The Confessions of a Tory MP (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cyril Osborne, Tory MP for Louth since 1945, often blurts out his thoughts on the state of the country without much regard for the embarrassment it must cause to his Party. He is a stockbroker, a company director, and an executive member of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce; he has a special interest in trade and finance.

He is gloomy about the present, and pessimistic about what comes after. Speaking to the staff conference of the Wholesale Textile Association at Oxford on July 9 he struck out in all directions; with force if not always with accuracy, if we judge by the report in the Times: “The Western capitalist system,” he said, is facing its gravest crisis since 1931, and “the communist powers” are not in better shape.

He found that in most countries excess manufacturing capacity has been built up in many basic industries, and “no one seemed to know how to increase consumption without starting galloping inflation”:

“They were all trying to export more and at the same time cut down on imports. President Kennedy was beaten by the problem and Germany’s exuberance was slowing down. The whole Common Market is losing its value, while Canada is down and out. Neither Government nor Opposition in this country is sure what is the right answer.”

Discounting some exaggeration, Mr. Osborne’s description of trade conditions in the Western world is indisputable. There are an increasing number of firms and industries here and across the Atlantic that are working far below capacity; not because they could not expand output by getting more workers out of the hundreds of thousands of job-seekers, but because they can’t find enough buyers who will offer profitable prices for their products. In some big industries, coal and railways, shipbuilding and aircraft production, the number of jobs is falling as sales decline.

It is a telling point Mr. Osborne makes that the countries are all trying to increase exports while curtailing imports, forgetting that one country’s exports are another country’s imports. (Mr. Osborne probably does not know that Socialists were making the point before he was born). And Mr. Osborne is at least getting a little nearer to the truth when he doubts whether the remedy is to be found in the Common Market, or in Kennedy’s policies, or in Canadian dreams of greatness, or in the way they run their trade in Russia. According to him, “the communist powers” are anxiously watching to see if we can find the key to the problem.

But first a word or two about Mr. Osborne’s personal and Party responsibility. He tells us now that the workers (and “the management”) have got to work harder and expect less, and put up with the loss of jobs that will follow the bankruptcy of many inefficient firms and that even so it is uncertain whether recovery can come “without the cruel harshness of an economic slump”: in other words, back to the nineteen thirties and the depression years.

He finds the root of the trouble in the outlook of this generation, “that has been told it can vote itself anything it desires.” But who told them that if they voted a Conservative Government back into power it meant voting to double the standard of living in this generation, and meant “Prosperity and Peace,” and “prosperity and opportunity for all”? Who told the electors in 1959 that 1951, when the Tories came into power, “was a turning point in British history”? Turning away from what to what? Surely it wasn’t supposed to mean turning to the grim outlook Mr. Osborne now threatens us with?

And it is transparently clear that Mr. Osborne knows no better than those he slates how to put things right. He wants the workers to work harder and expect less so that prices will be lower and British goods improved in quality. But just as it is impossible for all the world’s exports to expand if all the worlds’ imports are being cut—which Mr. Osborne sees—it is likewise impossible to make trading conditions better by having each worker producing more and buying less.

And while British industries are lowering prices and raising quality and producing more, what are the rest of the world’s manufacturers supposed to be doing? They will all be chasing the same elusive solution.

But note just how silly Mr. Osborne’s solution is. The problem, as stated by him, is “how to increase consumption” since many industries have excess capacity which will not be used unless consumption is increased—and his remedy is that consumption should be decreased (The workers must “expect less.”)

We have to correct one of Mr. Osborne’s errors, his belief that no one seems to know how to increase consumption without starting inflation. Socialists know very well how to do this and have been trying to get workers to heed it for a long, long time. All it needs is to bring the production and the consumption together. The world’s population needs, and would like, to increase its consumption of all kinds of things by very large amounts. The world’s resources of human labour, nature given materials, and machinery, etc., could vastly increase output of the things people want. Let Mr. Osborne tell us why the two should not be brought into direct relationship, with production solely for use without the complexities of buying, selling and profit-making that the Western and Eastern powers agree in supposing to be necessary.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Soviet State - part 1 (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia is a mysterious country in many ways. Its internal power struggles are submerged, dramatic affairs in which we usually realise that one man has fallen and another taken his place only by their relative places on a rostrum or in the line up to greet Krushchev at an airport. What news comes out is carefully filtered.

Nevertheless, we know enough about Russia to be able to say that the social system which exists there is Capitalism. This means that it is basically the same system as in England and America, although it would obviously be foolish to say that it corresponds in every way. When feudalism was the recognisable social system in many parts of the globe it, too, took different forms in different countries, but basically it was the same social system in all of them.

The Russian Government claims—and its claim is supported by the Communist Parties of the World—that the Soviet Union is a Socialist country. The Soviet Constitution states, for example, in Article 1 that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics “is a Socialist State of workers and peasants.” And Article 4 adds that:

“the economic foundations of the U.S.S.R. consist in the Socialist ownership of the implements and means of production, firmly established as a result of the liquidation of the Capitalist system of economy, the abolition of private property of the instruments and means of production, and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.”

But it is not constitutions that determine social systems. Capitalism in Russia does not rest on a legal constitution, but on the social and economic relationships which operate there. The evidence that has come from Russia in the past and is still coming now, shows clearly that certain basic features of Soviet society correspond to what we recognise as Capitalism. In fact, the so-called “evidence” for the existence of Socialism there is mainly a listing of the superficial differences between Russian Capitalism and some of the other Capitalist powers. These differences mean a lot to the ardent supporter of Russia; a critical analysis puts them in a less convincing light.

To begin with, we have to chop away some of the confusion which Communist party leaders have so assiduously spread over the years. Writing in Economic problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Stalin said:

“absolutely mistaken . . . are those comrades who allege that, since Socialist society has not abolished commodity production, we are bound to have the reappearance of all the economic categories characteristic of capitalism: labour power as a commodity, surplus value, capital, capitalist profit, the average rate of profit, etc. “(Page 21).

He went on to justify these apparent contradictions by claiming that in Russia commodities, money, banks, and so on, “. . . while they lose their old functions and acquire new ones, preserve their old form, which is utilised by the Socialist system” (page 59), and that “. . . it is chiefly the form, the outward appearance, of the old categories of Capitalism that have remained in our country, but . . . their essence has radically changed in adaption to the requirements of the Socialist economy” (page 60).

This sort of argument is dishonest enough to explain away anything. Stalin, of course, had the last word—any comrades who remained “absolutely mistaken” long enough probably went under in one of the purges which were so often necessary to protect what we were told was Socialism in Russia.

What are the fundamental criteria by which we recognise the capitalist social system ? They are: wage labour and commodity production; and capital investment and accumulation.

Do these things exist in Russia? The Soviet state is the centralised monopoliser of the means of wealth production, to which the workers in Russia have to sell their energies for money. It therefore employs the Russian workers and pays them wages just like other employers in other countries. Thus the relationship between the Soviet state and its workers is one of capital and labour. Members of the Communist Party may not think that this fact in itself proves that Capitalism exists in Russia, but Karl Marx, to whose theories they pay lip service, would certainly have thought so. In his Wage Labour and Capital, he summed up his argument with “wage labour presupposes capital—capital presupposes wage labour.”

