Greasy Pole: Goldsmith versus Khan (2016)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a thought for Zac Goldsmith. For Frank Zacharias Robin ‘Zac’ Goldsmith.  For the son of a proliferous billionaire who left him to struggle through life on an inheritance of between two hundred and three hundred million pounds, which represented a monthly income of about £5 million. For the pupil at Eton –-  until they found forbidden drugs in his room. For one so convincing  as a self-promoted defender of the natural world that his uncle gave him the magazine The Ecologist to do with what he liked, even to appoint himself as its editor. For the triumphantly victorious MP for Richmond Park against the industrious Lib Dem Susan Kramer. But one whose smooth rise up the Greasy Pole was obstructed when he devoted his talents and his riches to a campaign for election as Mayor of London – in which he was thwarted by the distinctly non-legatee Labour candidate Sadiq Khan. Thus Goldsmith’s case for election was not as elegantly appealing as those Richmond Tories must have assumed it would be and his copious ambitions were reduced to a state of baffled suspension. So spare a thought for him.

Argumentative

And for Sadiq Khan who stood as the underdog against the handsome, elegant Goldsmith.  He could hardly have been more different for he is the youngest of five children whose grandparents came from Pakistan to take root in council housing in one of the rougher parts of London. His father was a bus driver and his mother a seamstress. Working his way through university Khan qualified as a solicitor, specialising in cases concerning human rights – which often brought him into conflict with the police (a teacher at his comprehensive school had advised him that his ‘argumentative personality’ made him a natural to study law instead of dentistry as he intended). In 2005, after a spell as a councillor in Wandsworth, he became the MP for Tooting and in 2009, when he was made Minister of State for Transport under Gordon Brown, he was the first Muslim to attend the Cabinet. He then held a succession of shadow ministerial posts under Ed Miliband. In this process he was establishing a number of records, often related to being a Muslim but including such as regularly being placed by the Evening Standard among the Top 100 London politicians and, in 2005, awarded the ‘Newcomer Of The Year’ by the Spectator for ‘…the tough-mindedness and clarity with which he has spoken out about the very difficult issues of Islamic terror’. But none of these counted as crucial in the battle against Zac Goldsmith for the London Mayoralty. No matter that Kahn could offer the usual promises: against this was the slickness of Goldsmith’s office and his experienced media advisers with their well-honed voting strategies.

Terrorists

But this was a case when those experts in the dog-whistle style of voter-manipulation placed themselves in a position which was evidently ill-advised. For they seemed to have decided that as Sadiq Khan is a Muslim there were votes to be won by associating him with the terrorist operations which are among  the current problems across the world. One example of this appeared when theGuardian of 30 April publicised a letter written by David Cameron to Anita Vasisht who is a lawyer specialising in immigration problems. Cameron warned that any policy resulting from the united efforts of Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan would bring about a situation in which ‘Londoners will become lab rats in a giant political experiment’. The implication of this was more obvious in a letter from David Cameron to another lawyer which stated that only Goldsmith could be relied on to ‘…keep our streets safe from terrorist attacks’. At the same time, and on the same theme, there was Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph accusing Sadiq Khan of ‘…pandering to the extremists. I don’t want him running our capital’. And Teresa May, whose earliest claim to fame was when she denounced the Tories as ‘the nasty party’, warning their spring conference that Khan would be ‘unsafe’ to run London when it faced ‘…a significant threat of terrorism’. These attacks on Khan as a Muslim terrorist were not entirely welcome in the Tory party. Their ex-chair Baroness Warsi later referred to the election loss as a result as an ‘appalling dog-whistle campaign’ which ‘lost us the election, our reputation and credibility on issues of race and religion’. Steve Hilton, previously infamous as the party’s election master mind, regretted that it had brought back that ‘nasty party label to the Conservatives’.

Milkman

The overall effect of this, with the ominous survey ratings which gave Khan a solid lead, may have persuaded those Tory strategists to try another style of deceit, by sending Goldsmith out in the early morning disguised as a milkman on his rounds. However Goldsmith was not travelling in one of those snuffling battery floats but in a posh black limousine. We were supposed to believe that he was delivering that milk to what looked like some posh mews in a place like Kensington. But of course one effect of this was to arouse those well-used, long-ago slogans about Thatcher The Milk Snatcher.

 Sadiq Khan became the new Mayor of London by defeating Zac Goldsmith by 14 percentage points.  From the piracy that is now the Labour Party he may emerge as their new leader. Meanwhile he must make his mark through some particular policies which he claims will adjust, or even eliminate, the merciless realities which distort the lives and the wellbeing of what are called ordinary hard-working citizens.  At present there are few surprises in these; for example an intention to build genuinely affordable homes; to ensure that the streets of London are cleaner, safer. There is one novelty in the introduction of a new public transport ticket known as the Hopper which at first threatens to require harassed commuters to become mathematically agile as they are about to board the bus or the train. London is a great example of capitalism in sordid operation with its proliferation of social dislocation and hopeless responses.  The election struggle between Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith was no more than another rejected opportunity for the people in this part of the world to begin the historical change for the better.

Ivan

The Problem is Not the EU . . . It’s Capitalism (2016)

From the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 23 June you will asked to make a decision on behalf of the minority who own and control the means of production in Britain: should they stay or should they leave the EU?  Perhaps you ought to feel flattered that, for once, they have entrusted you with making a decision of vital importance to them. But our answer, as socialists, is ‘we are not interested. Settle the matter yourselves’.

This is because the problems we and you face as wage and salary workers or their dependents are caused by the capitalist system of ownership by the few and production for profit. This system, which requires that making profits comes before meeting needs, will continue whether Britain is in or out of the EU. Whichever it is to be, the problems will continue. They will continue for as long as capitalism does. The only way out is if you, together with wage and salary workers in the rest of the world, organise democratically to replace global capitalism by a worldwide classless socialist society of common ownership and democratic control, with production to satisfy people’s needs not for profit, and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” not by the amount of money you have – or don’t have.

The devil you know

Apart from a few idealists who want to see a Federal European State, the main group in favour of  staying is Big Business. With good reason, from their point if view. The EU gives them tariff- free access to a vast single market with common standards. And the EU, negotiating as a single body with non-member States over trade and other economic matters and so with more bargaining power, gets them a better deal than if Britain had to do this on its own.

Other supporters are the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists who want to protect the EU subsidies their parts of Britain get. More principled is the position of the Green Party which wants to defend the free movement of workers throughout the EU – out of as well as into Britain.

Cameron claims to have negotiated some fundamental reform of the EU. Actually, he has done no more than freeze the position of Britain as a non-member of the Eurozone. He hasn’t undone anything. He hasn’t even stopped immigration which some mistakenly see as a problem, only held out a hope that it will be less attractive in a few years. No wonder the Eurosceptics are sceptical.

Basically, the Stay campaign are campaigning for the status quo. As is the Labour Party.  In other words, capitalism as we know it, with all the problems it causes, and so not worth supporting even if it is the devil we know.

