Party News from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
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Friday, November 7, 2025
Letter: The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party (1984)
Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party
Dear Editors,
Naivete is not what one expects from the columns of the Socialist Standard but the article on the miners’ strike (September, 1984) comes very close to it in stating that the SPGB will support any strike between the robbers and robbed, except when they are political. It is implied that this strike is more than just a political action, thus qualifying it for SPGB support.
Well, as I think that it is just a political strike, and you think it isn’t the score is now one all, a draw. The article goes on to say that 120,000 miners can't all be wrong, to which I must reply that 60,000 other NCB workers say that they are. As you can't produce a ballot to show what the 120,000 think, and my 60,000 can, you lose on the re-count because you cannot substantiate your case.
You enter a very dangerous minefield in trying to decide what is a political strike and what is not. The SPGB has been explaining for eighty years that politics is but an expression of the economic facts of life, then, all of a sudden, hey presto . . . we have the purely political strike. The two examples given, "dockers against immigration" and “Labour’s day of Action” had their roots in economic problems confronting the working class and being directed to political ends. This is exactly how I see the miners’ strike. So what is the exact mix which will trigger off SPGB support for a strike? 85 per cent political and 15 per cent economic? Or 60 per cent and 40 per cent? Or even perhaps 51 per cent and 49 per cent? May we be informed please?
So, is the strike political then? Messrs. Scargill and Co. have made it very plain indeed that the mere mention of Thatcher gives them all indigestion and sleepless nights, and they want to bring down the government immediately. This strike was called when coal stocks were at an all-time high, summer time just round the corner, plenty of nuclear power and oil about and no ballot. It was either "daft" (Lord Gormley) or politically motivated. In your article you state that the Labour Government did exactly what the NCB now proposes but there was no strike. So, if given exactly the same conditions, the miners didn’t strike under Labour, and are striking under the Tories, what other reasons except political reasons can there be?
Will the SPGB support any strike? I can't believe that it would be so stupid. The Socialist Standard in the recent past has quoted items from the "propaganda press" showing that certain strikes are welcomed with gratitude and delight by the bosses and are pleased to prolong them to bring the workers to heel. Support for this kind of strike brings only extra poverty and extra subservience to the workers involved. You indicate that the miners’ strike may well be in this category.
The word "support” in my working class dictionary means "to hold up — assist - sustain”. Would the SPGB assist in the prolonging of these strikes? Did the early SPGB back the Hansom Cab workers in their struggles against the encroachments made by automobile manufacturers? Would they have backed the Sword-Pikestaff and Bow and Arrow Makers Union against the encroaching Rifle. Gunpowder and Bullet manufacturers? I think not. The kindest thing to do is sometimes to advise people to leave a dying industry and not support their unavailing efforts? If nuclear power eventually takes over from coal will the SPGB be there sustaining the last striking miners in the last pit?
Mr Scargill and the NUM Executive and their bully-boys remind me of an embryonic Hitler and his storm-troopers gagging the union and menacing those who disagree. The SPGB finds fault only with the gagging, keeping a respectful silence on the activities of Scargill’s storm troopers. Activities well known to everyone in England except the SPGB. This policy of putting all the violence down to police brutality can best be described as fifty per cent SPGB and fifty per cent Trotskyist. As the gagging of the union. the split in the union and the mass violence of the striking miners are all part of the same coin, your article betrays a dangerous naivete, the implications of which need to be debated. Working Nottinghamshire miners must be wondering who the SPGB thinks is harassing their homes, property and families if it isn’t the bully boys . . . maybe it’s the police. What is certain is that working Nottinghamshire miners will regard the SPGB as a party to shun, which is a very great pity, for even Mr Kinnock has come out of his mouse-hole and condemned all violence.
S Levitt
London NW3
Reply:
Against Capitalism
It is a clear sign that a critic is standing upon thin ice when he resorts to distortion in order to make a case. Consider these examples: 1) Levitt claims that the article in the September Standard states that the Socialist Party supports all strikes, except for those motivated by political intentions to reform capitalism. He then bases a large part of his criticism on the use of the word "support". If he re-reads the article he will see that the term he objects to is not even used. 2) Levitt claims that the article suggests that "120.000 miners can’t all be wrong". No such statement is made. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that because a number of workers are taking an action they must be right. 3) Levitt — whose silly hysteria about "storm troopers" we deal with below — claims that the Socialist Party has kept “a respectful silence” on the question of violence by picketing strikers (unlike Mr Kinnock whose moral stand wins the approval of our critic). As a subscriber to the Socialist Standard, our critic will have read the article "An Open letter to the Miners” (July, 1984) in which it is stated that "insofar as the reports of workers persecuting those who disagree with them are not false or exaggerated, socialists condemn unreservedly the anti-working-class intimidation of fellow miners”. Of course, this condemnation might not satisfy Levitt, whose own exaggerated description of the picketing resembles some of the most ignorant comment of the gutter press. 4) Levitt claims that the Socialist Party attributes all the violence to the police, whereas no such point is made in the article. In fact, the Socialist Party is not in the business of blaming one group or another for the violence which is endemic to the class war. So, four distortions in eight paragraphs: now let us try to make sense of the other fifty per cent.
Our critic suggests that it is difficult to determine what is a political strike, in the sense in which the term was used in the article. The difficulty does not trouble the Socialist Party: as far as we are concerned, the role of trade unions is to defend and improve the wages and conditions of workers under capitalism. In short, they have a defensive, economic function. Strikes intended to use working-class combination for the purpose of affecting the overall administration of capitalism are politically reformist and socialists oppose them. For example, when miners went on strike to oppose immigrant labour being introduced into British pits this was not an economic action; neither was Labour’s Day of Action, which was an attempted strike designed to show that a Labour government of capitalism would be better for workers than a Tory one.