Capital is accumulated in Russia by the State and invested in state enterprise. Now the State can only do this if it is appropriating the surplus-value, or the results of unpaid labour time, of the workers it employs. This surplus value may not be distributed in dividends in the same way as in other Capitalist countries, but this makes no difference to the basic situation. In this country the State take a sizeable portion of surplus value by way of taxation upon the Capitalist class; in Russia, it also takes it directly from the workers it employs. The Soviet State does impose some taxes—capital can thus be accumulated in either way.

Raising productivity

In his book Industry in the U.S.S.R. (Moscow, 1949), E. Lokshin wrote:

“Socialist industry has incomparably greater possibilities than Capitalist industry of raising the productivity of labour, of constantly lowering production costs and thus increasing accumulations.” (Page 100.)

But before making this statement, he was careful to prepare the way for it by quoting Stalin:

“History up till now,” said Comrade Stalin, “has known three paths of the formation and development of powerful industrial states. The first path is the path of grabbing and pillaging colonies . . . The second path is the path of military conquest and the exaction of large indemnities from one country by another . . . The third path is the path of usurious concessions and usurious loans from capitalistically developed countries to a capitalistically backward country . . . All these paths were inacceptable to the Soviet Union . . . The Communist Party and the Soviet Government led the Land of Soviets along a different course, of industrialising the country by drawing on its interior sources of accumulation” (our emphasis).

These statements of Stalin’s may be true in themselves, but Lokshin’s defence of the Soviet Union is typical in that he uses them to give a completely false comparison between what he calls “capitalist methods of accumulation” and the method which is used in Russia—”interior sources of accumulation.” Capital can only be accumulated from the exploitation of labour. So what else can Lokshin’s “interior sources” be other than the unpaid labour of Soviet workers?

No one can deny the dissimilarities between Capitalism in this country and Capitalism in Russia. The capitalist class in Russia is not as distinct as in this country and “Western style” private property is largely non-existent in the Soviet Union. But it does not follow from this that Capitalism has gone from Russia, and with it the exploitation of man by man. It does mean that in Russia the state is the biggest property owner and exploiter of all.

For exploitation has nothing to do with conditions of work, nor with the value of wages. Exploitation is an integral part of the relationship between employer and employee, whereby the employer can appropriate surplus value for the accumulation of capital, by paying the worker less than the value of what he has produced or assisted in producing. Thus it is possible for a worker with a relatively high wage to be exploited at a higher rate than a worker with a lower wage.

It may be argued that the State uses some surplus value for the creation of things like roads, schools and hospitals. But this is only the accepted function of the State in a highly organised society. The capitalist class in this country needs a centralised authority to do these things because it could not possibly do them without such an authority. In Russia, the State has the same functions, but with a difference. It has the field to itself.

Ian Jones

                                                                           (To be concluded)

Capitalism in the Caribbean - Part 3 (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

The First World War gave the West Indies sugar industry a real fillip, but the slumps which followed caused the sugar owners to amalgamate and look for ways of cutting costs—as always, their first thought was to lower wages. Sugar workers were forced to form trade unions to resist the attempts of the sugar owners to depress their already very low standard of living and in 1935 the sugar workers of Antigua went on strike.

Trade unions had already been formed in other industries, notably the oil industry in Trinidad. Blood was shed during riots in the oilfields in 1937. The Trinidad oilworkers’ union is strong and well-disciplined: a well-planned strike in 1960 forced some notable concessions from the oil companies in the face of a recession in the oil industry.

There were disorders in other islands, and governments soon realised that it was wise to encourage rather than to hinder the formation of trade unions. To meet the challenge, both from their workers and from rival capitalist groups in other parts of the world, West Indian capitalists joined together in strong amalgamations. Thus were formed the various cane-growers associations, the Banana Producers’ Association of Jamaica, the Trinidad and Tobago Co-operative Citrus Growers’ Association, etc.

West Indian leaders on the economic field eventually became political leaders: men like Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Bird in Antigua, Grantley Adams in Barbados, Bustamante and Manley in Jamaica, and Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler (who was behind the 1937 oilfield riots) in Trinidad. Economic struggles, therefore, formed the basis for political struggles, fought mainly on a racial platform with special emphasis on anti-colonialism. These political movements were supported by the utterances of men like Marcus Garvey (a Negro from Jamaica who served his apprenticeship with Booker T. Washington) who eloquently and powerfully advocated during the thirties a Negro “Back to Africa” movement.

Through the energetic action of politicians such as Bustamante, Manley, and Marryshow of Grenada the British Government conceded constitutional reforms, culminating in the formation of the West Indies Federation in 1958. This meant full internal self-government based on universal suffrage in certain islands, the British Government retaining control of defence.

The identification of trade unions with newly emerged governments is fraught with danger for the West Indian working class. During the recent Trinidad elections, for example, one or two quite large trade-unions held demonstration marches in support of Dr. Williams’ Peoples’ National Movement party. It may be. however that West Indian workers are too politically sophisticated to be completely taken in by demagogic politicians to the point of surrendering trade union and political advantages won after so many years of struggle.

The wind of change has blown through the West Indies as it has through the African continent; the eagerness with which the Colonial Office has fanned this wind in the British Caribbean towards the formation of the West Indies Federation indicates that the British ruling class would rather deal with a single West Indian Government than with several. But West Indians have apparently proved to be too nationalistic. In a referendum held towards the end of 1961, Jamaica seceded from the Federation, and thus set off the collapse which quickly followed. Now, a looser federation of eight of the islands, including Barbados and the Leeward and Windward Islands, is in prospect. The present tendency is for unit governments (at least in the British islands and British Guiana) to try to go it alone. Political leaders in the larger islands such as Jamaica and Trinidad, the only really economically viable island in the Federation, are reluctant for sizeable proportions of taxes realised in their islands to be utilised by a Federal Government to assist the poorer, smaller, islands’ economy, when the money could be used in development projects in their own countries.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, whether it be in terms of a host of small units trying to go it alone or of varying degrees of federation, the problems of the West Indian worker wherever he is will be basically the same as those of his fellows in other parts of the world. He is, unfortunately, no more seized with the ideas of Socialism than his counterparts elsewhere, but sooner or later he will find that these ideas are the only ones worth considering in his search for an end to his present poverty and insecurity and for a better and happier future.

Michael La Touche

                                                                               (Concluded)

Entertainment and Profit (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Theatres, cinemas and football clubs have all recently felt the draught as their support and so their receipts fell. Pubs, Restaurants and Dance Halls have gone through the same agony. Where, they must have wondered, have all our supporters, patrons, clients, gone? Surely not all of them are televiewing?

One football club got so worked up about this recently that they took a census to find out the reason for their falling gates. They discovered some of their missing supporters in the strangest of places; in the local shopping centres, fetching and carrying for the wife. The wife, apparently, is at work all week and so she has to buy as much of the week’s food as she can in one go on Saturday afternoon. Who can blame her for cutting up rough if the old man wants to enjoy himself watching football while she has to push and shove her heavy laden way through the crowds? So no football, no dozing, no telly even for him.

Of course, there are any number of reasons offered for this. Some say that football, or the theatre, or what-have-you, are not what they used to be. Others say that they are not up to the standard of other countries (how unpatriotic!). And there are those who simply shrug and blame it all onto the telly.