The devil you don’t

But what about the devil we don’t know?  Its supporters are an unsavoury lot. UKippers, Tory backwoodsmen and other xenophobes plus a few ambitious politicians calculating that leaving will provide them with a better chance to climb further up the greasy pole. They have some limited business support, mainly small businesses producing for the home market rather than for export and some hedge funds that don’t want to be regulated.

The leave camp are the ones proposing a change, which they claim will be for the better. But their case is a mixture of wishful thinking and the usual empty promises of politicians. It doesn’t even make sense from a capitalist point of view. Certainly, as they claim, outside the EU British capitalism could still have access to the single EU market, but would no longer have a say in fixing its rules and regulations. A non-EU Britain could still, as they also claim, negotiate trade deals with other countries and trading blocs, but on its own would be in a weaker bargaining position. No wonder Big Business and its supporters regard them as flat-earthers.

The sovereign has no clothes

One more respectable argument for leaving  than ‘Keep Immigrants Out’ or ‘Send Them Back’ is that leaving would give back to parliament the ‘sovereign power’ to decide what laws should apply in Britain.  Capitalism, however, is a single world economic system, which makes ‘independence’ and ‘sovereignty’ purely formal when it comes to economic matters. Governments, whatever formal powers they may have, cannot control the way the profit system works. In fact it’s the other way round. Capitalism is sovereign and governments have to apply its basic economic law that priority must be given to profit-making as this is what drives the system.

A State can choose that its government and parliament take the decisions required to comply with capitalism’s basic economic law (as the leavers want) or it can delegate some of these decisions to some inter-governmental body (as at present and as the stayers support), but in the end it doesn’t matter who makes the decision. Nor where, whether London or Brussels. the decision is made.

How to vote, then?

You don’t need to accept the sham choice on offer in this referendum between the devil you know and the devil you don’t. Leave that choice to those who support capitalism in one form or another.  As we consider the right to vote as a gain and a possible tool to end capitalism we will be going to the polling station, to cast a write-in vote for socialism by writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across our ballot paper. If you agree with us, we urge you to do the same.

Executive Committee

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

April 2016

Editorial: The Shadow of Anti-Semitism (1960)

Editorial from the February 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

This “Brave New Year” of 1960 has opened sinisterly. Outbreaks of slogan daubing and swastika painting have occurred in many parts of Germany and there have been similar incidents in a number of other countries, including Britain. People have been reminded, rudely and violently, of something they had almost forgotten—those terrible days of the thirties when the shadow of Nazism first fell upon the world. The photograph on our front page is a vivid reminder of those times and of the way in which the German working-class took its first steps along the road that was to end in conflagration and ruin.

For some strange reason these outbreaks appear to have come as a surprise to many people. They have been shocked to see again something they thought was finished for ever. It is hard to understand why, unless it was from a deeply hidden fear of having their thoughts again disturbed by the horrors of the past.

Did they really think that the people of Germany could change their thinking overnight? That after twelve years of being conditioned to hating Jews, to being the only true “Aryan Supermen,” to belonging to the “Master Race,” they could each and every one turn into an apostle of brotherly love and racial tolerance? Or did they really believe the notion trotted out to them in wartime that the ideology of Nazism would disappear with the defeat of Germany? If so, they must be incredibly naive.

And if they really thought this, how explain the similar outbreaks that have occurred in something like twenty other countries, at almost the same time? What about the incidents in this country itself? The real facts are that the virus of anti-Semitism is to be found wherever there are Jews. Given the right conditions, this virus will come into life, grow, and flourish—unless the working-class decide otherwise.

As to the incidents themselves, what importance are we to attach to them? Are they the work of some lunatic tinge, or of a few die-hard Nazis and fascists still lingering on from the past, or are they evidence of more serious forces at work in Germany and elsewhere? Can they perhaps be dismissed as a petty example of imitative hysteria brought on by the widespread coverage they have received from the newspapers, radio, and T.V.? Concentrated publicity, especially on a subject that lends itself to sensationalism, can often set up a chain-reaction, the effects of which can be particularly strong upon the young and the mentally ill. The Guardian of 14th January, for example, mentioned the case of the individual who went round Woolwich at night inviting people to “join the English Reich party.” Even more absurd was the further instance they quoted of the schoolboy in Western Germany who confessed he had painted his swastikas because “my village hasn’t been in the news at all.”

On the other hand, serious and apparently reliable sources have spoken of new Nazi organisations with memberships running into tens of thousands, and of periodicals and pamphlets with circulations of the same order.

Which of these is the truer reflection of the actual state of affairs? Should we, in short, be heartened or should we be alarmed?

We suggest that there is no reason for the moment to be one or the other. First, because we have not yet enough sound evidence to form a judgment. It is still difficult to establish, through the haze of newspaper and other publicity. just what the real facts are. Second, because not enough time has gone by as yet for the incidents to be seen in their proper perspective. The whole thing may die down as quickly as it arose. On the other hand, it may only be a prelude to more serious events.

For the moment, therefore, we prefer to reserve judgment on the incidents themselves and their significance. What we do want to state, or rather re-state, because it is not something that we suddenly think up for occasions such as these, is the fundamental Socialist position on anti-Semitism and on all other forms of “race" prejudice.

This position is that “race” prejudice today is bound up with the capitalist system. That like a virus it dies away or flourishes according to the state of health of that system. That if capitalism is passing through one of its more “prosperous” periods the virus will tend to lie dormant. But that if capitalism is in crisis, as it was in Germany in the early thirties with its terrible unemployment and all the misery and other evils that stemmed from it, then the virus is capable of coming into swift and virulent life.

The only means whereby the working-class can be sure of immunity from racial intolerance is through an understanding of the forces at work in capitalism. This means Socialist understanding. It means the realisation that the conflicts, the crises, the frustrations, the miseries, the threats of war, and all the other evils of capitalism, are fertile ground for the workers to find a convenient scapegoat in the Jews, West Indians, Irish, or any other minority that happens to be at hand. It means the realisation that such race prejudice can be part and parcel of nationalism, dictatorship, and the drift to war. It means, finally, the realisation that race prejudice is useful in taking their minds off the real cause of their troubles—the capitalist system itself.

It cannot be said too often. The working-class fall for the myth of “race” at their peril. 

Action Replay: Cinderella Men Win Premier League (2016)

Jamie Vardy against Liverpool.

The Action Replay column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against all the odds and prognostications of sports journalists and pundits, Leicester City, the team that narrowly missed relegation last season, silenced the doomsayers and doubters by winning the English Premier League.

Leicester could be described as a team of journeymen who have been rejected by former clubs or have joined from lower leagues. But led by manager Claudio Ranieri they have been transmuted from base metal into gold. The total cost of the team is £55 million, only 2 million more than the £53 million Manchester United spent on one player, Ander Herrera.

Now after the joyful celebrations that took place in Leicester and echoed in other parts of the country by neutral football fans impressed with Leicester’s endeavour, Ranieri will look forward to next season knowing that without significant investment to strengthen the squad it will be difficult to compete for the top prizes.

Since wage bill data was first released by the Premier League 16 years ago, the ledger shows that the clubs with the biggest wage bills claim the top four places 80 percent of the time. Only twice, Manchester United in 2013 and Chelsea in 2001, have the team with the biggest payroll finished outside of the top four.

