Caught In The Act: Brylcreem Boys (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brylcreem Boys

To reconstruct a famous saying — Kenneth Baker has the looks of a politician designed by a committee. If we are to choose one short word to describe his appearance it would be smug, which is odd for a politician at a time when British capitalism is promising to slide into recession, when working class poverty, homelessness and sickness are as rampant as ever and — what is even worse — when the Conservative Party is in disarray. It is not so much his seriously fleshed body and face topped by a confection of hair battered into shape with generous applications of grease, nor the mouth which looks like the result of a surgical operation, an afterthought when the committee had adjourned, as his bravely persistent smile.

Baker's smiles do not spread over his face in order to prove that the surgeons have done a good job, connecting up all the muscles and nerves in the right order. They are his contribution to British politics, in his job as chairman of the Conservative Party. Confronted with some inconvenient news such as a crisis in the cabinet or a by-election defeat or a big lead for the Labour Party in the opinion polls, his conditioned response must be an expression of delight. It was in this way that he slickly misrepresented the Tories' heavy losses in the local election in May as a country-wide victory for them, making enough pleasureable noise about their results in Wandsworth, Westminster and Ealing to drown the wails of their defeated candidates in other areas and the panic-stricken twittering of Tory MPs who sit on thin majorities which they could see melting away in the warmth of the Baker smile.

Recanting

Of course Baker is only human which means that sometimes the genial mask slips to show the despondency beneath. This happened when he had to face the newsnounds in the street after Nigel Lawson had resigned. But he soon perked up — he was. after all on TV — to urge us to take comfort from the fact that we had a very good Chancellor and a very good Foreign Secretary so all was well. The Tories' humiliation in Bradford North was partly blamed on their candidate's inept practice of the deceits and posturing which are called electioneering — which meant that Baker had to be sent out to tell everyone how much he admired her and to brush off the defeat with the understatement that "out there we're not very popular at the moment". Baker's job got really difficult when Geoffrey Howe resigned because in face of this massive piece of evidence of a split in the cabinet he had to insist that they were united — which made him took a fool or a fraud.

The job of Conservative Party chairman (so far no woman has held this job and if one does, knowing the Tories they will probably still call her a chairman) calls for a measure of flexibility — which might better be called a readiness to tell lies. Baker has already proved how flexible he can be because from being one of Thatcher's inner opponents he has joined the sorry ranks of her ardent admirers. In 1986 he voiced his anxieties about one of Thatcher’s favourite policies — support for the American bombing of Libya. Shortly afterwards he gave out one of those coded warnings, which the Tories are so fond of and which it is really pointless to obscure in code because everyone knows what the speaker means, when he spoke about the government losing its "sense of direction". Privately he spoke of the coming day when the traditional Tory style of government would return with ministers like Hurd and Gilmour and, of course, Baker.

By the time of the 1987 election Baker had seen — or had pointed out to him — the error of his ways and was praising "acquisitive individualism". This typically Thatcherite phrase was intended to strike a chord with those workers who were about to vote Tory because they had one of those massive debts called a mortgage or were very briefly shareholders in some privatised state concern. These people — the working class — acquire very little in their lives apart from debts and delusions about capitalism and what individualism they may display has a hard time under the pressures of having to work for their living. But it sounded good. And by the time of Heseltine's challenge for the Tory leadership Baker's recantation was as complete as Winston Smith’s in 1984. "Mrs. Thatcher's leadership qualities," he grovelled, "Are the greatest political assets which the Conservative Party and our nation have".

Ambitions

Being Tory Party chairman can be enjoyable when things are going well for the Tories, like when the Treasury are able to roll out some reassuring statistics about things like inflation and the balance of trade which the voters believe are so vital to our wellbeing. In other circumstances — like nowadays — it can be what might be called a harrowing experience, not to be recommended to anyone who has not first consulted their doctor. Baker's time in the chair has done little or nothing to advance his ambitions to be Tory leader himself. The same can be said for his time as Minister for Education, when he managed to antagonise the teachers into militancy by his rearrangements of their jobs and his bullying tactics over their pay. Under the stress of all this, he was said to be making his policies on the hoof and it is something of a monument to him that the Labour Party are now making a big electoral issue of education. They are sure that such is the dissatisfaction among workers about how children are taught that there are votes to be won and lost. So Baker's career seems to have come to a dead-end and he will become yet another discarded hopeful. But he can be relied on, however messy his end may be, to keep smiling to it.

Brilliance

Another Brylcreem boy, who was slapping on the brilliantine when Baker was a baby being kissed by politicians instead of the other way around, was the late Richard Crossman who is the subject of a recently published biography by Anthony Howard. While he was still at school Crossman decided that he was exceptionally brilliant and therefore conducted his life on that assumption. When he was elected to the Commons he was marked down as an incorruptible left winger by hopeful Labour dupes who mistake boorish behaviour for principled radicalism. In fact it was Crossman's behaviour and not his principles — such as could be identified — which deterred Attlee from promoting him from the back benches. For that he had to wait for Harold Wilson and his crafty balancing act.

To the dismay of many of those we must call his colleagues Crossman kept a diary of his time as a minister and it does not make soothing reading for them. Anyone who has any lingering delusions about the comradeship in a Labour government or its crusade to the new society should purge themselves by reading Crossman’s barbed accounts of what actually happened. They might also consider what these diaries say about Crossman himself — about his open contempt not just for his Labour colleagues but also for the working class who endure the poverty and repression of capitalism yet vote for braggarts like Crossman in the hope that they will change things. And they could ask themselves how anyone like Crossman could be called — could call themselves — a socialist. They could think about the meaning of the word socialist and how it can validly be applied only to those who struggle to end capitalism and its fetish for leaders, whether oily like Baker or abrasive like Crossman. If enough do that, enough ask those questions, then those diaries, to reconstruct another famous phrase, will not have been written in vain.

