With or Without Comment (1943)

From the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism” in Russia: The Archbishop steps in where angels fear to tread

Dr. Garbett, Archbishop of York, after his visit to Russia, has taken it on himself to give us a little lecture on Socialism : —

“Russia is at its present stage a Socialist rather than a Communist State : that is, while the means of production and distribution belong to the State, the individual may keep for his use or dispose of as he thinks fit whatever he has himself earned, including the houses built by individuals on collective farms.” (Daily Express, October 12, 1943.)

This is, of course, not really Dr. Garbett speaking, but the usual propaganda hand-out of the Communists. In recent years the Communists have found it convenient to misapply the term Socialism to Russia’s present form of State capitalism, with its new rich, the rouble millionaires, and to use the term Communism to describe what they used to call Socialism

Exactly 20 years ago the Communist Party of Great Britain published “A Short Course of Economic Science,” by A. Bogdahoff. This book was a textbook used by the Russian Bolsheviks. In it Bogdanoff used the term “socialist system” to describe “the highest stage of society we can conceive” (p. 391). Dealing with distribution, he distinguished between a first phase when, owing to low production, distribution will have to be on the basis of giving products to each individual “in proportion to the amount of labour he has given to society,” and a later phase when “complete freedom of consumption will be established for the worker. Giving society all that he is able in strength and ability, society will give him all that he needs” (p. 385); but he did not seek to justify vast inequality and call it Socialism. Compare, too, his statement : “Under Socialism the question of profits will disappear in production also” (p. 380) with the following statement in the “U.S.S.R. Handbook,” 1936 (compiled from Russian sources with the help of “distinguished Soviet scientists and writers”) : —

“The State farms are operated in the same manner as mills and factories—on ‘business principles’—i.e.. on the basis of yielding profits defined according to the balance sheet of each farm.” (p. 158.)

Socialists do not need the help of the Archbishop to decide what is Socialism and what isn’t.

The Labour Theory of Value

Capitalist economists reject the Marxian labour theory of value, according to which : —

“That which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production.” (“Capital,” Kerr Edition, p. 46.)

As this applies to all commodities, including gold, it explains why gold, the money commodity, can serve as a measure of value and medium of exchange for other commodities. A curious illustration of the labour theory has arisen in trade between Sweden and Germany. Not wishing to accept from Germany gold which may have been looted and which may therefore be reclaimed after the war, the Swedish Government has refused to accept payment in gold. Instead, “the Swedes in their barter trade with Germany were now working their exchange on a ‘man-hour’ standard. For example, the Swedes, when importing one ton of coal from Germany, would settle the transaction by exporting as much iron ore as could be produced with the same number of man-hours as went to the production of the ton of coal.” (News Chronicle, July 10, 1943.)

Questions and Answers on Religion

Under the heading, “Why Keep Dog-collar?” Canon T. P. Stevens wrote in the Evening Standard (October 6. 1943) about a soldier’s doubts and difficulties on the subject of religion. He said that he had received a letter “of enormous length” which asked among other things, “Why not get rid of the parsonic voice and the parsonic collar? ” Canon Stevens is sensible enough to realise that those strange whining, toneless voices we hear on the radio are not an asset to the Churches. He is also easy on the subject of the dog collar.

We, too, have received a letter on the subject of religion, but it is not of enormous length. All it says is, “Why keep the dog ? ”

Millionaires of the World, Unite !

The Daily Worker (October 14, 1943) announces that a pamphlet by Reg Bishop has been published entitled “Soviet Millionaires,” explaining the whole nature of Soviet “millionairedom.” “The key point,” says the Daily Worker, is made plain—namely, that no person in the Soviet Union can acquire wealth by exploiting other men’s labour for profit, nor can he use acquired wealth for such exploitation.”

The same day the Daily Telegraph published figures about the top salaries paid by various companies in the U.S.A. to film stars, newspaper cartoonists, and others. Mr. Louis B. Mayer, head of the Metro-Goldwyn Film Corporation, receives a salary of £237,000 a year, while Mr. Thomas Watson receives a salary of £115,000 a year from the International Business Machines Corporation.

The point of mentioning these high salaries is that the gentlemen in question can (and do) put forward precisely the same justification as the Daily Worker puts forward for the high salaried individuals and prosperous farmers in Russia. “Do we not work for our money?” they can say. “Is it not payment for the work we do?"

And having saved some part of their salaries and invested it in War Loan or other investments, they can likewise argue that their accumulated wealth and the income they derive from their investments is not “exploitation of other men’s labour.” There is nothing in the Russian finaincial system to prevent those who inherit large sums of money, win big prizes in lottery loans, receive big salaries, or make big profits by the sale of their farm products, from investing in State loans and deriving a larger and larger proportion of their total income from those investments.

A quarter of a century ago Lenin, proclaiming the principle of reducing salaries to the standard remuneration of the average worker (“Soviets at Work,” 1918), said that to pay high salaries was a “regrettable necessity” and “a step backward,” and that to pretend otherwise was to “cheat the people.” Cheating the people seems to be the order of the day among Lenin’s successors.

Of course, the new-rich in Russia have a long way to go before they reach U.S.A. levels, but it seems they will always be able to count on the Communists giving them their blessing.

Edgar Hardcastle

Conscientious Objectors (1943)

From the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Stanley Hilton, the Rochdale conscientious objector, who on July 26th was sentenced at his fourth court-martial to two years’ detention, has been released on a ‘suspended sentence.’ . . . Hilton, a Jehovah’s Witness, had spent three years in jail.”—(News Chronicle, October 5, 1943.)

“In this war, as in the last, the position of M.P.s in regard to military service is a difficult and delicate one. The public and even many members of the House of Commons believe that they are legally exempt from the provisions of the National Service Act. This is not so. … A member of the Commons is, by custom, left to decide for himself whether he will serve in the Forces. … In spite of these privileges, some 150 M.P.s are engaged on full-time war service. . . . Rightly the decision is left to the individual conscience.”—(Evening Standard, September 23, 1943.)

SPGB Meetings (1943)

Party News from the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sting in the Tail: Who are the crazies? (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the crazies?

Capitalism is a crazy social system. It takes food out of production to keep up prices, while people go hungry. A recent example of this market madness appeared in the Observer (5 February):

"Every morning, farmer Brian Nicholas carefully collects 800 litres of milk—fresh, creamy and frothing—and then tips it all into his muck spreader. . . Mr Nicholas, a small dairy farmer is one of hundreds of producers forced by European Union milk quotas to throwaway his produce this year, following deregulation of the milk industry in November."

Defenders of capitalism are always telling socialists that production for profit is the only sane way to run society. Are we crazy because we think milk should be produced to satisfy human needs?

Sense about race

The racist ideas currently coming out of America are being countered by American scientists. An article in the Independent (21 February) reports that ‘‘the concept of race is out of date and has no biological basis, according to scientists”.

Professor of anthropology Loring Brace told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Atlanta that the division of people into separate races was “an historical hangover from the days of colonial conquest”. Indeed:

"There was no race concept prior to the Renaissance. There is no race concept in the Bible or other writings of antiquity. The best way to refer to people is to use geographical designations. Thus people can be identified as African, or Australian, or European. and the like."

