrew in protest. Finally, at the end of March Councillor Norris gave up:

   I felt I could no longer support a party introducing measures which hit the working classes and which were not being resisted by the local party. As regards the two main parties, it's now a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee—they are both the same (Tottenham Herald, 22 March 1968).

And what did boring-from-within achieve? And don't let us forget that those who are now getting out of the Labour Party, in telling workers to vote for that party, must share some of the blame for its actions.

Adam Buick

Union Will Not Back Labour (1968)

From the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new union, set up by the merger of the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers and Coppersmiths (50,000) and the Heating and Domestic Engineers Union (26,000), voted by 9,506 to 6,003 not to have a political fund—a blow against Labour as the Sheet Metal Workers had previously been affiliated.

Labour party General Secretary Len Williams was reported as saying:

It was a matter of regret that the newly formed union should have balloted against setting up a political fund especially since the members voting were such a small proportion of the total (Evening News, 15 March 1968)

Since the minority would have been the active unionists the result is even more significant. Williams was just being a hypocrite. He would not have complained about the low poll if the vote had gone the other way. Besides the whole contracting-out fiddle to milk unions for the Labour party is based on apathy, on the hope that the ordinary union member will not take the trouble to sign the form merely to save a penny or two a week. Contracting-out and disaffiliation is one way in which workers can hit back at the anti-working class actions of the Labour Party government. The 12,000 strong National Society of Pottery Workers has set a good example in disaffiliating in February last year, when the Labour government issued an Order banning a wage increase for some of its members.

Robens Admits It? (1968)

From the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Robens, who was a Labour MP from 1945 until in 1960 he became Chairman of the state capitalist National Coal Board, told an NUM weekend school in Blackpool on 31 March:

Recalling to miners the nationalization of coal, gas and electricity industries, he said: ‘I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalizing these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us then that they were going to turn into state capitalism'. If they had Labour MP’s at the time would not have jubilantly sung ‘The Red Flag' in the corridors of the House of Commons.

But they were told. They did not listen but carried on doing ‘something now'. Long before 1945 the Labour party and its supporters were warned by the Socialist Party of Great Britain that nationalisation was not Socialism, or even a step toward it, but merely state capitalism. In December 1945 the Socialist Party brought out a pamphlet, Nationalisation or Socialism? explaining just this. Another pamphlet. Is Labour Government the Way to Socialism? published the following month, made the same point:

Not nationalisation, which is just another name for State Capitalism, but Socialism which involves the abolition of capitalism, is the objective for which the working class must strive. The Labour Party is the party of State Capitalism. It is not a party serving the interest of the working class.

Labour Aims to Cut Living Standard (1968)

From the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ray Gunter, £8,500-a-year Minister of Power, up to April 5th, Minister of Labour, recently called for a cut in living standards. Speaking at a slap-up lunch laid on by the Industrial Society in London on March 28 he was reported:

It was no good the British people believing they could get out of this position and put the economy on a sound basis ‘If we are going to demand increases in the standard of living, or even maintain the same standard of living', he said. ‘There is bound to be a drop in the standard, and if anybody in this country thinks he is going to have the same standard as in the past, we shall never get anywhere' (The Times, 29 March 1968).

This frank confession merely confirms what many had suspected was Labour’s aim anyway. Their whole policy has been to cut our standard of living. Their six-month wage freeze did succeed for a time but since then workers, through their trade unions, have been able to keep wages up with rises in the cost of living. This has upset the Labour government who are now determined to strengthen their powers for dealing with workers who refuse to fall in line. This attempt to further hold back wages and salaries is bound to provoke industrial action. But if the experience of the last Labour government is anything to go by this one will not hesitate to use the state machine to back up their policy of cutting living standards. No doubt there are dockers who will recall the time a Labour Attorney-General prosecuted their colleagues for defying an anti-strike Order.

It has taken trade unionists some time to recognise that they must fight back against the Labour government. Even now many union leaders, as Labour supporters, only do so reluctantly but increasingly ordinary unionists are putting the pressure on them. To such an extent that even a notorious government lickspittle like Les Cannon of the ETU has come out against a further period of wage restraint.

Conscious of the fact that in aiming to cut living standards Labour was breaking its election promises Gunter lashed out at democracy:

It was time everybody forgot about election promises. 'I would never have another election manifesto if I had my way', he said. The Government of the day had to do what in its considered opinion was right irrespective of what Dr. Gallup thought.

If his past authoritarian utterances—calling for more discipline, threatening the unions with state take-over—are anything to go by, Gunter probably would not have any elections either.

The Bomb (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Second World War was nearing its end when in August 1945 atom bombs were exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus adding further horrors to the crimes of capitalism at war. Like other wars it had supposedly been fought for noble ideals. Rivalries leading to war did not disappear of course and this weapon has taken its place along with more destructive variations in the armouries of the world. Strategy and international diplomacy have been revamped to take them into account.

Much of the development of scientific theory leading up to the atom bomb was done in the period between the two world wars, by scientists from many lands. Classical physicists had held that matter and energy were totally distinct and could neither be created nor destroyed. Then Einstein evolved the theory that one could be destroyed and converted into the other. This was summarised in his equation E=mc², where E is energy, m is mass, c is the velocity of light. Hence the energy released by the destruction of small quantities of matter is very large. Nuclear weapons are practical demonstration of the truth of this proposition. As long as scientific investigation into the nature of matter and the atom showed no prospect of profitable applications, capitalists and their governments were miserly in giving their support. The atom was first split in 1919 and work progressed, until by the late 1930’s it became evident to scientists that applications were possible. Once war was declared they were concerned about their findings being put to military use. In America these experts, some of whom had fled from Nazi tyranny, petitioned the President, demanding a weapons research programme, in order to get a bomb produced before Germany did.

Once convinced, the US government invested lavishly in the equipment and installations required. The problems of turning theoretical propositions into military hardware were enormous. It took the co-operation of the British, Canadian and US governments, an international team of scientists and the expenditure of $2,000 million. By 1942 calculations showed that less than 100 lbs. of uranium 235 or plutonium 239 could be used as explosive material to release energy equivalent to 20,000 tons of T.N.T. Only a minute quantity of either material had been produced at the time. Techniques and equipment for producing them had to be developed. Research was carried out at various universities and the Oak Ridge and Hanford plants were set up to produce fissile material. Work on the weapons started in 1943 at Los Alamos. The project was run as a military operation with maximum security. It was organised in such a way that only a few people knew of the whole scheme, the majority working on individual problems not knowing what their particular items related to.

By the time the first bombs were ready, Germany had been defeated. The menace the scientists had feared was gone. However this did not prevent the US government using the bombs. One of the features of capitalism is the tendency to internationalise production, and this goes for armaments too. No security system, however elaborate it may be, can stop the spread or development of ideas and techniques of production. By 1949 the United States lost its monopoly of the weapon, when Russia exploded its first atom bomb. In the years that followed other nations mastered the techniques. To-date Britain, France and China have become nuclear powers.