Leicester are by no means paupers. Actually they are one of 17 teams on the Deloitte list of the world’s 30 richest clubs, coming in at no 24 with revenues of £137m. Owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabba features in the Forbes rich list at 714 in the world.

They are, however, competing against clubs that have far deeper pockets. Even with the £90 million winner’s prize, £19m up on the club’s take last season and the increased handout from the new Premier League broadcast rights deal, which sees an increase in value of 71 percent from last season, Leicester do not have the same financial underpinning as the elite clubs they triumphed over this time.

It’s been an invigorating season watching the big teams flounder against them and getting a timely comeuppance.

Kevin.

Editorial: End Not Mend Capitalism (2016)

Editorial from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic nature of the society we live in, where we make human relationships, where we contribute with our ideas and our work, also fashions the problems we face. For good reason that society is known as capitalism, historically a developed human arrangement in which a minority class dominates in the exploitation of the rest of us to its own advantage and to enduring frustration and damage to us as humans.

For example a recent survey revealed that a serious health risk is needlessly imposed by the enormous amounts of sugar which are included in what are described as ‘fashionable’ hot flavoured drinks. This contributes to Britain suffering Europe’s highest rate of obesity – a condition which can fertilise a host of menacing illnesses such as diabetes, strokes, osteoarthritis. This highly dangerous addition is actively promoted by the street coffee shops, particularly the likes of Starbucks and Costa Coffee – a situation recently blasted by a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine as ‘scandalous’. Starbucks and Costa, balancing it out with their profits, must have another word for it.

In another field, also relevant to our health, is a recent report by the Ministry of Justice which revealed that in 2015 in England and Wales a total of 42,728 ‘households’ were forcibly evicted from their homes by bailiffs because they had failed to pay their rent – the highest recorded since records were opened in 2000. This whole matter is a symptom of the most desperately dehumanising effects of poverty – at a time when George Osborne and David Cameron habitually insist that we are luxuriating in the shelter of a ‘strong economy’.

The conventional political parties – Conservative, Labour, LibDem, the Greens, UKIP, the Nationalists – strive to persuade us that they have the ability and the intention to wipe out the current problems in society. To this end they produce policies relating to problems such as health, housing, crime, poverty, education, transport, along with less prominent issues such as planning, art and culture.

This is often effective in persuading enough people that they should take serious notice of their pronouncements, however transparently populist. But for people to do this entails them ignoring the fact that these parties have promised many times before to solve these problems, so that at times the remedies being put forward clash with those in the past. It also entails ignoring the vital – indeed crucial – fact that, as these problems are engendered by the capitalist system itself, they cannot be solved within its framework of minority ownership and production for profit, a system which all these parties uphold in one form or another.

In contrast, the Socialist Party is an organisation which is distinctive through its principle of refusing to promise to ease the problems of capitalism as they are inevitable results of that social system’s basic nature. Our objective is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism – a classless, moneyless society based on common ownership – a universal system which cannot exist separately in Britain or any other part of the world.

The War - Capitalism does it again (2003)

Editorial from the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The organised slaughter has begun. It is now clear that this was always the intention of Bush, the nominal head of US capitalism, and his British counterpart, Blair. They cynically allowed the diplomatic wrangling to go on at the UN so as to buy them time to get their forces massing on the borders of Iraq up to full fighting strength. This done, diplomacy was discarded and the military given the go-ahead.

This war is not being fought simply to overthrow a brutal dictator – though this will surely happen. Nor even to stop the spread of chemical and biological weapons – even though countries like the US and Britain are anxious to maintain their monopoly of such weapons. It is being fought over a key energy source – oil, of which Iraq has the second biggest reserves after Saudi Arabia. The chief aim is to secure future supplies of such energy resources, essential to their political and economic demands.In other words, this war is no different from any of the wars that have taken place in modern times. It's a business war. Capitalism is driven by the competitive struggle for profits between corporations and states. Conflict, economic, political and, as a last resort, military is built-in to capitalism over sources of raw materials, investment outlets, markets, trade routes, and strategic points to control and protect these. When a state judges that its “vital interest” is threatened – e.g. needing to secure access to a key raw material, trade route or military outpost – it goes to war. Iraq did this when it invaded Kuwait in 1990 and America is doing this now in invading Iraq.

Capitalism breeds war, though most people would prefer to live in peace. Consequently massive propaganda exercises are employed by the state to stoke people's fears and anxieties that stem from their material poverty and insecurity. Invariably these also endeavour to present it as being in some way humanitarian. This is because people have a healthy horror of war. They know war means death and destruction. Death not only of the soldiers on both sides, but also of women, children and old people as “collateral damage” – who make up four-fifths of casualties of modern war – and destruction not only of military installations and hardware, but also of bridges, roads, power stations, ports, hospitals and other socially-useful constructions.

This particular war may be over quickly. The Iraqi armed forces are no match for the US army and its awesome weapons of mass destruction. It is, however, going to be followed by chaos and massacres throughout the region, as Bush and Blair well know but have dismissed as “a price worth paying” to secure control of oil supplies.

Many people's gut reaction is simply that war is crazy. Socialists share this anti-war sentiment. It is one of the reasons why we are Socialists – real Socialists that is, not supporters of the sort of state capitalist dictatorships that failed in Russia and Eastern Europe, but advocates of a united world community without frontiers based on all the Earth's resources, natural and industrial, becoming the common heritage of all humanity and being used to satisfy people's needs instead of for profit. We have concluded that capitalism means war and that therefore to get rid of wars and the threat of wars – and the constant preparation for war represented by maintaining armed forces – you have got to get rid of capitalism.

That voices are raised against the war, millions of voices, shows that there is hope. That workers – whose experience of life stems from using their energies and talents to co-operatively solve problems and achieve goals; who realise the potential for mutual dependence and support; who enjoy some security of life won through the class struggle – are determined to oppose the war shows that opposition to war has its basis in material reality rather than mere moral condemnation.

War is completely unnecessary. We are living in a world that has enough resources to provide plenty for all, to eliminate world poverty, ignorance and disease, to provide an adequate and comfortable life for everyone on the planet. Yet under capitalism resources are squandered on armaments, of individual as well as of mass destruction, and, as now, in actual war. Even in times of peace – as the armed truce between wars is called – capitalism's pursuit of profit pollutes and plunders the planet and upsets the balance of nature with potentially devastating consequences. The economic law “no profit, no production” applies implacably, resulting in millions dying of hunger and related diseases every year simply because it is not profitable to produce the food to feed them and, in fact, often while the food that could feed them is destroyed so as to maintain prices and profits.

As World Socialists, who are opposed to war and to capitalism which breeds it: 

• We place on record our horror that capitalism has once again provoked the orgy of death and destruction known as war.

• We extend the hand of friendship to our fellow workers in Iraq who our political masters have designated as targets for destruction.

• We pledge to do all within our means to bring the slaughter to an immediate end.

• We pledge ourselves to continue to work for the establishment of a world socialist society of peace and cooperation.