And another anthropologist, Professor Kay, summed it up:

"There is just no valid reason for using existing racial terms. This isn't politically correct, it's scientifically correct. "

The back scratchers

After Labour’s 1945 election victory, the Tories bitterly attacked its policy of wholesale nationalisation. They soon came to accept that, however distasteful, a greater degree of state ownership did have widespread public support and probably was necessary to set post-war British capitalism back on its feet.

Thus Labour did the Tories’ dirty work for them, but see what is happening now. Following the Tory victory in 1979, Labour threatened to return each privatised industry to state ownership, but because this was now a vote-loser and had (as we always said it would) proved to be a flop anyway, these threats have been dropped one-by-one. Now, even water and coal are to stay privatised.

So history is repeating itself: just as Labour after 1945 took the steps which the Tories shrank from taking themselves, the Tories are returning the favour for a future Labour government.

NatWest’s dodgy future

NatWest Bank's 61 percent increase in pretax profits in 1994—up from £989 million to £1.6 billion—was less than well received by the bank's workers. They were furious because the directors will cop huge bonuses, shareholders pocket bigger dividends, while staff get rises averaging 3 percent.

But the City of London wasn’t happy either as the big jump in profits wasn’t due to an improved performance by the bank. Income was down and costs were up while UK banking profits actually fell by £109 million despite savage staff cuts and branch closures.

In fact, the increased profits were almost entirely down to the big drop in bad debt from £1.25 billion to £616 million and is probably a one-off.

The City knows that ever-increasing competition, plus limits to what can be saved by cost-cutting, mean that NatWest’s future profits growth is under threat. Banking is not, as many people imagine, a licence to print money.

Nothing is forever

After World War Two that grand old British institution, the small shopkeeper who was “open all hours”, was decimated by the High Street chainstores which were cheaper and provided greater choice.

The High Street in turn became an institution but is now in trouble. Many of its shops lie empty and Rumbelows entire chain is to close shortly. The recession and high prime-site rents are among the reasons for this, but the main one is the growth of Shopping Malls and edge-of-town Superstores which offer even greater choice plus easy parking.

But nothing is forever. Already Malls and Superstores in America are being challenged by TV shopping which means shoppers don’t even have to leave their homes.

So everything that appears to be stable and permanent is merely in a state of temporary equilibrium and is in the process of becoming something else. This applies not just to capitalism’s hallowed institutions but to the very system itself.

Madras madness

In the Calcutta newspaper, The Telegraph (5th March) we read of the booming trade in kidney selling down in Madras. Like every other market in capitalism, when there is an increase in supply there is a fall in price, in this case from 80,000 rupees to 30,000 rupees. This is approximately from £1,600 to £600.

This macabre trade is defended by a local leading nephrologist. K.C. Reddy is quoted as saying:

"We have a group of people dying and desperate for a kidney. Then there is a group, much below the poverty line, willing to sell anything for some money. For them, selling a kidney is a more altruistic option — at least they are saving, not harming anyone. There is no question of exploitation here."

The newspaper reports that most of the kidneys are going to patients in Germany, Japan and the Gulf. One recipient from Yemen is reported to have paid $10,000 for his transplant.

The whole sordid business is typical of capitalism. Wherever there is human misery there is always “entrepreneurs” quick to cash in. Only in socialism will the best possible medical and health care be free to the whole of the world’s population. 

What the market does to Agriculture (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agriculture today is increasingly production for cash — and
 that means that the lifestyles and needs of both producers
 and consumers are afflicted by the blight of profit, like in any
 other sphere of capitalism, with poor working environments,
 ecological destruction and second-rate products. In socialism, 
human “intervention ” in the form of agriculture would no
 longer be dominated by the impersonal forces of the market, 
but would be under conscious human control. Socialism 
could use the technology developed by capitalism in frame-
works best suited to the requirements of farmers and consumers alike, and would substitute production for the sake of
 capital accumulation with production solely for the satisfaction of needs and desires.

Ecology is about the relationships of living organisms to one another and their physical environment. This complex of relationships is arranged into a number of relatively well-defined ecosystems.

Left to itself, an ecosystem will tend to evolve in a process of “ecological succession", from a simple pioneer stage, through intermediate stages, towards a natural “climax". This is when the diversity of life forms that a particular area can support (under prevailing physical and climatic conditions) has reached its full potential, when there are no more ecological niches or unutilised food resources left for new arrivals to exploit. A climax community will tend to be a relatively stable one — that is, the populations of its constituent species fluctuate very little over time — because of the checks and balances they exert upon each other through the food chain.

Human intervention in nature has the potential to profoundly alter this picture. In a sense, though, to talk of intervention is a misnomer. Strictly speaking, we are part of nature—albeit, a uniquely self-conscious part—and act upon other parts of it to meet our material needs. However, because everything is connected in nature, such actions cannot fail to have ecological repercussions for us and other species. A relatively early example of human intervention is agriculture.

Agriculture entails some reduction in the complexity of plant and animal species inhabiting a particular area; it represents a shift backwards along the line of ecological succession. The climax community is replaced by a “successional community” in which nutrients are made available to a relatively smaller and less diverse number of domesticated species selected for human consumption, with potentially destabilising consequences for the ecosystem in question.

This need not necessarily give cause for concern. In any case, we have little choice in this regard, the existing population could not support itself by reverting to hunting and gathering. What should really concern us now is the sustainability of our agricultural practices. This behoves us to take into account the ecological consequences of such practices, to devise some workable compromise between the pressure of human needs and the ecological integrity of nature.

Typically, this is what traditional systems of fanning tended to do. Indeed, the sustainability of such systems is evidenced by the fact that many small farmers, largely concentrated in the so-called Third World, still substantially rely on a repertoire of time-honoured techniques. These help to reinforce, and in turn are rooted in, the social relations of production of traditional societies, characterised by a strong sense of communality and co-operation. Two closely related aspects of this ecological approach to fanning are diversity and self-sufficiency.

The precise package of techniques adopted will tend to subtlely differ from one locality to the next. This is indicative of a highly sophisticated understanding on the part of traditional farmers of the specific environmental constraints they face, and to which they must adapt, with little or no assistance from outside.

Transition to the market economy

Nevertheless, the outside world has increasingly intruded into the realm of traditional farming. With the historical expansion of the market economy, the relationship between human groups and their environment has undergone a profound transformation. Despite the persistence of a large non-market sector—mainly in the Third World, where much of the output of peasants is destined for household consumption or localised gift exchanges—the market has become the dominant economic system in the world today; it connects every part of it in a complex pattern of physical and informational flows.

How has this affected people’s relationship with the land? In small-scale, autarkic pre-capitalist societies, direct dependence on local resources meant that wanton exploitation of these resources would spell ecological (and thus economic) ruin and the disintegration of the community—unless it could migrate or develop new resources.

With the coming of the market economy, the purpose of farming changed radically—from production for local need to production for the market. This has brought about a corresponding change in the nature of farming. An ecological mode of farming, emphasising risk avoidance and long-term stability of output, has gradually given way to a more ecologically exploitative, “industrial” mode of farming.