Of course, no strike is entirely economic because there is no separation of politics and economics under capitalism. So, while the miners' strike is an economic strike, not very different from others conducted by other unions, it has a political dimension insofar as its result can affect the balance of political strength between organised labour and organised capital. It may well be true that the officials of the NUM want to get rid of the present government (so does the Socialist Party), but it is naive of our critic to think that 120,000 strikers have somehow been hoodwinked into striking for such a purpose.
Levitt cannot believe that socialists would be so stupid as to support any strike. We cannot believe that Levitt can be so stupid as to think that we might, when only four paragraphs earlier he acknowledges our opposition to strikes designed to reform capitalism. As for the question of "support" — a term not introduced by us — let us be clear that, as early as 1905, when the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published, the socialist view has been that trade unions are a necessity under capitalism and “any action on their part upon sound lines should be heartily supported". We do not exist as a party to advise unions on how to conduct their necessary struggles within capitalism, although, as socialist trade unionists, we do our best to ensure that our unions act on sound lines and that we support union action to the best of our abilities. We might add that socialists within the NUM have done precisely that during this miners’ strike. The role of the Socialist Party is to advocate socialism and to point out that beyond the sectional, limited and repetitive struggle of trade unions there is a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism which is both urgent and more important than mere defensive actions.
Levitt suggests that the Socialist Party — in a spirit of kindness — should advise the miners to leave their dying industry. Having issued such advice, does he propose that we urge them to buy some bikes and travel the country looking for thriving industries? The Socialist Party does not exist to urge workers to fit in with the absurd economic priorities of capitalism. What we can say to the miners is that, with an estimated 300-years’ supply of coal underneath Britain, there is no reason why a socialist society need let the coal industry die. Of course, a socialist society might decide that there are other energy sources which are preferable to coal; if so, such a decision would neither be based on profit calculations nor cause hardship to men who had been miners in the past. We think that the growing rejection of the profit-based priorities of capitalism, which has led mine workers to challenge the NCB’s definition of “uneconomic", should be regarded with enthusiasm by socialists. Our task is to show the miners that only in socialism can the economic priorities which offend them be eliminated.
The remarks about picket-line violence are stale and naive. Certainly, socialists have emphasised time and time again, both in our propaganda and in our unions, that violent tactics should be avoided by workers who can win by force of numbers. But the state, which is an institution of legalised violence, will not simply sit back and let workers picket as they please. Laws allowing pickets to persuade non-strikers have been largely ignored during this strike — vans carrying strike-breakers (‘‘rebels”) have driven through picket lines at such speeds that it has been impossible for pickets to speak to their fellow-workers. So, mass picket lines have been formed in order to ensure that the strike-breakers either stop and listen or stay out of the colliery.
Does our critic really think that the condemnation of picket-line violence by Neil Kinnock will make any difference to the class struggle? After all, Thatcher. Kinnock and the other hypocrites who are appalled by picket-line violence are the same leaders who support the creation of war machines designed to murder civilian populations. The Socialist Party does not issue moral condemnations of selective acts of violence — we are busy advocating the case for the abolition of the social cause of such behaviour. We did not notice the Fleet Street propaganda rags condemning the picket-line murder of seven striking miners in South Africa (reported briefly on BBC’s Newsnight on 18 September).
Our critic is concerned that the working miners of Nottinghamshire will shun the Socialist Party because of what we have written about the strike. Well, they were shunning us before the strike started, but that did not stop us from trying to convince them of the validity of our case, which applies to all workers, whether unionised or not. striking or working, militant or conservative.
Editors.
Letter: A sane society (1984)
A sane society
Dear Editors,
May I be allowed to say a few words on the miners’ strike of the kind I have not yet seen clearly expressed in the columns of the Standard?
Can I first of all get back to socialist basics and say that disputes like this one are inevitable in a social set-up in which the interests of one group of the population (wage and salary earners) are inherently opposed to the interests of the other group (employers, private or state). When the first group gains, the other loses, and vice versa. That is why even when workers say they don’t like other people’s strikes, they will always go on strike themselves if they consider it necessary.
Can I add that if strikes are, therefore, inevitable in the present society it is very much in the interest of the workers involved in them to see to it that their action is as democratically based as possible. Otherwise they play into the hands of their employers making it easy for the latter to use public opinion, the media and the forces of the state (police, judiciary, etc.) to make sure they come out on top — as in the present miners' dispute.
But there is of course no glory in strikes — not even in successful ones. They are an unpleasant necessity in a society divided into two groups with irreconcilable interests. And even if, in the present case, the NUM got its way, all it would be doing would be reserving for yet another generation of young men a future no sane society would reserve for any of its members — a future which consists of spending most of your waking hours during your whole working life in a hole under the ground. This is what "preserving mining communities" really means.
A sane society would use the technology now available to bring coal up from the ground solely by automation. As an article in the New Scientist magazine in September showed, the robot mine is a perfectly feasible proposition. The main reason it has not yet been developed is because, in the words of Tom Carr, director of the NCB's Mining Research and Development Establishment, "it’s too damn expensive to automate completely”.
And there we have it. What counts isn’t human wellbeing but cost and profit — which are of course at the crux of the present strike as well.
The alternative to this — and the one for which socialists stand — is a world in which cost and profit are not the criterion by which judgements are made. The alternative is a world in which human needs come first, in which there is no buying and selling, no employees and employers, and no strikes. This is the lesson to be drawn from the miners’ strike, whatever its outcome.
