The Riches of the Working Class !! (1925)

From the April 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The newspapers have discovered that the workers are capitalists. Since March 18th, when Mr. Runciman, the Liberal Capitalist, made his speech on “The Distribution of Wealth,” the Press has waxed eloquent about the “enormous” number of capitalists and the wealth of the workers.

Figures such as Mr. Runciman gave are similar in kind to those supplied for many years to attempt to show that the mass of the people are not propertyless.

In his speech before the United Kingdom Provident Institution, Mr. Runciman said that the amount of the Post Office Savings Bank deposits was 280 million pounds at the end of 1924. This sum was held by 12,300,000 people. A simple sum in division will show that the vast savings of these 12 million people amount to about £23 per head. So that these lucky people with a bank book have amassed the enormous wealth of £23 as their life savings.

Assuming them to be workers, these “savings” are insufficient to tide over one of the periods of sickness or unemployment to which workers and their families are subject. To call these paltry sums “investments,” as Mr. Runciman does, is a capitalist joke. The fact that the sum per head in the Post Office Bank is so small is in itself an indictment of the system. The paltry amount “saved” by the industrious would not pay for an employer’s "night out.”

Mr. Runciman gave further figures showing that about 2 millions had £40 per head in the Trustee Savings Banks. This Liberal statesman omitted to state that both in the Post Office and Trustee Savings Bank there were a large number of depositors who were petty tradesmen and shopkeepers and not members of the working class.

In order to pile up the figures, Mr. Runciman took the total amount of Government War Stock issued by the Post Office since 1914, amounting to 239 million pounds. The fact is well known that a very large number of the original holders of War Stock have been compelled to sell it, so that a large amount, of it is owned now by banks and other companies. After making other “estimates” and “conjectures,” our figure juggler arrived at the conclusion that 15 millions had a grand total of savings in these banks, etc., amounting to 777 millions. These “fifteen million capitalists,” as Mr. Runciman called them, had therefore an average of about £52 “saved ” !

A week before, one of the leading Conservative papers (the “Evening Standard,” March 11th, 1925) presented some facts which dispel the ”rosy dreams ” inspired by Mr. Runciman’s figures.

Mr. Lort-Williams, K.C., late Tory M. P. for Rotherhithe, and now Recorder of West Bromwich, is the writer of the article, from which we quote the following extracts :—

   One-and-a-half millions of willing, able-bodied working people cannot earn the means to live. The law forbids them to work. They may not build themselves houses, nor grow their own food, nor make their tools, nor clothe themselves. They may not even anticipate death. The only right which the law gives them is a claim to a charitable dole just sufficient to sustain life, but in a country teeming with wealth no part of it is theirs. A further two million people are dependent on the Poor Law, and one million are qualified by poverty to draw the pittance of an old age pension. According to Professor Henry Clay, 2½ million people out of a population of 47½ millions own the entire wealth of the country.
   Ten years ago the national income was £2,000 million. One million persons had incomes over £160 per annum, and their aggregate income was £1,000 million, or half the entire national income. Half the land of the British Isles is owned by 2,500 persons. Out of £300 million left at death in one year 4,400 persons owned £212 million. Out of 670,000 persons who died, 594,000 left nothing or under £100. To-day these monstrous discrepancies of fortune are even worse. If a future Labour Government’ orders a Capital Levy on estates over £1,000, 95 per cent, of the electorate will be untouched by such taxation.

This supporter of the Tory Government makes admissions which show the intense exploitation of the producers of wealth. But we will not rely on the evidence of this politician alone. We quote below an extract from Professor Clay, who holds the Chair of Political Economy at Manchester University. This Professor wrote to The Times,” objecting to Mr. Runciman’s figure juggling :—

    The figures given by Mr. Runciman in his address of March 18 hardly justify either the inferences drawn from them or the complacent attitude towards the existing distribution of capital that they have encouraged. They give the amount of certain investments in the hands of the poor; the inferences drawn are that the distribution of capital is wider than it used to be, and that the alleged concentration of wealth in few hands is no longer in fact the case.
   Before such inferences can be safely drawn, we require to know, not only the amount of a particular investment by a section of the nation, but the amount of all accumulated wealth in the hands of all classes; and, further, to know its distribution, both at the present time .and in the previous age with which the present is so favourably contrasted. Mr. Runciman did not attempt to give us this information and, in the absence of it, it is difficult to accept his claim that the distribution is "better than at any period in our history." The distribution of property is closely connected with the form of economic organisation of a country; and 18th century England, with its small farmers and master-craftsmen, must have shown a much wider distribution of capital than England today—just as contemporary France and Ireland do.
   Whether the tendency is in the direction of greater equality of distribution or not, progress in that direction has not been great. What Mr. Runciman calls “the stupendous total of £777,834,000" is not more than 5 per cent of the national capital—not a large proportion to be held by ‘‘15 million capitalists." On the other hand, allowing a considerable margin for error, it is probably safe to say that over two-thirds of the national capital is held by less than 2 per cent. of the people.—The Times, March 24, 1925.

In glaring contrast to the lie of a wide distribution of wealth are the plain facts of industrial life. The ever-growing strength and influence of the vast limited companies and industrial magnates, to which even the Premier drew attention, is one phase of modern economic life which shows the hopeless plight of the worker..The records shown month by month in official figures of the decline in wages in the main industries is another fact of the increasing poverty of the wage-slave.

On this point Sir Chiozza Money wrote (”The People’s Year Book,” 1924):—

  In the middle of 1923 it is probably true that a considerable proportion of wage earners are earning less, money’s worth for money’s worth, than they did in 1913.

Progress under capitalism means prosperity for the few. In spite of all the reforms of the three capitalist parties in Parliament, the gulf between worker and employer widens. It widens with the very rise in the workers’ efficiency. One effect of the deep poverty of the workers was shown by the Secretary for War (March 16th, 1925) in introducing the Army Estimates, when he said that five out of every eight recruits for the Army had to be rejected on grounds of health and physique.

So not only are the workers robbed of the wealth produced, but they are robbed of health through the conditions of their life and labour. There is no remedy under private or State ownership. The progress of the producer will begin with the establishment of common ownership.

Adolph Kohn

More Trade Less Work. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the Conservative papers during the General Election made great play of the increase in unemployment during the last ten months. Now the papers are full of figures showing that imports and exports have largely increased in the same ten months compared to the similar ten months of last year. What better proof is required of the falsity of Ramsay MacDonald’s claim that the way to reduce unemployment is to develop world trade. Trade may be greatly increased, but if more economies and labour saving methods are used in production the increase in trade can actually be carried on by fewer employees.