This mode of fanning is driven by the need to maximise output, to produce agricultural surpluses, to feed a growing urban population resulting from the development of capitalism, This physical separation of the producers and consumers of food, highlighted by the largely one-way flow of organic material (food products) between them, has entailed not only an increasing problem of waste disposal in the urban centres but also a discontinuation of the traditional practice of recycling such material.

When nutrients removed from the soil as harvested crops are not returned to the soil, agricultural productivity will steadily fall—unless this loss can be made good in some other way. That is precisely what industrial fanning has endeavoured to do through increasing applications of industrially produced artificial fertilisers (and other) inputs to boost yields. Thus, by replacing a cyclical flow of nutrients with a linear one it has reduced the dependence of farmers on local resources but only by increasing their dependence on resources originating outside their locality.

It is important to realise that it is not global economic integration as such that is the cause of the abandoning of “conservationist” agricultural practices. What has caused this is the form economic integration has taken historically until now—the profit-driven market economy.

The dynamic of capitalism, regulated by the law of market competition, is to accumulate capital through the maximisation of profit. This puts pressure on economic actors to cut their unit costs in order to undersell their rivals, not to do so would be to risk being priced out of the market. This, in turn, disposes them to adopt both a short-term and narrow view of production.

Commercial farming

From this perspective, the return of off-farm organic wastes to the land, for example, while technically feasible, will be seen as economically undesirable. Firstly, though the benefits it could bring cannot be doubted, these need time to take effect and in the world of business competition “time is money”. Hence, it will tend to be bypassed in favour of techniques which produce more immediate results.

even where these deplete the natural productivity of the soil in the long run.

Secondly, there are costs considerations which make such a proposition problematic. Thus, domestic sewage and industrial wastes tend to be mixed because it is cheaper to dispose of them in this way, rather than separately. This means, however, that the resulting mixture cannot be applied to the land because of the high levels of toxic chemicals and heavy metals it contains. But while it might thus make “economic sense” to apply artificial fertilisers to the land, rather than separate out domestic sewage for recycling, there are other hidden costs involved in such a course of action; these are not reflected in the narrow definition of“cost” employed by a market-based methodology of cost accounting. An example is the leaching of nitrates into rivers which then have to be removed through expensive technology to make drinking water safe. Such incidental costs are treated as “externalities” insofar as they are not shouldered by the enterprise—the commercial farmer—responsible for them, which would make such an enterprise less competitive were it to take such costs into account.

This is not to suggest that production for the market must completely rule out ecological or organic methods of farming. Nevertheless, such methods go against the grain of capitalism. Organic products are usually more expensive than those produced by industrial farming. Farmers hooked on industrial farming often find it very difficult to convert to organic agriculture; in the transition they will usually have to contend with a significant drop in output and probably profit too. Above all, organic agriculture faces formidable and well-organised opposition from multinational corporations supplying industrial inputs to farmers. It is thus hardly surprising that only a tiny fraction of agricultural land in the developed capitalist countries— less than 3 percent in Europe—is devoted to organic agriculture.

In contrast to capitalism, socialism, as a society freed from the profit motive and competitive pressures “to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible”, will be able to adopt agricultural methods which will achieve a working compromise with nature respecting the long-term considerations which ecological science teaches are vitally important.

Robin Cox

Press Exposure: Who's in Charge? (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Jay is regarded by many people including himself—as one of the cleverest men in Britain, if not the world or perhaps the entire history of the human race. So what part of his historically wonderful brain malfunctioned when he accepted the job of chief of staff to Robert Maxwell, who also had a pretty high opinion of his own intellect and who subjected Jay to years of harassment and humiliation?

For example: in 1989 Jay had to get Maxwell to sign a cheque, a contribution towards the support the Mirror boss had promised to the Commonwealth Games. Maxwell loved this kind of situation. "I will decide when that cheque is paid," he told his cerebral chief-of-staff, “Now fuck off out of here."

The longer Jay stayed on Maxwell's payroll the more harassed and ragged he became, the more he drank and smoked. Hardly a week went by without him having to sack some secretary, receptionist or telephonist—until it was his turn to be fired. In spite of all this he could later say about his time with Maxwell: “Nothing happened that was outside what I expected or regarded as legitimate." (At the time Maxwell was alive: after his death Jay described him as “this crazy guy".)

Sarf London boy

Flamboyant characters are what the newspaper industry is notorious for. While Maxwell was terrorising the staff at the Mirror (if he asked what time it was the wise response was "What time would you like it to be, Bob?") Kelvin Mackenzie was imposing a similar regime at the Sun, where office life was a continual turmoil of abuse, threats and humiliation. Mackenzie took a delight in playing up to his self-image as a Sarf-London-boy-made-good or -bad, depending on whether you were on the receiving end of his ranting temper. He seemed unable to speak a sentence which did not have the word "fuck" in it at least once. He seemed unable to get through a day which did not involve the ritual reduction of some hapless staff member to a trembling, stammering wreck. With all this Mackenzie turned out a newspaper whose circulation climbed up and up, far above its nearest rival. So behind the shrieking and the swearing and the abuse there was a diabolically shrewd journalist—which not everyone would regard as a compliment Mackenzie was very different from the press lords who once dominated the British newspaper industry, passing the ownership from one generation to another to protect what they thought was the highest standards of journalism. This meant (didn't it?) that newspapers always told the truth, always respected privacy, never resorted to salacious exploitation of their readers’ sadder repressions.

Screws of the world

For over 70 years, until it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch, the News of the World was owned by the Carr family. During that time the newspaper became famous, not for its reporting of international events but for its rollicking exposure of vicars (the older the better) who had affairs with their secretaries or parishioners (the younger the better). When the paper was losing so much money that it had to be sold or put to sleep Robert Maxwell tried to take it over, resisted by the editor who claimed that his tawdry conglomeration of sensationalism and juvenile smut was "as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. . . this is a British newspaper run by British people. Let’s keep it that way". But then money spoke louder than jingoism and the Carrs sold out to Murdoch, who was as Australian as a kangaroo meat barbie on Bondi Beach.

The Berry family are another lot to have been ousted in recent years—in their case from ownership of the Daily Telegraph. This paper always had a shrewd eye for its market, apart from its small ads for jobs which were combed through regularly by ambitious managers, it appealed to the tea-shop regulars in places like Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells. This gave a certain allure to its letter columns, which were rather like a primeval mental swamp. Such a distaste for ideas meant that generally the Telegraph’s news coverage was better than average—which included regular in-depth reporting of any scandal or sexual misdemeanour, especially if they involved members of the ruling class whose behaviour had let the side down.

A bit of a con

One family to hang on has been the Harmsworths. associated with the Daily Mail whose politics, they say, have not changed for over 80 years (they must have forgotten that in the 1930s the Mail supported Mosley’s British Union of Fascists). The Daily Mail is not famous for an addiction to the truth. A few years ago they eagerly joined in the Bingo war with rivals like the Sun and the Mirror, claiming to make some lucky people Mail Millionaires. In fact the statistical chance of a millionaire emerging from playing the "game" in the Mail was once in about 400 years. This impressed even Lord Rothermere, who admitted the whole thing was "a bit of a con”.