H. Moss
Swansea
Corporal punishment (1984)
Most inner-city High Streets have an army-recruiting office where the raw are taken in (literally) to find themselves in plush surroundings; where the harvesting recruitment sergeant patronises the newly-germinated with smarmy small-talk about ski-ing and discos on far-off shores, using all the underhand skills and techniques of a sales representative for Cannon Fodder Incorporated. The process of recruitment from the High Street Office to the training camp can be as little as two weeks. During this period there is hardly enough time for the recruits to read the large-print in the glossy magazines, let alone the small-print surrounding their twenty-two-year contracts.
At the High Street Office the unsuspecting windfalls are tested in Arithmetic. English and Physical fitness, after which there is an interview. The Arithmetic and English are to ascertain the recruit's degree of simplicity. The medical decides whether the next in line can walk or hold a gun. The interview is perhaps more sinister. This is when the would-be soldiers are asked — prior to taking the Oath of Allegiance — if they are Communists. Have they ever been a Communist? Do they know any Communists? Answering "No" to these questions. they receive their one-way tickets to the training camp. Recruits are then trained like animals in a circus, with tit-bits for the good dog and a crack of the ringmaster’s whip (the Regimental Sergeant Major's pace stick) for those who don’t sit up and beg.
To obtain discipline and control the Army has more subtle methods than boot bulling and potato peeling. They have a long history of expertise in military psychology on which they can draw. The tools they use for processing the recruits are Conformity, Alienation and Competition.
Conformity
To impose Conformity the recruits must first be robbed of their individuality. This is done by inflicting uniformity of looks and behaviour on all soldiers. Uniformity of personal appearance is achieved at the first stop in camp, the barber's shop. The haircut and the clean-shaven look strips many young people of a part of their identity. If they were a little green in joining the Army in the first place, they become greener with a visit to the Quarter-Master's stores where they are issued with about six suits of varying sizes, just as many hats and the obligatory identity tag. informing them of their new name: an eight-figure number. Loaded with more new clothes than they have ever had at any one time, they set off to their accommodation having almost forgotten their frightening new hairstyle.
Impressed by the self-confidence of the reception Corporal, the new recruits are under the misapprehension that all they need to do is put on one of their new suits and they will be transformed into the new macho man. The dormitories each house twelve to twenty and are furnished in the most basic fashion — one bed, one locker and one chair for each person, laid out in a military style which is about as welcoming as a nuclear winter. With so little furniture you could think it easy to keep clean. The recruits soon discover that this isn't the case. For the forthcoming weeks they are cleaning the floor and removing dust from 5am to breakfast and then later from 5pm until lights out. with short breaks in between to clean their kit. Complete uniformity of behaviour is hammered into those with any remaining personality of their own during square bashing. Here marching, saluting and rifle drills are choreographed to such a degree that Lionel Blair would be envious.
Alienation
Alienation is another wrench in the mechanism of the military machine, used to twist the squaddies away from social interaction and to tighten the nut of docile acquiescence. Few of the trainees have much experience in letter-writing and many of their families cannot afford a telephone. so it isn't too long before they become isolated. This separation from family and friends, coupled with the confinement to barracks that most training camps impose. make it impossible to make new friends in the local community. The new soldier becomes so lonely and introverted, bullied helplessly into shape. For the smallest mistake the recruits are humiliated, bawled at and in some cases physically beaten.
A recent case of bullying was that of a new boy, or “sprogg" who, after a kangaroo court in the barrack room, was found "guilty” of not polishing his floor space to the required standard and was sentenced to be hung. He was beaten up by a dozen others, stood on a chair, blindfolded and a noose was tied around his neck. After a lengthy pause in which he broke down pleading for mercy, the chair was kicked from under his feet. Fortunately for him the rope was not secured to the rafters above.
Black balling is common among recruits. and many of the dangers they face in training are from each other, as each tries playing at soldiers with little more than an Action Man comic to go on, plus the stories learned from dad down the pub the night before they left. The recruits show a willingness to participate in any community pursuit and try to to impress anyone and everyone with their mixed-up league of priorities. They will take part in the humiliation of others, pleased that it is not happening to them. They have the childish notion of one who does not know right from wrong; if everyone else does something then it must be right. The alienating process has them so frightened that when they do join in group pursuits they often show their insecurity with violent reaction.
Competition is the third bracket that straps the cogs to the tank tracks. Recruits are told from the outset that they must shape up to perform with team spirit in an endless cycle of competition that ends up like a game of snakes and snakes. Those who fail to perform well enough at individual and team skills are made to go back in training (back squadded). Competition strains at every level of the Army. At Battalion level there are about 600 men divided into four Companies, each of which has four Platoons of 30-40 soldiers. They are divided further into four sections of 8-12 and competition is intense for promotion and the cushy life. The sections are at loggerheads to be the best section in the platoon. The platoon is rife with the obsession to be top in the Company and the Company, predictably, is all-out for the coveted Battalion premiership. Of course the Battalion has its role to play at Garrison level and every Garrison goes all-out to be the best in the Army. The question is. where you go with the best Army in the world? Afghanistan? Grenada? or the Falklands?
Armies compete on behalf of the nation-states they represent for strategic positions on the trade map, areas rich in mineral resources and trade routes. In the name of defence they are often sent by governments to embark on expansionist imperialism. The sporting competitions of football and rugby, much advertised in the glossy brochures that could well have been composed by Saatchi and Saatchi, fall by the wayside when the Army enters the big league of politics at its sickening best. With such an extensive conditioning attack it is little wonder that the trainees soon appear to be the unthinking patriotic morons that the drill sergeants, non-commissioned officers and officers have set out to make them. The Army has disrupted everything that was important to the ex-civilian and imposed a new set of values. It is by treating the recruits in this way that governing them becomes easy and so effective.