These are at best the superficial reasons for changes in public tastes. To find the basic reason we must look at the motive for the birth and presentation of various types of entertainment. Today, we live in a Capitalist world in which all social endeavour in terms of research, invention, culture, service and work is carried on with the object of returning to the Capitalist more from his business than he puts into it. This is assured by the simple method of allowing the working class, who produce all the wealth, to receive only a part of it in their wages. But, sometimes, as we know, there is no profit in certain lines of business. One industry may be undermined by the development of a cheap substitute for its product. Another will fail because it cannot stand the pace of competition. So they decline, sometimes washed down with crocodile tears in the City columns.

The entertainment industry is no exception to this rule. It, too, must have, its profits—and it is often not too particular how it gets them. Jazz clubs, dance halls and coffee bars are not worried whether the working class teenagers who keep them going are missing their homework, or skipping evening classes, to do so. Publicans would rather see us drinking in their bars than attending a Political or Trade Union meeting, or a lecture on archaeology if it comes to that. And entertainment, with its various branches vying with each other for our custom, must keep producing the novel and alleged improvements to keep us interested.

Yet however interested we become, we can never avoid the fact that the biggest and best part of our day is spent in being exploited in the factory or the office to make huge fortunes for the lucky shareholders. This does not leave much time to enjoy our entertainment, however good or bad it may be.

Joe McGuinness

50 Years Ago: Organisation (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . Often there seems to be an idea—an entirely erroneous idea in the writer’s estimation—that as capitalism (or at least the present phase of capitalism) appears to be drawing to a close, the next step must inevitably be the establishment of Socialism in its stead. There is, therefore, no need, so it is considered, to do anything more than sit with folded hands, waiting for the downfall of capitalist society and the springing up, full-armed, of the new system of society.

. . . It does not actually follow that Socialism will be the outcome of present-day capitalist society. If you have a discontented people, poverty-stricken, degraded by continual toil and suffering into mere human machines, ripe for any change from their present existence of physical and mental penury, you have within that people all the possibilities, not so much of an elevation to a higher type, but rather toward an atavism even more degrading physically, more destructive intellectually, than at present.

The essential thing is, of course, that there should be implanted in the minds of the workers knowledge of the fact that their position as workers must be altered from the present state of slavery to a state wherein they shall be free to order their lives as they may best determine. But this knowledge once having been attained, it then becomes quite as necessary to know how to live. After all, life is not only the eating of good food, the wearing of good clothes, the sheltering in good houses, with a minimum of work and a maximum of leisure. All these things are, or should be, simply the means to an end in themselves . . .

. . . So it can be seen that the necessity of organisation becomes doubly imperative. Firstly, in order to build up a body of men and women whose main idea shall be the ending of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. Secondly, that the men and women thus organised may have the opportunity of keeping themselves in touch with every phase of life, thus forming, indeed, an educational centre in the real meaning of the word education . . .

[From the article, 'The Need For Organisation', by F. J. Webb, Socialist Standard, August 1912]

How the Workers are Butchered on the Rand. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Putumayo is not such ancient history that one person here and there, with an exceptional memory for grisly tales of barbarity and suffering, can with an effort recall something of the facts of that interesting case. The present writer endeavoured to show that the wave of indignation which swept over the land, from the Cabinet Ministers in our immaculate Parliament to the poet (!) (now deceased) who once stirred the nation’s soul with a deathless poem calling upon the British bulldogs to “Hurry Up for Pity Sake !” (the merit of which poem was handsomely acknowledged by it being printed on red cotton handkerchieves and sold at a price within the means of all who had a nose to wipe thereon) might well have been let loose over equally deserving happenings very much nearer home.

That statement did not meet with universal approval. It seemed incredible to some that those smart, jovial, silk-hatted gentlemen who rush to and fro between Park Lane and Throgmorton Street, and who carry so gracefully the knighthoods and honours heaped upon them by the Liberal Government, could ever be guilty, could even fall under suspicion of being guilty, of any such atrocities as those with which those strange-named servants of a British company turned the peaceful Putumayo into a river of blood and tears in a “Devil’s Paradise.”

Recent happenings in South Africa, however, in which British miners, and British soldiers, and British (!) capitalists, and British knights, and the highest of high officers of the British Crown, are concerned, show clearly enough that in all essentials, the “cultured” ones of our Western civilisation are quite aa capable, given the materials, as any Portuguese half-breed in the pay of British capital, of creating a “Devil’s Paradise” of their own, with British blood and brawn, on the soil of the British Empire.

All the humbug of that sly old servant of Satan, W. E. Gladstone, who covered his machinations in the interests of the ruling class with a slime of “moral” cant, in which the “wrongs” of the Balkan people quivering under the spiked and envenomed heel of “Abdul the Damned” were in particular made to be a mat, jealously guarded and preserved, for him to clean his begrimed boots on, has been, it seems, bequeathed in trust and with compound interest, to the Liberal party. While they are busy fulminating against the “White Slave Trader” at home, they are, with brutal cynicism, crowning the blood-reeking fortunes of South African millionaires with titles. So that the political funds of the “Great Liberal Party” may benefit, they make murder respectable by covering it with the cloak of knighthood. 

Those who do not know how, and at what cost of working class suffering and misery, these South African fortunes have been amassed, are invited to think over the scanty particulars reproduced from a Press which, under a system, fails to suppress much that they would for the simple reason that sensation (and advertisements) is their life’s blood.

“‘However healthy a Transvaal rock-drill man may appear to be on his return to this country,’ Dr. Haldane told the Departmental Committee on Industrial Diseases in 1907, ‘he will probably be dead within a year or two.'” (“Pall Mall Gazette,” 7.7.13.)

“The death rate of one section of the men who mine the gold—the machine men or rock drillers—is over 230 per thousand from one disease—miner’s phthisis—alone. Such a death rate from a single occupational disease must be unparalleled in the whole industrial world. It can only be compared with King Leopold’s Congo Free State.

“Speaking before a representative meeting of mining engineers in Johannesburgh in September last Mr. Koetze, the Government mining engineer, said : ‘Sooner or later every worker underground in these mines will contract miner’s phthisis.’

“The practical result of commissions of inquiry have been recommendations that water be used to keep down the dust which causes the disease. These recommendations have been urged upon the mineowners, in each case with the same result—utter callousness and neglect.”

These extracts were written by Dr. G. L. Ugmara, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., and were reproduced in the “Morning Leader” for December 2, 1911.

“No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every.” (Mr. Merriman.)

“Miners’ phthisis is said to be due to the inhalation of fine dust which arises not merely from rock-drilling without the accompaniment of water, but also from the blasting operations with explosives. Last year more than 1,000 of 3,000 men examined by the Medical Commission were found to have phthisis. No rock-driller could work in the mines for sixteen years and escape it. Death took place as a rule before the age of forty. Here is a table which showed at that time how inevitable is the doom of any man who undertakes this work :—

Years of service Percentage of men affected

    2½ 25

    4½ 55

    6½ 70

   10½ 80

   13½ 90

   16½ 100 ” 

“Daily News.”

“Then all the miners and the population know that the mine owners are responsible in the same way for the death among the Kaffirs, which Mr. Sauer, the Minister for Native Affairs, has characterised, as regards the natives from tropical countries, as little short of murder. There was no need for any limitation in the phrase. The probability is that over 100,000 natives have been killed in the mines since the war.” (Mr. R. L. Outhwaite, M.P., in “Reynolds’s,” 6.7.13.)