Ivan

A working week (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monday: Another five days of blood, sweat and tears starts here. Why, if today is the first day of the rest of my life, do I feel as if it’s passing me by? Everyone is walking around with that miserable expression they always wear at the beginning of the week. Tell them that they’re hungover from capitalism and they look at you oddly. I asked Jason how he fared in court last Friday. He says he was fined four hundred pounds. Seems to think it was a reasonable price to pay for getting canned and hitting a policeman. I suggest he should join the Army and indulge his taste for booze and violence at the expense of the state. He is not amused. Check my diary to see what exciting opportunities the week has in store for me. I am not jetting to New York on Concorde for a business meeting, but I am seeing some fellow wage slaves tomorrow to find out why their company isn’t paying its bills. What a stimulating life l lead. I note that it’s Tom’s sixtieth birthday next week. I don't know how he manages to haul that 32-ton artic around every day, what with night's out, and three a.m. starts. He’s certainly looking his age.

Tuesday: I'll never understand why these occasions always end up getting so heated. The way they were going on you'd think it was their own money they were spending. It's like marriage; money caused more arguments than anything else. When I get back to the office, Martin's put his bloody posters all over the place again. How come that if I display union information I'm accused of fomenting a communist revolution, but he can plaster evangelical messages all over reception with impunity? They're all the same, these born again hypocrites. Give 'em a company car and their name on the office door, and they're in the bosses' pocket. Allowing for inflation it’s a lot cheaper than thirty pieces of silver. Check my diary and discover that I’m not engineering the take-over of another company to add to my growing international industrial empire. Instead, I have an appointment with my bank manager because I’m a hundred pounds overdrawn without permission. Bit of grovelling obviously called for. Money, it s a bugger.

Wednesday: Our cats got more sense than me. The bank manager didn't appreciate my jokingly threatening to take my overdraft elsewhere; but when I told him that if I were a Third World country he would be falling over backwards to lend me millions at extortionate rates of interest, I don't think he was best pleased. Make a note to find a new bank. Better still, get rid of money, and everything that goes with it. Back at work Martin's been applying "Christian principles" to my members' work practices again He's trying to render unto Caesar every last Denarius. I told him once. "Look", I said, “you're just as much a member of the working class as those lads on the shop floor . "I don t believe in class", he said, "we're all god's children". Obviously there isn't anything about Marx's Labour Theory of Value in the bible. Martin hates unions. I know that. Personally, I think he resents not having been born into the ruling class. Capitalism's not got a lot to worry about with people like him at its beck and call. Still, everyone's not as stupid as he is. After all, it's the working class that runs capitalism from top to bottom. The asylum of ignorance, Spinoza called religion.

Thursday: Today's the day we have the weekly ritual whereby the workers pick up their ration of poverty. It's always the same. They open their pay-packet, examine the contents carefully. Then sign for it with a long, sorrowful sigh. The routine never varies. After further careful perusal of the pay-slip, the queries start to come thick and fast. Is this tax right? I thought I earned more bonus than this last week? Can I have a twenty-pound sub to see me through to next week? When are you going to talk to the boss about re-instating overtime? It's bad for my blood pressure, Thursdays. All that aggravation over money. All over the country, no, the world, there are wage clerks, bank clerks, accountants. petrol pump attendants, security guards, all involved in helping to run a society where you can’t even get a box of matches if you don't possess that unit of exchange, money. Stupid, isn't it? And what does it achieve? After the collection of the wages comes the payouts. Union dues, pay back subs, and a quid to the lad who runs the football pools syndicate. Winning the pools seems the best chance most of us have got of escaping from a nine-to-five existence. Stupid, isn’t it. Especially when the alternative is staring us in the face, socialism.

Friday: Talk about wishing your life away. Monday's blues are now forgotten. Until next week. Everyone's walking around saying, roll on five o'clock, and discussing what they're going to do over the weekend. The options are somewhat limited by the amount of cash available. A dinner for two at Maxim's, Paris? No, three pints down the pub. A spot of grouse shooting on the moors? No, a walk round the park. A night at the Royal Opera House? No, a night in front of the television. At four forty-five in the afternoon, Martin calls me into his office. He's wearing his worried but concerned look. I get treated to a fifteen-minute exposition on the state of the world economy, its effect on national profitability, and then comes the crunch. The company's suffering from overproduction and falling sales. We must reduce costs. He hopes that I appreciate the necessity of ensuring that the company does its best to survive these difficult times for us all. We're talking redundancies. Or we will be on Monday.

Everyday: Stupid isn't it? Life isn't some pre-ordained. unchangeable circumstances there simply to test our worthiness or otherwise to pass the examination for entry to some eternal luxury hotel when we die. Life isn't a rehearsal. This is the only one we get. Are we all really satisfied that it couldn't be better? Some of us are happier than most. They're the ones who own the institutions that most of us work for. They're the ones who sit back and let the rest of us continue to create wealth for them. Day after day after day. Some of us are employed to persuade the rest of the working class what a wonderful system capitalism is. Or to persuade us that after a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears, we'll get our reward in heaven. It won't do. We, the working class, run society already, but for the benefit of a few rather than for the many. Let's make the capitalist class redundant. and with it capitalism. Let's put a smile back into every day of the week.

Dave Coggan

Architects on the dole (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

When people think of architects images of a be-wigged Christopher Wren come to mind. Or there is the image of a corrupt businessman like John Poulson. For tens of thousands of workers and their families it is an image of a faceless designer who throughout the fifties and sixties packed them into wind-swept concrete slums many of which are currently being blown up.

However, images aside, there is one characteristic about architects which is generally forgotten, namely, that most are members of the working class. Of course Sunday Telegraph editorials like to portray them as members of a fictional "middle class”, as do the academic textbooks written by sociologists, a sect who are to capitalism what the Schoolmen were to feudalism.

But architects are workers whether they like it or not. because they are employed by those who own and control the architectural practices. These employers buy the architect’s mental and physical abilities to design and supervise the construction of a building exactly in the same way as a contractor buys the labour power of a bricklayer, a carpenter or a ground-worker. So in terms of the production and distribution of commodities architects are just a small constituent in what Marx called the "Collective Labourer". When put to work this collective workforce creates value and, through its exploitation by the capitalist, surplus-value in the form of commodities which are then sold on the market for a profit.