In the meantime research teams in America and Russia were kept busy on another project. For some time it had been known that energy was continually being released from the sun by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. This was far greater than the forces liberated by fission of uranium atoms. Work proceeded to try to reproduce this process on earth. The problem involved was that intense heat was needed in order to fuse atoms and the atoms of the lightest element, hydrogen, were best suited to this purpose. The solution was to generate the heat by setting off a fission explosion which would produce the fusion reaction. The United States tested the first bombs of this type in May 1951 and November 1952, followed by Russia in August 1953. This new weapon has had various names — Super, Hydrogen, Thermo-Nuclear. A test in 1954 in which the force of the explosion was estimated to be between 12-14 million tons of T.N.T. showed the danger from radioactive fallout in these experiments. The crew of the Japanese fishing vessel The Lucky Dragon suffered radiation sickness, and one of them died of it, as a result of fallout 90 miles from the test. Testing continued and the largest explosion to-date is estimated at 57 million tons of T.N.T. Again it was impossible to prevent the spread of this weapon. In 1957 Britain exploded an H bomb, China did the same last year and France is getting ready for its own test.

It is as well to note the feelings of one of the scientists', involved as expressed by Teller (known in the USA as the father of the H bomb). ‘Those were days", as Teller later recalled, “filled with a spirit of spontaneous expression, adventure and surprise" — a natural reaction for men engaged in studies in which new knowledge was coming to light. At the same time it is an indictment of present society, that their efforts were efforts directed to producing greater means of destruction. For the few who backed down, jobs were hard to come by. Those who protested did so in vain. They, like their fellow workers in other occupations, are caught in a situation over which they have no control. Another arms race was under way. There were new evils to eradicate and the scientists were led to believe their contributions were of vital interest to them. Like the overwhelming majority of workers their knowledge of the workings of capitalism is minute and they easily succumb to its propaganda.

Two factors have to be kept in mind when considering the possibility of more countries making nuclear weapons. First they must be able to produce the weapon in a compact enough form to be delivered and secondly they must be able to produce or acquire a means of delivering it to the target. Early work in America was concentrated on developing the bomb. But as time went by more effort was directed to producing aircraft, rockets and electronic equipment needed for both defence and attack. States entering the race since then have been faced with the same task and so will any others joining the club.

For nuclear weapons the first requirements are stocks of fissile material and the necessary technology to produce and handle them. One way of achieving this is through setting up nuclear power stations, fuelled by uranium 238, which have the fissile material plutonium 239 as a by-product. A number of countries operate this type of equipment and are in a position to develop fissile weapons if needed. Two of them, India and Israel, have recently been involved in wars and there has been speculation about their intentions. Such countries as Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and even neutral Sweden and Switzerland must be considered as potential producers of nuclear weapons. Even so tremendous costs are involved. Many countries are now dependent on America and Russia for financial and technical aid and must keep this in mind. Both France and China have been isolated from their former allies since they became nuclear powers.

Before the H-bomb production can take place an A-bomb trigger device must be developed. Moreover this device has so far been fuelled by uranium 235. It is a difficult and expensive process to separate it from uranium 238. It is acknowledged that China has mastered the problem, but France has not been so successful. According to the Sunday Times of 18 June last year “The French are believed to have spent over £300m on their [gaseous diffusion plant] at Pierrelatte and it is still not fully operational". To add to the expense large supplies of electricity are required. It is estimated that America devoted 10 per cent of its generating capacity to this purpose in the second world war. Since these early days, however, an alternative process of separating U235 from U238, centrifugally, has been investigated without success. Recent reports indicate that researchers in Holland have now made a workable centrifuge. This could lead to a cheapening of the operation of up to 90 per cent.

The development of nuclear weapons, long-range aircraft, rockets and electronics has led to radical changes in military thinking. The scientist, equipped with computers, has largely taken over from the old-fashioned military tactician. The world is now the battlefield with potential civilian casualties numbered in tens of millions. Control of the upper atmosphere and space are now as important as control of land and sea routes were in the past.

The situation since the second world war has seen the two super powers, America and Russia, battling for the supremacy of capitalism. The arms race between them has been on a scale that has left the once great powers, Britain and France, far behind. Missiles equipped with nuclear warheads can now be launched from aircraft, the ground, ships and submarines. Artillery, mortar and land mines can now produce nuclear explosions. As the power, variety and number of weapons increase so does the possibility of defending populations and industry decrease. More emphasis is placed on advanced preparation, protecting missiles and command posts so as to enable the combatants to continue the battle amidst the debris. Massive spying operations are required to keep war ministries informed of the enemy's equipment and allow them to plan strategy. America, for instance, made wild estimates of Russia's aircraft strength in the 1950’s as was shown up by the U2 spy flights. The U2 has been succeeded by satellites equipped with cameras able to photograph large areas in great detail and transmit information to ground stations. This has already allowed Russia and America to locate China’s nuclear plants. With electronics playing an increasingly important part in weapon guidance and early warning radar, so the search for information to jam these systems grows. The USN Pueblo was equipped for this type of work and it is claimed that Russia’s notorious trawler fleet is similarly equipped.

Both Russia and America have built up a series of alliances in pursuit of their interests. The most important of them are the Warsaw Pact and NATO, whose essential feature is that the two powers should provide the nuclear weapons. These groupings have proved troublesome as each of the states involved has had its own interests to pursue. Britain and France, with world-wide commitments, have attempted to equip themselves for a world-wide strategic role. France’s force de frappe at the moment cannot reach a target such as Moscow or Washington without its aircraft re-fuelling on route. But these will later be supplemented by missiles and rocket-firing submarines. Britain has suffered many expensive failures in trying to play this world-wide role. It still depends on its obsolescent Victor and Vulcan bombers. Shortly its Polaris submarines will be going into service with missiles capable of hitting any target on earth. While Russia has been more successful in preventing east European states developing nuclear weapons it failed in the case of its former ally, China.

Strategy has been based on being able to deliver a knock-out blow while at the same time defending against one. Though manned aircraft and submarines are still maintained, missiles form the greater part of the strategic forces. America has depended on having more inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM), but Russia has been catching up recently and also has a superiority in intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM). These missiles are kept in underground concrete emplacements, called silos, said to be to protect the missiles for further use. In America they are under the control of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) which has an underground HQ in Nebraska. There are also three aircraft, one of which is constantly in flight, fitted as command posts in case the SAC HQ is put out of action. Similarly there is a special aircraft and a special ship fitted out for the President. The SAC also controls a large number of bombers, some of which are kept on air-borne alert. A vital part of all this is the early-warning radar system, including ground-stations, ships and aircraft. Communication satellites and computers are also part of the equipment. Defence equipment includes fighter aircraft fitted with rockets and ground-to-air missiles, some of which have nuclear warheads. Russia has similar equipment but not on as lavish a scale. It also claims to be capable of putting bombs into orbit around the earth and of later bringing them down on target. It is developing an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. America has recently decided to invest in similar equipment. These moves have given a new emphasis to the arms race and may be the means of renewed atmospheric nuclear testing by both states.