There can be no escape from such a mass of evidence supplied by the capitalists’ own tools and fellows. Ten thousand victims in a year ! It would take a continent of Putumayos to equal this stupendous crime. When the war was raging we were told that they were “painting the map red,” but never in those days of open and avowed slaughter were such libations of blood poured out to the “Imperial idea” as have been run out, as from a vast broken cask, every year since, to satisfy the blood-thirsty vampires of Park Lane, in the ultra-respectable West End of London.

It is the story of Whitehaven retold in more callous letters. There miners were hurled to death because it would cost their safe and comfortable masters something to ventilate the mine in accordance with the first clause of their own Mines Act. On the Rand thousands of working-class lives are thrown away annually because it would absorb some of the knighted owners’ profits to spray with water in the process of rock-drilling, and to allow time for the dust to settle after a “blast” before the men returned to the “face.” It is the story of rubber retold, on a scale more in keeping with the dignity of the yellow commodity.

It cannot be pleaded that this wholesale murder of black and white is the work of a few of the capitalists alone. It is aided and connived at by the whole master class as such. How the British Government imposed a “hut tax” upon the natives whose land they had stolen, and sent a military force to enforce the payment of the paltry sums that could never pay the expense of collecting them, in order to drive the blacks into the mines to earn the money in which alone the taxes were payable, may not be entirely forgotten by some who do not especially treasure the memory of these curious incidents. It reads and looks and smells remarkably like some of the means resorted to by the “brigands” who cost virtuous England the price of a special commission and a House of Commons inquiry. Ten thousand victims a year ! Oh, the stinking hypocrisy of the howl that greeted the revelation of the Peruvian atrocities !

The war which was engineered in order that the mine owners might squeeze another four million pounds profit per annum out of the writhing and quivering carcasses of their white and black slaves was the work of a Tory administration, but it was reserved for a Liberal Government to make the Transvaal a “self-governing” colony, in order that they might be able to say when miners were to be butchered on the Rand : “We cannot interfere.” Strange, is it not, that when the Outlanders were supposed to be writhing in agony under the indignity of being without the franchise, the fact that they were under a foreign Government did not prevent the full armed might of the British Empire being used to “see them righted,” but now that these miners are being massacred in cold blood by troops provided and paid by the British Government, under the direction of a high officer of the British Crown, on soil painted red” with the blood of ten thousand British soldiers, nothing can be done because the Transvaal is a self-governing British colony !

I say nothing about the lives lost in the so-called rioting. Where life is held so cheap it seems little enough to make a bother about. But whose estimate of working-class life is it that counts ten thousand workers lives as of less importance than the cost of providing safe conditions for the mining of 40 million pounds worth of gold ? Think of that great army of workers—men of your own class—who must march to death to produce one year’s output of gold from South African mines. Ten thousand of them, black and white. For every million pounds 250 lives. We have been nurtured on grim and haunting pictures of the unspeakable Arab slave-caravans, but was ever anything more appalling enacted in all Africa than is enacted by these silk-hatted brigands of Park Lane, West ?

Fellow workers, very guarded must be the language of the revolutionary who would criticise those who engineered a great war in order to grab the mines, who have butchered you on a hundred shambles from Peterloo and Featherstone to Llanelly and the Rand, who waste your lives by raising the loadline of ships, and by refusing to adopt automatic couplings on the railways, who murder you by thousands for the mere cost of ventilating coal mines at home and spraying the dust in the mines of South Africa. To speak too plainly of these things is to ask to be sent to prison, for those who set so little store on your lives have taken every cunning care to so hedge about their victims with laws and armed force that they must die almost unheard. Hence much must be left to the reader’s imagination. But attention is directed to that clause in our Declaration of Principles which declares that the “armed forces of the nation exist only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers”. Its contradiction, in the face of every military action since the war, from Sir George White’s (the “hero” of Ladysmith) smashing of the coal porters’ strike at Gibraltar to the latest gun-boat demonstration at Leith and cold-blooded butchery in the streets of Johannesburgh, is here challenged. It cannot be seriously and truthfully contradicted.

If this is true, then it is true also that the hope of the workers lies in obtaining control of those armed forces by capturing political power.

That is the way out—the Socialist way. First to deprive the murder class of political control by ceasing to elect them and their Labour allies to Parliament—electing Socialists instead—then by expropriating them and establishing the Socialist Commonwealth. There is no other way.

A. E. Jacomb

Public Safety V. Railway Profits. I. The Cleaner. (1913)

From the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

That Fateful Letter.

The workers in general, and railwaymen in particular, have heard a great deal respecting the “safety of the public” and the “welfare of the country” from the masters and their hangers-on just lately. We also saw the letter of Mr. A K. Butterworth (General Manager N.E.R.) to driver Knox; and, unfortunately, since then one or two “accidents” have taken place which might well make the man in the street wonder whether a train is altogether safe to ride in.

We have in front of us a very big and important question, and it would be impossible in a short article to treat it in all its branches. I propose to deal with a section of the railway workers and their conditions of service, about whom the people know very little ; and, as is always the case in like circumstances, a section that is lied about by the prostitute Press and orators of the master class, in the hope of turning public opinion against them. I refer to the men employed in what is known as the “Running Section” of the Locomotive Department of the lines. Let me explain.

The Loco. Dept. consists of all men connected with the Loco, shed work, and also the “running” section, but these latter are classed separately from the rest of the employees because they are employed to “run” the road. The men are doubtless better known as drivers, firemen, and cleaners.

A glance at the title of this article would seem to open up a question of safety in the mind of the thoughtful reader, and I have no hesitation in saying that, as at present run, safety is not the first consideration of the railway magnates. It is profit they think of first, and the services are not safe for many reasons, all of which have a direct bearing on the making of profit.

If safety was the first consideration of the companies, obviously the men who actually work the trains, viz., drivers and firemen, would be assured of a decent living so as to keep them fit for their perilous duties ; also the machines they work would be kept thoroughly roadworthy and in the pink of condition. This, however, I know from experience with two of the leading companies in this country, is not the case.

The men are sadly overworked ; their machines, many of them, are not properly road-worthy, and their wages, especially considering their responsibility, are low.

What We Shall See.

Before going any further it would, perhaps, be as well to look into the conditions of service of the men, as these conditions have a direct bearing on the safety of the services. In doing this we shall have to start with the lad who, after passing a medical examination at the hands of the railway doctor, and an eyesight test at the hands of the Loco. Superintendent or his deputy, starts in the service as an engine cleaner. This is the lad who will be a fireman at some future time, and then driver.

The safety question will not be greatly dealt with in looking at the conditions of the cleaner, for he is not yet “on the road.” Nevertheless it is necessary, I think, to examine the conditions under which he works, if only to see what qualifications he has for taking up the duties of fireman when his turn comes. We shall see that no provision is made to properly teach him the various parts of his engine, and that his daily work becomes a bore to him through the speeding up to which he is subjected.

On most of the trunk lines the lads start at 18 or older, so as to take their turn on night work. They begin by cleaning shunting engires. and are usually on for 10¼ working hours and start at 17s. a week as a rule. These engines are nearly always in a very bad condition, and the lads have to work hard—many such engines running a fortnight without having a “wiper” put on them.