And that really sums it up. Newspapers are not there to inform us but to be sold, to make profits for the likes of Murdoch and the Rothermeres. The important issue is what is implied by the market they operate in. Do the readers of the Sun, the Mail, the Telegraph and the rest really want nothing better than the world as presented to them in the newspapers? Reading the press should be enough to change the mind of anyone who doubts the urgent need to change society.

Ivan

Will the nurses strike? (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nurses have been offered a 1 percent play rise in the current round of pay talks with the possibility of an extra half to two percent on top of that to be negotiated locally out of existing budgets. Some trusts may fund the extra pay rise out of existing funds but this would be at the expense of staff redundancies and a reduction in the quality of patient care. The Industrial Relations Services surveyed 180 trusts and found that almost half of them expected staff numbers to fall in the next 12 month (Nursing Times, January 1995).

The government's proposal angered the ruling council of the Royal College of Nursing and, for the first time in the 11-year history of the pay review body, it rejected out of hand, without balloting its 300.000 members, a pay offer.

The Royal College of Nursing has a no-strike policy which has been in force since it was founded in 1916. Five ballots have been held to try to overturn this policy but each time the moves to do so have been defeated by large majorities. But the mood is beginning to change. The RCN is considering balloting its members to end its no-strike rule again and this time it is likely that the policy will be changed.

Nurses seem to be waking up to the fact that withdrawal of labour is the chief weapon in the armoury of trade unionists. Without it, or at least the possibility of strike action if negotiations fail, a union is severely handicapped when fighting employers for better pay and working conditions.

When the previous secretary of the RCN. the late Trevor Clay, wanted to discuss nurses' pay awards with the then Health Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, because of nurses’ anger over the levels of pay. he was not granted an audience. Clarke, of course, was under no obligation to negotiate with an organisation which had abrogated its power to strike and therefore posed no threat.

If the RCN’s campaign to persuade the government to fund the full 3 percent is successful nurses will still be worse off. Inflation is currently running at over 3 percent and could go higher still. Last year's pay rise for public sector workers was only 1.5 percent. Nurses' living standards will continue to fall. But while nurses have received low rises, trust executives have awarded themselves average rises of 6.6 percent and the highest paid of these now receive over £100.000 a year (Nursing Times, January 1995).

The RCN has co-operated with the health service union UNISON (an amalgamation of COHSE, NUPE and NALGO) in recent months and a combined strike by both unions could paralyse British hospitals. But the unions have already backed down from a claim of 8 percent at the end of last year when inflation was running at less than 3 percent. It seems that the RCN. in calling for the government to fund the full 3 percent nationally, is giving the government a chance to retreat from its original position and yet still keep nurses' pay below the level of inflation. The government could feel satisfied with this result and the RCN could claim a victory without having to resort to strike action: only the nurses would be the losers.

Deteriorating conditions

In the meantime, nurses may decide to stop working the average 4.8 hours unpaid overtime that they work each week saving the NHS £180 million a year (Observer, 19 February). Nurses have seen their working conditions deteriorate in other ways: patient turnover has increased while the number of trained nurses to look after them has fallen. Newly qualified nurses, if they can obtain employment at all, are offered part-time, temporary posts. Ward sisters’ posts are being phased out in many hospitals, limiting the career prospects of staff nurses.

Some Health Service trusts have been training support workers to carry out tasks presently performed by trained nurses. A few trusts have tried to downgrade trained nurses to support workers, but the legal protection of nurses' registration may prevent this from happening.

There is no doubt that the exploitation of nurses has worsened: fewer nurses work harder for. in real terms, less pay whilst patient turnover continues to rise. But, due to fraudulent manipulation of statistics, it is difficult to assess just how much working conditions have deteriorated or how badly the trusts are performing. Much higher numbers of part-time nurses are employed, making the total number of staff seem greater whilst the number of hours worked continues to fall. In the drive to increase turnover there is pressure to discharge patients prematurely. If these patients have to return to hospital as a result of being sent home too soon they are counted as new admissions. Poor care masquerades as efficiency in the statistics.

If a patient changes consultants this is recorded as a new patient. Rosie Williams, the RCN's policy adviser, claims that nurses in Casualty Departments are having pressure put on them to record misleading information to help trusts improve their position in hospital league tables. But lengthening waiting lists highlight the continuing shortcomings of the NHS: the waiting list for treatment in London has risen by five percent in the last year (Observer, 19 February).

The increasing number of people needing treatment indicates a problem which capitalist politicians are careful to ignore. Poverty is the main cause of ill-health. Unemployment; lower wages for workers whose labour is in plentiful supply if they are unskilled or in occupations in which the demand for traditional skills is in decline; poorer housing have all affected the working class. Politicians, whether enthusiastic supporters of capitalism or apologists for the system, are unable to remedy the human misery that capitalism causes. It will take more than a strike to permanently improve nurses' conditions and people’s health. It will take a completely new way of organising our lives.

Carl Pinel

50 Years Ago: The Cause of Crime (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Whitehead asks for details of the avenues by which rich men can escape hanging when poor men can’t. The answer should immediately occur to him. Wealth can purchase medical testimony of useful kinds to impress judge and jury; it can fetch witnesses from all over the world; it can provide a barrage of the most skilful barristers and solicitors with assistants to hunt up records and precedents; it can also buy witnesses. There is also the general fact Mr. Whitehead overlooks—the undiscovered crimes committed by the wealthy which they can commit because they are wealthy, and which do not figure in crime statistics. (, . , )

It is a waste of time for Mr. Whitehead to blindly repeat the same contentions without meeting the arguments we have put against them. We have given ample evidence to show that crime in general can be explained by the social environment, and modern crime by the capitalist environment in which we live.

(From a reply to a letter, Socialist Standard, April 1945)

World View: Arms and Mandela (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

For decades, Nelson Mandela decried the apartheid machine and its arms hardware manufacturer Armscor (South African Armaments Corporation). and many commentators therefore looked with interest to the country's first free elections last year to see how the new government would tackle the arms issue. Socialists saw what they had always anticipated. Overnight, Mandela changed his views and bowed to the whims of international capital. Last November, launching the South African equivalent of Farnborough, the Defence Exposition of South Africa (DEXSA), Mandela announced that "South Africa is launching a defence industry which is guided by new priorities and a new ethos,” that this was a "unique opportunity to help ensure that peaceful purposes are served by the defence industry" (New African, February 1995).

This from the man who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace!

Mandela's reasoning was that arms sales could be justified if the recipients were "responsible" countries—an idea that smacks of insanity, for any country that buys arms does so with the view that they will come in useful. Further, any increase in the world's arms stockpile can only increase the likelihood of conflict breaking out Kasrils. a former member of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was another to defend the South African search for new markets for arms. The South African government, he stated,

"...is establishing strict criteria concerning countries to which we will or will not sell arms ... countries that violate their people's human rights, are involved in civil war, or threaten the sovereignty of their neighbours".

Kasrils's words come only a month after a shipload of automatic rifles, intended for unstable Lebanon, ended up in Yemen, itself embroiled in civil strife.