Some of the strategy is worked out by organisations such as the Rand Corporation in America. Here over a thousand scientists of all types are kept by the US Air Force to work out possible developments in nuclear warfare. Their calculations include how to retaliate after attacks by opponents and how to maintain or revive production in the course of such a war. They juggle with figures of potential deaths running into tens of millions. One thing they do not get round to of course is an analysis of what the conflict is all about and how it can be ended. What the conflict is not over is ideas of how society should be run. Both Russia and America had sufficient in common to be allies in the last world war. Their production is based on the profit motive and it is from this that the conflict between them springs. Success in the competition springing from this mode of production demands the control of exploitable manpower, markets, raw materials and trade routes. In this struggle famine relief, technical and financial aid, military and commercial alliances, all play a part. It will only be brought to an end when the workers who produce the wealth over which the conflict rages take control of the means of production and replace capitalism with Socialism.

Joe Carter

50 Years Ago: The Passing of Individualism (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imperialism, especially under the impulse of its exacting offspring, the war, has revolutionised the capitalist mind. The old "individualism” is dead as a working philosophy. Whilst in the "Liberal" period, the capitalist class largely achieved its prosperity through each capitalist seeking independently his own welfare without much regard for, or heed of, the support of his class, now that competition between its national sections has become intense, class solidarity within the nation has become imperative. The great expense of militarism and the need for efficiency demand concessions and sacrifices from the individual members of the bourgeoisie.

Organisation for war having become an economic necessity, military service is now considered an imperative obligation. The military spirit is glorified, military traditions are revived. The State it no longer regarded, as in the individualist period, a necessary nuisance, useful to keep the workers down (maintaining "order" as it is called) but otherwise the less in evidence the better. Now, on the contrary it has become the "saviour of society” (i.e. of the bourgeoisie). Only by its powerful aid can the needs of the capitalist class be satisfied. The State, in addition to securing military efficiency, now organises and provides over the industries of the Nation, striving to co-ordinate National production, eliminate waste, and otherwise promote the efficiency required for the intense competition in the world market.

From an article by R. W. Housley, Socialist Standard April 1918.

Prejudice and Pride (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Her Majestie understanding that there are of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are allready too mannie, consideringe howe God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our owne nation . . .  those kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande . . .

(Acts of the Privy Council 1596)

Apart from the government’s feeble, obligatory excuses, both supporters and opponents of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act are agreed that it is a measure designed to discriminate against people on grounds of colour.

The Act was rushed through in deference to a widespread feeling that it was needed, which is what Callaghan meant' when he spoke in the debate on the Bill:

Pledges had been given to people which, if carried out. could cause great political turbulence and place Britain's services under a far greater strain. (Daily Telegraph, 28/2/68.)

Labour politicians have learned their lesson; the name of Smethwick is graven on their hearts and it will be a long time before they again risk going against the popular conviction that immigration should be restricted, if not stopped altogether, and that coloured immigrants are especially undesirable.

This last prejudice, which was behind the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, is a complex matter which has been the subject of much investigation. We do not need to be a probing sociologist to know what it amounts to — the opinion that coloured people are sexually dangerous, emotionally unstable, mentally retarded, lazy. Some think that a coloured skin must be dirty, like the chauffeur who was surprised to find Negresses working in the kitchens at London Airport. “. . . because they are usually so careful about hygiene here." Others do not bother to think out their prejudices even to that extent; to them, a coloured skin is strange and that is enough to condemn it.

We must be careful not to exaggerate the size of this feeling. In his book White And Coloured Michael Banton sums up one aspect of his investigations:

  It would appear that the proportion of the British population who consciously subscribe to doctrines of racial superiority is certainly less than 4 per cent, while the proportion who are prepared to translate such opinions into active hostility is very much smaller still.

Banton’s carefully qualified statement is probably correct; but behind that 4 per cent lies a much larger proportion of people who have prejudices which are perhaps less conscious but which, when they are tested by an influx of coloured workers, can be provoked into activity. This is what has happened in recent years. Banton found 62 per cent assenting to the proposition that “It would be a good thing if people of different races mixed with one another more’’. But that was in 1956; if 62 per cent of the electorate were now in favour of racial integration there would probably have been no such thing as a Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

A lot of the objections to immigrants are based on the fears that they will swamp the hospitals and social services. In its most extreme, but by no means rare, version, this pictures the Negroes and the Asians coming here with an enormous family and heading straight for the nearest office of the National Assistance Board, then settling down in slumland, performing the miracle of running a big flashy car and several women on unemployment pay.

To some extent this was answered in the Sunday Times of March 3, in an article which pointed out that, with the exception of Education and Child Care, the average cost per head of the immigrants to the social services is below that for the total population. This is because the immigrants tend to be younger than average, which also means that their national insurance payments are higher than the average.

We should realise that facts like these only put some prejudices into perspective. What, it may be asked, happens when the immigrants get older? Does the case against them become stronger because they are more of a burden on the social services? In fact, the whole issue is irrelevant. People who object because there are some — even many — coloured faces in an already overcrowded, understaffed hospital are overlooking the fact that it is only one social class which always has to rely on such hospitals and that the best medical services are reserved, not for coloured workers but for the economic masters of workers of all colours.

By the same token immigrants are forced to move into areas which are in a state of slow decay and accelerate the process. A large, depressed migrant population, fleeing from destitution or oppression, is usually forced into this (have a look at Cecil Woodham Smith’s story of the Irish emigration westwards in The Great Hunger). But the solution is not to keep the immigrants out, so that at best the decay advances only slowly. The root of the problem is in the fact that we live in a social system which frankly admits that it cannot stop producing slums.

To illustrate the point, here are a couple of extracts from A Question Of Colour?, a book by Peter Griffiths, the man who won the notorious election at Smethwick. These are supposed to be justifications for the objections to immigrants but in fact they show up the negative attitudes behind the objections:

People who have perhaps been evicted from one overcrowded dwelling after another are bound to feel bitter when they hear of houses being occupied by several families or used on the shift system.

And

Housewives, waging a never-ending battle against industrial dust and grime in an attempt to turn mean little houses into real homes, are highly critical of any lowering of standards.

Working class fear about lack of housing, hospital accommodation and so on, is only the sauce on the pudding. Without it, there is still an indigestible lump of what can only be called prejudice, or sometimes simple insularity. In Southall, for example, the elderly Sikhs regularly gather in the park — whenever they can in the open — and converse in a large circle. Sometimes younger men join them. It is all perfectly harmless, all very sociable — the kind of thing that does not normally happen in an industrialised city and is all the more poignant for it. But many local white people think it is a cheek, to take up so much of the park and others that it is a strange and sinister thing to do.