The Queen's Regulations (the bible of the British Army) make interesting reading. For example, under Section 69(a) of the Army Act 1955 are listed offences against their god — good order and discipline — under which it is possible to charge someone with anything, including breathing. It is not uncommon for soldiers to be charged with “dumb insolence” when there is no better excuse than the face not fitting. Soldiers are caught by the jankers under these Acts. 'Frying to quote from the Queen’s Regulations in their defence can lead to another charge of insolence.
The ranks above are continually reminding the soldiers that they are not paid to think, with the old cliche:
Yours is not to reason why;Yours is but to do or die.
This is shortly followed by a reprimand for not using their initiative. In recognising that the soldiers go through a very severe conditioning process we ask ourselves a few questions: Does it work in every case? Are there any long-term effects? and Is this conditioning a barrier to socialism? The answer to the first question must be that the conditioning of the soldier does work in most cases, proof of which can be found at the graves of Verdun or the Somme or Arnheim and the countless millions of nameless graves across the world where worker has killed worker for countries in which they had no stake. There are a few trainees who get out of the Army in the first few weeks but the majority feel compelled to stay, under the misbelief that it would be cowardice to leave. Secondly, are there any long-term effects? The sad answer is yes. We are familiar with the war wounded who were never hit by the enemy’s bullets, but were struck by a life in billets and camp songs for whom the last war has never ended. Many workers, however, have learned that no workers' interests are at stake when the capitalists make battle. Thirdly, what about the conditioning process? This is not a barrier to our achieving a socialist society. We have seen American soldiers conscripted to fight in Vietnam desert to the safety of Sweden. We have recently seen a film of the Russian soldiers defecting in Afghanistan and must conclude that as the individuals mature, so do the ideas and vice versa.
Jimmy Bob
Messenger boys (1984)
The various Christian churches seem to be hitting the secular headlines recently with the Catholic church, by far the biggest, taking the lead. For the last year or so it has been deeply embroiled with the larger than life moneylenders of the international banking world. But it isn’t (as the innocent Catholic might think) the Children of Christ condemning the moneylenders, calling on them to “Store up their riches in Heaven and not on earth where they will rust and be eaten up by moths.”
A collection of about 120 foreign banks and other creditors want to know what has happened to £916 million of their money which was last seen passing through an intricate network of companies and subsidiaries from Liechtenstein to Peru, mostly owned by the Vatican Bank (IOR). Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, ex-head of the Vatican Bank, has been intimately linked with this mysterious affair. A one-time diplomat in the Vatican, Marcinkus seems to have been unwise in the company he kept while head of the Vatican Bank, for two of his closest associates were Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona, a successful Sicilian banker, has been convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds while Calvi. ex-member of the infamous masonic lodge P2. belter known as “God’s Banker”, recently slipped secretly out of Italy. He crossed the Gulf of Trieste to Yugoslavia and London, apparently to hang himself from Blackfriars Bridge, first taking the precaution of filling his pockets with stones and placing half a brick down the front of his trousers.
As with any good story, the plot thickens. In July 1978 Pope Paul VI died and was succeeded by a Pope John Paul I. Pope John Paul I died a few months later in September 1978. Allegations have been made that Pope John Paul I was poisoned because he had uncovered the financial wheeling and dealing of the Vatican Bank and objected to it. Contradictory statements by the Vatican about the circumstances of the death only encourage suspicion. Who really did discover the body? What was the Pope really reading when he died in bed?
All this has cast some doubt on the infallibility of the papacy. How could the Vatican get itself into such an embarrassing mess? Even if Pope Paul VI didn't know what was going on under his very nose (Marcinkus’s office was directly beneath the Papal apartments) you would have thought God would have had a quiet word in his ear. After all the Pope, so they tell us, is our direct link with God.
Of course, the Vatican hasn't admitted to making a mistake. It never does. Nevertheless, Archbishop Marcinkus has applied for immunity from prosecution by the Italian Judiciary. The Vatican Bank has also agreed to pay creditors £180 million. confidently expecting to recoup the loss from contributions by working class catholics.
While the Vatican is uneasily wearing the cloak of infallibility the Church of England has attributed falling attendances to the rigidity and inflexibility of ideas, which haven’t changed much in centuries. It has realised that the mumbo-jumbo of the past that worked quite well is seen to be more and more ridiculous. To counter this it has decided to invent some more modern mumbo-jumbo, adapted from the old stuff. Oxbridge theologians have been telling us that a lot of the Bible isn't strictly true, that the meaning and symbolism of what is written in the Bible is more important than whether or not it actually occurred in history. This innovative bit of philosophical sophistry has not gone unnoticed by the more conservative members of the clergy.The result has been a bitter debate about whether the Virgin Mary was or wasn’t.
In July David Jenkins, a leading advocate for change, was consecrated in York Minster as the Bishop of Durham amid protests and interruptions. A few days later there was an unhappy coincidence when the south transept of the Minster was struck by lightning and burnt down. Not surprisingly some of the clergy put this down to a divine thunderbolt, sent by a merciful God as an act of retribution. Fortunately, York Minster was insured by an ecclesiastical insurance company even if it is paradoxical for the church to be insuring itself against acts of God.
So while the Catholic church is grappling with financial corruption and infallibility, the Church of England is trying to reinterpret the work of God. A church that isn't as burdened with outmoded ideas and traditions inherited from previous centuries is Billy Graham's Evangelism. Everybody living in the English provinces must have noticed Big Brother Billy staring down at them from bill boards. His square set jaw. menacing smile and piercing eyes encourage the question “Would I buy a second-hand car from this man?”, especially in view of the personal testimony from ex-President Richard Nixon: “Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time”. But Dr. Billy isn’t the man he was in 1949 when he terrified all those who would like to sec 1950 with Christian threats like “Communism is inspired, directed and motivated by the devil himself. Either communism must die or Christianity must die”. A couple of years ago he went to preach in that nest of demons and devil worshippers, Moscow. Having been well treated by the puppets of Satan, he returned to cause a storm with some inane comments about the benevolent nature of the Russian state.