The wider use of labour-displacing methods since the war and the growing number of combines and trusts are facts which make the cry of “More Trade” mean nothing to the unemployed.

Adolph Kohn

A Socialist Searchlight: Where Are The "Reds" of Yesteryear? (1930)

From the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has finance, positions, a large following, and is popular and respectable. That explains its attraction for those elements which were so busy a little while since supporting Bolshevism, insurrection and similar gospels. In the official "Labour Magazine” for June there are three “converts” writing for it. Walton Newbold, late Communist M.P., Peter Petroff, the late Communist official in Russia, and R. M. Fox, late follower of Larkin. In the political arena crowds of one-time Communists have climbed on board the "Labour” engine of Capitalism. When it was apparent that Communist membership was a hindrance to adoption by the Labour Party, they dropped their Communist association. The Third International, faced with declining membership and the need for peaceful commercial relations with Capital, spent less money on propaganda. Thus, many left the Communists for the party they had denounced. Newbold, Whitehead, Windsor, J. S. Clarke, Ellen Wilkinson, R. Williams, Wall, the Secretary of the London Trades Council, Colyer, late Treasurer of the Communist Party, Mellor, now Editor of the "Daily Herald," all sought the genial circles of the Anti-Socialist Labour Party.

The Communists boosted new leaders for Labour, like Sam Elsbury, of the Clothing Workers, Alex. Gossip, of the Furnishing Trades, and Cook, of the Miners. Now they are mostly denounced as enemies. "Making" leaders and then pouring venom on them is a special feature of Communist work. It attracted the would-be leader to the party by its programme of "Down with the old leaders,” and then sobbed because new leaders got the jobs with their assistance and then kicked the party overboard.

Edgar Lansbury has faded out of the Communist picture. Ashleigh, once on the staff of the Communist Press, has stopped "preparing for the Revolution.” The Russian Oil Products, Argos, and other Soviet firms, were a happy hunting ground for those with the 'Communist ticket,' and once safely settled in the jobs, the noisy slogan-slingers forget all about 'the Revolution round the corner.” You don’t run after a ’bus when you have already caught it!

The conflict in the Russian Party resulted in 'New Lines” and new deviations being send round to Communists' Parties of the world. Then sprang up the various sections of the C.P. here and abroad, such as Trotskyists, Left and Right Wing Deviators, etc.

The contest for positions resulted in many of the 'Early Fathers” or Pioneers getting ousted, and the new Political Bureau saw that their opponents lost their old positions. Hence names like T. A. Jackson do not now adorn the pages of the Communist papers. These sheets are now left with less philosophic contents, such as 'Prepare for August 1st," and "A Boon for Ladies," "How to get a paper pattern for a shirt,” etc. , Soviet Russia has had a very poor advertisement in the parties she adopted. In spite of all the enthusiasm and inspiration Russia aroused, the Communist Party has declined from 20,000 in 1921 to 3,500 in 1929.

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LABOUR NOT A CLASS PARTY.

To those simple folk who believe that the Labour Party is a party based upon working class interests, we quote the following from the final Election address of the Labour Party broadcast by Ramsay MacDonald during the General Election of 1929 from Newcastle B.B.C. Station (May 28th, 1929).

It shows the appeal of "Labour ” to all classes, and repudiates any class aims.

    Another charge is that we are a Class Party because the Party was created for the purpose of bringing the life experience of the great mass of our people to guide political and economic policy. Against us our opponents say that they stand for national unity and such-like. You cannot talk of national unity unless that unity embraces all classes and functions which give services to the whole varied life of the community. I cannot understand how it is that intelligent and honest people can continue to think that Labour is a Class Party. If I had time to-night, and if it were profitable, I could prove to you not only the contrary, but I could turn the tables upon our Conservative antagonists and show that on their minds, on the composition of their Party, on their funds, on their appeals, and their achievements class and sectional interests are deeply stamped. One of the great reasons why I belong to the Labour Party and hold the Socialist views of what a wise and just social structure is. is because I detest class politics, and want to end them in real national unity.

Adolph Kohn.

Party Activities (1930)

Party News from the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the summer there has been an encouraging increase in the propaganda activities of the branches. Old stations have been maintained and several new ones opened up for outdoor meetings, with considerable success in some cases.

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BATTERSEA.

The Battersea Branch has been holding good meetings on Clapham Common on Sunday evenings. Owing to the failing light, these meetings are now held at 3.30 in the afternoon. Sales of literature have been, fair, and efforts have been rewarded with a few entrants to the Branch.

The Buckmore Road meetings on Friday evenings were abandoned, as the pitch proved unsuitable. Mossbury Road, the new station, shows signs of being more useful. Interest in the principles of Socialism, as opposed to the quackery and confusion preached by the Labour leaders, is made apparent by the questions and keenness to hear our case.

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EAST LONDON.

The East London Branch continues to hold meetings in Victoria Park. Keen interest has been maintained, despite counter-attractions round the platforms of Hot-Gospellers and other upholders of wage-slavery.

Audiences, large and attentive, gather round us, and questions are put from many who are beginning to appreciate the correctness of our case.

The L.C.C. ban on literature and collections hampers the extension of the Branch’s activities, but does not damp our enthusiasm. The mid-week meeting-place at Stepney Green Gardens is a new station for us. We anticipated great difficulties in the district, but it has, from our propaganda point of view, proved a great success. Audiences have been regular, and the inquiries intelligent. Questions have been mainly on Labour Party policy and upon matters that appear problems to those unacquainted with our case. These, and opposition from Communists advocating violence as a means of emancipation, have been effectively met by facts and Socialist arguments.

The Branch have obtained the use of the Bancroft Road Library Lecture Hall for their coming winter campaign, commencing October 2nd. (See notice in this issue.) Here will be an opportunity for all who take an interest in our propaganda to hear our message undisturbed by the distracting influences of the street corner.

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PADDINGTON.

The Paddington Branch have been very active. Sales of literature and collections have been good, and several new members have been gained.

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HEAD OFFICE.

The Sunday evening meetings which are to be held throughout the winter began in September and promise to be as successful as those held last year.

Particulars of forthcoming meetings are advertised elsewhere in this issue.

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SATURDAY EVENINGS.

Meetings are being arranged on Saturday evenings at Head Office, 42, Great Dover Street, for the discussion of questions of interest to members and sympathisers, varied by an occasional social. Admission is free to all our meetings.

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MEETINGS.

EAST LONDON.