As workers, architects' ability to sell their labour-power to an employer is dependent upon trade conditions. In a boom there is no problem, and workers can obtain higher wages and better working conditions since their employers do not want production disrupted thereby jeopardising profits. But in a trade depression workers are expendable because the employers, in finding that their commodities are not selling, find that it is unprofitable to exploit the workers’ labour. Some workers are lucky in these conditions and retain their job. others are laid-off or made redundant. Such is the precarious existence for workers under capitalism.

The building industry is in a depression at the moment. Irrespective of whether people need houses—being forced to live with parents or friends, or in bed-sits and hostels, or to squat or sleep rough—if developers. whose only concern is profit and capital accumulation, find that they cannot sell the commodities that their houses and flats are they curtail production. They will either invest their capital elsewhere or, if they have over-produced, they will go bankrupt through not being able to meet their creditors' demands on time.

Sacked
As a result of the present depression in the building industry many architectural practices have found work hard to come by, particularly those which were working for large house-builders and speculators in the City or Docklands. Bankrupt developers and capital moving out into sectors with higher rates of profit show that the owners of these businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to exploit their workforce. According to a recent report in the Architect's Journal (September 1990):

  The swiftness and severity of downturn in workload has alarmed many. In post-boom London and the South-East some practices are facing oblivion.

The report also cites a Department of Environment figure which claims:

  an 18 per cent fall in construction orders during the second quarter compared to 1989—the most dramatic decline for a quarter of a century.

The Architect's Journal in a telephone poll of 78 architectural practices found that employers had laid-off 133 architects in the last six months. During the next six months it believed that "another 55 redundancies are expected" in these offices. Over at the Royal Institute of British Architects, a business club which represents the class interests of those who own and control architectural practices. Tim Pritchard of the RIBA Appointment Bureau exclaimed:

  Some practices simply have no one left to sack. We're hearing now of practices on the ropes: they are down to the partners and the next stop will be to wind-up. Virtually every large firm is sacking: the effects are beginning to ripple North.

Bearing in mind that many architects see themselves divorced from the working class and the "operatives’’ on the building sites, it is tempting to have little sympathy for their current misfortune. Unemployment is a ruthless leveller. Now architects are having to join the ranks of the unemployed. They are in good company because Wren was sacked by his employers too. And, as they go through the humiliating and degrading experience of the Unemployment Office, they might like to reflect upon exactly what class they really belong to. Propertyless and dependent upon a wage or salary they fall fairly and squarely into the working class: the majority within a class-divided society.

With a good deal of humility, rather than aligning their interests with those of a hostile class they might also like to consider, along with the rest of our class, the urgent need for workers to take conscious political action in pursuit of their class interests to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism.

Socialism will be a society which values design, construction and production for the pleasure these give and the use to which society can put them in meeting men's and women's needs. Architects will find this infinitely more rewarding than the way capitalism currently exploits them for its own profitable ends as disposable commodities on an unpredictable and anarchic world market.

Richard Lloyd

Between the Lines: Racism in Poland (1990)

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

Racism in Poland

Jew-hating is the echo of fear. Frightened little men with distorted images of the world and ignorant louts with leather-boot-brains are to be found seeking someone — anyone — to blame for the predicament of their misery. Failing to recognise the real foe, which is the profit system in which they exist as the providers of their masters' privilege, they seek out a cultural group and chant their poisonous slogans of hatred. In Poland jew-hating (better to call it that — anti-semitism makes it sound like a philosophical outlook) is on the rise. Frozen prejudices are thawing out in the new, freer political atmosphere of post-state capitalism.

Assignment (BBC2, 7.45pm, 13 November) showed how the current Presidential election in Poland has brought out some of these sickening old prejudices. Workers interviewed on the street complained that the Jews ran the country. The reason for the awful poverty of most Poles was the Jews. The Walesa campaign has pandered to the kind of crass nationalism within which portrayal of the Jew as a non-Pole — a disruptive alien — has a place. This is the dirty work of running Polish capitalism which Walesa and those other brave workers of ten years ago have taken on.

In 1980 they knew who their enemies were: the Communist Party bosses; today the Jews are the scapegoats. The irony is that there are hardly any Jews left in Poland. The Nazis saw to that — about four million Polish Jews were systematically slaughtered. In Russia the same hatreds are being concocted by those in need of new enemies to blame.

Decades of so-called communist education and media have left nothing but a working class which is prey to this most ignorant of bigoted beliefs.

Gullibility in Britain

Equinox (Channel 4, 7pm, 18 November) reminded us just how many mugs there were in Britain and how many swines there are who will happily take money for exploiting such gullibility.

The programme examined the attempts to expose the frauds and — more often — self-deceptions of those who claim that they can read fortunes by looking at tarot cards, communicate with the dead and hold conversations with men from flying saucers. It is fear of rational thought which attracts the believers to such nonsensical beliefs.

Doris Collins was shown prancing up and down a stage delivering phoney messages from dead people to ignorant workers who do not want to believe that death means the end of life. "I have a message here from someone from a Jim — or a Jimmy — or a Timmy . . ." And someone somewhere whose father was called that or something like it or something close enough to let them imagine that they are getting their money’s worth raises their hand and allows Doris to tell them what they want to believe.

Then there was the expose of the detestably stupid Christian Dion: a caricature of a fair-ground fake — but perhaps he believes in what he says. Dion appears on London radio telling callers what their future will be like. By employing an array of cliches and likely possibilities Dion is able to create an image of a man who is doing something other than looking at a pack of silly cards and telling people what they want to hear.

The likes of Doris and Dion prey on the uncertainties and anxieties of working class life. They persisently fail to be put to the test of rigorous scientific scrutiny. They are the fools of a foolish culture and the providers of untruth to those who cannot face the truth. It has been a bad month for prejudice and fraud — bring on the Queen's Speech and the nativity play and let the sickly trend continue.