An Irishman's Rise.

About twelve months of this, and then comes the first promotion—to local passenger engines, which are kept almost as dirty. The lads as a rule get 2d. a day rise then, and work in gangs, the work amounting to 1½ engines per man per night (very little or no day work is the rule when on these engines), so that the cleaners are no better off for their extra 1s. a week.

The lads then get another “promotion,” and go on tender engines. Further speeding-up is now resorted to by reducing the working hours to 9, in which time the lads have to clean the mammoth locomotives of to-day. A number of companies have the “contract” clearer, who has always the same engine to clean. It is, however, impossible to clean the biggest modern engines in 9 hours—indeed, they would in some cases take nearer 20. So a great deal of the engine is “left.”

The “contract” cleaner has no appointed time on duty. He has to vary with the “turn” of his engine, which means turning out at all hours of the day or night. A holiday is an unlooked for privilege, and even a day off in the summer is more than many dare ask for.

The man, having his regular engine, takes a pride in it, and would kick up a noise if he were barred going on his machine because it has only a “light” trip “on” it, which often is the case. It is a rule that if an engine looks anything like “respectable” it can “run round,” thus overworking the cleaner by making him “tear off” two or three trips instead of one.

I may say here that the wages of these men are the highest paid for cleaning (the G.N.R. in London district formerly paid 3s. 10d. per day) but they are rapidly disappearing, and are now almost a thing of the past.

Dirt and Dividends.

The directors and shareholders demanding a greater return on their investments, expenses have to be cut down, regardless of safety or anything else. So a number of companies clean their engines by piecework, at miserable rates, and the wages of the man then depends upon how be “stands” with the foreman. (This system has recently been introduced on the G.N.) Another system extensively employed is to have the work done by day work by gangs, the men getting different engines daily. Under this method no pride can be taken by the cleaners in the machines.

Under both the last-mentioned systems the “contract” man is done away with because he is not cheap enough. Engines go out two, three, or four days without a clean, so it is impossible for a driver to make a minute inspection of the parts to see they are not broken. This, which is a very important matter affecting the “welfare of the public,” and the fact that an engine may “run hot” and delay several trains, besides causing a great inconvenience on and off the shed, and a host of other things, are thrown to the winds in the interest of increased dividends. If a machine fails and the driver cannot give a "satisfactory” explanation to the Loco. Superintendent, he can be fined and thus help to swell the coffers of the human vampires that live upon him.

To sum up, the highest standing wage a cleaner can depend upon is in the neighbour­hood of 19s. a week on the trunk lines, for which he puts in at least 54 hours. In the country the wages paid are much lower.

The state of the engines proves conclusively that there are not nearly enough men, and what men there are are immensely overworked, with plenty of dirt, night-work, inconvenience to self and family, bad smells on shed, and the lads often working feet deep in hot water. In addition there is a good deal of bullying from the foreman, who is generally a man who has failed on the footplate.

A Premium on Ignorance.

The average period a man does cleaning is about four years, and from the way he is overworked there is no chance for him to learn much about his engine. Nor is he given a rules-book order to enable him to make himself acquainted with the rules of the road (the Midland does give rules-books after six months). There are, however, “educational classes” on some companies (e.g., the G.N.), but they are not successful, and the attendance is small. The men have to attend in their own time, and with their state of overwork, and that great curse, overtime, it is not to be wondered at that very few attend the classes, the lecturers at which as a rule are drivers.

In working hours the lads are sent home or fined for trifling offences, and kept in abject slavery, so their mind is turned against their work. As a result of these conditions they can not take it up with the interest necessary to become good enginemen and to befit them to be in charge of trains. It is, therefore, little wonder that, at the end of four years or so, when the lad goes up to “pass” for a spare fireman, he often fails in the exam.—which means more shed slavery, or, what is the rule on a number of lines, the sack.

Those who get through, however, owing to the unscientific way they are trained and the low wages paid, are not fit, from the point of view of public safety, to be in charge of an engine—which, by the way, is quite in accordance with the standing orders of capitalism and the production of profit.

And the unscientific training of enginemen through their period as cleaners, is pretty well certain to last until the system that trains men for profit instead of for usefulness and safety is swept into oblivion.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. II. The Fireman. (1913)

From the July 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from last issue.]

 

We will now look into the conditions of the spare firemen and firemen of the trunk lines, and in doing so we shall be concerned with men that are actually working the trains.

The spare fireman is a man that has been “passed” to act as a fireman when needed, but who is not always engaged in firing. When he is not doing so he is booked “shed duty as required,” and as often as not goes back to cleaning or other shed work. We can briefly pass him bye, because when firing he is under the conditions of a regular fireman.

His working hours are ten without a break, as a rule, and his pay is anything from 3s. to 4s. a day when employed firing. But he must exceed five hours in order to get this. When on “shed duty” the wage is something less (usually 3s. 6d.), which is another instance of the shameless robbery of these men, seeing that it is not through their fault that they are “put back” in the shed, or “cancelled.” Once a man is passed for firing he should be treated and paid as such.

As a rule the spare fireman’s week is six days. Occasionally, however, it is seven days. He is usually on shunting work, but is sometimes put on long trips—a common practice on the M.R. The period of spare-firing is about two or three years, then the man undergoes a further exam. for a regular fireman.

His promotion generally follows in the order of seniority, but the company “reserves the right of choice for promotion irrespective of seniority”—a clause which obviously leaves plenty of room for jobbery.

Once a man is passed as a regular fireman he is always at work on engines, either on or off shed ; so in looking at his working conditions we shall commence to get to grips with the indictment that has already been levelled at the companies: that the men are overworked and underpaid, which are circumstances not consistent with public safety.

Let us briefly look at his conditions. Ten hours constitute his working day. This, for a man standing over a furnace which (according C. I. Bowen Cooke, of the L.N.W., in his book “British Locomotives”) developes a temperature of 5,027 degree Fah., is excessive.

To give some idea of the nature of the work let me quote from an article, “A day’s work on the footplate,” which appeared in that capitalist, organ, “The Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909, and in which the author says : “With 14½ on (a moderate load) I fire up every two minutes, and sometimes oftener.” That this is no exaggeration is shown by the fact that on some of the big engines the coal consumed is about 50 lbs. per mile.

Before leaving the shed the fireman has to make up his fire, assist in oiling, clean and trim his lamps, fetch oil for his driver, and in many cases clean his “front” and otherwise assist his driver to get the engine ready to back on the train. By this time he must be “squared up” and have steam up to anything between 140 to 225 lbs per square inch.

To get the engine ready to leave the shed half an hour is allowed ; to get “on train” from shed another half hour generally, but sometimes only a quarter. In “British Locomotives” Mr. Cooke (Chief Mechanical Engineer L.N.W.) says (p. 353): “Firemen should come to work before booked, and make all preparations with comfort to himself and his driver”—a thing all firemen have to do, for to get an engine ready in a proper manner to ensure safety in the time allowed is impossible, and many firemen “sign on” as much as half an hour before booked in order to make these preparations.

After an engine has run a trip one way “the fire must be cleaned, etc., in readiness for the return journey.” (“British Locomotives,”.p. 370). In the running, when not actually firing, “the fireman must assist his driver in sighting the signals.” (Rule 139.) This is the way that he “learns the road.”