For a few months this year Graham was on Mission England. Backed up by technicians, campaign managers, thousand-voice choirs, security heavies and the all important $40 million business machine. Billy visited Bristol. Norwich, Sunderland, Birmingham. Liverpool and Ipswich. It must have been quite a spectacle to sec him preaching from the hallowed turf of Anfield. to hear the stadium echoing to the songs of praise, though not the usual irreverent and profane type. No doubt there was a deathly hush as Billy asked the spectators if they could hear Jesus knocking to come in. Jesus certainly wouldn't have been the first to be locked out of Anfield anyway.
Billy is not, as some might think, a man of peace, for when our masters’ property and profits are threatened he believes in the necessity of defence — of killing people and not turning the other cheek. Although he has gone to great pains to appear concerned about the problems of his flock such as unemployment and poverty, these are problems that God has spared Billy, who lives in a converted log cabin on a 200 acre site in America and receives a salary of $55,000 a year.
It’s all very easy poking fun at the Church now that the age of inquisition and witch burnings is over, but it is beside the point. Why do these ridiculous people and institutions exist? Why do so many people believe in what they say?
It is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. who exists only for people who have "faith”, a belief in something for which there is no material evidence. The evidence that Christians will give for the existence of a God is their faith. How could they believe in something of which there is no material evidence (except a book of dubious origin and authenticity) unless that belief was inspired by God himself? Their god is supposed to give them faith and this explains, for them, why they have faith. To break this circle of "God exists because 1 believe in God", it is necessary to understand why Christianity is so appealing to many people.
We live in a friendless society of competition. insecurity and. for many of us, absolute poverty. We live in a cruel and impersonal world, over which we seem to have no control. Most Christians would refer to all this as "suffering”. But they offer a unique "solution” to those who arc suffering, which is most of us — a philosophy, a set of ideas, that turns this suffering from something pointless and wasteful into something worthwhile. If we believe in God and Jesus Christ and accept the suffering doled out to us by the world, so they tell us, we will go to a much better place at the end of it and there live forever. The meek acceptance of suffering is a sort of lest and the better we do. the better the chance that we will be rewarded.
This, in essence, is very much like working for a wage. You graft for eight hours a day in a job you hate for the promise of a wage packet at the end of the week. The difference is that there is no pie in the sky at the end of your stint down here. Only worms and maggots. The idea of Christianity also gives you a sense of control over your ow n life for you can participate in the kingdom of Heaven. In every sense Christianity is masochistic, it dupes you into enjoying pain and suffering. It anaesthetises you against the stresses and strains of society. Once accepted, it becomes more difficult to face up to the real horrors of society
DB
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Profits before food . . . (1984)
From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
In June a Danish MEP, Jens-Peter Bonde, put down a written question in the European Parliament to the Common Market Commissioner for Agriculture, asking him to state what proportion of fruit bought by the Common Market to maintain price levels “was distributed free of charge, processed to make alcohol, used as animal fodder or destroyed in 1983” and adding, “when does the Commission intend to stop destroying people’s food?”
In his reply the Commissioner, Poul Dalsager, tried to argue that no food had actually been destroyed; it was just that some of the food bought to maintain prices “became unfit for use” before it could be turned into alcohol or used in other ways. This is pure hypocrisy: the food was deliberately allowed to rot — destroyed — because as Dalsager went on to explain, “an increase in the number of possible uses cannot be achieved without the risk of interfering in the normal distribution channels or of distorting competition between the various commercial operators”. In other words, if too much is given away to hospitals and other institutions or used as animal fodder or turned into alcohol, the profits of food merchants, animal feed producers and other alcohol distillers would be threatened.
The figures quoted by Dalsager allow us to work out how much food was destroyed in the ten Common Market countries in the year 1982/83 (April to April). For comparison we also give the figures for the amount given away free as this very neatly illustrates capitalism's priorities.
Adam Buick
South African time-bomb (1984)
From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
South Africa has recently experienced the bloodiest conflicts between rioters and police since the 1976 Soweto uprising. Several dozen people were shot dead by police, who used live rounds in addition to rubber bullets and teargas. The conflict was concentrated in the Vaal Triangle, in Sharpeville, in Sebokeng, Boibateng and Evaton. More than a hundred people were seriously injured in the rioting, which coincided with the introduction of a new constitution upholding the apartheid regime.
In 1976, the state response to the Soweto uprising left more than five hundred dead across the country. Clearly, not very much has changed since then. At the time of the more recent riots, those who boycotted the elections to the new system of assemblies were beaten up by van-loads of police and some of the candidates themselves. Some reporters sympathetic to those not voting were also attacked. However, the intense discontent felt by the majority of South Africans relates to far broader issues than the new Constitution.
There have been protests at rent increases, increases in bus fares and over the high level of indirect taxation. As in 1976, it is children who have led the protests, organising widespread school boycotts as a protest against conditions in those prison camps for the young. During last month's elections to the tricameral parliament these boycotts reached a peak, with 500,000 staying away from school.
The fact that hand in hand with the racist oppression of apartheid goes an underlying class division has not escaped the notice of the rioters. The black majority are turning against black councillors because of their association with unpopular measures such as rent increases, and the government's attempt to distance itself from the discontent by giving some power to black councils in the townships is certain to backfire in the end.