Embargo

In 1977, the UN Security Council had imposed an arms embargo on South Africa. At the end of May 1994 it was lifted. As the election results were announced, Armscor, assured of Mandela’s support, informed the international media that it would now increase its share of the world’s arms market from 0.2 percent to 2 percent, a tenfold leap. In reality, the UN embargo had only paid the anti-apartheid lobby lip-service, for Armscor had enjoyed 17 years of covert circumvention of the embargo, supplying arms to Angola, Argentina (used in the Falklands War). Iraq. Libya, Rwanda. Somalia and Zaire—everyone a repressive regime.

Indeed, the Guardian reported last year that “evidence has been accumulating that for political and strategic reasons, Western governments and their intelligence agencies turned a blind eye to sanctions-busting" (23 September).

Abba Omar, an Armscor spokesman and another former Umkhonto we Sizwe figure believes the South African arms industry has an "outstanding contribution to make to the development of South Africa". His view is that the arms industry, being the biggest exporter of manufactured goods. not only brings much needed money to the South African economy, but that the technology it generates spills over into developments in transport, health care, water purification and the like, as well as providing employment. Thus, as the argument goes, everyone benefits.

Ranged against the advocates of arms trade benefits is the anti-weapons lobby. One such voice, Peter Storey, a Methodist minister argues that “to talk of a moral or ethical defence industry is a contradiction in terms. The defence industry represents one of those areas of human behaviour where ethics have to be suspended in order for it to function at all (New African).

In her analysis Open Arms for the Prodigal Son; The Future of South Africa’s Arms Trade Policies (BASIC Report, June 1994) Sue Willett, of King’s College, London’s Centre for Defence Studies, argues the arms industry can only be developed at the expense of civilian industry:

“Heavy dependence on the exports of weapons is not a good foundation for an exporting manufacturing sector . . . The danger is that temporary reliance on arms exports serves to put off into the indefinite future a really vigorous programme of developing alternative civil industries (Quoted in CAAT News, August 1994).

Insane logic

Mandela promised, on coming to power, that he would see to the implementation of improved housing, health care and sanitation, for instance. To maintain an arms industry is not only to betray the aspirations raised by the ANC’s Freedom Charter. It is more importantly an acknowledgement by Mandela, a recognition, that what the ANC stood for in the past—"black majority rule" and "socialism now"—was in fact a pipe-dream, and that those who take power within the capitalist system have to allow, and encourage it to operate according to its own insane logic.

When the arms embargo was lifted, Armscor’s general manager announced that he expected South Africa’s weapons exports to double within the next financial year. Between 1993 and 1994 Armscor’s sales to some 55 countries netted South Africa R886 million. If we add to this the fact that 72 countries attended DEXSA recently to view the wares of over 100 exhibitors, and the recent British invitation for South Africa to put a tender to supply 90 "Roolvalk" helicopters for the British army, then it becomes apparent that headlines like "Mandela applauds South Africa's rising arms trade" (Times, 23 November 1994) clearly cast Mandela in the same mould as every other pro-capitalist government official in the world.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Mandela has subordinated everything he once stood for to the profit motive and to the risks, inherent to the capitalist system, it entails. With Mandela aiming to stand down at the next election, it is evident that he will do so having sanctioned the ascendancy and, more, the legitimacy of the profit-seeking élite of South Africa. Time will teach the South African working class not to put their faith in leaders, but in their own collective strength and to link their struggle with workers everywhere.

John Bissett

A Framework of Deceit (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the wake of the republican and loyalist ceasefires in Northern 
Ireland the British and Irish governments finally produced their
 long awaited Framework document. The buzz phrase contained in the document is “parity of esteem” — but they don’t
mean between the rich and the poor!

Some years ago, when the so-called constitutional parties in Northern Ireland failed yet again to work out a formula for their participation in the government of the province, some of the parties invited the British government, in concert with the government of the Republic of Ireland, to offer guidelines for a system of acceptable government.

The period since then has seen a number of summit meetings between the Prime Ministers of both countries and between the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Patrick Mayhew, and Dick Spring, the Irish Deputy Prime Minister. In the background, advising, and being advised by their chiefs, a bevy of senior civil servants, constitutional lawyers and experts in political draughtsmanship laboured away over a very hot potato.

In early February, against the encouraging background of months of relative peace following the republican and loyalist cease-fires, the public waited expectantly for the promised Framework document. Peace, or at least the ending of slaughter on the streets, had created an atmosphere which younger people in places like Belfast had never experienced before, a marked drop in tension and fear brought people out at night; news was about a new-hoped-for prosperity as money appeared on the commercial horizon to underwrite the “peace dividend”.

Most surprising of all was the apparent transformation in the attitudes of the paramilitaries. Being the harbingers of peace, the republican and loyalist paramilitaries were given centre stage and, remarkably, the apologists for yesterday’s killers showed more understanding of the situation, and more tolerance of their opponents, than the allegedly pragmatic politicians had ever displayed. The big names in local politics, the political ratbags whose words built barricades, were pushed into the wings as it seemed yesterday’s hard-men could make the dream of peace a reality. Impatiently, people waited while the media speculated on the date for the eagerly-awaited Framework document.

It was at that point that the Murdoch newspaper, the Times (which, in pursuit of Murdoch's devious ambitions, has, over the least few years, played a sinister role in trying to undermine what passes for democracy in Britain) threw a bomb into the peace process.

Low-grade bible-basher

This took the form of selective leakings of the Framework document and was calculated to ensure that the latter was stillborn. That it was a malicious act of treachery against the British government by a well-placed Unionist in Britain became quickly clear, as did the identity of the person concerned. What was not commented on was the recklessness of the act which, if the less-pragmatic mob had acted predictably, could have resulted in an explosion of loyalist violence. But the streets in loyalist Ulster remained quiet while Paisley vied with his competitor colleague, Trimble, in an orgy of ignorance and bigotry that clearly repudiated their claim that they could work out a formula for coexistence with the nationalists.

Ironically, loyalism’s erstwhile hard-men urged reflection and restraint and the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Hugh Smyth, politically associated with the hard-men, displayed more dignity in his overtly working class demeanour and more realism in his comments than the respectable scions of Ulster Unionism and the holy hypocrites of the misnamed “Democratic” Unionist Party.

The Unionists had to make a rapid deployment into rank bigotry to avoid being outflanked by “Doctor” Paisley. He, of course, was bellowing “No!” and “Never!” at John Major and the Irish Prime Minister without leaving Belfast. With the purblind aggression and violent bigotry that has marked his rise from low-grade bible-bashing to gauleiter of his own Ku Klux Klan, he again backed himself into a corner of immovable intransigence, dragging the competing Unionist Party with him. The media had a field day and Gerry Adams probably dusted his portrait of Paisley, who has done more for Republicanism than a dozen IRA battalions.

When the Framework document finally did appear it wrapped a morsel of political comfort for everyone in complex but conciliatory prose. It did, however, spell out in clear and unequivocal language what the British government called “various political realities”. These include: 

" the present reality, in fact and in international law, of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, affirmed in the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. It is the clear position, as set out in the 1973 Act and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, that the current constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom will not change, save with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland clearly expressed. This guarantee is reaffirmed in the Joint Declaration ” (Frameworks for the Future, page 14).