• We call upon fellow workers everywhere to join in the struggle for World Socialism.

One World, One People! Unite for World Socialism!

The Executive Committee,

The Socialist Party of Great Britain,

Companion party of the World Socialist Movement.

Editorial: Mr. Bevan: Another confusionist to fog the issue (1951)

Editorial from the June 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is an old established custom of the reformist movement that the astute rebels of to-day become the leaders of to-morrow, only to be pushed aside in turn by new rebels. The explanation is simple.

The reformist movements such as the British Labour Party are founded on the belief that Capitalism can be gradually improved and humanised if only the right men are put in control. It does credit to their hearts but not their heads, for it is demonstrably false. Capitalism can function at all only so long as those who control the Government enable the capitalists to make profit out of the exploitation of the working class. The most direct illustration of this is shown in governmental policy on wages. Notwithstanding the Labour Government's professed desire to see wages rise, immediately it came into power it had to start discouraging wage increases. If it had not done so higher wages would have eliminated profit and brought the system to a standstill.

So the regular phases of Labour Party internal policy are the election of vociferous rebels to leadership, their rise to governmental office, their loss of popularity through administering Capitalism, and their removal to make way for new confusionists.

And all the time the workers suffer from Capitalism and its wars, pacified by glowing promises of more reforms which end only in more disillusionment.

The latest claimant is Mr. Aneurin Bevan who resigned over the charges for false teeth and spectacles and over what he regards as the over-hasty plans for re-armament.

Following the example of all the earlier rebels who have trod the well-worn path to leadership, he claims that his policy is more truly socialist than that of Attlee. Having himself been occupied since 1945 trying to make Capitalism work he suddenly discovers that his "socialist” conscience requires him to resign and smugly writes to Attlee that “ it would be dishonourable for me to allow my name to be associated in the carrying out of policies which are repugnant to my conscience and contrary to my expressed opinion” (News Chronicle, 23/4/51). Having swallowed Capitalism whole and backed the policy of greater armaments, he strains at the gnats of charges for false teeth and too quick re-armament.

Writing in Reynolds News (6/5/51) he resuscitates the old slogan of “Socialism in our Time," claims that the Labour Party is socialist (he names it the “ Socialist Party ”), and that it has been engaged in building up Socialism and that it is only now that the question arises of “diluting our socialist policies” in order to secure electoral victory.

The truth is that Bevan, like the others, never got into Parliament on a socialist vote and if he had stood for election simply on the programme of establishing Socialism in place of Capitalism he would never have been a Member of Parliament.

How little he is concerned with Socialism is shown by his quaint remark that “the first glory of the Labour Government was the nationalisation of steel" and “the second glory . . . was the free National Health Service. That is a piece of genuine, undiluted Socialism.” (Reynolds News, 6/5/51.)

Political commentators are wondering what will be his future. We can tell them. So long as the working class can be deceived into believing that State Capitalism and reforms of Capitalism are Socialism they will refrain from establishing Socialism and will be content instead to chase after "leaders” each as futile as his predecessor.

Either they will continue to be misled by Attlee, or will choose Bevan (or some other) in his stead, and the difference between the one and the other will not matter the price of a pair of spectacles.

It has fallen to Labour Party peer, Lord Amwell, formerly Mr. F. Montague, M.P., who during the war was successively Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, to expose the hollowness of the claims of both Bevan and those he criticises. Lord Amwell has been thinking back to the time when he was in the Social Democratic Federation and he now writes to The Times (26/4/51) to tell the readers of that journal what he says he has long tried, in vain, to force on the attention of his fellow members of die Labour Party. Here are some of his remarks:—

“Bevan and his friends .... are not socialists, only ‘ sharers-out.’ ”
   "The Welfare State (not originated in 1945) is part of the technique of scientific Capitalism.”
   "Nationalization as part of a scheme designed to capture world markets has nothing in common with public ownership to build a co-operative society.”
    "Nationalization is not what we meant by Socialism.”

It will be seen that on the above questions Lord Amwell has come round to what the S.P.G.B. has been saying for 46 years. Maybe he did hold those views long ago but nevertheless he has remained in the Labour Party and thereby helped to bring about the result he now deplores.

Which all goes, to show how right the S.P.G.B. was and how wrong Lord Amwell and the S.D.F. were on the question whether socialists could enter the reformist Labour Party to any useful purpose. The odd scraps of socialist propaganda delivered inside the Labour Party's ranks have no effect at all on its policy. It is not going towards Socialism and a change of leadership from Attlee to Bevan will not change its direction. The only place for those who do want Socialism is in the ranks of the Socialist Party.

It's Not Only Heroin That Blows Your Mind (1998)

Theatre Review from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Junk.

The Oxford Stage Company are an enterprising group with a good track record for producing realistic, contemporary drama. They are soon to go on the road with Roots, Arnold Wesker's masterpiece about working-class enlightenment, but at present they are touring with a play about heroin addicts, adapted from Melvin Burgess's book Junk.

The adaptation has been managed by the play's director, John Retallack, and the result points, yet again, to the danger of allowing one person to both write and direct. Another director would surely have said to John Retallack, the author, "The piece is too long and unhelpfully repetitive. If it is to work as a drama it needs pruning."

But if Retallack doesn't always manage to keep the narrative taut and lean, there are other more substantial failings. Burgess's book is set in Bristol in the early 1980s. It tells the story of a group of junkies, an especially two fourteen-year-olds, Tar and Gemma, who have run away from their homes in a nearby small town-he because his father assaults him regularly, she to escape her small-minded parents. Never mind that Gemma's parents are comic caricatures masquerading as real people, the picture that is painted of homeless junkies is absurdly romantic. Well-appointed squats are seemingly easy to find, drugs are plentiful, and money appears hardly a problem when drugs are paid for by casual prostitution. There is no mention of the uncertainties of life, the possibilities of mindless violence fuelled by addiction, the cost of drugs paid for by petty crime.

Burgess describes his book as "a piece of entertainment", and I think this fairly describes its Mills and Boon-like mixture of naïve and uncomplicated fantasising. Unfortunately many people, not least teachers, seem to have seen the book as some kind of definitive description of the 1980s' drug scene. When I saw the play the theatre was packed with parties of 14-18-year-olds and their accompanying teachers. The programme approvingly quotes one fourteen-year-old as follows: "Well the pop stars are all saying how great drugs are. And the press is always saying how awful they are. This is a book that tells the story and lets me decide for myself."

The thought that reading Burgess's book (or seeing Retallack's play) might be a suitable basis for making an informed decision about drugs seems a sick joke of almost tragic proportions. The idea of choice presupposes the existence of acceptable alternatives, from which a choice is possible. But there is nothing in the story that is retailed here that even begins to sketch the nature of such alternatives. This is because the nature of these alternatives would only become clear after a considered analysis of the use of drugs, seen from a number of perspectives. And it is no part of the function of schools, colleges and universities to give access to such perspectives, since the interests of those who at present manage society are not well served by an educated, discriminating population. It would involve an appraisal of the use of drugs through space and time: an attempt to answer questions like, "What are the physiological effects of tobacco and alcohol-is it only illegal drugs which are dangerous?" "What is it about contemporary life that makes taking hard drugs attractive?" "Why is it that life is so lacking in appeal for so many young people that they need to escape by 'blowing their minds'?" "Is it possible to imagine other social arrangements which are sufficiently fulfilling for use of mind-blowing drugs as a form of escape to be unnecessary?" etc, etc.