In the same way, there is a reluctance to accept, or even to evaluate, any different sexual standards which immigrants may have. The West Indians regard marriage with rather less reverence than do the British — which has the effect of making their families almost matriarchal and their old men sometimes almost discards. This attitude has nothing to do with any inherent Negro characteristics, as many white workers think. It is no more than a product of the immigrants' history. In West Indian Children In London (Occasional Papers on Social Administration) Katrin Fitzherbert outlines the results which slavery had on the family in the West Indies:

Family life was barely possible under slavery; the marriage customs of a particular tribe could not survive when slaves from different parts of Africa were put into the same compound; English-type marriage was forbidden for most of the period of slavery — on some plantations to the very end. For two centuries the institution we consider most fundamental to human society was forgotten.

A British worker has to make some sort of an effort, if he is to realise that the family organisation he has been conditioned to accept as eternal and invulnerable does not hold good for all time and all over the world, and that different social circumstances will often result in different sexual conventions. At the moment he prefers not to make the effort; it is easier to reject facts and surrender to prejudice, sexual fears, the jungle standards of competition on the labour market. It is easier to try to keep out anything foreign, with different customs and culture.

A lot of the reason for these insular prejudices can be found in the fact that many workers, after perhaps decades of hard work, have painstakingly sunk their roots into mortgaged houses and have embellished them with hire-purchased durables (which is not our word for them) like cars, television sets, refrigerators. They have revealed remarkable talents in decorating their rooms and laying out their gardens. They are proud of what they have done.

In these little homes, within the confines of their families, many workers feel they have built themselves a fortress. They will defend it against all comers — and at the moment the enemy they see coming is the coloured immigrant. They are fighting him now with their votes. Who cares to say how they will fight in the future? 

The tragedy is that those little homes are not fortresses so much as prisons. Capitalism is a massive confidence trick which convinces workers that their chains are ornaments, that their poverty is prosperity, that cheap, cramped houses are objects of pride — because they have had to be worked for. Coloured workers are equally deceived—the limits of their ambitions is to get a clean passport into the working class with all its poverty, fears and suspicions, probably to set up their own prejudices and insularity.

Capitalism is strikingly adept at erecting barriers among its people. It divides them into nations, income groups, races — all of them inspired by false notions of economic and social interests. It is a desperately inadequate society, in which for millions of people the highest achievements is to close themselves up into the confines of a little home and a little job and a little family. These confines are self-productive; they encourage the neuroses and prejudices which fear a different skin colour, and which insist that I shall keep in my small corner while you must keep in yours.

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Nationalisation and the Commercial Jungle (1968)

The Finance and Industry column from the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalisation and the Commercial Jungle

The shortcomings of capitalism are widely felt but little understood. The Labour Party see some of these as being due to the unbridled competition resulting from private enterprise and supposed Tory policies. To them capitalism is competition, private enterprise and the Tories. Their answer is to restrain competition through government intervention in industry and through nationalisation. Add planning to this and you get their idea of Socialism. But if this is Socialism, then the Tories too could call themselves socialists.

The government’s proposed aluminium smelter scheme is an example of how little can nationalised industries be isolated from commercial wrangles. In the past it was cheaper to import aluminium, but now it is expected to be a paying proposition to do the refining and smelting in Britain. The proposed scheme set off a competitive scramble between the nationalised atomic energy, electricity and coal industries. Aluminium smelting ' requires large, uninterrupted supplies of electricity. New nuclear power stations were expected to provide the cheapest source of power. But Alcan proposes to use electricity generated in their own coal-fired power station. It was this that caused the storm amongst the nationalised industries. The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) complained that Alcan would be getting coal cheaper than they themselves were. The recently nationalised steel industry made the same complaint and added the objection that manufacturers of a rival metal were being given an unfair advantage. Again the NCB has been complaining that the government’s fuel policy unfairly discriminated against coal and in favour of atomic power. On top of trying to sort out the rival claims of the aluminium companies and to settle the squabbles of the nationalised industries, the government has come under fire from abroad. Overseas producers, especially Britain’s EFTA partner Norway, do not like the idea of losing part of their market. The Norwegian government suspects that the EFTA treaty may be violated, claiming that aluminium cannot be produced profitably in Britain without subsidy.

This is the predicament of those, like Labour, who would tame capitalism whilst leaving its basis intact. Socialists do not care who gets the contract or what kind of fuel is used or whether EFTA agreements are violated. We know that capitalism is based on the monopoly of the means of wealth production by a minority. Buying and selling and the commercial jungle result from this. Our answer is to replace minority ownership by the common ownership of the means of production by society as a whole. Then there would be no basis for commerce or competition as there would really be a common social interest.


Rich and Poor

The second United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Delhi was faced with problems that would have defeated the mythical wisdom of Solomon. They will also defeat this international gathering of talented experts. Unctad’s aim is to find ways of bridging the gap that exists between the so-called developed and underdeveloped nations. Statistics are used showing the differences between America and India in per capita income, steel production, electricity output and so on. Giving the impression that India equals poverty and America affluence and so the conclusion that poverty in India will be eradicated when average income and production figures reach those of America. So, Unctad claims, what is needed is more trade and technical development. But it is on the question of trade that their plans founder.

The underdeveloped countries are urging easier access for themselves to the markets of the developed countries. The developed countries are trying to balance their own trade and payments. This involves cutting imports and stimulating exports. So they are faced with the same problem as those they say they are trying to help: more exports. The main exports from the poorer countries are raw materials. But their plight in recent years has net been due to any lack of enterprise or too slow increase in productivity, as is generally thought, but to too much of these. The problem has been that the prices of their export commodities have been falling because the market cannot absorb the extra production. This is what the Unctad experts have to sort out. The best capitalism has come up with so far is giant bonfires of coffee, cocoa and other products, or, what amounts to the same thing, schemes for curtailing production. Proposals that more manufactured goods should be imported by the developed countries from the less developed are worth as much as the suggestion that Brazil should import large quantities of coffee.

Just as all nations are faced with trade problems so they all also have poverty problems. America is not entirely populated by Rockerfellers and Henry Fords. Nor is everybody in India destitute. Living in affluence there are not only the remnants of the pre-capitalist rulers but also home-grown captains of industry who are just as wealthy as their American counterparts. The problem is not one of rich and poor nations, but of rich and poor social classes. The solution to the world-wide poverty problem is the establishment of a world community in which production is geared solely to meeting human needs. The problem is not one of trade, aid or technology but of how society is organised.

Joe Carter

Party News: Teddy Lake Retires (1968)

Party News from the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month Teddy Lake retired from Head Office activity. He has been our Treasurer since 1944, when he took over "temporarily" after his predecessor, Jack Butler, was killed in an air raid. We shall miss his genial and warm presence at Head Office.

Phyllis Howard

Draft Resistance and Conscience (1968)

From the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over Vietnam, the majority of Americans go willingly to war—or at any rate keep their fears and doubts to themselves. President Johnson, under pressure about the war, replies that this is no time to argue; American boys are in battle over there. Most Americans accept this cynically emotional appeal and close their ranks—and perhaps their minds as well.