Steve Coleman

Which Exploiting Regime—U.S.A. or U.S.S.R.? (1945)

From the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Union Leaders at Loggerheads

The 1945 Trade Union Congress witnessed an indictment of Russian trade unionism by Mr. G. Meany, delegate from the reactionary American Federation of Labour. The incident occurred during a discussion on the proposed formation of an International Federation of Trade Unions. Mr. Meany protested against the inclusion of Russia, on the grounds that Russian trade unionism was a sham. He said: 

  "We do not recognise that the Russian worker groups are trade unions. The Soviet worker groups are formally and actually instruments of the State.
  "They are official branches of the Government and of its ruling dictatorial party.
 "These trade unions actively support the Soviet system of worker black lists and deportation to labour camps that have resulted in virtual enslavement for millions of peasants, workers and professional people, who are confined to labour camps with no protection from exploitation end compulsory labour.
  "We have been in complete accord with our Government's military co-operation with Russia. We hope our Government may find ways and means to achieve similar cooperation in post-war years in the interests of permanent world peace. But in simple honesty we insist on recognising the so-called Russian trade union movement for what it is—a Government controlled, Government fostered and Government dominated labour front that denies to the workers of Soviet Russia the basic human freedoms that American workers hold are pre-requisite to a free trade union.
  "For us membership in a world organisation that would attempt to dictate to our Government on the conduct of its foreign relations is unthinkable. We do not want our Government to take over trade unions and we do not want our trade unions to take over our Government.
  "We believe in Labour co-operation along trade union lines in the international field." —(Daily Sketch, 13th September, 1946.)

The next day Mr. Tarasov, representing the Soviet trade unions, referred to Mr. Meany's statements as insults and lies. He made no attempt to prove they were lies, but said Mr. Meany's accusations "aimed at disrupting their common efforts to achieve unity of one international trade union movement. This feeling of resentment was demonstrated in the Congress itself by the indignant protests of many delegates."

Mr. Meany's accusations were aimed more at the form of government in England and Russia than against trade unionism as such in those countries. American bosses would be in complete accord with him. The resentment of Mr. Tarasov and the disapproval of the delegates sprang more from this aspersion on their respective governments than from any charge against Russian trade unionism. The delegates of all three countries were merely showing their loyalty to their national bosses.

Confirmation of Meany's statements came from a number of sources during the following weeks. On September 20th, the Daily Telegraph published an article by J. L. Garvin which comprehensively outlined the attitude of Russian leaders towards the working-class of that country, together with a survey of their spectacular rise to power. Among other things he said:—

  "Turn to the no less dynamic system of Russia, operated by other means. It derives from an original compulsion of unique circumstances. Not from the ancient doctrines and dogmas of Karl Marx, framed a hundred years ago, but from the personal and path-breaking genius of Lenin and Stalin.
  "On no subject are our Socialist Ministers and their rank and file more deceived. Russia to-day is neither dominated nor influenced by any idea concerning labour that appeals to the Trades Union Congress. The Soviet Union is a system of State Capitalism fundamentally based on compulsory and stimulated labour.
   "How did it arise? After the overthrow of Tsarism the economic problem was nothing less than to lift Russia from conditions like those of the thirteenth century to the level of the twentieth; and so to do the work of five centuries in one generation.
  "Lenin had definite conceptions of how to do it on the largest lines of modern technique. Stalin became the daring and mighty executant of that design—the demiurge of the incredible transformation effected by the series of Five Years' Plans. It has been a work made possible by the extent of Russia's undeveloped resources. Nowhere else on earth could its like have been achieved by the same means.
   "British labour would not stand for a single day that rigour and urge of compulsion or the lower standard of life.
   "The old Communist maxim was, 'From everyone according to their ability; to everyone according to their need.' Soviet State Capitalism is rightly so called because It has succeeded in the former purpose of compelling total and extreme exertion, but has not begun to attain the second ideal of plentiful distribution.
   "Owing to the successive necessities of political and economic revolution and of war, the low Russian standard of living is largely a sacrifice for a higher future of human welfare, as well as national strength. Stalin avowed years ago that his continuous aim was to create ultimately 'the happiest as well as mightiest society in the world.'
    "But let us make no mistake about the method. Its power at bottom depends on no Marxist nor any other theory, but—let us repeat it—on a practical economic policy of intensive work and maximum production emulating the similar aims in America."—Telegraph, September 20th, 1945.

To understand fully the attitude, or acquiescence, of the Russian workers, we have to remember that their leaders claim to be Socialists planning to achieve Socialism. Their names are often coupled with that of Marx, who is regarded as a mere theorist; while Lenin and Stalin are supposed to have been translating his theories into practice in accordance with the changed circumstances of to-day. In addition, of course, there are the concentration camps for those who disagree, or fail to work energetically for the five-year plans.

The nationalised planning in Russia and England and the boasted private enterprise of America have all the same objective: trade supremacy based on exploitation. of the working-class. In all three countries the workers are being urged to tighten their belts and work harder and faster. In Russia the workers are hypnotised by Stalin and Co. In England and America trade union leaders have no ideas beyond bargaining with the masters for concessions here and there. Their protracted and ineffective efforts inevitably lead to impatience on the part of the workers and numerous unofficial strikes; leaders and masters then invariably demand a return to work as a condition of further consideration of the men's demands.

Futile as this procedure is, trade union leaders have no desire for a change. They have established themselves as responsible links between capital and labour, and the importance and permanence of each side must be maintained in order to preserve their status, and of course, their jobs..

It must be obvious to thinking people that trade unionism can do nothing for the workers beyond putting up organised resistance against the masters on the questions of wage reductions and greater speed and intensity of work.

Among those who had a ding at trade unions, following Mr. Meany’s charges at the T.U.C., was “Candidus,” of the Daily Sketch. Among other things he said:—

  “For Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism, whereas capitalism is the fly-wheel of trade unionism. Capitalism and trade unionism stand or fall with each other."—Daily Sketch, September 17th, 1945.