That teachers should think that exposure to the kind of inadequate fantasising that is at the heart of Junk has something to do with education and enlightenment, is a fair indication of the way in which they have succumbed to the fictions of contemporary capitalism. When it comes to mind blowing the ideological apparatus of capitalism, whether realised in newspapers, TV programmes, books and plays, or education, can be very bad for your mental health.

Michael Gill

Votes for some women (2016)

Book Review from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital'. By Sharon Smith. Haymarket Books. 2016

This is a ‘fully revised’ re-edition, with a new subtitle, of a book with the same title that came out in 2004 by an American Trotskyist. In the meantime Smith had revised her previous derogatory attitude towards ‘middle class feminists’ (who merely want equality under capitalism). She also wanted to emphasise more her view that there is a need to unify feminist and black struggles.

One interesting fact that emerges from a couple of passages is that we were not alone in opposing the suffragettes, who were demanding votes for women on the same terms as men then had, for wanting 'Votes for Rich Women'. Some in the German Social Democratic movement took the same position in regard to the same demand in Germany (where universal male suffrage did not exist either). Smith tells us:

'… the early-twentieth-century German women's suffrage movement did not challenge the property requirements that denied working-class men the right to vote – knowing that such requirements would also deny voting rights to working-class women. Maintaining such property requirements could only strengthen the political weight of the middle and upper classes, while the working class would remain politically voiceless.'

and

'Some women's suffrage organizations demanded (and in some European countries, won) partial suffrage for women – with voting rights based upon property holding and the payment of taxes (that is, restricting voting rights to those women of financial means). But in many of these same societies, male suffrage was also partial, denying working-class men the right to vote. Thus, partial suffrage merely increased the voting power of the upper classes.'

In the USA universal male and female suffrage was instituted in 1920 but only on paper in the ex-Confederate States where black men let alone black women were excluded under various pretexts, an anomaly not put right until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Smith sees not insisting on this at the time as a failure on the part of earlier feminists which, she argues, should now be rectified by seeing the black and women's equality movements as part of the same struggle. Multi-identity – gays and lesbians are invited to join too – politics, if you like, instead of class politics.

She argues that the basis for women's equality has to be pay for housework. But this is not going to happen under capitalism and won't be necessary in socialism where people won't have to have a money income to access the goods and services they need. Instead, the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' will apply, a much better and more rational way of putting women and men in a position of equality in that respect.

Adam Buick

The Moscow executions (1927)

Editorial from the July 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Editor of the “Sunday Worker” (June 19th), defends the execution of 20 political prisoners by the Soviet Government as an “act of stern revolutionary justice.” My thought on reading this was to wonder why the Russians allow soft-headed Communists in this country to broadcast such sentimental poppy-cock in their name. When professional politicians like Lloyd George or MacDonald speak as if they are the humble instruments of the Almighty, dealing out even-handed justice in a wicked world, we recognise an accepted trick of an old-established trade, but the Communists should be above such things. The working-class movement has no need to defend its actions on the illogical ground that they are in accord with some everlasting standard of abstract justice, or on the ground that those who suffer from those actions have “deserved” what they get. If the working-class should ever be compelled to take human life, its only justification—and that a sufficient one—is that working-class interests necessitate that action. If one may believe some of the Communists, these 20 prisoners were executed out of revenge for the assassination of Voikoff in Warsaw. If so, that is a piece of indefensible emotionalism, for which the working-class movement has no use. If the rigid test of working-class interests is applied, it is hard to see how this action could assist the progress of Socialism. It may be answered that those in control of the Russian Government thought that it was called for in order to serve some interest of State, to enhance the prestige of Russia by a defiant gesture. Our answer to this is that as Socialists, we are not interested in the game of Statecraft and we repudiate the notion that “reasons of State” can be adequate grounds on which to base working-class policy. When the Russian Communists allow themselves to be drawn into the bogs of diplomatic intrigue, trying to play off one capitalist state against another, they may prove as cunning as their opponents (although this is doubtful—certainly, the present incident has not added to their reputation for wisdom or strength) but the pleasure gained through the satisfaction of their desire for revenge will be at the direct expense of the real interests of the working-class.

War games (1991)

Book Review from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Playing Them False: A Study of Children's Toys, Games and Puzzles. By Bob Dixon. Trentham Books. £11.95.

From earliest age children’s toys are clearly divided into boys’ and girls’: the boys’ miniturising outdoor pursuits, construction and “manly” activities while the girls’ are based on the kitchen and domestic activities.

Adventure kits for boys as young as three are intended to "make little men out of boys” with gear appropriate to various aggressive roles. Take you pick from, among others, the Para Kit. Assault Kit or Tank Commander. Speaking of tanks. Bromley Council in 1981 purchased for its playgrounds fighter plane and tank climbing frames; on the latter there's a gun which you can fire in the turret.

The first toy soldiers, made of flat tin, were produced in Nuremberg in 1775 and Germany remained the main producer and exporter until the late nineteenth century. By 1893 hollow-casting had been developed in Britain, making the toys cheaper and more widely available. During the 1914-18 war a printed rag-doll soldier called Tommy Atkins became so popular that filename was adopted for British foot soldiers. During the 1930’s khaki-dressed dolls were on sale. Their sophisticated descendant, Action Man, is described in the trade magazine Toys International as “a fully mobile moulded plastic toy for boys which could be equipped for every phase of military service".

IPC have, since 1975. published a comic Battle (now called Battle Action Force). If you grow up thinking that war is a game it will be easier to persuade you to participate in the real thing when you grow up; the war games entered into by certain groups of adults are evidence of this. Even "peaceful" boys’ dolls such as Star Wars. Masters of the Universe. Power Lords or the latest Turtles craze, stress the desirability of toughness, domination and strength. Books, games. T-Shirts and even cakes and yoghurts promote these toys and keep tills ringing.

As children grow older the process continues with games promoting wars. These arc considered OK as long as they don’t get too near home. When they do, there is an outcry— Waddington’s Bomb Disposal and Mayfair's War in the Falklands in this country are examples. Avalon Mill’s USA game about the Arab/Israeli conflict was fine when it came out but. with the present US involvement in the Gulf, would be condemned today.

Board games became popular in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century and, until the twentieth, were mainly concerned with improving morals and teaching children their "correct" place in life (including the superiority of the male and the subject position of women). The suggestion that poverty is caused by laziness often propounded by these games is mouthed with equal hypocrisy by politicians today. Monopoly and Rat Race are about the "desirable" goal for workers under capitalism—the need to succeed when entering the labour market. Role playing and simulated business games arc encouraged in schools and are often sponsored by interested parties such as the Financial Times or banks.