Only a minority, now graced (or cursed) with the name Draft Dodgers, stand aside and refuse to join in the killing. These young men, opposed to the Vietnam war, refuse service in the army under the United States selective service system. They sometimes destroy their draft cards, sometimes return them to the authorities—even give them to the enemy, the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

Some of the objectors—for example the Quakers—are acting in line with a persistent opposition to war wherever it is fought. Others resist only the war in Vietnam:

  I am not a pacifist or a conscientious objector in the narrow sense, but I am a conscientious objector with regard to the Vietnam war. I do not object to conscription as such. (Michael Haag.)
  I totally want to dissociate myself from my country's course in what I consider a disgraceful, cynical war. It is not a war against communism. (Joel Gladstone.)

(Both quoted in The American, 15/12/67.)

We can see how small a minority the draft dodgers are, from the figures issued by the U.S. Justice Department of prosecutions for draft evasion. About 160,000 men are registered for the draft each month, only a part of them being called up. In the year July 1965/June 1966 the call up was 336,530; only 658 men were prosecuted. For the year July 1966/June 1967 the figures were: call up 288,000; prosecutions 1,409.

Young Americans can apply for registration as conscientious objectors but, according to the Sunday Times (21/1/68) the only people likely to be granted this are Quakers or members of the American Friends’ Church. (In this country, during 1914/18, the C. O. Tribunals rarely accepted what they called a "political" objection to war.) Very often, then, the only way out is to evade the draft laws —refuse to register, destroy or return the draft card. The legal penalty for this can be a fine of up to $10,000 and a prison sentence up to five years. There can also be illegal penalties—victimisation in employment or, as some of the card burners have experienced, a beating up from patriotic hooligans.

The draft dodgers are the latest in a long line of war resisters—a line with a mixed pedigree. There were the Christians who refused to serve in the Roman militiae; the Quakers who went by sledge to Moscow to protest against the Crimean War; the unenduring resolutions of the Second International. In this there is a discernible change; the development of capitalism had its effect on the anti-war movement. For capitalism made war total, with everyone under fire and with a modem state machine recruiting all its resources—including people—if necessary by compulsion. But at the same time capitalism needed to school its people in its productive techniques, which gave rise to a working class with political fights, often seeing capitalism’s problems as political issues. Thus when conscription came in, the opposition to it was often in political terms. Pacifism, in the words of Christopher Driver tended to become secularised.

In his book Pacifism and Conscientious Objection Professor G. C. Field, who sat on a C.O. Tribunal from 1940 to 1944, recalls among the people who came before him:

  . . . adherents of fifty one different religious bodies . . . those, comparatively few in number, whose objections were based on ethical or humanitarian grounds independently of any religious beliefs . . . a few whom we classified as political objectors and a few, also, who could only be described as objectors on aesthetic grounds.

This was the result of a development which started in 1914. Before the First World War, Britain was the only major European power to rely on a volunteer army. As the war drew closer, a conscription pressure group grew in strength and in 1902 gave birth to the National Service League (President the Duke of Wellington; supporters Rudyard Kipling, the Duke of Westminster, the Bishop of Chester.)

The outbreak of war, and the growing threat of conscription, threw up an opposition—the No Conscription Fellowship (Chairman Clifford Allen; supporters Fenner Brockway, Bertrand Russell, Bernard Boothryd.) On December 3 1914 the NCF declared itself:

  . . .  it would, we think, be as well if men of enlistment age who are not prepared to take a combatant’s part, whatever the penalty for refusing, formed an organisation for mutual counsel and action.

Stage by stage, as the war settled down into a pattern of interminable murder, the government progressed towards conscription—its appetite, as Philip Snowden pointed out, growing by what it fed upon. In March 1916 the final blow came; the Military Service Act gave the unmarried man of military age a choice between enlisting immediately or being called up in his group. If he did neither he would be "deemed to have enlisted”—in other words he was a soldier whether he liked it or not.

This was a vital provision. It meant that an objector who was turned down by his tribunal was instructed to report to his unit. If he did not go he was a deserter; if he was taken and then refused to put on a uniform he was disobeying a military command. As he was legally a soldier he was subject to army discipline; he could be sent to a military prison, court martialled, sentenced to undergo such experiences as Field Punishment Number One or even—as happened to thirty four men—could be sentenced to be shot.

Under army detention the C.O.s were subjected to a variety of brutality and torture. In the civil prisons they fared only a little better. J. Allen Skinner was one who spent time in both Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs during 1916/17. In 1960 he was in prison again—in Brixton after a Ban the Bomb demonstration. He told the Governor of Brixton of his earlier sentences. "That”, said the governor feelingly "must have been a terrible experience." (See The Disarmers by Christopher Driver.)

And so it was—for Skinner and for all the other objectors to that war. There were about sixteen thousand of them (12,000 with “political” objections) and seventy three died as a result of the treatment they received.

The pacifist movement, dying down after 1918, came back to life in 1935, once more at the approach of a major European war. That was the year when the Peace Pledge Union was formed; over 100,000 signed its renunciation of war. The PPU was swept along on a wave of enthusiasm; in 1937 its Leader, the Rev. Dick Sheppard, was elected Rector of Glasgow University.

The 1939 war, as many thought it would, exposed the Pledge. (Professor Field claimed: ". . . a clear-sighted pacifist friend said to me, the Peace Pledge was really a piece of bluff”) Only about 65,000 men registered as C.O.s during the entire war and of course not all of these had signed the Pledge. British capitalism had learned a lesson. Conscription was in force before war was declared, the tribunals operated with a lighter hand (about seventy per cent of objectors were found to he “genuine”) nobody was “deemed to have enlisted”, sentences (there were about four thousand of them) were served in civil prisons. There was no torture, no death sentences, hardly any discernible victimisation, no outrages worthy of the name.

The Second World War saw a decline in the numbers of “political” objectors; from about 12,000 in 1914/18 to about 3,250 in 1939/45. This can be explained by the fact that most of these in the first war were members of the ILP which was then part of the Labour Party. By 1939 the ILP had all but disappeared arid the Labour Party no longer had any doubts about its support for capitalism’s wars.

What of the pacifists? The word covers a multitude of opinions on war, but implies the basic agreement of regarding war in the idealistic sense, as an evil in itself which can be abolished by a policy of righteousness. Thus Dr. Alfred Salter in his pamphlet Religion of a C.O. (1914):

There is a great place waiting in history for the first nation . . . that will dare to base its national existence on righteous dealing, and not on force . . .

This is typical of the pacifist attempt to deal with war in isolation from the very surrounding conditions which cause it. It avoids the all-important question of why governments base their existence on force—even a government like the Attlee administration, which included men who were objectors with Dr. Salter in 1914/18. What did their pacifism do for their policies, when they had the chance to try a little righteous dealing?