Bancroft Road Library,

Lecture Hall

Thursday Evenings 8 p.m. PROMPT.

Commencing Thursday, October 2nd

Date. Subject. Speaker.

October 2nd           E. Hardy.

   'What the Socialist Party Stands for.'

October 9th            E. Lake.

    'Socialism and the Meantime.'

October 16th            W. McHaffie

     'Socialism and Religion.'

October 23rd             Gilmac.

      'Socialism and Parliamentarianism.'

October 30th             A. Jacobs.

       'The Labour Party and Socialism.'

          QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION.

Admission Free.                                                                                                             All Invited.

Think Globally - Act Globally (2018)

From the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Think globally — obviously. Global warming, world poverty, globalization, the threat of world war — their very names show that we are faced with world problems. It ought to be equally obvious that these problems can only be solved on a global basis, by action at world level.

So, who coined the phrase 'act locally'? Whoever imagined that these problems could be solved by a mass of scattered actions at local? But this is what has been put forward by Greens, socially-minded Christians and others as a serious political strategy.

Some of those involved in these puny, isolated local struggles have begun to realise the inadequacy of this approach. They have organised regular demonstrations on the occasion of meetings of international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the European Union.

But many of them have still not got hold of the right end of the stick, and still see the answer as lying in a retreat behind the protective tariff walls of national states and even smaller units.

If global warming, world poverty and the other problems facing humanity are to be solved, then world structures must be created to deal with them. We must act globally. The resources of the Earth must stop being the property of multinational corporations, national states and rich individuals and become instead the common heritage of all humanity.

Within this framework of a world socialist society without frontiers appropriate institutions can be set up at world, regional and—yes—local levels to tackle the problems that are caused, not by globalization as such, but by the fact that globalization is taking place under a system where the uncontrollable economic imperative is to make profits and accumulate more and more capital, regardless of the effect on people or the environment.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Voting (1997)

From the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tories are right. The next Labour government will end in tears, just as every other Labour government has. But so has every Tory government. In fact all governments end in tears for the great majority of the population.

Since every government in Britain since the first world war has been either a Tory government, a Labour government or a combination of the two, the minimum conclusion that a rational voter would draw is never to vote Labour or Tory again.

“Hear, hear”, the Liberal politician will say, “Vote Liberal”. But this wouldn’t be a rational course of action either. This would be to assume that Tory' and Labour governments fail because of the personal failings of Tory and Labour politicians since the only thing that distinguishes the Liberals from Tories and Labourites is that they are different people. Everything else is the same; their approach to politics (promising to do things for people) and the framework within which they see themselves operating (the profit-motivated, market-governed system) are identical. But there is no reason to think that Liberal politicians are any more, or any less, honest or competent than Tory or Labour politicians.

The fact is that the personality of those who form the government is irrelevant. Even if they were all sincere, incorruptible and efficient, as opposed to, say, power-hungry, money-seeking careerists, it wouldn’t matter. They would still fail. A government of super-competent saints too would end in tears.

The reason is simple. Contrary to the claims of politicians, governments cannot control the levels of production, employment and consumption, These are the result of the blind workings of the profit- driven market system and go up and down according to whether the rate of profit is rising or falling.

Governments can't make the economy work in accordance with their desires but have to adapt their policies to what the economy requires, and the profit system requires that priority lx given to making profits over everything else and in particular over spending to meet the needs of the majority of the population. Which is why all governments end in tears.

In short, the government does not control the economy, the economy controls the government.

Going Fishing
The lesson is clear. What is required is not a change of government but a change of economic system. A change of bums on the ministerial benches in the House of Commons is an utter irrelevancy for almost everybody except the politicians concerned. Insofar as this is what is at stake in elections then the rational course of action for a voter is to abstain.

The thing to do on election day would be to go fishing or to spend your day digging the garden or doing some home repairs. Millions will be doing this and they won’t be wrong. At least they will be behaving in a more intelligent way than the millions who will be trotting along to the polling stations and voting for one or other rival hand of professional politicians.

But it is still a rather negative reaction. Abstaining is, quite literally, doing nothing, which can be seen as accepting that nothing can be done to end the misery people have to suffer whichever party or parties form the government. This in fact is probably what most abstentionists think but this is going too far. Something can be done to escape from the vale of tears the profit system imposes on ordinary people. The profit system can be abolished and replaced by one geared directly to meeting people’s needs instead of to making profits for a privileged few.

But this will only come about if we make it come about. This is why those of us who want this change have organised ourselves into a Socialist Party, not with the purpose of rivalling the other parties in their bid to form the government—a government formed by us would also end in tears—but with the aim of publicising the fact that there is an alternative to the profit system: a socialist system of society based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit.

Such a system can only come about when a majority of people want it and organise themselves to get it. So the sort of politics we are talking about is not that of trusting in professional politicians to do things for you but is a do-it-yourself politics, with people themselves organising at work and where they live to take control of their own lives by working to change the economic basis of society.

Voting has a part to play in bringing about this change. Although governments don't control the economy they do control the forces of political repression, so it would be stupid to leave the machinery of government in the hands of supporters of the privileged few who benefit from the profit system. At some stage those who want socialism will have to mount an electoral challenge to the parties of the profit system and defeat them at the polls.

Voting Usefully

This means that voting isn’t in itself useless. It doesn’t serve much use today when there’s no real choice but it can in the future. When there is a socialist majority it can be used to remove from power those who support class privilege and the profit motive, so opening the way for ordinary people to carry out by their own efforts the socialist transformation of society.

Even today those who realise that what is required is a change of economic system and not a change of government can do something more positive than merely abstaining. They can cast a write-in vote for socialism by writing the word “SOCIALISM" across their ballot paper. That way you reject the view that whoever forms the government makes a difference while at the same time showing that you think that the vote can serve a useful purpose at a later date.

The number of us who want socialism is relatively small at the moment but we are still strong enough to put up socialist candidates in a number of constituencies in the coming election, in five to be precise (London Vauxhall, Glasgow Kelvin, Livingston, Jarrow and Easington).

These socialist candidates are not offered as leaders. They will make no promises to do things for people. They are merely names on the ballot paper to allow those who reject the profit system and want socialism to register the fact. In the extremely unlikely event of them being elected, they would just be the messengers of those who voted for them, delegates mandated to go to the House of Commons to use it as a megaphone to broadcast the case for socialism more widely.

So, if you reject the profit system and want socialism, the best thing to do in the coming election is, depending on where you live, either write “SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper or put an X against the name of the Socialist candidate.