In South Africa today there is an explosive undercurrent of resentment and discontent among the black majority, who are treated like beasts of burden by the ruling class. But the actions of this reactionary white elite are part of a wider conflict which directly involves us all every day: the power struggle between a propertied and privileged minority, and the majority on whose backs they prosper. Of one thing there can be no doubt: the majority in South Africa will defeat those who today sit smugly entrenched in Johannesburg. Victory will set the end of a class division between a powerful minority and the dispossessed majority and the ownership of the means of life by the world’s inhabitants without distinction of race or sex.
50 Years Ago: Armed revolt in Spain (1984)
From a working-class and socialist standpoint the revolt was a piece of criminal irresponsibility. The overwhelming majority of Spanish electors are not socialist, and do not understand or desire socialism.
No minority, whether in Spain, Russia, Austria or anywhere else, can impose socialism on a hostile or apathetic majority. Forced, therefore, to abandon the idea of introducing socialism, the new rulers sooner or later accommodate themselves to the job of administering capitalism. Finding power sweet they develop the century-old technique of intrigue, deception, bribery, and arbitrary violence in order to keep themselves in power. Unable to give the reality of socialism they learn a new propaganda, which consists, crudely put, of calling the unregenerate capitalism by a new name — socialism.
Knowing this the Socialist Party of Great Britain refuses in any circumstances to countenance the policy of minority armed revolt. That road does not lead to socialism. In truth it leads nowhere, for workers who head that way must sooner or later retrace their steps if they are to play their part in achieving socialism.
[From an article, “A Vain Sacrifice” published in the Socialist Standard, November 1934.]
World Socialist Party - Belfast Branch (1984)
From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
SPGB Meetings (1984)
Party News from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
Blogger's Note:
The March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a report of the SPGB's debate with Tom Sackville, the Conservative MP for Bolton West. The SPGB speaker in that debate, Howard Moss, revisited that debate in his Life and Times column in the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard.
SPGB Meetings (1984)
Party News from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard
Blogger's Note:
A recording of one of the meetings from the Islington Branch Weekend Educational Conference on Working For Socialism is available in the audio section of the SPGB website. Click on the following link for more information:
Islington Branch meetingDate: 9th December 1984Speaker: Clifford Slapper
The Emerging World Scene (1946)
There is no doubt that things are on the move. Incessant activity on the part of politicians leads one to speculate as to what is pending. The Nuremberg Trial is now a thing of the past, the U.N. is proposing to take a breathing spell, the Conservative Party holds a conference, the U.S. takes decisive action in Europe; in short, what we see in our master’s press leads to the belief that the decks are being cleared for action : the capitalist class have, in the main, decided upon what they are going to do.
The American Presidential election takes place in two years’ time, and all those aspiring to office in the United States act, and speak, under the spell of that important fact. Eisenhower, who recently spoke at Edinburgh, Byrnes, the representative at the U.N., Wallace, the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and many others are thinking when they speak not so much of the subject in hand as of the American election of 1948.
Eisenhower said in his speech of October 3rd : “World neighbourliness must be achieved or else, we shall, in a twinkling, travel a backward route over mankind’s long and laborious progress from his ancient caves to the present.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)
Mr. Byrnes says that if other Powers will agree to the 40-year Treaty proposed by him, this treaty will bind “not merely the present American administration, but its successors.”
Commenting on this, the Daily Telegraph of October 4th says : —
“Of the four Powers consulted upon this proposal, Britain, France and the United States are favourable, and it, is only from Russia that a refusal has so far come. This refusal is no doubt partly based upon those divergencies of view between the wartime Allies to which Mr. Byrnes made discreet reference. The prospect of a democratic Germany as seen by the State Department and by the Kremlin is strikingly different. Yet it is difficult not to surmise that Marshal Stalin’s objection to the Four-Power Treaty is mainly based on the fear, not that the United States will disinterest herself from Europe, but on the contrary, that the Treaty would serve to maintain her influence there. Mr. Byrnes’s reference to the Yalta declaration and the continued American interest in the Balkans indicates that this influence will, none the less, persist.”
Mr. Byrnes has a good election cry for 1948 : his rival, Mr. Wallace, who recently was rapped over the knuckles by President Truman and, as a consequence, lost his job, is losing out in the race; the policy of isolationism is no longer in favour in capitalist circles.
Mr. Baruch, United States representative on the Atomic Control Commission, has vigorously attacked Wallace, and stated that the latter was totally ignorant of the facts underlying atomic control. Wallace is now trimming his sails, and states, in excuse for his attack on Mr. Byrnes’ policy in regard to Russia, “that he had obviously not been fully posted as to the facts.” The deadlock over atomic control, according to Wallace, results from absence of mutual trust between U.S. and Russia. He faces both ways, like all politicians placed in similar circumstances, by concluding that “the United States is in a better position to assume leadership which will lead,” but he has no plan except that of stopping the manufacture of atomic bombs.
If we read between the lines the general conclusion arrived at is that a peace treaty is going to be patched up. Russia is compelled to accept the U.N. decision on Trieste, and her policy regarding the Danubian Waterway has been opposed so strenuously by Britain, France and the United States that she is compelled temporarily to give way to them.
There is little likelihood of a long or permanent peace; however, the nations will, in all probability, prepare for what, under capitalism, is inevitable with what speed they may. Britain is evidently not going to be caught napping. Look at this: —
£12,000,000 FOB ROCKET TESTS.AUSTRALIAN PLANT.“The British and Australian Governments may be involved in an expenditure of between £12,000,000 and £14,000,000 in the construction of rocket-bomb workshops and testing ranges in Australia. The annual maintenance cost is expected to be about £3,000,000.It is understood the Australian Government has received advice from Britain setting out proposals for research and development and for testing grounds in the centre of Australia. These are based on the recommendations of a mission of experts and scientists which visited Australia early this year”.—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)
It is against the above background we must judge the speeches of Sir Stafford Cripps at the Empire Trade Conference on October 3rd.