After the return journey is completed and the engine is “on shed,” it has to be “put away,” which means thoroughly cleaning all the parts affected by fire, “turning” the engine, filling the tank, and locking up the tools, etc., reporting any losses of same. For this he is allowed half an hour, which is quite inadequate. He then “signs off,” and is at liberty for nine hours (eight on the L.B.S.C.) from that time. But “in cases of emergency” he may be called out before he has had nine hours off. No matter what “turn” he is booked, after nine hours have expired from his “signing off,” he is the “property” of the company employing him, and is liable to be “called out” at any time. If he is not at home when he is required he is cautioned or reprimanded, and often fined or suspended, for “not being available for duty when required.”

The man’s turn, as a rule, varies daily, and he does not know what turn he will be until the previous day (the Midland and the L.N.W. keep their men fairly well informed of their turns). As aforesaid, his working day is ten hours, but often circumstances compel him to work overtime, especially when starting his career as fireman on the main line, for which, of course, he is paid. Often a fireman does twelve hours or so, then has nine hours off, for two and three days together, the result being that he is tired before commencing his day’s work. This, by the way, being consistent with the companies’ ideas of “safety,” to say nothing of Rule 6 and the dangerous way he may have to cross running roads during the day’s work to carry out the detestable rule 35.

Anyway, his week must not exceed six, or sometimes seven, days (which is quite enough), so after his nine hours off periods he is given a rest of something like sixteen to twenty hours, but only nine of them are his—he is company’s property for the rest of the time, for which he receives nothing.

Of course, anyone with a whit of sense can see that the “men only drive and fire for about four hours per day and are paid ten” (“A Day’s Work on the Footplate,” “Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909), and the statement of Mr. J. Gooday (Gen. Manager G.E.R.) and his directors, who consider that the “time the men are on duty counts only in the actual running” (“Railway Magazine,” March 1907), is mere piffle, and is only intended to poison the mind of the man in the street, who regards such statements, emanating from such journals and gentlemen, as gospel truth.

It will be seen that the life of a fireman is worry from beginning to end, with bad rest, bad coal, bad engines, bad conditions generally, and bad pay—with which I will deal later.

Now we come to conditions which are rather peculiar to most sons of toil, but which play an important part in dividend making as applied to the Loco. Depts. of the trunk lines. I refer to “lodging,” one of the biggest curses that can befall the loco. man, whether driver or fireman. The sum allowed for a “lodge” is 1s. 6d., and if it exceeds twelve hours, 2s. 6d. The latter price, however, is easily wangled by “calling out” the man a minute or before the twelve hours have expired.

The “main line” men are affected by this, on some lines more than on others. On short lines it is unknown. The men working the long distance goods trains are generally safe for a “lodge out,” because they can only get one way by the time their day is up. They, therefore, on their scanty wages, have to keep two homes going, to say nothing of making a smoke as the result of the bad coal supplied. (See “British Locomo­tives,” p. 346.)

The fireman’s wages vary from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. per day, according where and by whom he is employed—a good average through the country being about 30s. a week. A main line man might get somewhere about 35s. if he is lucky; but besides “lodging,” time worked that he is not paid for, and time at home “waiting” after his nine hours are up for which, as I have said, he gets nothing, and many other expenses connected with the calling, he has to run something like 950 miles.

The wages are nothing like sufficient, neither are there enough men by half, as the long-distance engine working and “lodging” will show. And engines work daily double journeys of 180 odd miles.

The usual term of firing is from twelve to sixteen years, and it is a period of excessive robbery from beginning to end. And while such conditions prevail, and such a set of men are worked as they are, the “welfare and safety” of the travelling public is impossible.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. III The Driver. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[continued from last issue.]

How often has one gone on any busy station and seen a crowd of people gathered round a large engine just about to “get away” with a world famous train ! And how often have we heard very harsh and untrue things said about the men thereon, especially in the neighbour­hood of August 1911, by the master class, and even by many misguided workers !

“The men have fine jobs and get good money, and they ought not to be allowed anywhere where beer and spirits are sold, nor to smoke, for the responsibility of these men is great, and every precaution should betaken.” That is what I have often heard from “gentlemen,” and that, no doubt, expresses the ideas of many people on the subject.

I will attempt to show what a “fine job” and what “good money” falls to the lot of the engine driver.

As regards beer, Carrie Nation herself could not have said anything stronger ; besides, it implies that the majority of accidents are due to drink, which is not the case—though doubtless there have been times when a loco. man has been at fault in this respect.

I am not advocating the “Standard’s” “right to get drunk.” I agree that “every precaution should be taken.” But to debar the men from having any beer or tobacco is not precaution, but only tyranny. Real precautions cost money, and hence lower dividends, so they are not taken.

At the commencement of these articles I stated that in order to cope with the dangers of their calling, all men of the running department should be assured of a decent living, decent conditions, perfect machinery, good education, and encouragement. All this is essential to making a man thoroughly efficient. But all, alas! is sadly lacking.

The fireman who has done about sixteen years swinging the shovel first undergoes a very stiff exam, to see if the fire has “killed” his eyes. If such is the case he is ruthlessly cast aside, but if he gets through he is in for an exam. of the engine that no one has taught him—unless it is his driver, who only tells him what he has had to find out for himself. If he passes he is then a “spare driver” : i.e., he drives if there is a job, but if not he has to go firing, with a corresponding reduction in pay. He is usually “spare driving” about four years, and then, after passing more exams, and tests, he becomes a full-blown driver.

Let us look at this man, whom we perhaps have seen with a pipe on as he sits down for a minute or two before running something like 350 miles. Upon his presence of mind and vigilance depends the safe running of the train, and one would think that, to keep him fit for a task that must tax him to the utmost, he above all men would be assured of decent conditions, pay, and rest. But far from this is the case.

The driver’s hours are ten, and there is plenty of overtime. And besides being “in steam” at home, for which he is not paid, he is a victim of “lodging out.”

It will be quickest, perhaps, to describe a driver’s day’s work. His first duty is to “sign on.” He must then read the notices—whether they concern him or not he must read and know them—and sign a book saying that he has read them. He then proceeds to get his engine ready. “Everything that could possibly go wrong must be examined” (“British Locomotives,” p. 348). At the same time he must oil the whole of the working parts. Often he must make a shunt to get water and coal. Having done all this, he “whistles up,” and goes right away to back on to his train at a terminus or wait for it at a road-side station.

From signing on to “right away” half an hour is allowed (in the interest of safety) which is far too short a time in which to do the work satisfactorily on the big engines of to-day. This is well known to the officials, as Mr. Bowen Cooke says that the statement that the firemen should come on before booked applies equally to the drivers. (“British Locomotive,” p. 383.)

Often only a quarter of an hour is allowed to get on the train, and this is the first the public sees of the driver—when he has been at work an hour and a half.

When the driver backs on the train he delivers a “ticket” to the guard, who times the train throughout the trip, stating whether he is early or late at various points and why. And if the driver is not “to time,” and no “satisfactory” excuse is forthcoming, it means a fine or suspension, even if the engine is vastly overloaded.

Another examination of the brake apparatus is made here to see if it is all right on the train, in accordance with rule 3d Vacuum Appendix, and the guard tells him what load he has on, and the brake-power under his control.