Abstain if you like, but whatever you do don't vote for one of the parties that supports the profit system and wants to form the government, That way, when the next government, whatever it is, ends in tears you can say “Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for any of them". If you ignore this advice, you will only have yourself to blame for what will inevitably happen 

Adam Buick 

The Last Word: The Undeserving (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word column from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a hell on earth reserved for those with no money. These are the “socially excluded”. These dwell in the darkness of inescapable poverty, ever wrestling with the torment of survival in a world dominated by the fast buck. If you have no money to feed to the profit-hunger of the owning élite you must starve or eat rotten food; you must sleep on the pavement or in slums designed to accommodate the economically imprisoned; you must freeze when it gets cold and sweat in the urban heat; you must watch the ceaseless propaganda serenades of the ad-men who are not talking to those without money to buy, but merely teasing your expectations; you must eat the crap which is poisoned by its cheapness; you must learn to go without and watch your children go without—sinners in the land of the Great God Money.

The deprivations of extreme poverty are still here. They are built into the very fabric of the profit system, like a viral fungus which can never be contained. From time to time the smiley reformers will come to peer at poverty—they will set up their Social Exclusion Unit, packed with euphemisms to describe poverty and futile remedies which never worked before because the system spews out such affronts to its callous economic logic. The simple-minded reformers, now Brand New (Extra Sterile) Labour, doped up on Christian platitudes and forgotten memories of every previous attempt to exorcise poverty from the profit system, come to throw their crumbs and offer sympathy.

They do not begin to understand. It is as well they don't. For knowledge would only show them that the stink which offends them is inherent to the system they seek to run. So, they wave their wands of Social Inclusion and sermonise about Social Justice and play games with the welfare rules until they are satisfied that their latest spray will de-odorise the capitalist air and free it from the stench of poverty. How good it makes them seem to those who elected them to rid the world of smelly beggars and single mums.

They do not understand what it is to spend night-after-night adding up figures to see whether you can buy your way through the coming week. Pay the rent—then what about food for the weekend? The ghostly footsteps of the bailiff draw closer each time you shut your eyes. Adapt to each latest deprivation only to be hit by a new one.The humiliating rituals of the welfare maze forever eroding your humanity and ripping away your dignity.

The new propaganda, now being pushed like an opiate for the just-surviving, speaks of “the deserving poor”. Yes, the very deserving ones should be helped. The ninety-seven-year-old, blind, deaf and one-legged wretch who has never taken a drink and now lives in squalor, must be . . . must be Socially Included. So throw a few quid at the geriatric service and, let’s be really socially inclusive here, take the poor old sod on a day trip to Margate care of the tax-payers.

But as for those who chose to dwell in hell—the shouldn’t-have-got-pregnants and the couldn’t-be-bothered-at-schools and the petty fools who thought they could beat the law or find temporary oblivion in a drug- haze—these are the sinners who are beyond redemption. The Socially Excludable. The Victorian profit-louts called them The Undeserving Poor. Let them rot. Did they not read the rules of The System when they entered this world? Did they not believe it when they were told of the eternal agonies of hell?

I have just finished talking with a friend whose disability benefits have been withdrawn. They have decided that, despite all the obvious evidence, he is fit for wage-slavery. He is sick with worry. He does not know which way to turn. He is one of tens of thousands in the same position. Him today, you tomorrow, me the day after? New Britain; Old Poverty.

Steve Coleman

Commonwealth — What's in a Name? (1997)

From the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Commonwealth is indeed a strange organisation, consisting of some 30 republics, 5 states with non-British monarchs and 16 nations that continue to recognise Queen Elizabeth as their monarch.

Basically set up as a grouping of countries that were once part of the British Empire, members now include Namibia—formerly a Germany colony, Mozambique—once under Portuguese rule and Cameroon, which had largely been under the control of the French. At the same time, several countries originally controlled by Britain, are not members—i.e. Israel. Jordan. Yemen, Palestine, Rwanda, Egypt, Sudan.

Existing chameleon-like, the Commonwealth has no real rules, other than new members must agree to abide by democratic and human rights guidelines laid down in the 1991 Harare Declaration.

It was from this organisation that Sierra Leone, having just experienced a military coup, was to find itself joining Nigeria in suspension—Nigeria having been suspended by the 1995 Auckland Summit—until such a time as democracy is restored.

This says much for the Commonwealth, for at least 20 of its members also find themselves at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index, experiencing the poverty and relative social ills that have in the past made unrest, internal conflict and coup all the more likely—ironically, the same countries that British capitalism “milked dry” in the days when huge portions of classroom atlases were coloured pink.

For the average worker in Commonwealth countries, membership has not altered their lifestyle one iota. Socialists correspond with many workers in Commonwealth countries including Jamaica. Pakistan, Botswana, Sierra Leone. Uganda—and are more than familiar with their tales of woe.

The World Socialism Movement has members in 11 Commonwealth countries, all of whom will testify that membership means little more than business as usual. They will tell how being a worker in such countries no more increases their prospects of work than it prevents member countries going to war with one another (i.e. India and Pakistan), and that in such countries the word "democracy” is as hollow and meaningless to the exploited as the word “commonwealth" itself.

The aforementioned members, however, do share a vision of a real "commonwealth”. It means a global system of society where all wealth is held in common and is democratically controlled by all people. It is a society from which borders and frontiers, social classes and leaders, states and governments have disappeared, in which production is geared to meeting needs, not profit, and in which people give of their abilities and have free access to the benefits of civilisation. This is the real "commonwealth" socialists look forward to.

John Bissett

Advertising and Art (1997)

From the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is advertising art? Whatever it is, it's the nearest thing under capitalism to creative adornment of public spaces, even if it reflects capitalism's buying and selling ethos.

Advertising "is" pornography. When we say that advertising is pornography we are not in any way making a moral point. We’re making a point about the etymology of the word.

According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, the word "pornography" derives from the Greek word pornographos, itself deriving from the words porne and grapho, "prostitute” and "write" respectively. Prostituted writing. Or, as it is often colloquially translated (and so generalising it a little more), "whore art". As the word is most commonly used, pornography obviously relates the notion of prostitution to sexuality. But it could also be interpreted as simply denoting the sale or hiring out of a person’s body (including, of course, the brain), by themselves, "willingly" for material reward. Under this definition, any worker could be described as a prostitute and the prostitute becomes just another kind of worker. It is, in fact, only for historical reasons, both ideological and material, that a special, moralistic, case is made of sexuality and therefore that prostitutes receive special (or any) approbation.