Because of his habitual confusion over nationalisation and Socialism, "Candidus” inadvertently proclaims a profound Socialist truth. To be the antithesis of capitalism. Socialism must be opposed to it on fundamentals. Which it is. Capitalism, the thesis, is based on class ownership of the means of wealth production. Socialism, the antithesis, proclaims ownership of these essential things by the people as a whole. But the antithesis can only be realised by the working-class in opposition to the master-class. The workers’ are wasting much time and energy struggling against them on the industrial field. A little thought would show them the limits of this struggle, and a little more thought would convince them of the necessity to understand and work for Socialism.

F. Foan

Donations To Party Funds (1945)

Party News from the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: Some Facts About The Dock Strike (1945)

Editorial from the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hypocritical Attitude of Labour Spokesmen

A great deal of cant has been spoken and written about the dockers' “unofficial ” strike which ended on November 5th, but with the threat that they will come out again if the negotiations now resumed do not give them satisfaction. The line taken by the daily Press and by the spokesmen of the Labour Government has been that there can be no recognition of “unofficial” action not endorsed by the central executives of the Transport and General Workers' Union and the other unions involved. The pious attitude of the newspapers would be more convincing if there was the slightest reason to believe that they would have given their support if the strike had been official,—but experience shows that if it had they would have opposed it just the same. After the last war the same problem arose of the attempted stabilisation of wages at war-time levels, and there were innumerable strikes, official and unofficial. One of the biggest official strike# was of railway men, and it took place after long negotiations. The strike was widely condemned by the newspapers, though it was official, and Hr. Lloyd George’s Government refused to negotiate while the men were on strike. That is the typical attitude of the employers, the capitalist press and governments. Trade union officials, who are quite familiar with it, ought to have something better to do than lend themselves to sidetracking capitalist propaganda about unofficial strikes. If members of the unions think that negotiations are being needlessly prolonged by the employers, or if delays and lack of contact exist because of the unwieldy machinery of huge composite unions like the Transport Workers, with its million members and dozen separate trade groups, or if there is a suspicion that the men's interests are being sacrificed in order not to embarrass the Labour Government in its task of administering capitalism, trade union officials cannot justifiably disown responsibility.

If the Press has been hypocritical so have the Labour Ministers. Many of them in the past have been engaged in activities likewise denounced by the capitalist Press or by the men who at that time controlled the Labour Party and trade unions. Some of them on occasion have been active in unofficial strikes and have incurred the displeasure of the officials they were repudiating.

Many of them were associated with the national strike of 1926 and would be wise to remember how the politicians and lawyers denounced it as “unconstitutional." Mr. Shinwell, as Chairman of the 40-hour Committee in 1919, was charged with inciting to riotous conduct and imprisoned for five months, and Miss Ellen Wilkinson was once a fiery advocate of “direct action." The Labour Government should also explain how they square their use of thousands of troops to do the work of striking dockers with their traditional opposition to the use of soldiers in industrial disputes. Have they forgotten that on May 12th, 1939, when the Government was introducing the Military Training Bill to conscript young men for the coming war, the Labour Opposition moved an amendment which would have freed the conscripts from liability “to take duty in aid of the civil power in connection with a trade dispute, or to perform, in consequence of a trade dispute, any civil or industrial duty customarily performed by a civilian in the course of his employment.’’ It was Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of Fuel and Power, who moved the amendment and said that his Party would “resent very strongly the use of conscripts who might be employed . . . . either to assist in supporting men who were on strike and bringing the dispute to an end, or to take their places in any particular department of industry."—(Hansard, 12th May, 1939. Col. 690.)

The principal cause behind the present dispute is the reduction of earnings with the ending of the war. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian (3rd October), writing on the dockers at Liverpool, states that “during the war they have been working hard and drawing good wages—£8 to £10. . . . Now they feel that they are faced with a peace-time cut to about half that amount." Overtime has ceased and the dockers are seeking to offset the big reduction of earnings by claiming a daily wage of 25s. in place of the present 16s. (15s. in smaller ports). What helped to aggravate the situation was the fact that at Liverpool 500 dockers had just been discharged as redundant—a bitter pill that fine words about “full employment" did not make any sweeter.

One aspect of the dockers' dispute is of general application and deserves the closest attention of trade unionists, that is the dependence on leaders. They found themselves denounced and opposed by their own elected officials, men whose salaries are paid by the men's contributions. Leadership is of no use to the working class movement. Officials should not be made, or allowed to make themselves, into leaders. The members should decide themselves exactly what they want done and see that the officials carry out their instructions. What counts in the last resort is the pressure that can be exerted on the employers by the strike, and the object, time and duration of strikes should be solely in the hands of the union members. There is no magic art of leadership or negotiation that will take the place of the workers' strike weapon. Lastly, the workers should realise—and if they don't, experience will teach them—that nothing essential is changed because a Labour Government is trying to run capitalism. Long ago the Daily Herald (then only an “unofficial" Labour organ) stated the truth of this. If the price of nationalisation is giving up the strike, then “under capitalism a nationalised industry would actually be worse off than those left in private hands" (13th September, 1922).

Again the Herald said:—

  “We do not believe that there is any fundamental distinction so long as the wage system exists between the relationship of a private employer to his workers and the relationship of a municipality or State to its workers. In each case the latter sell their labour-power and their capacity to sell it at a fair price depends on their capacity, through their trade unions, to refuse to work."—12th April, 1924.)

There is particular point in this in view of the fact that dock work at present is to a large extent under the control of the Government, and that some of the dockers are employed by the Port of London Authority, a body once denounced by Mr. Herbert Morrison as a “capitalist soviet," but now used by him and his Government as a model for nationalisation, and wrongly described as “socialism."

Those who fancy that employment by the State or by a public utility corporation is the solution of the workers' problems should think over the action of the P.L.A. when its workers came out on strike. “A notice warning Port of London permanent labourers that they would be 'deemed to have left the service of the Authority without notice' if they did not return to work . . . was posted outside the Royal Albert Dock yesterday."—(Daily Herald, 13th October, 1945.)