The average express-train load throughout the country is about 350 tons behind the tender on passenger, and about 45 waggons (average capacity 10 tons) or about 750 tons on goods trains. (These waggons, by the way, are loose coupled, and have no brake-power provided to “hold” them, except it be a 10- or 20-ton egg-box). Even this seems, in the eyes of those jealous guardians of the “public safety,” the railway directors, to be too much, for within the last few weeks a goods guard on the Midland Railway was dismissed for refusing to take a train with insufficient brake-power, according to that company’s own rules. To have taken the train would have directly affected the driver in working it, and woe betide him if he lost control over it !

We must now consider the “homework” a driver has to do to properly work his train. He has an Appendix consisting of about 1,200 pages, with the working time-table, which he must know—for he dare not take his eyes off the road while he is running. Weekly notices are issued to him in reference to any alterations of signals and repairs to the road, and he must be prepared to act on them. Many a “day off” of a driver is taken up in learning all this printed matter, which is, in effect, part of his work, and for which he receives nothing.

We must not, however, forget the Rule Book, containing over 260 rules, which it is impera­tive he must know.

Still now the signal is “off,” the flag waved and whistle blown and we are on the move. Through rain, snow, fog, wind, and boiling sun this frail hero is now “doing his duty,” ever mindful of what he has behind him, and knowing only too well what it means if he does not get over the road to time—at speeds which are sometimes criminally excessive. But we are a queer people in a queer system.

Besides driving his own train the driver must be prepared to safeguard trains travelling on the opposite road (Rule 191c), and occasionally to assist the fireman, either manually or viva-voce. He must make no “unnecessary” noise in the working, nor must smoke be emitted from the engine, for either of these offences are rewarded with a fine or suspension, and in the case of smoke it falls on the fireman as well, for “being concerned with driver in making a smoke when working train” (“British Locomotives,” p. 346.)

After he has worked one way according to written orders, the driver “comes off” the train and gets into a siding or the nearest loco. shed, and there “another examination must be made by the driver in readiness for the return journey” (“British Locomotives,” p. 370). The return trip is performed as before, after which the engine is taken to the shed and again examined, and put away.

When the driver leaves his train the guard gives him back his tickets, which he then has to copy out on to a “way-bill,” also stating what coal and oil he has had, what coaches attached and detached, and make out a report of any irregularity in the day’s work.

This bill sometimes takes half an hour to write out, and then the driver has to enter in the “repair book” whatever he may have found wrong with the engine during his examinations and in the running. He then finds out his turn for the next day, “books off,” and goes home.

From the time of arriving on the shed half an hour is allowed to get clear away and “book off,” but it usually takes nearer an hour.

Such is a very brief outline of a day’s work on the footplate. The number of hours worked by a driver in a week actually on the job amounts to anything between 60 and 80, to say nothing of the work of memorising he has to get through at home.

Now a word as to the pay. “Spare” drivers, as a rule, get 5s. 6d. per day, and when firing 6d. less. The “registered” driver usually starts at 6s., and continues at this for three years or so, until he has advanced to occasionally getting a “running” job. Many companies then “bracket” the pay of drivers. If a “bracketed” man runs six miles he is entitled to 7s. a day; if he runs less he only gets 6s. And, needless to say, the mileage is made up as a rule so that he only gets the 6s, I know of a case where one mile is deliberately cut out of the mileage table in order to “dish” drivers out of 1s. a day. From A to B is three miles, but the return trip over the opposite pair of rails is only given as two, so the driver making that journey, though he actually runs six miles, is only allowed to book five !

Generally when a man is properly “on the road” (i.e., does little or no shunting), his wage is 7s. a day. Occasionally 8s. is the highest wage of a main-line driver in this country, and this, with all expenses to be paid, including “lodging” away from home, is shamefully inadequate.

The average shunting and local drivers’ wage is from 36s. to 42s. a week, and on the main lines it is higher where the mileage rates are in force. Long distance engine working is a favourite dodge of the companies’ to save additional engines and men ; so, as a general thing, many companies lay it down that 150 miles shall be a day’s work. But owing to the long distance working, many men get 1¼ , 1½, or 2 days in one, which looks very nice—on paper.

The men, however, are worn out after these long trips, and where they are in vogue, usually follow a long trip by a short one. This often means 9 hours off after having worked 12, 13, and sometimes even 14 hours on the job, which is clearly a menace to public safety.

Other companies have the “trip” system—so much for the trip—which on a number of lines means hours worked for nothing at all. A few companies work on “classification,” paying different rates for different trains worked ; so many a man’s hours are paid at two or three different ratings in one day.

Anyway, the average “crack” driver’s earnings are a little less than £2 10s. per week, for which, as in the case of the fireman, something like 950 miles must be run.

The safety of the driver or the public is not allowed to stand in the way of the sweating of the railway servants and the heaping up of profits. Signals are placed anywhere, and not in the best position to be read ; and many of them cannot be seen until one is quite close to them. On most lines no difference is shown by night between a “home” and a “distant” signal, nor are the slackening notice-boards illuminated. In the “interests of public safety” the driver has to guess where these notices—in fact, many lines discard them altogether. The same applies to water trough, and crane notice boards, and also gradient boards. Chance rules the road. The driver is even placed on the wrong side of the engine to see the signals and station work himself, and he has to ask his mate to look for him. Even in the matter of stopping a train the “actual” brake-power is not known : only the “absolute” power is shown when running, and the actual power at the driver’s command often falls short of that shown on the brake gauge. Nothing is told him as to where to apply the brake—he has to find this out from his own experience.

A further example of the elaborate precautions taken to procure safety is found when, in long-distance working, the driver has to leave the regulator and swing the shovel because the half-starved fireman becomes exhausted. And again in the common practice of putting a young and inexperienced fireman on a heavy job in order to save a few pence—which re-acts on the driver. At the best his hands and mind are over-crowded, and it is murder to impose these additions to his duties.

Now that we have briefly looked at the conditions under which our enginemen work, we can truthfully say that their lot is a hard one, and that it is a period of continual overwork. Any child knows full well that such a state of affairs cannot exist side by side with safety. A study of what is here laid bare will show that the conditions of labour of the men upon whom the safety of those using the railways depends constitute a public scandal. But there is still more speeding-up in the air so far as the Loco. Dept. is concerned, which will make railway travelling still more dangerous. And until the railway magnates, together with all other property owners, are dispossessed, and the railways, together with all the other means and instruments of production and distribution, become socially owned, profit will be the first consideration, and the public welfare and safe services quite a secondary matter.

J. Sevier

                                                                 [To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. IV The Engine. (1913)

From the September 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from last issue.]

After even thus briefly reviewing the working conditions of the footplate men, I doubt whether anybody will question that the Loco. running conditions are bad, and that the “elaborate precautions” for the public safety that we hear so much about are entirely wanting. We now come to another part of our survey, namely, the machines that the men have to work.

Like the men, the engines are overworked. They are also supplied with poor coal and oil, and are nothing like sufficiently examined or repaired. The officials’ motto is : “As long as the wheels go round let her run.” Let me quote the “Railway Magazine” for October 1908 : —

“The proper cleaning of an engine is a great help to economy. The valves, packing, tubes, and firebox do not always get examined until trouble o! a serious nature exists.”