Hired writers
Artists are also, of course, workers (at least until, if they’re very lucky, they amass enough wealth so as to be able to work just for their own pleasure), as are "creatives" in advertising firms. This is quite an important point as regards the question of differences and similarities between advertising and art. The artist does not "create" from nothing, and nor does he or she proceed from some "divine" inspiration, as much of the dominant ideology of art would continue to have us believe. The artist is rather a worker producing art out of various raw materials, including previously existing systems of meaning, and in specific historical and social, which is to say material, conditions. It might also be said that artists are experimenters in the general area of culture and concepts, akin to philosophers and scientists. This is not to say that the artist doesn’t have special abilities, honed over a long period, that it would be difficult or impossible for the rest of us to mimic; but then so does a surgeon, an engineer or a skilled plasterer. And, most pertinently in this context, so most certainly does an advertising creative. But what is also important for our context, and for differentiating art from advertising, is the analogy between art and science, the concept of art as an experimental process, that requires the exercise of the imagination to transcend the simple given fact of the pre-existing materials.

It seems possible to argue that advertising, in the context of contemporary capitalism, actually is art, and a very popular art at that. Our cities might well "look pretty dead" if all adverts were to be suddenly removed. Many adverts are clever, amusing, even at times beautiful. The Marlboro adverts of a couple of years ago, for example, featuring black and white photographs of American landscapes and cityscapes, splashed with a touch of red to signify the brand (when allied to the health warning across the base of the image, utilised to signify the product), were considered by many to have a certain beauty that we might call "artistic”. Adverts also quite often make use of the most sophisticated techniques of modernist art, both in still images and in television or cinema advertising; this is, of course, quite interesting in itself given the popular comprehension, and even hostility, that they are often subject to when they are labelled "art”. This is connected to a certain ideological élitism, and an ideological reverence, that continues to surround artistic appreciation, tending to incite an anti-art backlash from those who are, culturally or educationally, largely excluded (supposedly) from such appreciation.

There are, in fact, those working in advertising, such as Tony Kaye, who produced the surrealist television adverts for Pirelli tyres, who have explicitly claimed artistic status for their work. There are also people working in fields that are recognised as “authentic" art who have previously worked in advertising. Salman Rushdie, for example, worked as writer for an advertising agency and came up with the cream cake slogan "naughty but nice", while Alan Parker, who has directed films such as The Commitments and Mississippi Burning, recently said in an interview with Jeremy Isaacs that he always considered advertising to be a "new art form" when he worked in the industry. Even when advertising was less sophisticated than at present there were well known instances of “cross-over" between art and advertising, such as W.H. Auden’s writing and reciting the text for the Post Office’s Night Mail advert in the 1930s, or further back, the art-nouveau posters of the late nineteenth century, the most celebrated of which were Toulose-Lautrec’s posters for Parisian nightclubs such as the Moulin Rouge. On the other hand art, in its turn, often makes use of materials and forms more usually associated with advertising, the Pop Art produced by Andy Warhol and others being the most obvious example.

So it seems advertising may have a certain aesthetic interest or artistic value; what then, if any, are the differences between art and advertising?

Caught up in the market

Both advertising and art are caught up in capitalist markets to some extent. This is an obvious fact given the fact that we are all necessarily caught up in the capitalist system whether we like it or not. But given this, and for all that the boundaries between art and advertising are blurred or semi-erased, there are at least two important differences.

Firstly, advertising is always and necessarily produced for the sake of the market, while art is, at least on occasion if not for the most part (the extent is debatable), produced before the explicit intervention of the market.

Secondly, advertising sets in place an ossification of concepts, promoting clichés of thought, perception and even aesthetics that are essentially ideologically (and so politically) conservative. It is even used, in fact, to implicitly encourage and promote commodity fetishism.

We are now approaching the sense in which advertising can be said to be pornography; the second difference outlined above is in a sense a consequence of the first. Where art is produced and then (the artist hopes) sold, advertising is sold and then produced, an important point since it means that the advert must conform to capitalist requirements in itself. Art, on the other hand, is not necessarily affected by such requirements, even though the individual artist may be tempted for the sake of relative financial security to tailor his or her work to them. If they do so, though, the work produced may often be the poorer for it, as the many examples of great art that has been unappreciated by the markets of its time (such as the work of Van Gogh or Stravinsky) would seem to indicate. What would have been the results if they had simply churned out what the markets were demanding?

Turning briefly to the cultural and aesthetic policies of Stalinism, we can see that the so-called "Socialist Realism” (which was neither socialist or particularly realistic, in that such works primarily presented fantasies of the Stalinist “utopia”) produced according to state diktat largely amounted to simple advertising for the state (the same applies to Fascist art) and its ideologies. We can see in this context how Leninist state capitalism is precisely that, with the state not only acting as the principal market (though a market nonetheless) for art but also dictating, on pain of the destruction of work and texts or even the imposition of judicial penalties on artists, exactly what that art must be, in both form and content.

In a truly socialist world, the freedom of the artist would be promoted rather than diminished by the abolition of both the market and the state. Not only would those who would in any case work in the areas of art find their freedom increased, but the absolute redundancy of the entire advertising industry would release the enormous wealth of talent currently tied up there. As for whether or not advertising "adds to the action" in our cities, there seems little doubt that it does—but in a socialist society advertising could be replaced by art of the highest standards, with local people deciding democratically which art is placed in which public spaces. On the other hand, galleries could continue to provide space for those works that might be unappreciated by the majority in their own time but which are of possible long-term historical, aesthetic and cultural worth. As in perhaps every other area of human existence, the end of the reign of capital and the capitalists would see the beginning of the reign of freedom and the consequent burgeoning of invention, imagination and creativity.

Jonathan Clay

These Foolish Things . . . : Big Bucks (1997)

The Scavenger column from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Big bucks

The world’s top 500 companies, it seems, employ 0.05 percent of the world’s population but control a quarter of the world’s economic output. The combined assets of the 50 biggest companies is now 60 percent of the world’s $20 trillion of productive capital. In eight sectors, including cars, aerospace, electronics, steel, armaments and media, the top five corporations now control 50 percent of the global market. Increasingly the question is: who governs them? And for whom? . . . Ten corporations now control nearly every aspect of the world’s food chain. Four control 90 percent of the world’s exports of corn, wheat, tobacco, tea, pineapple, jute and forest products. (Guardian. 20 June.)