Capitalism runs true to form even if a Labour Government chooses to pretend that it is different because it now runs under different colours!

Letter: The Change Over From Capitalism To Socialism (1945)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (A. Outram, Dagenham) asks the following questions about the coming of Socialism :—

"It is reasonable to presume that one of the companion parties will be elected to office in advance of the others. In such circumstances would the party administer capitalism under government supervision, at the same time passing laws to alleviate the workers' suffering, and using its influence to carry on intensive Socialist propaganda amongst the workers of other lands, who by this time would be well advanced on the road ho Socialism?

"With the wages system finally overthrown in the advanced countries, how would the distribution of food, clothing, etc., be arranged in the early days of Socialist administration? By coupons issued according to a man's needs? I presume that the transition from capitalist to Socialist methods would not take place overnight."

A. Outram, 

Dagenham

Reply.

Does Socialism make headway in all countries at the same rate?

Our correspondent's first question turns on the rate at which the Socialist movement grows in different countries. At present the Socialist movement is small in all countries though large and increasing numbers of workers are sympathetic to the general idea of Socialism. They have yet to convinced of the truth that Socialism cannot be brought about by "Labour” Governments put into power by the votes of the discontented, who want to improve capitalism by means of reforms but are so far unable to understand that capitalism needs to be abolished. The experience the workers are having of "Labour" Governments in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and elsewhere, will hasten the process of winning the workers from Labourism to Socialism. Whatever differences there may be now between the spread of Socialist ideas in one country and another will become smaller not larger as the Socialist movement grows, because of one factor which is operating with more and more effectiveness from year to year. That is the extent to which the workers in one country observe and profit by the experience of workers in all countries. Workers in Britain do not need Fascism here to appreciate its uselessness to the working class, they can learn from what happened in Italy and Germany. Likewise workers in countries under Liberal or Conservative or "Communist" Governments will learn not only the uselessness to them of these governments but will also more and more appreciate the inevitable failure of Labour Governments from what they observe takes place in countries with Labour Governments. Capitalism is forcing the workers to take an international view of the problems of the working class.

We can therefore state confidently that by the time a majority of workers have become Socialist in one country there will be majorities or near-majorities in all the industrialised capitalist countries. Moreover, the Socialist parties will constitute an international body acting harmoniously together as a single movement. At that time the capitalist parties and governments will ho longer be in a position to offer serious opposition to the world Socialist movement either in the countries with Socialist majorities or in those where the Socialists, though strong, are not quite in the majority. The time for action to establish Socialism internationally, and the steps to be taken to deal with the weakened remnants of capitalist parties and governments will be matters for decision by the international Socialist movement as a whole, and the capitalist remnants will be unable to interfere effectively. There is no need to envisage a long marking-time by a Socialist majority in the first country where Socialists gain political control.

Distribution in the period immediately after Socialists have gained control.

Certain economic problems would require immediate attention since it is not possible "overnight" to produce the larger quantities of useful articles that would be needed for the world’s population, but this does not mean that "the transition from capitalist to Socialist methods" need be delayed if by Socialist methods is meant the abolition of the wages system and of production for profit. The introduction of a Socialist system would involve the immediate abolition of capitalist ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. The working class would simply continue production but for the benefit of the whole community. Short-term scarcity of certain articles may exist while, for example, the ex-capitalists (and the workers now engaged on financial operations needed only for capitalism), are being brought into useful occupations, and while armament factories are being turned over to the production of useful articles. What administrative method may be used to secure satisfactory distribution of the articles temporarily in short supply is a minor question, to be dealt with at the time. The important factor will be that the Socialist majority will make the decision with full understanding of the nature of the problem and will carry it out with a full realisation that distribution will be made in the interests of the whole community and not in the interests only of a section.

Editorial Committee

Glasgow Branch Municipal Election Fund (1945)

Party News from the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Glasgow Branch of the S.P.G.B. reconsidered their organisational strength for such a venture, and decided to withdraw from the Glasgow Municipal Elections. Members and friends who contributed to the election fund, and wish to have their donations refunded, should apply to the Secretary, S.P.G.B., 13, Maryhill Road, Glasgow, N.W.

Failing applications being received before March, 1946. the Branch will transfer all monies in the Fund to the S.P.G.B. Parliamentary Fund. -

Thos. A. Mulheron. Organiser.

Observations: Santa on the spot (1986)

The Observations Column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Santa on the spot

Playing Santa Claus can be an extremely disagreeable way of contributing to a Christmas party. It's not just that all those robes and false whiskers make you feel like the pudding in the steamer, nor the physical assaults which must be uncomplainingly absorbed from impatient, disappointed or inquisitive children. There's also the fact that you're being set up to work a deception on people who, by their age, are assumed to be nicely vulnerable to it.

Whatever the hazards faced by the amateur Santa Claus they are as nothing compared to those of the professionals, those derelict actors who seem ready to take almost any risk for the sake of a bit of work in the Christmas spending spree. This year it promises to be even worse; if there are any Santas getting job satisfaction by resisting the idea that Christmas is a vast festival of commerce, 1986 should make them change their minds.

The pressure is on, in all the big stores, for the jolly Santas to turn in higher sales figures and some decidedly unromantic methods are being used in the process. Harrods, where Santa has always wandered freely about the toy department chatting with the kids, are now confining him to his enchanted castle because, the store say, the old method was too random to ensnare all the possible children. Hamleys, where they have never had a Santa before, now have three of them working shifts in a magic forest where the time and motion people roam among the clockwork animals. Each child is allocated 25 seconds to state their dearest Christmas wishes and the Christmas sport of mishearing the child's name, traditional but time-consuming, has been eliminated through a system of name cards.

It is worse outside London. In Glasgow and Manchester Santa had to bid perilously for publicity by shinning up a 100-foot ladder, amid exploding fireworks, onto the roof of the store. In Chester he was winched up to a high window by the fire brigade. For all this, of course, youth and fitness are needed; Santa, like so many other jobs, is no longer for the older man.