This is giving the game away with a vengeance. But the men get fined or otherwise punished if a mishap of any kind happens whilst working, as I have stated before.

To show how injustice is done to the men in the way of fines for losing time, etc., I may say a lot of it is entirely due to the bad state of the engines and to the villainous coal supplied (see “Drivers in Difficulties,” “Railway Magazine,” November 1911).

Now we will look at the working of an engine. The first thing after being left the previous day is to have the repairs that the driver entered in the repairs book carried out. This, by the way, is done in a very loose fashion, and, as often, as not, the repairs, like the cleaning, remain undone, unless they happen to be of such a nature as to almost stop the engine.

Many a time I have known defects in the brake apparatus to be ignored for days together, as also defects in the injectors, which might easily cause trouble on the road. Frequently, too, the regulators are allowed to get in such a condition as to “blow through” very badly. Before now I have seen engines at work with loose tyres, and spring hangers almost cut away, and very often the “blowing” of glands and cylinder covers is passed over as nothing.

The parts of the machine looked after most carefully are the boiler and the firebox, but even these are in a bad state, the continual breakage of firebox stays, and the number of leaking and burst tubes being ample evidence of this.

Next comes the cleaning (!) and perhaps a “wash out” of the boiler—a process which, if properly carried out, saves a great deal of fuel and prevents the boiler burning away. (The general rule is about 300 iniles between each “wash out,” but on local engines, where there is a fire for a week on end. a proper examination of the boiler even is out of the question, to say nothing of washing out.)

Next an “examiner” (!) looks rapidly over the engine, and then comes the driver’s examination. This last, after knocking off ten minutes for finding the engine, getting out and replacing his cans and tools, etc., would work out at about twenty minutes—which, of course, is quite inadequate.

After the run another examination is made as before described. Once a month is about the usual interval for a thorough examination of the engine, for which it is “stopped” for two or three days. Generally eighteen months or two years elapse between the engine being the subject of “heavy” repairs, during which period the machine has to run some 100,000 miles.

In the face of all this it is really amusing to observe the righteous indignation of the companies and their henchmen in the matter of the driver’s glass of beer—clearly enough exposed, by the facts herein described, as a shallow and pitifully cheap artifice to cover their own callous disregard of their passengers’ safety, and cast suspicion for all the disasters that have happened in the past and will, under the conditions imposed by the greed for dividends, most certainly happen in the future, upon the men who work the rotten and uncared-for engines.

The trunk lines build their own engines—often by piece-work—and it can be guessed how it is done. If the imagination is not lively enough to serve, perhaps Col. Van Dolop’s remarks upon the cause of the Stoat’s Nest disaster (L.B.S.C.) on Jan. 29, 1910 will assist.

According to the Colonel’s report the accident was “caused by shifted wheel. The wheel was examined, and the grip between the wheel and axle can only have been a very loose one, and on most railways it is not customary to test whether wheels have a firm grip on their axles.”

There is many an engine on the road to-day, on which the automatic brake apparatus is next to worthless, and it is a bye-word amongst drivers on suburban passenger trains that they lose a lot of time through not being properly able to release the brake owing to the bad state of the apparatus. In fact, even to-day on a few lines, there are engines that work goods and coal trains of fairly heavy weight (whose stock is not “braked”) which are fitted with the hand brake only—which is a fine state of affairs, and likely to prove pretty costly to somebody in a case of emergency.

Now just a word on overloading, which is a common occurrence, especially during the busy seasons. Often excessive loads are placed behind comparatively small engines, with the result that, to get along to time, the machines are “flogged” to the utmost, which obviously overstrains the working parts and overworks the men.

Is it to be doubted that a full and adequate explanation of many of the “accidents” which take place from time to time (and there are many that the public never hear of) is to be found in all this callous, pinching, false economy ? When an enquiry (!) is held, the companies are time after time shielded by the person who issues the report of the enquiry, as the shipowners were shielded in the Board of Trade “enquiry” into the loss of the “Titanic.” That is what such institutions and such “enquiries” are for. In the case of the “enquiry” into the cause of the Shrewsbury disaster, rather than indict the master class, those appointed to make the investigation attributed the “accident” to the alleged fact that the men “sleep on the footplate whilst, on duty.” (See decision of Col. Yorke, “Railway Magazine,” June 1908.)

CONCLUSION.

Now a final word in reference to the situation. It must not be thought that the whole of the defects of the railway systems have been brought forward. Space has permitted me to deal only with a few of the principle abuses connected with the calling of the loco. men, who are at least as much concerned and as responsibly engaged in the running of the trains as any other section of the railway slaves. I doubt if, after having read the irrefutable statements which have appeared in this series of articles, anyone can continue to hold the opinion that the railway magnates really do run the safe services they would have us believe.

Now the railways are a necessary institution in our modern life, and the safety of the services should be the first consideration of, not only all who have anything to do with their provision and maintenance, but also of all who have occasion to use them. Therefore we will see if any remedy can be applied, and if so, what it is.

There is no solution under private ownership except “cutting down expenses” and the extension of the “control” we have heard so much about lately. The masters have no ideas in railway working outside of this. And as for the Trade Unions, the National Programmes of 1907 and 1911 of the A.S.L.E. & F. and the A.S.R.S. (the section dealing with loco. men) was a poor contrivance, and only calculated to give the present bad conditions a new lease of life. The “four eights” are no remedy for the railwayman, because they would soon be nullified by the increased cost of living, etc. Moreover, such items as lodging and long-distance engine working figured prominently, whilst such necessary items as the fitting of all engines with power brakes—items which have a direct and vital bearing on safety—were omitted.

The Trade Unions may effect something, but they will never be able to grapple properly with the safety question, and often it looks as if the “leaders” do not intend to do so—the N.E.R. betrayal re Knox and A.S.R.S. to wit. Some of them, no doubt, are in earnest, and so are the rank and file, but they are not conscious of their position in society.

Now let us look at the claims of that nostrum, State Ownership of Railways, and see if that would solve the “problem.”

We have no State lines in England but there are plenty in Europe, of which Mr. Bell, speaking of a tour through various countries on the Continent which own State lines, said they are not beneficial, either to the workers or to the public. “I am satisfied” he declared, “that, bad as are the conditions of British Railwaymen, they are far in advance of State owned railways on the Continent, and if conditions there are a fair sample of them, then save the British Railwayman from them.” (“Railway Magazine,” December 1908.)

Besides, we have an example in the frequent strikes which occur on the French State railways. For, after all, the State of to-day is merely the master class, so that anything owned by the State is just the property of the proper tied class.

The only remedy, therefore, is that which is proposed by the Socialist, viz., that the railways shall be owned and controlled by the whole community for their own use. This, of course, can only be accomplished through the complete overthrow of the master class and the taking of all the means and instruments of production and distribution by the community for the community. When this condition of affairs is brought about the people will see to it that the safety, both of those who operate the railways and those who use them, shall be the first consideration, far transcending all question of speed or economy.

Only when this property condition has been instituted, when there is no longer any question of “cutting down expenses” in order to provide big dividends for idle shareholders and princely salaries for parasitic directors and jacks in office, will the services be safely run and the community be able to use them to the fullest extent.

Such a condition is Socialism, therefore only Socialism is the remedy for the unsafe and unsatisfactory conditions under which the railway services are run.

J. Sevier