Labour is Right

Even as they elect their new leader, the Tories are in a quandary. They are faced with a government which seems determined to outdo them in all of the things they did best. If new Labour stands for free markets, sound money, prudent finances, a tough stance on criminals, higher school standards, and unravelling the welfare mess, why should anyone need the Tories? They have the difficult task of persuading the electorate that they will do even better, and will have the competence to fulfil that promise. Politics in Britain used to be a clash of ideologies: now it has become a competition in virtue. Dr Madsen Pirie, President of Adam Smith Institute. (Scotland on Sunday, 15 June.)


In proportion

It would take one Haitian worker producing Disney dolls and clothes 166 years to earn as much as Disney President Michael Eisner makes in one day. And Eisner isn’t even one of the seven richest men in the world . . . (Independent on Sunday, 22 June.)


Work is dangerous

Statistics show the work-place is the fastest growing location for violent crime. According to the Loss Prevention Council, between 1981 and 1991 assaults at work doubled to 350,000 a year . . . according to British Retail Consortium figures, retailers reported that more than 9,000 staff were subjected to physical violence, 47,000 to threats of violence and 120,000 to verbal abuse between 1995 and 1996. (Observer, 22 June.)


Market cares

Small charities have been warned to merge or risk going under in the face of fierce competition for declining funds. The Disabilities Trust said the market place for charities was already overcrowded with 188,000 bodies chasing the same money. In a report, it claims public donations are set to fall by 13 percent by 1999, blaming the National Lottery for siphoning off funds. (Evening Mail, 18 July.)


Conspiracy theory

Jonathan Aitken’s world is truly crumbling around him. After his resignation from the Privy Council, the former Tory cabinet minister, ruined by his collapsed libel case against the Guardian, will have to cede another honour—one that his friends say he values as much as being a Right Hon or PC. For the past few years Mr Aitken has been chairman of Le Cercle, right-wing think-tank set up at the height of the Cold War for senior politicians, diplomats and intelligence agents which is one of the most influential, secretive, and, it goes without saying, exclusive political clubs in the West. Now he is about to be relieved of this role . . . [Alan Clark] describes it as “a right-wing think-tank funded by the CIA, which churns Cold War concepts around". (Independent on Sunday, 29 June.)

The Scavenger

A Vivid Imagined Nation (1997)

TV Review from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always fascinating to attend an event later portrayed on television if only to make the obvious "compare and contrast" analysis afterwards. So it was on Sunday 10 August with BBC2's The National Eisteddfod of Wales, which comprised commentary, clips and observations of an event I had attended in the cause of wage slave duty on three occasions the previous week.

Given the strong links between the Welsh establishment and the media it was unlikely to be a highly critical piece—more so with BBC political correspondent Huw Edwards doing the commentary, a man whose father was a Bard. Focusing on the traditional portrayal of Wales as the land of harmonies and the harp, of poetry and prose, it successfully documented an event in many ways well worth attending, even by non-Welsh speakers. The impression given was that of a generally convivial atmosphere in the north Wales hills, sunshine beating down and fine music of most varieties all around. With much of this being true it might seem churlish to complain.

And yet in other respects it does well to cast a more cynical eye at events than the BBC is in the habit of doing. For instance, it is not necessarily a good idea to go to the Eisteddfod if you are poor. Entrance fees notwithstanding, food and drink prices on the site—dominated seemingly by a cartel of some sorts—were extortionate to a degree rarely found outside of Central London in peak season. And with the Eisteddfod site itself still being alcohol-free, a trip to the pubs in Bala which had also formed a cartel just for the week, was not an entirely sensible alternative.

You can of course go to Alton Towers or London Zoo and complain about the prices after they have got you in their ring-fenced compound, but in virtually all other respects the Eisteddfod has a clear edge. To illustrate this, it was a pity that the BBC didn't have its cameras at the ready for the hardly untypical scene when a Jordanian academic, who had spent over a decade learning fluent English, conversed with a Welsh boy while showing him how to use the internet. Whenever he spoke to the child, the boy's mother shouted at her son in Welsh not to answer him . . . and the naive among you thought language was all about effective communication. So did the pop band Gorky's Zygotic Munci, who were banned from playing their traditionally bilingual set in the Rock Tent because the language-fascists thought their occasional English singing would have corrupted the young and innocent. (Bands singing sexist or totally vacuous shit was fine so long as they did it all in Welsh.)

Narrow-minded nationalists
The prevalence of this type of stultifying, narrow-minded behaviour is a tragedy for a land which otherwise has so much to offer. But then again. Wales has been blighted by nationalism and bigotry for as long as anyone can remember. And the ultimate irony is that while all nations are imagined communities, few illustrate this better than the Land of My Fathers.

Wales and the type of traditions currently celebrated at the Eisteddfod are largely a product of the rise of a Welsh non-conformist commerce-based class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was a class initially desperate to throw off English domination and in some instances, at least, keen to pursue the same course eventually adopted by the southern Irish. The legacy of this mindset still persists today and pervades most Welsh culture and institutions.Wales has a fascinating culture and Welsh is a fine language but both have been devalued by the actions of capitalism's class of predators who would have been quite content to let Welsh culture in whatever its forms die if it had not served their interests to cynically mould it and debase it.

None of this is really a matter of dispute even among bourgeois historians, with Kenneth O. Morgan once famously stating that it was this economically-inspired cultural process, with the refoundation of the long-dead Eisteddfod, which led to the “rebirth of a nation", though admittedly the phrase "rebirth” was overstepping the mark a bit. In Wales: The Imagined Nation edited by Tony Curtis, another argues that the rise of the Welsh trading and capitalist class helped create "what was really a new national identity at a time when Wales was drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of British social, political and industrial life, and when many of the peculiarities of Welsh nationhood had either disappeared or become moribund".

The Welsh capitalist class—today more fully developed than hitherto and perhaps even more entwined in the workings of the state machine than its English counterpart—still trades on the nationalist myth and distortion it was largely responsible for in the first place, binding its wage slaves to a totally fake commonality of interests encouraged by a suspicion of outsiders.

The Labour Party, much in evidence at Bala '97 all the way from the Secretary of State downwards, panders to it all like they pander to their paymasters whoever they may be, from the City one day to the Farmers' Union of Wales and the "Taffia" the next. Meanwhile, the culture of the dispossessed class reflects the competing claims of the propertied, a global class forever encouraging the parochial touch for its subordinates, not out of a cultural celebration so much as an extension of the principles of divide and rule and each against all. To this end, in the grim terraced mining valleys, metropolitan Cardiff and the massive sink council housing estates of Wrexham and Newport the working class go about their daily business listening to Oasis, eating at McDonald's and occasionally taking night-classes in beginners’ Welsh. A cynical thought perhaps, but with more than a grain of truth attached to it and one unlikely to be given expression on the BBC.

