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./articles/Schreiner-Olive/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.women.authors.schrein.polsit | <body>
<h4>Olive Shreiner</h4>
<h3>The Political Situation</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<strong>Source:</strong> <em>The Political Situation,</em> T. Fisher Unwin, 1896;<br>
<strong>Transcribed:</strong> <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/sryan.htm">Sally Ryan</a> for marxists.org in 2000.</p>
<hr class="end">
<h3>PART I.</h3>
<p>
LET US glance first at the conditions of this Retrogressive Movement, and see if its cause be discoverable.</p><p>
That such a movement has taken place admits of no doubt.</p><p>
Many of the measures passed have not only shown no tendency to accord with the movement known as Liberal or Progressive in all countries inhabited by Europeans; but they have shown a persistent tendency to
move in a contrary direction, and even to undo the more advanced and progressive legislative enactments of the past.</p>
<h4>RETROGRESSIVE LEGISLATION.</h4>
<p>
While in all civilised countries where representative institutions prevail the tendency is to move without intermission in the direction of a broadened electoral basis,<a href="#1" name="a1"><span class="NOTE">[1]</span></a>
so that in several of the English colonies to-day we find manhood suffrage, or one man one vote, or adult suffrage; and while even the most backward of European countries are rapidly tending year by year towards these conditions–we, I believe, alone among civilised people have deliberately, during the last few years, narrowed our basis,I and undone the progressive work of the last generation.</p><p>
So also while in all enlightened countries during the past sixty years public opinion has been steadily advancing in the direction of doing away with the lash as a punishment for minor offences, we in this country have not only, during the last years, possessed certain individuals in our Legislative Councils who have striven to introduce an Act making legal the infliction of corporal punishment for the smallest offences towards master or mistress on the part of household or other servants, and which, if passed would be merely a recurrence to slavery under a new name–but this Act was voted for by three members in the last Ministry, two of them being Englishmen, and one the Premier, Mr. Cecil Rhodes.</p><p>
Again, while in ail civilised countries the tendency, as each country advances, is to consider more and more the welfare of its labouring classes; to remove oppressive restrictions; to endeavour by every lawful means to increase their wages; and to regard the labourer, not merely as a means for increasing the wealth of other sections of the community, but to legislate for <em>his</em> welfare, and to regard <em>his</em> happiness as one of the pressing considerations of the State–we in this country have, under the Glen Grey Act of last year, brought in and supported by Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his following, an enactment which compels even the self-supporting and industrious native to work for the white man for a certain time every year, whether he will or no; laying himself open to imprisonment or fine
if he refuse, even though his going out to labour for the white man should entail the neglect of his own cultivated lands.</p><p>
So again, with regard to land tenure; while in all progressive countries there is a tendency to obtain and retain as large a part as possible of lands, mines, and great public works as the property of, and to be worked for the benefit of, the nation as a whole–we, in this country, are for ever and completely alienating our public lands, our minerals, our precious stones, and even our public works.</p><p>
And further, not only are we alienating them within our own boundaries, and allowing almost without a struggle a small band of Monopolists to gain possession and control of that wealth which should be ours and our children's to employ for the benefit of the nation that shall be, but we are enabling them to grasp adjacent territories still uninhabited by the white man, so that when the mass of civilised men shall enter into occupation there, they will find nothing of value left for themselves in that state which, by their labour, they will have to build up; the alien will already have set his grasp upon all that is fair or rich. For not as in other countries has the Monopolist risen up
among us, a growth of our own , he comes from a foreign clime, and sweeps bare the virgin land before him like the locust; and, like the locust, leaves nothing for his successors but the barren earth.</p><p>
While in New Zealand and Other advanced colonies every legislative effort is being made to retain the land for the people, we are quietly allowing ourselves to be stripped bare session after session, and are confiding our possession into the hands of the Speculator and Monopolist.</p><p>
Lastly, while in enlightened countries there is a continually increasing tendency to raise the revenue, not by taxing the primary necessaries of life, upon which almost the whole income of the labouring classes is necessarily expended, but to raise it through the taxation of luxuries, whether by means of Excise or Import dues, we in this country find that not only are our necessaries of life already taxed to an appalling extent, but a heavy additional tax on wheat and flour, and an almost prohibitive tax on imported meat, is being levied upon us; while diamonds (forming a monopoly of which the Prime Minister is the head) and the Intoxicating liquors, inferior in quality, so largely produced in this country, are allowed to go untaxed.</p><p>