Further guarantees from the British government and from the government of the Republic regarding Northern Ireland’s future as part of the United Kingdom are to be found throughout the document—indeed, the undertaking is repeated over and over again as it has been ad nauseam by successive British governments over the past quarter of a century—a guarantee accepted by the Irish government, the SDLP and even now, albeit indirectly and grudgingly, by Sinn Fein. But even as the British Prime Minister was handing out the document to the press. Paisley’s “democratic” Unionist Party was condemning it and challenging the probity of yet another British government. After quite a remarkable bout of speed reading, spokespersons for the Unionist Party were boxing themselves into the same corner as the DUP and, as the day wore on, the character of John Major was diminishing by the minute.

The Framework document does not, nor is it intended to, address any working class problems. When Thatcher and Fitzgerald signed the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, Thatcher said, with an honesty bordering on contempt for the people of Northern Ireland, that it was not concerned with facts but only with perceptions. Similarly, the complex and torturously repetitive language in this latest document is meant to soothe Unionist fears while assuring “parity of esteem” to nationalists.

Not indifferent

Normally, the day-to-day schemes for the political administration of capitalism are only of passing interest to socialists whose task remains the same in any nominally democratic organisation of the system. On the other hand, we can not be indifferent to the slaughter of our fellow-workers nor does political terrorism create the best climate for rational consideration of democratic change. Hence our interest in the Framework document and our hope that it will succeed in ending permanently the division and hatred which has plagued Northern Ireland since the inception of the state.

Clearly and unequivocally the Framework paper says its proposals are not going to be imposed on the province. It makes clear, also, that the local politicians are free to find among their own deliberations an alternative formula for government, always providing that such a formula meets the provisions for “parity of esteem” for all citizens set out in the Framework document. This latter provision is, in fact, the only matter that the document insists on and, in the light of this, the refusal of the Unionist parties even to discuss it implies that their objection is to this single inflexible obligation.

Even though its language is coaxing and reasonable, in its entirety, it seemed to us, there is a note of finality and Unionist politicians certainly have the right to feel apprehensive. It is their own behaviour, however, that could well trigger off the exasperation of the British government. We believe that whereas the Unionist political leaders seem to have learnt little, the small political parties that now speak for the loyalist paramilitaries are getting the message. Not only that but, unlike Paisley, Trimble and their political ilk, they see that message as the need to reach an acceptable accommodation with Nationalists and the southern government and they know that, if this is achieved, the northern state will endure for the foreseeable future and the concept of a unitary state will be overridden by reciprocal arrangements between north and south.

In such a situation it is easy to discern the possibility of those workers who support Ulster nationalism, as well as those who support Irish nationalism, coming to the realisation that nationalism does not offer any solution to our common working class problems and that, while you can have “parity of esteem” between catholics and protestants, or unionists and nationalists, there can be no parity of esteem between the capitalist class, who own wealth, and the wage workers who produce that wealth.

Richard Montague

France - Lutte Ouvrière (1995)

Party News from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party plans to participate with a literature stall and possibly hold one or more meetings, at the Lutte Ouvrière Fête to be held at Presles. near the Forêt de Nile Adam, about 20 miles north of Paris, on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of June

To make a success of this venture, and to introduce as many French workers as possible to Socialist ideas, we will need members and sympathisers to assist and, of course, enjoy themselves at the fête!

Would readers who are interested, and would like more details, please write to me c/o The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Peter E. Newell

These Foolish Things: “Scientific” research (1995)

The Scavenger column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger who will publish the best.

“Scientific” research

Increasingly, large companies are shedding their own research departments and “buying in” research from specialists. The obvious advantage of this is that work does not have to be found for idle researchers.

But, more importantly, the external professionals can be assumed to be impartial in their findings. On the other hand, any findings they produce which are not to the liking of the commissioning firm can be referred back for “further confirmation”.

Gray Robertson, President of Healthy Buildings International, USA, a research company, did not wait for this. He personally altered the figures his researchers had established for cigarette smoke levels in buildings. He crossed out the figures and wrote in numbers half as high. This made it possible for the American Tobacco Company to deny knowledge of the addictive and damaging qualities of their products.

The annual budget for the US intelligence empire is S29 billion.

Transporting live cattle

The Transport Minister, Stephen Norris, has opposed the pressure for the government to spend large amounts of money on public transport systems to cut vehicle exhaust pollution. He said that the private car was: “extraordinarily convenient. You have you own company, your own temperature control, your own music and you don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you.”

Know your place

This month, at the beginning of the new tax year, the government is abolishing the 120-year-old rate levied on field sports—or, more precisely, on the land used for shooting and fishing.

This should raise the market value of thousands of acres of wild, uncultivatable land in Scotland where the price has been depressed in the last few years. Estate agents calculate the value of such land by averaging the number of grouse shot, deer killed or salmon caught. The current value of a brace of grouse in this calculation is about £2,500, a stag at about £18,000 and a salmon in rich rivers at anything up to £10,000.

This is the main reason why Kristiansen (the Lego manufacturer) recently paid around £3 million for the Strathconon estate. The 20,000-acre Tulchan estate in Morayshire fetched £12 million and the rich 32,000-acre Yorkshire estate of Gunnerside was bought by Robert Miller, the American, for approximately £10 million. If you want to enjoy the same sort of freedom to slaughter wildlife, the 6,000-acre Lyon estate in Perthshire is on the market at £2.5 million. A bargain, by the look of it, because it has its own hydroelectric plant.

To be fair, not all such landowners buy the land for blood sports. For some, the objective is simply guaranteed privacy. They want to leave behind the places—and the people—that their wealth comes from. They want that essential quality of private property—to keep everyone else out

“The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself ” John Kenneth Galbraith. .

The Scavenger

O. J. (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Certain combinations of letters from the alphabet, without forming words, convey a curious symbolic significance. Phonetically meaningless letter-clusters like JFK, Plc, CP and PhD have entered our common discourse, turning us each into little Second World War codebreakers. We have only to see a Plc to know that They own more than Us (not to be confused with U.S.) and are probably crooked. JFK invokes tedious murder conspiracies and it is hard to think of a CP or an SWP without expecting a dead Russian to introduce himself to you. U.N. equals impotence, E.R. is for arrogance and GMTV is a password for ignorance.

CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC, closely followed by BBC 1, are in the midst of an obsession about O.J. Guilty or innocent? For a state which murdered over a hundred thousand people with two atomic bombs it is a somewhat belated shock at the news of a murder. Daytime soaps have vanished from US TV as millions tune in to the latest dramas of barking dogs and melting ice-creams which comprise the evidence in the O.J. trial. Never since J.R. was shot have so many Americans been so involved in a matter of such earth-shattering triviality.

The fact that O.J. is rich means that he can afford the best defence lawyers on the market. The fact that he is black means that he needs them badly. How many black workers are waiting on Death Row right now while the world holds its breath to see if O.J. will be O.K.? A Los Angeles Times survey conducted last month found that 65 percent of those polled knew the name of the Judge in the O.J. trial (Ito by name, which is possibly two letters in Korean: a man who looks permanently surprised that he is not a waiter in a fancy restaurant), whereas only 45 percent knew the name of Newt Gingrich, the reptilian Republican who makes Toad Clinton look vaguely sane.