Dave Perrin

Authoritarian (1997)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where There’s Brass There’s Muck: Ecology and Anarchism. Anarchist Communist Federation pamphlet.

An interesting short survey of anarchist thinking on ecology. It reveals that Murray Bookchin, founder of the Social Ecology movement, has become even more reformist in adopting "Confederal Municipalism":". . .  a belief in taking state power at a local level and using that power to transform society from the bottom up."

The ACF itself advocates using Direct Action to bring about a classless society in harmony with the environment. The anti-roads movement, they say, "has a fine record of sabotage". They admit that their road to social transformation will lead to violence, as indeed it must. It is also a dead end. Apart from the people involved, they have no way of establishing that they represent the majority view, nor is there any way of democratically assessing their argument. This is the paradox of anarchism: the method for bringing about the society they want is inherently authoritarian.

Lew Higgins

Greasy Pole: Paying For It (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

How much would you pay to listen to a speech by John Major? Ten thousand pounds? A hundred? One? Fifty pence? Or would you rather pay not to have to listen to the spoken wisdom of our recently deposed Prime Minister? We ask these questions in response to the news that Major plans to spend some time, now that he is reduced to being a plain backbencher, lecturing in America and that he will be paid £32,000 for every one of his speeches.

Startling as this might be (because even the most ardent of Major's admirers could hardly describe him as £32,000-worth of charisma and gripping oratory) the fact is that he is not the highest-paid of the celebrities travelling the world on these jaunts, the irrelevance of which is matched by their lucrativeness. At the top of this particular pile—this will come as no surprise—is Margaret Thatcher, who gets £45,000 every time she holds forth on the world and its problems and how she almost solved the lot of them single- handedly.

At this point anyone who has the habit of asking naively penetrating questions will wonder why we suddenly have to pay to listen to Major and Thatcher when only a short time ago we endured their speeches for free. It was, after all, bad enough to hear Thatcher raving on about all those evil foreigners whose only ambition was to destroy the British Way Of Life without being charged for it. Listening to Major's oratorical blundering was never an uplifting experience but to be charged for it would have made it worse.

Burdens
In any case what can these people say that is worth listening to? They could trot out the same weary nonsense— the delusions, the evasions, the empty platitudes—which was their daily diet when they were in power. Thatcher could tell us. again, how she had made this country “great” as a property- owning democracy—where tens of thousands struggled with a lifetime’s burden of a mortgage or, when the burden became too much to bear, were ejected from the homes which they regarded as a symbol of their security. She would tell us about the rampant jingoism she stimulated during the Falklands war, while hundreds of workers on both sides died. She would tell us about her government’s assault on the trade unions and how they ruthlessly cut back the meagre state benefits on which the poorest people tried to get by.

John Major could tell us, in that voice which so many of us have been trying to wipe out of our memory, about the repeated blunders, the knee-jerk reaction to capitalism’s crises and the dedicated sleaze which characterised his governments. He could remind us how, while surrounded by all this disarray, he persisted in assuring us that he had the situation under control, that we were all living at a high standard and things could only get better. He might also explain why, if his premiership had been such a huge success, he so rapidly deprived us of the chance of keeping him as prime-minister-in-waiting after the May election. For anyone paying to hear these speeches there will be no guarantee of their money back if they are not completely satisfied.

Poverty
And how could anyone be satisfied? After almost two decades of Conservative rule the condition of the people of this country is such that the Labour Party are able to launch something described as an onslaught on the more extreme edges of poverty. Peter Mandelson who is Minister for Something or Other, hit the headlines in August with the announcement that a special cabinet unit would be set up to deal with the "scourge of social exclusion" which those in deeper poverty experience. Of course nobody should have got too excited by Mandelson’s words (how many times have we heard similar promises before?) and in any case the attack would have to wait until "circumstances and the reordering of public expenditure make this possible" (how many times have we heard that before?). Nor should we bother, right now, with the typical fragility of this typical Labour promise. The point, for the present, is that poverty still exists and shows no sign of going away or even of becoming a less onerous burden to its victims.

A recent report by the National Heart Forum—an alliance of 35 health and voluntary organisations working to prevent heart disease—stated that this is becoming a disease of poverty. In the 1970s its incidence was spread across society; now it is concentrating where people are poorer. The Institute of Fiscal Studies—not a body we would expect to call the masses to the barricades—has described capitalist society where, with income expressed in terms of body height, a handful of people reach almost twice as high as Nelson’s Column while nearly 60 percent of the population measure at or below 5ft 9in. A study by a geographer at Bristol University emphasises what this means in terms of health. Briefly, people who live in places like Glasgow, Oldham, Blackburn and Newcastle-on-Tyne have a much higher chance of dying younger than those who live in areas where poverty and the struggle to survive are not so acute.

Being silly
If politicians—retired or still, active— speak about these issues they always do so as if they are regrettable accidents— blips on capitalism’s ever-upward march towards universal prosperity. They assure us that they have the remedy to hand—an official enquiry perhaps or a special task-force of experts or, as Mandelson now tells us, a cabinet unit. Then, perhaps, a little tinkering about with rates of benefit or other footling adjustments.

Are we really expected to pay to hear such discredited drivel? It would be more worth it. if has-beens like Thatcher and Major would own up to their inability to control or change this social system and advise us to pay no heed to their words. They could tell us to take control of society ourselves and change it in our own interest. Or is this just being silly?

Ivan

50 Years Ago: The Crisis - The Planners' Swansong (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism we know and have long endured. Socialism we could have and will have when a majority understands the need for it. But is there a half-way house, something that has ceased to be Capitalism but is not Socialism? Socialists know that there can be no such thing, but many people both in the Labour Party and outside thought that it was possible and desirable. Not that the Labour supporters of planned capitalism called it that. Indeed they said precisely the opposite—“there is no half-way house between a society based on private ownership in the means of production, with the profit of the few as the measure of success, and a society where public ownership of those means deliberately planned for attaining the maximum of general well-being.” (“For Socialism and Peace,” Labour Party). Yet that is just what the Labour Party has been trying to do and in the experiment it received the support of many who knew quite well what they were seeking was to keep capitalism but rid it of its chaotic features and subject it to planning and controls.

(From front page article, Socialist Standard, September 1947)

The Irish scene changes (1997)

From the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we write, in August, Harold Wilson’s affirmation that a week is a long time in politics is particularly apposite to the political situation in Northern Ireland. The previous month most people here were anxiously scanning the daily news bulletins for some sign that would lend hope that the province’s Armageddon might not be at hand.