Eva Goodman

The Media Versus the Workers (1982)

From the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it . . . the ruling class regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. (Marx, German Ideology.)

What the Sun says today millions of workers will be repeating tomorrow. If the Daily Mail informs its readers that strikers are greedy and the Daily Express demands that patriots tighten their belts “for the sake of the nation” it is called news, not propaganda. Fed upon lies and distortions, who can blame most workers for regarding the mass media as a source of enlightenment? The distorting mirror of the press was not created by accident: it lies because it is dangerous for its owners to tell the truth. Their power is dependent on a majority ignorance about the nature of social reality.

In Britain three-quarters of all daily newspapers are owned by three companies. Rupert Murdoch’s News International owns the Sun (average circulation of 3,837,000) and the News of the World (4,472,000). These two account for 25 per cent of all national newspapers sold in Britain. Last year The Times and Sunday Times were added to Murdoch’s Empire. Reed International, publishers of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday People, also owns IPC which produces 37 per cent of all consumer magazines sold in Britain. Trafalgar House owns the Daily Express, the Daily Star, the Sunday Express, the New Standard (now London’s only evening paper) and has substantial investments in the Morgan Grampian magazine-publishing corporation. All of these multinationals have investments in capital projects other than newspapers. For example, Reed International receives only about 12 per cent of its profits from newspapers; its main investments being in pulp, paper and packaging, building products and home decorating. Trafalgar House is a major property company, owning ships (including the QE2), aviation projects, hotels (including the Ritz) and investment concerns. Associated Newspapers Group, publishers of the dreadful Daily Mail (1,985,000 copies a day) also owns fourteen provincial dailies, four commercial radio stations, Weekend magazine. National Opinion Rolls, the Wyndham and Picadilly Theatres, the London Cab Company, Teledata, several building and furniture companies and the Blackfriars Oil Company. The men who own the press have a great deal to defend—too much to allow the truth to get in their way. When Daily Mail editorials refer to “our” country the joke is on the readers, not the owners.

The press uses its power to mould working class prejudices. When workers are on strike the press takes the side of “the public” against the “anti-social troublemakers” who have dared to defy their bosses. When any aspect of their system is criticised the critic is immediately attacked as an “extremist”. Submissive wage slaves are “patriots” and political leaders who do not rock the boat are “moderates”. Newspaper editors preach to their working class readers about the need for austerity, honesty and moral righteousness, while the capitalist class live in luxury, deprive the workers of the fruits of our labours and indulge in the morality of a class which can afford to break their own rules. Praising the parasitism of their own class, the newspaper controllers make sure that the term “scrounger” is reserved for the unfortunate wage slave who is caught receiving more from the dole than the law allows. One only has to study the editorials of the press to understand just how much contempt the rulers of capitalism feel towards the working class.

Where the press cannot blind workers to their interests by direct preaching or by fraudulent reporting they do so by sensational diversions. In the 1960s the popular press hit on the idea of printing pictures of nude women to increase their circulation. More recently the fantasies have become more material and daily Bingo numbers are printed in order to con wage slaves into thinking that they too could become a Rupert Murdoch. Horoscopes, racing tips and trivial tales of men biting dogs have become part of the intellectual diet of the working class. The product of this massive outpouring of ruling class propaganda, through the columns of the daily press, is the existence of a class of men and women whose response to their exploitation is almost universal consent.

Experience is the greatest demystifier. Apologists for capitalism may be able to fool most of the people most of the time, but ruling class propaganda cannot perpetually hide the antagonism of interests between those who produce but do not possess and those who possess but do not produce. One recent example is the awakening of working class consciousness in Poland. The newspapers there are controlled by the government and official censors ensure that nothing is published which will expose the exploitative nature of the dictatorship. What passes for “news” is simply government propaganda.

The Polish press “sympathises” with strikers in Britain just as the British media suddenly found itself in militant recognition of the interests of the Polish strikers (while doing everything in its powers to oppose strikers here). The Polish newspapers are full of articles about the need to defend the Warsaw Pact against NATO aggression, just as British newspapers call for NATO vigilance against Warsaw Pact aggression. But despite the government-controlled media and the censorship and the overwhelming forces of indoctrination, the Polish workers did defy their masters. Their experience of poverty led them to go on strike, even though the media claimed that their actions were “unpatriotic”, “subversive” and even “anti-socialist”. The first action of the Gdansk strikers, in August 1980, was to publish a newspaper which would put their views, rather than the state’s. The first issue of Solidarity stated that

The whole country awaits genuine and accurate news . . .  but the news in the press, radio and television is both distorted and incomplete. (23.8.80.) 

Before long the Polish workers’ hunger for real news led to the creation of a number of new journals which were owned and controlled by the working class. In the northern port of Szczecin, the Solidarity journal Jednosc (Unity) was selling over 100,000 copies each week. It is in this journal that some of the most penetrating analyses of Polish state capitalism by Polish workers have appeared. The new military junta in Poland has banned the publication of all working class-controlled publications, but they cannot ban the ideas which such journals have encouraged in the minds of the working class.

In Britain, the “right” to publish a newspaper is open to everyone, as is the right to rent a suite in the Ritz Hotel. Much as the ruling class remind the workers of Britain about this generous freedom to publish what we like, most workers realise that printers have the freedom to charge what they like. In September 1904 a group of working class men and women did take up the “right" to produce and distribute their own publication. They called it the Socialist Standard, they sold it for a penny and they refused to compromise a single word for the sake of obtaining advertisers or attracting empty-headed readers. Seventy-eight years later the same party is still publishing the same journal the longest-running working class journal in the world.

Why do we do it? Because socialists realise that every newspaper, magazine and book which is produced under capitalism must make a fundamental decision: will it take the side of the capitalists or will it take the side of the workers? 99 per cent of what can be bought on any news stand is unadulterated pro-capitalist nonsense which deserves the contempt and ridicule of the working class. Unlike those journals, the Socialist Standard always takes the side of the workers’ interests. We do so for exactly the same reason as the capitalist press unceasingly takes the side of the bosses: because we share their class interests. The Socialist Party of Great Britain urges our fellow workers to reject the myths of the ruling class press and to join with us in producing and distributing the message of freedom.

NOW IS THE TIME TO 

• Take out a subscription to the Socialist Standard. It only costs £3.90. (including post) for a year's supply.
• Take an extra copy of the Standard to give or sell to a friend.
• Persuade your local bookshop/newsagent/ library to subscribe to the Standard. 
• Contact your local SPGB branch or group and help them to sell the Standard.
• Send a letter to your local newspaper/ union magazine urging workers to try the Standard.
• Send the names of local people who may wish to read the Standard to SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. We will send a free copy to them with a subscription form.

Steve Coleman

Free speech: official cuts (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A ban on all public meetings and processions was imposed by the Greater Manchester Council in August. Other local authorities have considered such a measure and announced that their halls shall not be let to the National Front and “extreme left-wing” organizations. This reaction to the violent disturbances at Lewisham and Birmingham in August was not unexpected. The councils say they have a responsibility for public order and the protection of property, which take precedence over legal rights of speech and assembly. The ordinary apolitical citizen agrees, on the reasonable grounds that he doesn’t want to have his windows broken or be exposed to danger through rioting.