The Tories have recently laid stress on Imperial Preference; the following is Stafford Cripps’ reply.—
“It was an obvious and sensible course for us to pursue to endeavour to extend and consolidate our inter-Commonwealth trade."But that trade alone cannot fully meet any of our needs, and it would defeat our object of full employment and prosperity for our own people if we were to concentrate on Commonwealth trade alone and neglect those wider fields of world trade which we must cultivate.”
You are plainly told the Empire is not enough for British Capitalism; the Government must go hunting elsewhere for markets. The system compels expansion; the world is the limit; the clash between nations cannot be avoided. Socialism is the only means of saving mankind from destruction, and, unfortunately, Socialism is not yet fully understood by those who are called upon by history to establish it.
The Conservative Conference was held by men who observe the signs of the times, and are getting ready to deal with a situation they think will arise in the not far distant future.
The Labour Party is designated as the Socialist Party, but one statement made by Mr. Eden will be very interesting to the readers of the Socialist Standard.
“There is one principle underlying our approach to all these problems, a principle on which we stand in fundamental opposition to Socialism. The objective of Socialism is State ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. Our objective is a nation-wide, property-owning democracy. (Cheers.)These objectives are fundamentally opposed. Whereas the Socialist purpose is the concentration of ownership in the hands of the State, ours is the distribution of ownership over the widest practicable number of individuals. (Cheers.) Both parties believe in a form of capitalism, but whereas our opponents believe in State capitalism, we believe in the widest measure of individual capitalism.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)
Eden knows, and clearly shows, that the difference between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party is a difference in degree and not in kind.
The propaganda of the l.L.P. and kindred organisations have confounded Socialism with State Capitalism.
Mr. Eden is slated for the Premiership and the odds are in his favour.
Division in the Labour Party is probable, and the Communists may hasten it along. “For or against the Soviet Union” may arise as an issue out of the present political situation. The Cabinet will be up against it if they are forced to decide between Russia and the United States. The “Labour Progressives”, supported by Communists, will go wholeheartedly for Russia if such an issue develops, so will many of their followers in the Unions, and the question, is what will happen to the Labour Government in these circumstances?
Anthony Eden is the most likely man for the Premiership in the Coalition Government which it is anticipated would then spring into being as a matter of course.
The above is how the prophets have worked it out; they may be right, but, as Shaw says, “You never can tell.”
Meanwhile the wage slave plods his weary way. his meagre rations barely sufficient to enable him to carry on.
So Capitalism staggers along through the stages that precede its dissolution. It must live its life, but the end is drawing nearer every day.
Wherever you go nowadays you find working men not only discussing the political situation, but analysing it ably and well.
The war has not succeeded in blowing out the light within the brains of the members of our class; it has accelerated the growth of class consciousness, and increased the knowledge of the system that is its cause.
In the chain gang of wage slavery this knowledge is being passed from man to man and from woman to woman. The substance of Socialism is being absorbed by ever-increasing numbers.
The effects of this may be clearly revealed in the intelligence displayed by the workers in the strenuous conflicts that lie ahead.
The inherent antagonism between the exploited and their exploiters cannot be suppressed; it will become world wide; wherever Capitalism goes Socialist ideas cannot be prevented from appearing and playing their historic part.
The Capitalist class are bent on rejuvenating a system that is now senile. They cannot give it a new lease of life.
The working class will soon be forced to try and discover ways and means of ending it. We are with them because we are of them. There is no doubt as to the result. Society must establish Socialism or perish. The expropriation of the expropriators is the only way out.
Charles Lestor
Editorial: Labourism Proposes – Capitalism Disposes (1946)
The members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not among those short-sighted electors who, having helped to elect a Labour Government to power, are now turning in astonished resentment to rend their idol of a year ago. We never had any illusions about Labour government.
Socialism cannot be achieved until there is a majority of socialists and they gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing capitalism. Until then, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers to improve the existing system and administer it differently, the evils of class society, based on the exploitation of the workers, will remain to throttle the progress of the human race. The Labour Party rejected this conception and holds that a Labour government, backed by non-Socialist voters, can administer capitalism on non-capitalist principles and mould it gradually so that in the ultimate a different system will emerge. Outlining his Party’s point of view, Mr. Attlee wrote in "The Labour Party in Perspective" (Gollancz, 1937, p. 138) : “Some future historian will not be able to point to a particular date as that on which the Socialist State was established . . .” That is the Labour Party’s view, but it is wrong. Socialist society is not being gradually introduced by Labour government; it will start when, and only when, a socialist working class comes to power. That will be the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one and later historians will not be in any doubt when it happened.
Sharing Mr. Attlee’s belief, millions of workers, who last year gloried in the Labour electoral triumph, thought that at last they would have a government able to control, improve and gradually to eliminate the capitalist system of society. Never did anyone cherish a more baseless illusion. Having no mandate to introduce Socialism, Mr. Attlee and his Cabinet colleagues have no alternative, even if they desired one, but to administer capitalism. They are riding the tiger and have to go where it takes them.