Everywhere the awful word "Drumcree” was spoken: cautiously, in anger and in whispers.The holy men of the Orange Order had to placate their god by marching down the "Catholic” Gervaghy Road and through other areas where their opponents would be put under police curfew so that they should not be offended when the Orangemen reminded them, with salutary intent, that they had beaten them in other places in the past.

Gervaghy Road was particularly sensitive for it was here two years ago that a flushed David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had skipped a victory jig with the arch bigot Paisley when the police had forcefully cleared a path for the Orangemen. Now the word was out: there would be no Orange feet on the Gervagghy Road. But the echo said: stop us at your peril!

Mo Mowlam, the new Labour Secretary of State was the mainstay of the popular hope of deliverance. What she lacked in ability and aplomb was compensated for by tremendous energy as she visited Residents’ Groups, Orange Lodges, politicians, clergymen and the dogs in the street with the old, failed argument that we should all be reasonable.The Catholic nationalists were especially impressed, however; British Secretaries of State didn’t usually call around for tea and a chat and the anger of the Unionists at this newly-forged friendship seemed to clinch the Catholic belief that Mo would protect them.

In the event, Mowlam, in what the Catholics not unreasonably construed as an act of gross treachery, supported the Chief Constable of the RUC in sending in hundreds of armed police, expensively equipped for dealing with the violence which they initiated. With a viciousness equalling their violence of the previous year, they cleared the road for the Orangemen to go in triumph for the worship of their god. Ironically, the Catholic god had to do with a makeshift mass on the street because Mo and the RUC refused them permission to go to their church.

While sensible people with motor cars or the price of a boat or plane ticket were making their way across the Irish border or across the Channel, the fiery battalions of stone and petrol-bomb throwers were already retaliating. Within a few days the cost, in monetary terms, of the legacy of lunacy that motivated both the Orangemen and those opposing them was around £20 million which was within an ass’s whisper of the cost of the same religious outing in '95 and ’96.

Twenty million deducted from the shrunken educational budget or the grossly under-funded NHS was an obvious matter for concern. Last year the offensively arrogant Sir Patrick Mayhew decided that additional “security" costs should be defrayed from the health and educational budgets—on the apparent assumption that youthful petrol-bombers would stop and think about the effect of their actions on their education. The real fear, however, was what the aftermath of Drumcree would lead to.

Would the IRA up the ante? Would the loyalist paramilitaries officially return to the killing game? The newspapers said people were hoarding essential supplies: the empty streets told the general fear.

Sudden change
Suddenly the Orange Order announced that its members would avoid those areas where its marches carried the greatest threat to the peace and a week later the IRA announced a cease-fire. It would have been comforting to think that both these organisations, neither of which is renowned for putting peace and the concern for human life before the historical fictions on which each bases its absurd posturings, had suddenly moved into the twentieth century; unfortunately, their subsequent "explanations” undermined any such optimism.

Unlike the Tories, the response of the Blair government to the IRA cease-fire has been swift and positive. The last government squandered the opportunity created by the earlier cease-fire because Major’s slim majority in the House of Commons left him hostage to the power of the Unionist parties at Westminster—and the Unionists opposed the idea of all-inclusive peace negotiations. Now the Unionists have lost their veto in the Commons and the British and Irish governments have made it clear that, if the IRA cease-fire holds, not only can Sinn Fein join the peace talks when they resume in September, but that, if those talks fail to come up with an agreed settlement before May of next year, the two governments will put their own joint settlement proposals to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum.

Problems
It appears like a no-win situation for the Unionists parties. Paisley, echoed by his understudy, Robinson, had already announced the intention of the so-called Democratic Unionist Party to pull out of the talks as has, also, the insignificant UK Unionist Party. The powerful Orange Order has asked the main Ulster Unionist Party to withdraw, too, but David Trimble, perhaps with a greater understanding of grassroots opinion, has indicated that the Ulster Unionists are likely to participate— though, as a public relations exercise they will probably insist that their public exchanges with Sinn Fein take the form of "proximity” talks.

The problem for the Unionists is the intention of both the British and the Irish governments to ensure that, one way or the other, there are peace proposals to put before the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum next year. With certainty it can be said that those proposals will not involve any constitutional, change in the status of Northern Ireland though it is likely that new cross-border bodies with considerable power will be included together with internal legislation to protect the rights of the nationalist minority under some form of "partnership” local assembly. Trimble can hardly be unaware that however numerous the opponents of such proposals may be, the majority of people want to seen an end to conflict and this is especially true of the loyalist fringe parties whose armed wings previously represented a serious threat to any solution opposed by the Unionist parties.

On the other hand, Trimble may be comforted by the fact that Adams and his political playmates in Sinn Fein must be equally aware of the desire among their supporters for a lasting resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. Even more comfort might be derived from the realisation that Sinn Fein, in consenting to enter open-ended talks with the Unionist parties, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the five smaller parties (all of whom accept as a negotiating principle that Northern Ireland should remain with the UK as long as a majority within the province wish so to remain) is compromising its traditional stand which has always been that only a majority on the island of Ireland can determine the constitutional fate of Northern Ireland.

Another grave problem for Sinn Fein and one that is likely to undermine the raison d’etre of the IRA’s justification of their historic right to use physical force is the intention of the Irish government to put any settlement agreed between the parties in Northern Ireland, or of the two governments, to the people of the Republic of Ireland in a referendum to be held the same day as the proposals are put in a referendum to the people of Northern Ireland. By indulging in a bit of political aerobatics Sinn Fein and the IRA were able to claim that the last all-Ireland election, in 1918 (before the British-imposed partition of the country) endorsed the right of Sinn Fein to employ the armed force of the IRA to wage war to establish an all-Ireland Republic.

This peculiar justification theory is important to the IRA/Sinn Fein for despite the fact that the opposition of the Catholic Church to their activities has bred a strong streak of anti-clericalism within the Republican movement, they do accept that there is a "moral" distinction between killing as the heirs of the “legitimate government” of the people and what they would see, and condemn, as mere political murder. The prospect of the removal of this eighty-year excuse must surely create a telling dilemma for ardent Catholics like Adams, McGuinness and many of their cohorts.

But, then, if the peace holds. Unionist, Nationalist and Republican politicians in Northern Ireland, whether or not they engage in the impending peace talks will be faced with dilemmas. Of course the consequences are relevant in that the killing may be ended or may start again but the issues behind the conflict are completely and utterly irrelevant to the real interests of the working class.

Richard Montague