All right: grant the validity of that. What about “free speech”? The Manchester ban is on everyone, and the Salvation Army and the Scouts have complained that it is unfair to them. (Should the ban last several months, it will be interesting to see if it is applied to the annual Catholic procession in Manchester.) In London, local restrictions and authorities’ reactions have already obstructed the holding of socialist meetings. The position now is that the elbow-room to argue a case in public has seriously diminished.

This is precisely what socialists forecast as an outcome of efforts at “confrontation” by the Socialist Workers’ Party and other groups. In pursuing a policy of violent attack on the National Front meetings and demonstrations, and thereby opposing the law, they put existing facilities at risk. It is a lesson which advocates of violence for political purposes refuse to learn. Eugene Debs was once quoted as saying that when a policeman’s club struck a demonstrating worker’s head, if the worker listened carefully he would hear the echo of the vote he cast at the last election. More correctly stated, what should be heard is that the state has superior force to support legislation: confrontation cannot win.

The SWP’s contention is that something must be done to prevent the National Front from flourishing. The course they have chosen is probably just what the NF want, and is irrational in every way. If attacking the NF because it is a repressive movement produces repression, what is achieved? Less than nothing. A sensible line of action would be to urge everyone to ignore the NF’s marches and not provide them with audiences—to treat them as mature people treat other cases of indecent exposure, by taking no notice. But underlying the SWP’s policy is the idea of taking charge of a situation and acting above the heads of all and sundry: in short, assuming leadership.

However, the SWP and the local councils are not the only people to whom, like the National Front, democracy is of little consequence. The majority of the working class, because they support capitalism, do not comprehend and therefore do not value democracy. The present restrictions on meetings have been accepted with little demur in the frame of mind that the need for a quiet life justifies them. In the western world legal rights are eroded or vitiated in this “soft” way. Thus, in the last twenty-five years public meetings out of doors have been made all-but-impossible in most areas not by dictatorial edicts but by traffic, parking, town planning, and regulations arising from them. The Civic Amenities Act of 1967 ended free bill-posting and chalking as means of advertisement for organizations without money. All these things represent public preferences for facilities for the motor-car, clean cities, etc.; and each of them takes for granted that free speech is not to be bothered about.

The matter is thrown into sharper relief by a proposal to raise the candidate’s deposit in parliamentary elections from £150 to £1,000. The argument for such a change is a frankly anti-minority one. The head of Parliamentary Research Services, F. W. S. Craig, said in a book published on 22nd September:

At least three thousand candidates are likely at the next general election unless the £150 deposit is increased . . . unless the deposit is increased the next election will undoubtedly provide a very large number of ‘crank’ candidatures.
   'I would have thought that a deposit of £1,000 would not be unreasonable considering that every candidate is entitled to send one free communication through the post to each elector’, Mr. Craig says.

(The Times, 22nd September)

The deposit is forfeited by any candidate who gets fewer than one-eighth of the total votes cast, and most minority candidates accept the likelihood that they will lose their deposits. The cost of a candidate including printing, hall hire etc. for the Socialist Party of Great Britain is currently about £650; if the deposit rose as suggested, it would be £1,500.

An alternative put forward in The Times of 6th October was to restrict candidates to those from parties with certain numbers of members and supporters The writer, Michael Steed of Manchester University, agreed on the need to keep minorities away from the media and the free post, but did not think high deposits would be a sufficient deterrent. In fact an election is a rare opportunity for a minority to make its existence and its case known. The SPGB does not receive big donations from wealthy organizations as the Labour and Tory Parties do; the money for election campaigns is squeezed out of our limited funds, and a thousand-pound deposit would have the intended effect.

There has been no sign of an outcry against these proposals to prevent us and other minorities from addressing voters on a level with the major parties. The response has been similar to what happened in 1960, after the SPGB had established that party political broadcasts arranged by the Labour, Liberal and Tory Parties with the BBC were a breach of the Representation of the People Act. Under the Act, every candidate in an election was entitled to the same facilities. So the system was amended to give broadcasting time in proportion to the number of candidates fielded—that is, to appear to comply with the law while still keeping minorities out.

The smug patrician’s speech view is that we live in a democratic and “liberal” society. The reality is that socialists have to struggle to make the most of limited means of “free speech”, against pressure from opponents who plead necessity but are glad to find excuses for further restrictions. If election deposits are raised or some other procedural obstacle created, and as a result we find it impossible at times to put up candidates, we will do what we have done in the past: urge workers to write “Socialism” across their ballot-papers. But the real answer is to build a strong socialist movement. With growing numbers we shall be better able to resist the pressure to box us in, and to push outwards all the time. Socialist consciousness is democracy-consciousness, and its spread is the only positive answer to all repressions.

Robert Barltrop

Bevan and the Labour Party Leadership (1955)

Editorial from the April 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bevan has declared that what he said and did in the row that caused his censure was "not a challenge to the personal authority and position of Mr. Attlee as leader of the Party. Differences are on policy and only policy.” (Daily Herald, 12/3/55.) As the Attlee and Bevan standpoints in the H-bomb debate in Parliament on March 2nd differed by only a hairs-breath the statement is surprising; unless he was speaking of policy in general not just the H-bomb issue. And if that was intended to mean that Mr. Bevan does not aspire to the leadership it is hard to reconcile it with his views and behaviour. The Labour Party’s policy and form of organization require a leader, and though the leader does not formulate policy he can and does exercise much influence on the policy votes at annual conference and in the Parliamentary party. Mr. Bevan believes that he has a policy different from that of the Labour Party’s “Right-Wing” (as he now describes it), and his own description of the kind of leader the Labour Party ought to have bears a clear resemblance to himself. What then could be more natural than that he should seek to further his policy, side by side with becoming Party leader? Mr. Bevan, speaking while the Labour Government was still in office but after he had left it, depicted the kind of leaders required. They must, he said, be men of courage, guts and character; not experts or men from the “top drawer of society,” but men “who had spent their lives in the Labour and trade union movement and who not only understood Socialism with their heads but knew it with their hearts.” (From a speech at Cumnock reported in the Manchester Guardian, 18 June, 1951.) From this it seems more than likely that he measured himself for the Party leadership and found it an admirable fit.

The opinion of a leader-writer in the Manchester Guardian (17/3/55) is that the difficulties began when Bevan failed to get the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s job.

“It is just four years since Mr. Bevan began to show his displeasure that he had been passed over when the time came to choose a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. A little later he pranced out of the Labour Government. From that he passed on to organising his private group within the Party, and two and a half years ago was told (by 188 votes in the Parliamentary Party to 51) to disband it and to stop his attacks on his colleagues. Since then the story of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been of one long succession of disturbances connected with Bevanism.”