None of this is calculated to bring a magic sparkle to a child's eyes, but to enliven the sales figures. Selfridges are planning to process a quarter of a million children through Santa's grotto this year — a quarter of a million spenders, that is. Maximising customers, to use the stores' jargon, means maximising profits, which is a nice seasonal present for the shareholders.

It gives a new meaning to the old saying about Christmas being for the children.


Bus de-regulation

The recent de-regulation of buses is absurd even by the warped standards of capitalism It is the latest outcome of the Tory Party's central economic tenet: "If it's profitable then privatise it”. The result: total chaos in many towns and cities outside London as hundreds of private bus operators compete for a limited number of profitable routes; inner city streets in towns like Glasgow congested with hundreds of almost empty buses looking for passengers, while on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas people stand at bus stops waiting for buses that no longer run. paying the price for living on "uneconomic" routes.

For such people some form of public transport will still have to be provided: employers will still expect their work force to get to work on time. So the local council will be obliged to lay on public transport on these "uneconomic" routes. In other words the state will still be involved in public transport provision, albeit on a more limited scale.

The reason why utilities and services like transport, gas. electricity and water were nationalised in the first place was because it was recognised that it was more efficient and cost-effective for the state to run certain essential services than private capitalists. But it looks as if the Tory obsession with privatisation now means that that lesson must be learned all over again. In the meantime it's workers who will suffer as a result of the chaos — capitalists may run bus companies, but they certainly don't have to travel by bus.


Undeserving poor

In the nineteenth century the Poor Law made a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. The "deserving" poor, people like widows and the long term sick or disabled, were granted Poor Law relief: the "undeserving", especially the able-bodied unemployed, were subjected to the workhouse test to see if they were really desperate or just shiftless scroungers. The idea was that only the really desperate who had no other alternative would put up with the brutally punitive regime of the workhouse.

That same mentality has always been present in the modern system of welfare benefits (hence the different benefit rates for unemployed and other claimants). So the government's latest "available for work" test is just the last in a long line of methods for sorting the "deserving" from the "scroungers" (with the added bonus of bringing down the embarrassingly high unemployment figures before the next election).

The unemployed are to be required to fill in a new questionnaire when they claim benefit to enable (according to Lord Young) "a proper assessment to be made of a person's entitlement to benefit". The claimant will be asked a series of trick questions: if they give the wrong answer then they are likely to have their benefit suspended. Questions like:

• Are you immediately available for work? (Correct answer: "Yes")
• What wages will you accept? (Correct answer: "I'll take anything, no matter how low, that is offered me").
• Do you have children or a disabled relative to care for? If so can alternative arrangements for their care be made immediately? (Correct answer: "A neighbour or relative has promised, that in the event of my being offered a job. then they would be prepared to step in to look after baby/granny/disabled relative").
• Are you prepared to accept work in another town? (Correct answer: "I'll get on my bike and go anywhere just so long as you 'll give me a job").

Although the government has dismissed claims that they are merely trying to fiddle the unemployment figures Kenneth Clarke. Paymaster General, said that if the new scheme reduced the number of claims allowed by less than two per cent then it would pay for itself, including the £14 million cost of employing 1,400 extra benefit staff. A senior civil servant wrote a letter to all regional benefit managers saying: "We may be able to deter two to four per cent of fresh claimants who are not serious about looking for work and disallow another two to three per cent who are not available".

Cooking the Books: How Long Will it Last? (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Permanent crises do not exist’, Marx once wrote (in Part 2 of Theories of Surplus Value), by which he meant that a check to capital accumulation brought about by overproduction would not be permanent; the slump itself would create the conditions for capital accumulation to resume.

This tells us nothing about how long this might take. That depends on the particular circumstances of each period of slump. Sometimes recovery might be fairly quick. Sometimes it might take longer, as two capitalist bosses have recently reminded us.

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising agency WPP, has ventured the following opinion as to how long the present slump might last:

  ‘”Going cold turkey and weaning the economy off the stimulus drug is clearly painful and will take some time,” he said. “The nearest historical parallel to the latest recession, which started… in August 2008, seems to be the Great Crash of 1929, which took at least ten years to recover from – a long, hard slog.”‘ (Times, 25 August)

His fellow capitalist Terry Smith, chief executive of the inter-dealer broker Tullet Prebon, went even further back in time. He was reported as saying that:

   ‘the world was heading for an inevitable and necessary recession. “It’s something we have to have,” he said, dismissing governments’ efforts to stimulate the economy as “trying to push a piece of spaghetti”. He likened the present post-crisis era to the Long Depression after the 1873 banking crisis – which, according to some historians, lasted for 23 years. “People are going to realise they are a lot poorer than they used to be,” Mr Smith said.’(Times, 1 August)

While the one capitalist envisages at least ten years of pain (for others) and the other looks forward as “necessary” to people (not him) being “a lot poorer than they used to be”, Times economic journalist, Anatole Kaletsky, is not so brutal. He thinks that this will only happen if the governments of the leading capitalist countries don’t get their act together:

  ‘Sooner or later, the private sector will recover and generate some kind of economic revival. But it will be a long and painful wait if governments and central banks around the world cannot co-operate to avert another recession.’ (Times, 10 August)

Could the present slump really last for a decade or more? It’s not impossible, as this has already happened twice. The present slump has already lasted for three years and GDP is still a long way from what it was at its peak in 2008. So it’s not going to be a short one.

The truth is we don’t know and can’t know. There is a lesson here. The prolonged depression of the 1870s and 1880s led Engels to comment in his preface to the English edition of Capital that was published in 1886:

  ‘The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression.’

He gave as an explanation that ‘while production increases in a geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ration.’ Events proved him wrong on both counts, a warning to socialists not to draw hasty conclusions from the situation in the middle of a slump.

The future course of capitalism is largely unpredictable. All we can say with certainty is that it is an irrational system subject to swings from boom to slump which have nothing to do with the level of actual human needs.