Orwell’s horrible prediction that words would one day be so diminished that nobody would have anything left to say which the state did not want them to say is probably no more than a tax inspector’s fantasy. In fact, far from being dominated by Newspeak or suppressed into pitiful silence, the tendency is to let the chattering millions choke on their own babble. A people prattling about whether O.J. is an S.O.B. is unlikely to notice that a black American is more likely to be in prison than in university.

Babble has reached its nadir with the latest pollutant of the airwaves. Talk Radio UK. (Of course, U.K. is a coded euphemism for an enforced combination of countries; what Tory right-wingers would call a super-state when UK is replaced by EU.) You know' how advertisements for the Sun are shouted by loutish buffoons for whom salesmanship sounds like a kind of threat? Well, Talk Radio UK is like that all day; It is like a philosophy seminar conducted by the Mitchell Brothers from EastEnders, with callers who drone endlessly about O.J. and their sexual secrets (revealed to anyone bored enough to listen).

Given the job (assuming for a few paranoid moments that there is such a job) of ensuring the passivity of the working class there would be two potential strategies. One of them, which we may call the Iranian Solution, would be to torture the life out of anyone suspected of an independent thought. This approach is big in Teheran and Damascus and provides healthy profits for torture equipment manufacturers in Coventry, although it is costly on bullets and wages for the army, screws and secret police. The cheaper way can be thought of as the Talk Radio UK Solution. Let them eat cake; let them talk crap — same principle, different century.

Trying to hold a conversation with a fourteen-year-old about computers is an invitation to a world of alphabetical derangement. It is the nearest experience on a personal level to sitting day after day in the Stock Exchange where language has been reduced to figures, catchphrases and communications where buttons have relieved brains of the need for activity. It is a world of codes written by idiots to convey the rules of idiocy.

Talk Radio UK, the First national commercial radio in Britain, tells the story of a world where reality has become a lost cause. They don’t talk about life, they talk about talking about life. The U.S. legal pundits whose daily reflections about the O.J. case give some poor wretches something to wake up for, are not talking about truth or justice or evidence, but about how these things are being talked about—or, more often, not talked about. Blabbering about blabbering: the pastime of a society in which life is increasingly acted out rather than lived. The irony of O.J.’s limited acting talent which was employed to make profits for a movie called [Naked] Gun is only matched by the recent decision of the rock megastar, Prince, who, going one stage further than turning himself into an initialised rock code (U2, UB40, El7, INXS), is to be known in future by a shapeless squiggle. Surely a future presidential candidate in the making here. 

Steve Coleman

Letters: No opposition worth mentioning (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

No opposition worth mentioning

Dear Editors,

Politics is the art or science of administration of affairs; and not the art or science of government as most people think, because the whole concept of government is thrown overboard by all serious students of politics ever since the law of social change was discovered in the middle of the last century.

The concept of "unfolding of productive forces" stands today unchallenged and unassailable; that is: factories, mills, workshops and farms in every country in the world are waiting ready to produce all we need abundantly; in other words, we have a potential plenty today. This is not at all a controversial issue; but only a fact acknowledged by all experts in the field of science and technology.

But why can’t we unfold these productive forces and produce all we need abundantly, and then distribute all over the world?

The real barrier to the unfolding is the lack of knowledge of a new alternative on the part of working people all over the world, and not the opposition of the owners of those productive forces as most people think. That was an old idea held by many in the early stage of the present economic set-up. in the last century, because democracy as we see it today had not developed then, i.e. universal franchise, freedom of speech, and the separation of the executive and the judiciary. After the development of democracy in its full form, it was taken for granted that any minority will be compelled to leave the scene on the emergence of a new majority, with any new idea.

In those days some groups, here and there, held that even an armed conflict is likely between working people and those owners of productive forces in order to defeat them. Now we are in an entirely new situation where we tragically fail to realise the simple truth that there is an alternative to the present way of living. Once this alternative is widely grasped by people everywhere, there is no question of any opposition worth mentioning.

Each and every reader is cordially invited to think over this matter very deeply on the line of discovering any new concrete proposal, which can be implemented in present-day society, through which we can break new ground from where we shall straightaway drive into a new set-up without buying and selling. and producing only for use. 

M. J. Panikkar, 

Kerala, India

Cardboard cut-outs and “collateral damage”

Dear Editors,

Remember the bellicose drum-beating of the Tory cabinet in the Gulf War; or the cheapjack nationalism of their lackeys in the right-wing press; or the American general like some grotesque cardboard cutout from MASH, talking of "collateral damage” in the bombings of women and children?

Of course it was in the interests of all those people in the UN to show illiteracy of our historical culpability in this region. This war was all about oil and less about justice: the little Mussolini still remains, savaging his own people—the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.

The early 1920s and the British Empire reigns supreme. My late father recalled as a boy, after the First World War, the maimed and blinded veterans of the trenches begging in the streets of Watford. As one of a poor family with eight children, he enlisted at 18 in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. That was in September 1923. Scores of young men in towns throughout the land would have done the same—to face a life of harsh discipline, gruelling 25-mile route marches and abysmal pay of two shillings a day. to escape the crippling unemployment of those times.

In November 1924, the Bedfords were despatched to Iraq, the men travelling like cattle for two days in open trucks, with the bitter desert cold, arriving at the largest British aerodrome east of Suez.

Oil was being discovered in large quantities in Iraq and British military operations were being carried out with a planned and ruthless precision. Patrols of 60 men would guard the huge airfield and Rolls Royce armoured cars would race though villages, with rocks being hurled by the angry local people. In 1925 a Company of the Bedfords (2nd Battalion) became the world’s first airborne troops, when they were flown up to Kurdistan in Vickers Victoria bombers. Here they occupied a ruined fort captured from the Turks in World War One.

One day an order came to despatch a platoon of 36 men into the hills to punish a remote Kurdish village. The Desert Police who dressed like arabs and were a sort of archetypal SAS had alleged that the villagers had shot down a small bi-plane and tortured its geologist pilot to death. My late father was a heliograph signaller in this small punitive force, which by dawn on the third day’s march from the fort surrounded the village. No real resistance was made: yet the village was burned to the ground, hidden underground stores of grain and water destroyed, some men in the village were hung and women, children and old men were driven out into the hills. It was October 1925, with winter coming on. Back at the fort, a brigadier had been flown up from his safe office job and congratulated the platoon on their return, ending with the words: "in three months, that village will cease to exist”.

Those who dispute the authenticity of this engagement will doubtless find it documented in the archive material of the "Bedfords" regiment. More importantly, those who boast about the Gulf War might digest and reflect on with a little humility the incidents described here. As our historical stupidity in Ireland formed a security platform for the IRA, so former arrogance and greed in Iraq, aided by subsequent collusion in arms sales, sowed the seeds for the bullying rise of Saddam.