This same question was still being evaded when the Second World War came. On September 8 1939 the PPU Council agreed that “. . .  in all ways possible the PPU should strive to make the Government publish terms of peace by consent.” In August 1944 they were demonstrating for a negotiated peace and “just peace terms”. (See I Renounce War by Sybil Morrison.)

It is a massive contradiction to accept all the pre-conditions for war and social violence—to accept the capitalist system and its governments, its diplomacy, its “peace” talks and treaties—and at the same time to object to war. This basic fallacy runs like a thread through pacifist thought. The people who marched from San Francisco to Moscow in 1961 distributed a leaflet along their route which said:

  We believe that the Soviet Union and the United States with other countries should pool their resources to remove such suffering—by using the money now wasted on weapons of destruction.

And Richard Gregg, in The Power of Nonviolence, says:

Nonviolent resistance is more efficient than war because it costs far less in money as well as in lives and suffering.

Pacifists like Gregg believe that war and violence are an effect of inferior ideas (“. . . a large part of the activities of the state are founded upon a mistake, namely, the idea that fear is the strongest and best sanction for group action and association.”) But it is impossible to conceive of capitalism without war. The private ownership of the means of production divides the world into antagonistic classes, competing firms, rival nations and international power blocs. It is this competitive nature of capitalism which causes its wars, which are as much a part of the system as the governments, the money and the treaties which the pacifists are prepared to accept.

Modern war is fought to settle the squabbles of capitalism’s master class; it does not involve the interests of the ordinary people except that it brings them nothing but suffering. If the working class refuse to fight—as we say they should—it should be on these grounds—and this should apply to all war, not just to Vietnam, or Korea, or Algeria. If the pacifist, idealist objection to war is futile how much more so is that which stands out against only one particular war?

The draft dodgers may claim to have made a start. If so, they must go on to realise that there is nothing special about Vietnam— nothing special about its causes, its history, its horrors. The war resisters have won the honourable distinction of showing that capitalism need not have it all its own way—that even in face of overwhelming propaganda the working class can recognise a problem and protest. They have shown their power, and that courage does not have to wear a uniform. These qualities will stand us in good stead, when we have a society where war is only a black memory.

Ivan

Bitcoin: What Would Marx Think? (2018)

From the February 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have heard all kind of things about Bitcoin. There is even someone who has dared to say that Bitcoin was an alternative to the current economic-political structure and that for this reason Marx would have liked it (‘Bitcoin and Marx’s Theory of History’, Kenny Spotz, Bitcoin Magazine 26, July 2014). Oh dear!

Let us see whether Marx would have liked Bitcoin or not. Bitcoin is a ‘cryptocurrency’, ie a digital encrypted means of payment, safe, until hacked of course. According to Marx, the only alternative to capitalism is a society based upon common ownership of the means of production and products, a society with no profit and no money, not even crypto or funny ones.

Marx analysed extensively the nature and function of money in the capitalist system. This can be found in the first section of the first volume of Capital. Let us brush up on a few concepts from it.

Anything that is able to satisfy a need has a use-value, which is a utility, a particular quality. But when we look at the exchange of two things and their qualities, for example two chairs and 0.3 ounces of gold, their various use-values are not the driver for the exchange; what matters is some measurable common quantity. In the exchange, these two things become commodities and their values become exchange-value. As for the example, the 2 and 0.3 are the exchange-values. Yet, if we were to look at it from the utility point of view, the two chairs should be more useful than the 0.3 ounces of gold (let’s say a golden ring).         

But who or what decides that two chairs are worth only 0.3 ounces of gold, rather than 20 ounces, or 0.1 ounce? It is because the average amount of human labour in a society needed to produce two chairs and to extract 0.3 ounces of gold is the same. Thus, two chairs as well as 0.3 ounces of gold can be exchanged with each other, as with 8,000 apples, or 4 pairs of shoes. Every commodity therefore has equivalents, reflecting the average labour time spent on producing them from start to finish. By convention, historically, the universal equivalent form was attributed to a precious metal, gold or silver, as money-commodity, as the currency, which in itself embodied a standard of labour time in the same way and allowed all other commodities to be measured against it. 

Marx sums this up in a clear example:

  ‘Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects is our [exchange] value.’
   ‘Gold [meaning here as money] … serves as a universal measure of [exchange] value.’

In origin, money was a commodity, the precious metals gold or silver, for their property of lasting through time and their divisibility; their exchange-value was determined by their weight. At some point in order to allow smaller scale exchanges, other metals such as copper were used as tokens, substitutes for gold or silver coins. Even gold and silver coins were subject to wear and tear, thus their value became more and more conventional and less and less connected to their weight. This paved the way for a purely conventional currency as paper notes. Paper by itself is of little exchange-value, but conventionally notes are worth £20, £50, £100, etc. In Marx’s time Bank of England notes were redeemable in gold. The Bank, to which the state had given a concession to print paper notes, had to have in its safe the same amount of value in gold.

As Marx said, ‘Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices, is the business of the State.’ Furthermore,

‘Only in so far as paper money represents gold, which like all other commodities has value, is it a symbol of value.’        

One by one, governments around the world decided to stop their currency’s convertibility to gold, making them fiat currencies. Fiat stands for let it be. That is to say, money with no gold convertibility obligations.

So today, a central bank, that can print banknotes under the state’s concession, can create money out of thin air, increasing the chances of inflation. 

Let us go back to the cryptocurrency, though, and how Marx would see it.

It is quite possible to create a ‘cryptocurrency’ out of thin air; it is all a question of convention. To become a real currency, the state would have to recognize it. In most of the world’s countries, but not all, bitcoins are legally recognized but only as a private currency. Importantly, the inventors of Bitcoin set a limit on the number of bitcoins (21 million) and this scarcity, combined with other advantages, gave it some attraction. The major other advantage is that Bitcoin guarantees anonymity, ideal for those interested in tax evasion, gambling and money laundering. Moreover, purchases are not taxed. Bitcoin does not require so many intermediaries and therefore should have lower transaction fees. Businesses can even raise money, by means of Bitcoin, with no formal stock exchange listing. Yet, these advantages do not explain the steep increase in its price.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest derivatives exchange operator, is planning to start offering Bitcoins trading. This has helped make the speculative Bitcoin bubble bigger than the dot-com one of the late 90s. At the time of writing, in December, bitcoins were worth about $15,500, already on a descending phase, from a peak of about $18,000. What was it going to be worth the next day, $10,000, $500, $1? Investors were buying bitcoins because they expected somebody else to buy them, and so on. They hope for a ‘greater fool’ to buy from them, as the Economist (1 November) put it. Clearly, despite what the Bitcoin community say, this is not a currency adequate for buying everyday goods, but it has proved ideal for a huge speculative bubble, surely not a step towards the future of human evolution.

Marx would not think that Bitcoin was a good currency, because it is not a stable form of universal equivalent. Marx would equally think that neither the dollar nor any other fiat money was a good form of universal equivalent, since fiat money is fictitiously sustained by the state and when issued in excess leads to inflation. Marx would not think that a currency, invisible because digital and encrypted, was intrinsically a step forward or could change the social order. Capitalism can be surpassed only by a system where the means of production and products have become the common property of the whole society, and access to them completely free. A society where gold would not be the universal form of equivalent, nor any other type of money.