Closing in on the Real Scroungers (2011)

From the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there’s one thing workers hate it’s seeing some lazy bugger living it up without getting a proper job. Quite right too. But instead of blaming the rare ‘benefits scrounger’, skiving on the fiddle for 65 quid a week, how about blaming the real lazy buggers, the idle rich who own everything? None of them have got a proper job – in fact life for them is a permanent holiday, and they’re raking in a lot more than 65 quid a week!

And how do they get to be so rich? Where does their money come from? It comes from the work you do, where else? You work so that they can enjoy. You give so that they can receive. You slave your whole life so that they can enjoy fine lifestyles, cars, jets, booze and sex you could never imagine in your wildest dreams – and all at your expense.

Workers like you produce all the useful wealth of the world, but the rich own and control it and you barely get any say at all. And when their politicians and their bankers play one reckless gamble too many, no prizes for guessing who pays the price. You lose your job, your income, maybe your house, maybe even your life. What do they lose? Nothing!

They’ve bought the politicians because they don’t want you to act. And they’ve bought the media because they don’t want you to think. If you vote for their politicians, whether Tory or Labour, you’re letting them win. if you buy into their ‘debates’ you’re letting them win. But if you turn your back on the whole business in disgust, guess what, you’re still letting them win! And as long as they keep winning, you’re going to keep losing.

Of course workers fight back. But it’s no good fighting just against this cut or that war. The global capitalist system is a game that’s rigged to keep the rich in their place and you in yours, so it’s the capitalist system that’s your real enemy. And that takes a different kind of fighting. The kind you do with your mind.

You could start by watching the video Capitalism and Other Kids’ Stuff 

The Right to be Idle (2011)

Book Review from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

How to be Idle. By Tom Hodgkinson. Penguin.

Here is a handbook for any would-be socialist wondering what life could really be like in a post-capitalist society. Of course it’s not possible to be living a socialist way of life in a non-socialist world, but this book is full of the pleasures to be had from a way of living totally different from the one we see all around us now. Hodgkinson has an insightful grasp of the iniquities of the capitalist system, its stranglehold on working conditions and its tight control of most areas of our lives. He succinctly identifies many of its outstanding features and, with his own particular brand of humour, hands out lots of good advice for the work-weary, enabling us to open our eyes and see more clearly the life we should be living. Are we to live an onerous life created for us by this current controlling system or should we choose how we build and live our own individual lives? Do we live by our rules or theirs?

One clue to Hodgkinson’s outlook on being an idler is found in a description of his routine: he works in the morning, reading and writing; spends the afternoon in the garden chopping logs and suchlike; and gives the evening over to eating, drinking and talking. ‘When work is freely chosen and creative, then it’s not really work at all.’ He claims not to know much about Marx, but having thought that work was at the centre of his philosophy’ he now says he is beginning to understand that Marx’s motivation came from ‘the boredom and misery caused by the Industrial Revolution and by his own dream to replace that system with something more humane.’  

The first step to being idle is to understand our 250 years of indoctrination into the work ethic – a topic Hodgkinson expands on. Understanding that this work ethic is based on guilt enables us to get rid of that guilt and get on with the dreaming. ‘Dreams are not about money – they are about you and about your quality of life and imagination.’  

Co-founder of the ‘Idler’ magazine (www.idler.co.uk) and the Idler Academy, Hodgkinson has spent nearly twenty years attempting (working hard?) to perfect the art of idling. He draws on the work of a host of writers, poets, philosophers and sociologists to support his ideas:  Paul Lafargue, Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, Tom Paine, Oscar Wilde and Lao Tzu, to name but a few.

Janet Surman

Proper Gander: Cleopatra Coming At Ya (2011)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We’re girlies from the thirties; wash the dishes, scrub the floor.When all of a sudden our hubbies went to war.Did you think we’d shrink in England’s needy hour?You what? ‘Course not, ‘cos we’ve got girl power!”

Imagine that sung to the tune of a girl band’s hit single, and you’ve got a taste of the BBC’s Horrible Histories. The series gives snappy history lessons to kids, told through comedy sketches and pop song pastiches. So, Charles the Second raps about being the “king of bling … who brought back partying”, while “angry chick” Boudicca warns us “don’t dis this miss”. Palaeontology is explained through a Randy Newmanesque song, and Roman Emperors brag about their atrocities in a pastiche of Michael Jackson. Horrible Histories is just downright bizarre when compared to the po-faced way that history used to be taught to children.

The show was adapted from the hugely popular range of books of the same name, and the franchise has grown to include magazines, video games, live shows and even a proposed theme park. It might be churlish to criticise Horrible Histories when it has the laudable goal of making kids interested in history, and which does so in such a lively way. The imagination and energy behind the show can’t be praised enough. The only quibble would be that by focusing on our most colourful ancestors, it reinforces the ‘great man theory’ of history. For a show which aims to breathe new life into the subject, it’s a shame that it has such an outdated perspective. But that somehow doesn’t matter when you can hear Cleopatra sing “famous beauty coming at ya” in the style of Lady Gaga.

Mike Foster

50 Years Ago: Fair Play for Teachers (2011)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many schoolteachers have spent how much time telling how many classes that an Englishman’s word is his bond, and that the road to happiness is paved with honesty and truthfulness?

Anybody who took this seriously must have been shocked by the recent government decisions to ignore the recommendations of the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal, to restrict the statutory Wage Councils and virtually to destroy the Burnham Committee. And all this from an upstanding Englishman like Mr Selwyn Lloyd!

In fact, the teachers are wasting their time if they are pining for fair play, for there is no such thing in the class war. The Ministry of Education, for example, took over the Burnham Committee’s functions because the government decided that the committee was being too generous to the teachers.

This makes no sense if we are looking for fair play. But in terms of the conflict of interest between any employer and his employees, it makes very good sense indeed. Teachers as a whole, like many civil servants and other white collar workers have always denied the existence of the class struggle. But it exists for them just as much as for the miner and the docker.

That is one of the things Mr. Selwyn Lloyd seems to be doing his best to teach them. Let us hope they turn out to be bright, receptive pupils.

(from News in Review, Socialist Standard, October 1961)