In the book quoted above Mr. Attlee said “The Labour Party is, of course, opposed to imperialism . . .” (p.230); but opposed or not, the Labour Government is committed to the maintenance of the British Colonial Empire, to the policy of protecting British “spheres of influence,” to the policy of using military force to keep control over strategic bases, trade routes and foreign territories where vital raw materials are found. British Forces prop up the Greek Monarchy, stand in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere, and British capitalist interests clash in all quarters of the world with the like-minded imperialisms of Russia, U.S.A. and other powers. The Labour Party in opposition dreamed dreams of world brotherhood, but the Labour Government in power must willy-nilly pursue a policy suited to the needs of British capitalism. Thrusting a vastly increased flood of British exports into the markets of the world may look like a friendly act to the British exporter, but it has a more sinister aspect to the rival powers trying to keep or to conquer the same markets for their own exports.
Linked up with the export drive is the Labour Government’s pledge to provide “full employment.” Those who have eyes to see can already glimpse the shape of things to come. More and more workers are being employed on producing goods for export, and we are told there is an unlimited demand for these goods. But what will happen when capitalism lurches into its next inevitable crisis of “over-production ‘? Already we have seen the writing on the wall in the shape of the stock exchange depression in U.S.A. in September. The City editors of the London and New York papers were all at sixes and sevens about the immediate cause and likely duration of the depression but on one thing they nearly all agreed – that the crisis of “over-production ” is bound to come. A typical comment was that of the New York Correspondent of the Observer (8/9/46) —
“Americans generally . . . take it for granted that there will eventually be a crash of some kind to offset the present boom. Their hope is that the crash will be brief …”
Another appeared in the Daily Express (23/9/46) :
“The Wall Street slump marks the end of the first post-war boom just as the similar break of November, 1919, signalled the world trade depression of 1920-21. That is the view of some of the best brains in the City.”
A world trade crisis is bound to come, and the more the Labour Government succeeds in increasing the dependence of British industry on selling goods abroad, the more certain it will be that the full effect of the crisis will be felt here immediately.
Another example of the way Labour Party policy has swerved away from its early preachings is in the forms taken by nationalisation. A book that was once very popular in Labour circles was "The Case for Socialism", by Mr. Fred Henderson. In it he frankly, faced up to the fact that Socialism involves dispossessing the capitalist class and that it is mere self-deception to suppose that you can both make over their property in the means of production to the community and at the same time give them full compensation for it. “If the nation gave them compensation, in the sense of giving them an equivalent for what it is proposed to take from them, we should fail in our purpose” (p. 20-21). A later, modified view, Mr. Attlee’s, for example, in his "Labour Party in Perspective", was that it would be unfair to expropriate the capitalists gradually, industry by industry, because the first to fall would have a legitimate grievance; also it would be better tactics to give them all “reasonable and just compensation” and then rely on taxation to eliminate the gulf between the capitalist class and the working class.
In practice the capitalists in the nationalised industries are being given what even Cabinet Ministers call “generous” compensation and at the same time Mr. Dalton’s first budget did not increase, but decreased taxation on companies in the form of the Excess Profits Tax. Taxing the rich out of existence may look all right in an election programme, but capitalism will only function if the capitalist has confidence in his ability to make a profit, so the Labour Government has had to safeguard profits and warn the workers against pressing too much for higher wages The rich are still with us in full force and nothing the Labour Government will do will alter it. Mr. Attlee may say “The abolition of classes is fundamental to the Socialist conception of society ” (p. 145) just as the Conservative Party can now give lip service to the same idea – “Mr. Churchill was telling them that England was moving towards a classless society and that the Conservative Party should not just accept the fact but actively promote this historic change” (Mr. D. Eccles, Conservative M.P., Times, 14/10/46) – but capitalism and classes are here to stay until Socialism ends them.
Also on nationalisation of industries, it used to be a Labour Party demand that the workers should be in control. Mr. Attlee ("Socialism for Trade Unionists", 1922) declared that “the general direction . . . will be in the hands of representatives of the workers in the industry in consultation with representatives of the users of the service.” Another Labour writer, Mr. E. E. Hunter, particularly warned against “the danger of national ownership being given over to committees of business experts.” “Democratic control,” he said, was an “essential part of any ideal scheme of nationalisation” ("Socialism at Work", I.L.P., 1921)
Nowhere in the nationalisation schemes now being put into operation will any vestige of these allegedly essential principles be found — they are incompatible with the functioning of capitalism and have had to go.
So one by one the Labour Party’s well-intentioned but ill-conceived schemes for bettering the capitalist system are sacrificed by the Labour Government in office. It could not be otherwise. The idea was that on taking office a Labour Government goes forward with the work of undermining capitalism and encroaching on the powers and wealth of the capitalists. The reality is that on the day a Labour Government takes office to administer capitalism it is forced to turn about arid begin the retreat from its beliefs so that capitalism may be kept running. The Labour voters believe that the Labour Government is in command of the situation. In truth — and doubtless by now even the most obtuse Labour minister begins to realise it — capitalism has the Labour Government in an iron grip. The Labour Government hoped to serve two masters, what they call the policy of serving the interests of all sections of the community. As time goes on and the working class become restive about the non-appearing fruits of labourism the Government will find itself more and more divorced from the workers and from its own pre-election promises.
North Paddington bye-election (1946)
Party News from the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard
In view of the forthcoming bye-election in North Paddington and the decision of the Party to contest it, we make an urgent appeal for funds. Elections need not only active work, but money for posters, literature, etc. What we can do is largely dependent on your support.
Please send Donations to:—E. LAKE, S.P.G.B., Rugby Chambers, Rugby St., Great James St., W.C.1.
Election Committee Rooms are not yet available. Will members and sympathisers willing to assist in election work please communicate with Parliamentary Committee at the above address.
Parliamentary Committee
Blogger's Note:
The December 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a report by Gilbert McClatchie ('Gilmac') about the Party contesting the North Paddington bye-election.
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