Cesco.

50 Years Ago: The Morality of Capitalism (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

As goods were produced, not that they should be used by their producers, but only to be sold at a profit, the quality of the articles was of little concern to the manufacturer so long as the purchaser could be deceived. The sale of adulterated foodstuffs, for instance, spread to proportions which would have seemed incredible in the ‘simple age' when people prepared food to eat. Bright declared adulteration a ‘legitimate form of competition’. Rubbish, in our civilised age, is sold as food, poison as drink, and the all-producing proletariat are clad in shoddy clothing, and in paper boots. Fortunes are built up, by the sale of quack ‘patent medicines’ and 'cures’ for every imaginable ailment. The advertising of goods has become an art in itself, an act of lying and deceit. Every article is pronounced from a hundred glaring posters to be better than all its competitors. Under capitalism it has become impossible to separate lying from the most everyday economic relations. The worker lies to his boss about his qualifications; the manufacturer and salesman lies to his customers from the hoarding and the Press, by his agent or over the counter. The ‘business lie’ has become ‘not a real lie at all’, a mere convention which everybody expects and everybody sees through.

Such are some of the glorious results of free competition and the 'rights of the individual’.

[From the Socialist Standard March 1918.]

Labour and the Health Charges (1968)

From the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The principle of the free, health service has been breached, and I dread to think how much that breach might be widened in future years”, said the President of the Board of Trade when he resigned from the Labour government in April 1951. He was objecting to 'imposing charges for National Health teeth and spectacles to raise money to spend on arms. His name was Harold Wilson.

Wilson was right. The new Tory government, elected in October of the same year announced within six months that it was to bring in prescription charges. The Labour Party was up in arms playing on its image as builder and defender of the welfare state. In Parliament they did all they could to oppose the measure. Former Minister of Health Hilary Marquand declared on 1 May 1952:

On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends I say when we are returned to power we shall take steps, as soon as Parliamentary opportunity permits, to bring all these charges— charges for drugs, medicines, appliances, dentures, dental treatment and spectacles—to an end.

This pledge was written into the 1955 election manifesto, Forward with Labour:

In order to restore a free Health Service, we shall abolish all charges, including those on teeth, spectacles and prescriptions.

In 1959 the manifesto, Britain Belongs to You, repeated:

We shall also restore the free Health Service by abolishing all charges, starting with the prescription charge.

When in 1961 the Tories increased the prescription charge to 2/- Labour MPs again opposed the measure. Anthony Greenwood, now a Cabinet Minister, told Labour’s 1963 Conference, on behalf of the Executive:

I repeat . . .  the pledge we have given you before this, that we shall remove the existing charges in the National Health Service.

Again, for the 1964 election The New Britain read:

The most serious attack on the Health Service made by Conservative Ministers has been the increasing burden of prescription charges imposed by them on those least able to pay. These charges will be abolished. Labour emphatically rejects recent proposals to introduce new charges for General Practitioner services; our aim is to restore as rapidly as possible a completely free Health Service.

This time they were lucky. Wilson became Prime Minister and Kenneth Robinson Minister of Health. Sure enough, in a few months Labour redeemed part of its pledge. On 17 December Robinson announced the ending of prescription charges “which, since 1952, have created a financial barrier between the patient and the treatment he needs”. He went on to state that in time they would also redeem the other part of their pledge:

There will remain charges for dental treatment and appliances and those for spectacles. It is our aim to abolish these charges also.

He did not say that for teeth and spectacles the financial barrier had existed since Gaitskell erected it in 1951.

In 1966, with Time For Decision, Labour faced the electorate, with the declaration that there were some principles they would not jettison “whatever the pressures”. One of those principles was that “even in times of economic crisis those in need should be helped by the state”. They brought forward their abolition of prescription charges as proof.

Less than two years later this principle is jettisoned, Wilson announced the restoration of prescription charges for many people at a rate of 2/6 an item. Far from abolishing the dental treatment charges, as Robinson promised, Labour raises them by 10/-. Charges for teeth and spectacles remain. After Wilson’s announcement a Labour MP, Laurie Pavitt, confronted him with Marquand’s pledge of May 1952. The official Hansard (daily) for 16 January quotes Wilson:

   The statement by Mr. Marquand on February 1, 1952, was a pledge to remove the charges which had been introduced in 1951, and it is only fair to say to my hon. Friend that such has been the problem that we have faced that we have not ourselves removed those Charges which were made on teeth and spectacles in 1951. I do not see how my hon. Friend can say that today’s announcement represents a fatal breach of principle.

This won’t do. If Marquand pledged Labour in 1952 to abolish the charges they themselves imposed in 1951, and Labour has failed to do this, then, by any standard, this is a breach of principle.

Wilson obviously found Pavitt’s reminder highly embarrassing. The parliamentary report of The Times of 17 January exposes Wilson's confusion. According to this report, what Wilson said was:

  The statement made by Mr. Marquand on May 1, 1952, was a pledge to restore the charges introduced in 1951. We have not restored those charges for teeth and spectacles, so I do not see how he can say that what I have announced reflects a breach in the principle

Another reporter, recorded in the Financial Times of the same date, confirms that Wilson said “we have not restored these charges on teeth and spectacles”. This, in his embarrassment, Wilson mistakenly has Marquand pledging Labour to restore the charges! But his remark about there being no breach of principle only makes sense if he really meant to say that Labour had not restored teeth and spectacle charges. Perhaps Wilson thought that Labour had ended these charges along with those for prescriptions in 1965. In any event, he was dodging the issue. Marquand pledged Labour to abolish all health charges and bringing back those on prescriptions is a breach of that pledge. Wilson seems to have had Hansard doctored to cover up his confusion, but despite this, his illogical argument comes out. Putting into Hansard something different from what was said is not uncommon, but it is nice to know that even Wilson has a guilty conscience over some of the pledges capitalism has forced him to break.

Aneurin Bevan called the National Health Service “pure Socialism” as it took buying and selling out of the treatment of the sick. True, Socialism does mean the ending of buying and selling, but Socialism is a social system that must replace capitalism; you cannot have bits of Socialism within capitalist society. In Socialism class ownership, the barrier to the community’s free use of the means of wealth production, will have been removed. All will have free access to what they need. But the NHS is not even free in the sense that Bevan meant. Part of the insurance stamp that is, deducted from wages and salaries is technically a “contribution” to the service. Wilson’s announcement that this deduction is to go up by 6d. will remind people of this.