The incident described here is an extreme and nasty example of the sort of militarism which must have been commonplace enough throughout the colonial Empire—an unwholesome collusion between the thuggery of emerging multi-nationals and right-wing politicians—with the soldiers "at the sharp end" doing their dirty work for them. It is this same rapacious greed— fuelled by "market forces" thinking—which is allowing the extermination of indigenous peoples and millions of acres of rain forest. treasure houses of irreplaceable bio-diversity beyond mere price, which must be checked by sane people at the present day. 

John Sears, 

Egremont, Cumbria

Reply:

One point. It was not us workers who were responsible for bombing the Kurds. It was our ruling class. So it's their "historical culpability" not "ours".

Editors

Ernie rides again?

Dear Editors,

In reply to the Scavenger’s “Bimbos for Christ's sake!”, (February Socialist Standard) please would you print the following: "Scavengers for Christ’s sake!

Beer bellies and bald heads are currently the fashion for those men who give slobs a bad name. But now sexism is becoming fashionable too.

Men like Benny Hill and "The Scavenger" (still reactionary after all these years) have embraced a few dodgy assumptions and bared a few prejudices in their time. But now, apparently, they are embracing misogyny and baring their ignorance as well. Let's face it, it’s got to be true if the bigots believe it.

Veronica Clanchy, Kate Rigby, Ann Rigby,

Poole, Dorset

Reply:

We can assure you that The Scavenger is not a Benny Hill loving misogynist.

Editors

In a Tiswas over Blue Peter (1995)

TV Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

How capitalism moulds the minds of children should be of concern to any socialist. For it is in childhood that most people develop a value system which is, to a greater or lesser extent, that of the prevailing system of society. As anyone who has observed children in the playground or on the street will testify, acquisitiveness. competition, selfishness and aggressive behaviour are developed within the first few years of a human’s existence by capitalism in distinction to, and at the expense of. co-operation, mutual self-respect and community solidarity. It is in the formative years that a child learns what "human nature" is supposed to be and what "common sense" is. This is because capitalism requires unaccepting, competitive thoughts and behaviour traits— it is, by its very nature, a competitive. aggressive and ruthless system with little room either for "sentimentality" or critical thinking. It is the "I’m all right. Jack" society, with the moronic “sod you!” philosophy and value system, and children soon learn this well enough.

Commodities aimed at the children’s market reflect this process very obviously. The life of a child in capitalism now seems to be one of never-ending competition; not just in exams, but to kill the most aliens, collect the most pots of gold, be the toughest warrior or the prettiest and thinnest girl in the class.

Before television, it was comics that played a vitally important socialisation role in childhood development, and to a lesser extent they still do. Today, though, the Victoriana of Jackie and Bunty has been replaced with the competitive society's Just Seventeen (aimed at those nearer seventeen months than seventeen years) and the adventurism of the Eagle by the sci-fi horror of Judge Dredd and 2000AD.

This conditioning process is now dominated by television, with computer games catching up fast in the outside lane. Children's television is actually an object lesson in conditioning and socialisation. This is not to say it is all bad—indeed, some of it is rather interesting. It has to be of some meagre standard today if it is to attract the attention of children at all because they have so many other potential distractions. There is no overt conspiracy to indoctrinate—at least probably not—it is just that the values and prejudices picked up by the programmes’ makers throughout their lives in capitalism tend to be uncritically repeated or reinvented for the youngsters of today.

Milk bottle tops

Blue Peter has always been a good example of this. Though it has always been on the "safe" side by capitalism's standards, with comparatively little encouragement of competition and aggressiveness, it has nonetheless tended to reinforce prevalent political attitudes in society without ever stopping to really think about it. This is most transparently the case with its obsession with charity. No-one can deny that there is not a well meaning veneer to the work of Blue Peter on this front, but its activities never really go beyond youthful training for the Rotary Club, a sanitised guilt-trip for those who know that poverty, deprivation and starvation exist, but do not know why.

Blue Peter, like virtually all children's programmes. does not encourage its audience to ask questions. Let the kids collect their milk-bottle tops for Somalia, or Bangladesh, or for the poverty-stricken disabled in Britain, but don't encourage them to ask why they have to do it. Just run the jumble sales, send the parcels and money off and collect your Blue Peter badge before you go to heaven. Blue Peter's attempts at conditioning go well beyond its charity campaigning, however. If you doubt this, examine closely its portrayal of historical events in its potted-documentary slots. If the Great Man theory of history lives on. it is surely here. Blue Peter's inordinate preoccupation with Kings. Queens and great military leaders is such as to shame the most conformist primary school in the land.

Of course, these days the programme has gone a bit "trendy”, at least in outward appearance, and is in many respects a shadow of its former self, but the essential formula of charity work and ruling class propaganda disguised as knowledge is still very much intact.

Other children's programmes are even less subtle. The ever-growing list of cartoon programmes demonstrates this. Today Scooby Doo has been replaced by Power Rangers and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The common threads in these type of programmes are aggressiveness and competition with a hint of gang-warfare. Indeed, just as comics have become more violent and belligerent in tone, so have the cartoons. Is a preoccupation with maiming, death and destruction entirely healthy in those so young? Even some of the more worthy apologists for capitalism argue not. For some, pornography could hardly be a worse influence.

Unlike most of the cartoons, some children’s TV programmes are well worth watching for entertainment value and give a reasonable child’s eye-view of our insane world. Unfortunately, there are not many of them. Probably the best, ever since its inception in the late 1970s. is Grange Hill, the drama about life in a North London comprehensive. Created by Phil Redmond, the man who created Brookside, Grange Hill is an object lesson in how to write, direct and produce a realistic drama series— those working on EastEnders should certainly take note.

Among the most entertaining TV programmes for children are the ones shown on a Saturday morning. There is a definite end-of-term feel about these which makes them particularly engaging for those cooped up in a classroom all week, or for that matter, an office—which is the same thing without the playtime. Currently BBC I is running Live and Kicking while ITV counters with What’s Up Doc?, a cartoon-orientated programme which at its best has mirrored the never-to-be-forgotten Tiswas of the late 70s and early 80s. Live and Kicking hosted by Emma Forbes and Andi Peters is the latest descendant in the line stretching from Noel Edmonds's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (remember that?) to Phillip Schofield and Sarah Green’s Going Live! Both are excellent examples of the mix of anarchic humour and pop star infatuation that has long characterised TV on Saturday mornings in Britain. They appear to be great fun to make—the camera operators rarely stop laughing—but they are invariably led by the values and concerns that infect the other kids’ programmes, merely doing it with more style, vigour and humour. This is something perhaps, but it’s not a great compensation.

One would have thought that television programmes aimed at the most junior members of society would try and cultivate their better natures and desire to exist peacefully and co-operatively, kindling inquisitive minds as much as possible. Despite the few exceptions that have been mentioned. this is generally very far from being the case. Realistic drama invariably takes second place to cartoon violence, and quality investigative programming to indoctrination and lowest-common denominator TV. We can probably expect little better from the market economy.

According to audience research figures, a hefty dose of those brought up on a diet of children's television and cartoons go on to become fodder for Blind Date (currently on its final warning from the Independent Television Commission) and The Word (ditto). There are no Blue Peter's badges on offer for guessing why.

Dave Perrin