The Bevan Business (1955)

From the April 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bevan and the H-Bomb

Mr. Bevan’s quarrel with Mr. Attlee in the House of Commons on 2 March, when he and some 60 other Labour M.P.s abstained from voting for an amendment that had been agreed beforehand at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, was serious because of the number who followed Mr. Bevan’s lead. The violence of the dispute certainly cannot be attributed to any wide gulf between the Bevan and Attlee standpoints on the H-bomb. Only a month earlier one of Mr. Bevan’s principal supporters, Mr. R. Crossman, M.P., had not only supported the Attlee line in favour of making the H-bomb but had declared that this, along with the Attlee attack on American policy, had “reasserted his command of Labour in Parliament” and was “nicely balanced for the purpose of achieving Socialist unity.” (Sunday Pictorial 6-2-55). Mr. Bevan’s revolt was as much a repudiation of Mr. Crossman as it was of Mr. Attlee. Mr. Bevan's reason for his action was that Mr. Attlee would not give a satisfactory answer to a question about the precise circumstances in which the Hydrogen bomb should be used. Mr. Bevan’s question to Mr. Attlee was:—

"If the Russians invaded Europe with conventional weapons, would the Party officially support a government that counter-attacked with hydrogen bombs? ” (Daily Mail, 3/3/55.)

But it must not be thought from this that Mr. Bevan is a pacifist or that he refuses to support war. His quarrels with Mr. Attlee have not been in that field. A correspondent writing in the Manchester Guardian (8-3-55) recalls that during World War II., when Attlee was in the National Government under Churchill. Bevan did indeed campaign against the government but it was for the early opening of the second front.

He was in the 1945-1951 Labour Government that built the Atom Bomb and that imposed peacetime conscription, for the first time in a 100 years. He supported the Korean war and the re-armament drive. He was Minister of Labour in March 1951 when the Ministry published a booklet “Wage Incentive Schemes,” the Foreword of which urged the adoption of piece-work and other incentive schemes in order to reduce costs and increase output, the need for which “has become, even more urgent in face of the unavoidable diversion of a substantial portion of the labour force to the carrying out of the Government’s defence programme.”

He said himself in June, 1951, “He did not believe in having no armies . . . (Manchester Guardian, 18/6/51.) And in an article in the News Chronicle (9/3/55) he admitted that in view of his past record he had no logical case against the hydrogen bomb:—

“Those of us who concurred in the making of the atom bomb and tolerated the saturation bombing of the last war have no moral or logical case against the hydrogen bomb. All three are methods and weapons of imprecision, that is, it is known they will destroy the civilian population and all the civil installations of the enemy."

What he asked therefore was that “we should pause before carrying the logic of our past behaviour to its furthermost extremities” (News Chronicle, 9/3/55). He wanted negotiations immediately with the Russians.

He also wanted, or so we may gather from his question to Mr. Attlee on 2 March, acceptance of the view that the hydrogen bomb will never be used by the British Government against an attack which itself does not include use of the hydrogen bomb.

As this is in effect an attempt to ensure that the next war will not be much more unpleasant than the last we are not grateful to Mr. Bevan and we don’t think that his plea that he is being “practical" has been made out.

* * *

Top Level Talks

One of the issues on which the Government, the Opposition, and the Bevanites are in principle agreed though heatedly differing as to timing, is that of top-level talks between U.S.A., Russia and Britain, with the possible addition of China and France. They are all agreed that there should be such talks and that these should not be conducted by the professional diplomats, the Ambassadors, or even by Foreign Secretaries, but by heads of States, Eisenhower, Churchill and Bulganin. The idea behind the plan is that something for the good of humanity can be achieved at informal talks between heads of States that cannot be achieved at the United Nations, which was specially set up for “friendly talks,” and that cannot be achieved by diplomats taking their orders from heads of States. None of the leaders who favour top level talks have so far explained what is the supposed magic in them. And it isn't as if they have not been tried before. A century and a half ago Czar Alexander had “top level" talks with Napoleon and with the heads of the Prussian and Austrian States, and cooked up the notorious Concert of Europe, through which the ruling class in the different countries hoped to stifle revolutionary movements. It set the pattern for all subsequent international gatherings in that the protestations of mutual love and harmony were only the cover for projected double-crossing by the top-level participants. Do top-level talks stop war? In this generation we have had the example of the top-level talks between Chamberlain and Hider at Munich which were the prelude to the 1939 war.

And the Press in mid-March was convulsed by the disclosure of what went on at some other top-level talks, those at Yalta in 1945. At those talks the three great Powers (except when two of them met to double-cross the absent one) were concerned in disposing of the world in much the same way as the Concert of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon and with as little foresight, wisdom and humanity. The Daily Mail's comment is typical of many in the British Press:—

“What we have read of the American version of the Yalta Conference leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. But why there should be any shock or astonishment at the disclosures of President Roosevelt’s attitude we do not know. It is not news that he tried to 'gang up' with Stalin against Churchill . . .  His naive belief that Stalin was a democratic idealist and Churchill a ‘wicked imperialist' helped to bedevil the post-war world. We should have been safer today, and Communism less of a menace, but for that” (Daily Mail, 18/3/55.)

The attitude of Attlee, and even more that of Bevan, to the present proposal is particularly illogical. Their professed belief is that if Churchill meets the other two face to face the war threat may be dispersed, and that this is impossible or, at least much more difficult if they don't meet face to face. Do Attlee and Bevan believe that Churchill's charm may smooth away the friction between the Russian and American ruling groups and that Churchill, Eisenhower and Bulganin have qualities of wisdom denied to their deputies? If so this admiration for the three leaders has been conspicuously absent from Attlee’s and Bevan's speeches and writings. From these we had gathered that the continuance of Churchill as Prime Minister is a menace to the well-being of the population.

The belief in the likely fruitfulness of top-level talks plainly rests not on a substantial basis of logic or on happy results of past experience, but on the despairing feeling that we must clutch at this straw because there is no other hope left for humanity.

Bevan not a Socialist

Debating whether Bevan will succeed in winning over majority support in the Labour Party, the Daily Mail (16/3/55) concedes to him that he is “ a dynamic figure, a powerful speaker, and the exponent of the pure doctrine of Socialism." The last claim is nonsense and we suspect that the Daily Mail leader writer knows it as well as we do. Mr. Bevan’s alleged Socialism did not deter him, any more than it deterred the rest of the Labour leaders, from running British capitalism for six years after the war, with all that entailed from the use of troops in strikes to the preservation intact of the capitalist social structure. Only the muddle-headed think that the change over of certain industries from private to state capitalism has something to do with Socialism or affects in any way the structure or stability of capitalism or the wealth of the capitalist class. The Manchester Guardian (17/3/55) is nearer the mark is its assessment when it says that the attraction of the Bevanite movement 

“lies in its beautiful sentimental vagueness. The Communist, the pacifist, the believer in the innate virtue of the Soviet State, the hater of American ’capitalism,’ the general 'do-gooder,' all see something of themselves reflected in the glowing rhetoric of Mr. Bevan. Yet, as Mr. Attlee has pointed out, Mr. Bevan himself does not differ doctrinally from the official policy he condemns. But he appears to differ and that is enough."

He may be, as is claimed, a great orator in the Churchill class but if so it may still be true of him as he said of Churchill

“The mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language." (Daily Herald, 3/3/55.)

Edgar Hardcastle