So-called free services under capitalism are only so in appearance. Capitalism is based on the exclusion of the great majority of society from the ownership of the means of production. Consequently, they must find an employer to live; they must enter the labour market to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage. The value of human labour-power is fixed in the same way as that of other commodities: by the amount of socially necessary labour needed to produce and reproduce it. Thus, wages never amount to much more than enough to keep a man (and his family) fit to work at his particular job. If the working class has to pay little or nothing for medical treatment or housing, then their cost of living is subsidised and employers do not have to pay so high a wage. Employers do not have to make allowance for what their workers might have to spend on their health or housing. Since “free services” are paid out of taxation and taxation, in the end, falls only on those who own property, such schemes are really a way of spreading the cost of maintaining the working class in a fit state to work, over the capitalist class as a whole. The NHS has been correctly dubbed the back-to-work service. Except perhaps for minor ailments, the rich do not use it; they prefer to pay doctors and nursing homes for a better service. The aim of the NHS is to patch up workers as cheaply and quickly as possible. And it cannot even do even this minimum task adequately.

It is not because Socialists think highly of the NHS that we have produced Labour's past pledges on health charges. We do not think that Labour has betrayed us. They have, however, betrayed the millions of workers who voted Labour in the past four general elections. If you were amongst these millions, it is your duty to find out why Labour has betrayed you. Was it because Labour ministers are incompetent? Did they deliberately mislead you? Or, is it just that politics is corrupt? Labour leaders may or may not be incompetent, cynical or insincere. It matters little. Labour has been forced to break its word not because of the personal failings of its leaders, but because of the nature of the social system which they imagined they could control. Labour has always claimed that it could impose human and social priorities on capitalism. The NHS has always been given as a shining example. So it is poetic justice that Labour should be the agent of capitalism’s profit priority getting its own back.

Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the whole community. It is a class system that runs on profits and so any government that tries to improve social conditions at the expense of profits, within the framework of capitalism, is bound to fail. The economic forces of capitalism will in the end dictate priorities to the government, as Labour now knows. Since they got power in 1964 capitalism has not given them a chance and, of course, it never will, despite the pathetic pleas of Wilson and Jenkins for another two years to put things right.

We are here fighting Labour on its own ground. It is they who made defence of the welfare state one of their principles, and used it as a means to win support. Socialists do not accept that the welfare state was the exclusive work of the Labour Party. Welfare services are a must at a certain stage of capitalist development. If free medicines and free prescriptions are something to do with Socialism, how explain that the Health Insurance Act of 1911 provided this for workers insured under it? The then Liberal government has no socialist pretensions. Quite the contrary, it was as anti-working class as the present Labour government. The last recorded case of striking workers being killed by troops occurred under Asquith.

The imposition of health charges is a further Labour attack on the living standards of the working class. No doubt workers will to resist by stepping up the trade union struggle. But this is only a defensive action. We advise workers to recognise that capitalism cannot work for them, whether run by Labour, Tories or Liberals: and to withdraw their support from these and other capitalist parties and join and support a genuine Socialist Party dedicated to replacing capitalism with Socialism.

Adam Buick

The Review Column: Trawlers In Distress (1968)

The Review Column column from the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trawlers In Distress

There is no quick solution to the tragic deaths in the deep sea fishing fleet—nothing that will appeal to any official inquiry, nor to zealous newspaper men, nor even to protesting relatives.

The fishermen would be safer in bigger and better ships, and with a mother ship to provide immediate help. The trawler owners are reluctant to invest in this kind of equipment, and are fighting against government restrictions on winter fishing, because they say this would damage the economics—in other words the profitability—of the industry.

For those who support capitalism, with its wealth production based on profit, that is a powerful argument.

But this is not a case of coffin ships being sent into impossibly dangerous waters. The fishermen themselves often take risks with their own safety; they penetrate into dangerous seas, they are reluctant to give their position away to other trawlers and do not, therefore, report regularly by radio, they often run before a storm instead of heaving to and riding it out because they want to be first into port with their catch.

They take these risks simply because they are paid on what they bring back. There is nothing new in workers, under this kind of pressure, putting their lives at hazard. An inspection of almost any factory or building site would reveal many cases of safety precautions being evaded in the chase after a bonus schedule or higher piecework pay.

Perhaps, if they were asked, the workers—including the trawlermen—would say they would not have it any other way. But what would that prove? 

That some workers depend on their wage almost to the point of desperation. That sometimes they will accept appalling conditions, because they can see no alternative to the system which makes them. That capitalism’s morals of acquisitiveness have hardened some workers to the point where even their own lives are cheap.

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Vietnam

The latest flare-up in Vietnam showed that not only the Americans are capable of escalating the war there. It also showed that, in spite of all the bombing, which Washington always insisted was aimed at the North’s supply lines, the Vietcong can still infiltrate in strength and can still equip their forces behind the lines.

Will this latest offensive be followed by the Americans stepping up their war effort? The working class have been well prepared for this and the newsreels and photographs of the recent fighting, including those of the outrages committed by both sides, will have stimulated those who advocate the use of nuclear weapons.

There is no reason to think that retaliation would not follow, perhaps from China. It is the blood-chilling work of capitalism’s strategists to evaluate such perilous situations and to make their speculations in death and injury and destruction.

Another possibility is that the Vietcong attack was intended to strengthen their hand at any peace talks which may be in the offing.

This in itself says a lot about the nature of any such negotiations as may take place. It reveals that they will not be about peace but about conflict and that they will be, in their way, as much a trial of strength as any war.

It reveals that the people of Vietnam have nothing to hope for from negotiations and that even if the current war is brought to a halt the Far East will continue to be an area where irreconcilable interests clash over which group of capitalists shall have access to which markets, oil fields, rubber plantations . . . 

Vietnam is simply another of capitalism’s conflicts. In its protraction, its atrocities, its morals of violence and its frightening possibilities it is no more than another page in a fearsome history.

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Mergers

It would be exceedingly difficult, in face of the greater and greater mergers which are taking place in industry, to keep up the once-popular myth that this is the Century of the Common Man.

The two latest headliners—of GEC and AEI and of British Motor Holdings and Leylands—were classics of their kind.

All four companies were already huge and had been built up after a series of previous mergers and takes-over. There are, it seems, no limits to the field of monopoly; size is no restriction and neither is competition as deadly rivals readily sink their differences in the new combines.

One of the driving forces in this is the hope that the mergers will bring economies in production and administration—including in the people who work in these.

It did not take GEC long to announce some of their cuts, in particular their plan to close the old AEI factory at Woolwich. The workers there reacted with stunned indignation; some of them have been at AEI for a very long time, many with their families.

But of course capitalism does not employ people as a benevolent service; nobody has a right to a job. People are employed if it is profitable for an employer to do so; if it is not, or if there is more profit to be made from sacking them, they will not be employed.

These facts are harsh, but facts nonetheless. If mergers do nothing else, they show workers their degrading place in capitalist society—as entries on an accountant’s balance sheet, as faceless units in production to be analysed, coded, evaluated and, in some cases, dispensed with.

The employers, for their part, can only trust that the merger’s economies will solve their problems. But the markets of capitalism remain untouchably anarchic. Perhaps the workers in the combines are not the only ones who are in for some shocks.