So also in small matters.</p><p>
In Australia, where the material welfare of the country largely depends on its wool, it has been clearly seen that to allow the land to be partially ruined by the existence of an easily eradicated disease in the Stock was scandalous and immoral; and they have legislated so successfully that in certain Australian colonies the insect which causes the disease has
been exterminated. It has been felt in those countries that the man who refuses to exterminate scab in his flocks inflicts a merciless wrong and injustice upon his fellows whose flocks his own infect; and the Australians have, by stringent legislation, made such conduct impossible.</p><p>
It is not necessary to say that in this country all attempts to legislate in defence of the man who endeavours to keep his flocks healthy have been crushed or emasculated.</p><p>
Many other matters will suggest themselves to every one in which our legislation has shown this retrograde tendency. We have no time now to enter into
details with regard to such measures as Haarhoff's Bill, which, as introduced, was intended to make it culpable for any aboriginal native, whether a domestic servant, householder, newspaper editor, or clergyman, to be found walking on pavements in our towns; and also to make it punishable for any aboriginal native to be found out of doors within a township after nine o'clock at night unless he or she had been given a pass by the Magistrate or other authorised person–a Bill which also received the support of the existing Government.</p><p>
On the whole, it is evident that no impartial mind can look at the course of our legislation during
recent years the fact that of legislation in other civilised and Anglo-Saxon communities are tending to propel the car of state forwards, ours are slowly but surely running us backwards.
</p>
<h4>RETROGRESSIVE FACTORS:</h4><br>
<h4>I. THE BOND.</h4>
<p>
Now, when we turn to inquire of ourselves what reason of the this Retrogressive Movement may be, I think the superficial reply, given when we glance merely at the surface of our public life, would be this: that the Retrogressive Movement of late years has been entirely the work of that organisation known throughout South Africa as the Afrikander Bond ; and which has in recent years attained to such influence
that it apparently coerces Ministry after Ministry, bending them to its will. But a deeper examination will, I think, show us that the Bond alone would not have been able to produce this movement. Another influence, working into the hands of the Bond, has given it for a moment the power of forcing this retrogression upon the country.</p><p>
But before we turn to consider this secondary influence, let us glance at the Bond itself.</p><p>
The Afrikander Bond was in its origin one of the most beneficent and desirable institutions that have appeared in South Africa. It banded together, and aroused to healthy interest in the affairs of the State, a large body of men who, hitherto unorganised and isolated, had not taken that share in the affairs of the State, a large body of men who, hithero, had not taken that share in the government of the State which their numbers would have justified, and who were therefore unduly disregarded and possibly even unjustly dealt with.</p><p>
Started originally (as was inevitable under the circumstances) as a more or less racial organisation, and opposing Boer as Boer to Englishman as Englishman, this tone, nevertheless, as time passed, quickly modified itself. To-day the organisation is merely an organisation which draws together and unites for common purposes a number of the early colonists and others holding certain views on social and political matters, and in no way is it a merely racial organisation. To this extent it forms a healthy and desirable element in our public life. Left to itself, and having no adventitious power given it by an extraneous intervention, I believe that, so far from being an evil, the existence of the Bond would awaken and maintain that healthy friction and interaction of opposing views which is necessary to keep pure and healthy the stream of political life.</p><p>
But what has this extraneous influence been which has acted upon the Bond, removing it from its healthy position, and enabled it to obtain for the moment an undue power of enforcing its retrogressive views and methods upon the whole Cape Colony?</p><p>
To explain this influence it will be necessary to examine carefully the nature and power of that small band of Monopolists to whom we before referred.
</p>
<h4>AFRICA BEFORE THE MONOPOLISTS.</h4>
<p>
South Africa is a country of vast resources. In spite of the dryness of much of our climate, the rocky nature of certain tracts of our soil, taking the whole of South Africa together from east to west, I do not hesitate to assert that not many countries equally desirable and suitable for human habitation
will be found. More than a compensation for the dryness of our climate is the absence of the numbing cold of extreme northern and southern lands, which for months in the year renders outdoor labour difficult;
yet more important is the absence of that moist heat which in tropical countries renders exertion almost impossible to the white man, and exhaustive to the dark. A country with temperate, stimulating climate, which favours the health and energy of Europeans, physically and mentally; which is favourable to the constitution of every species of domestic animal, and is adapted to the cultivation of almost every plant of the temperate and tropical zones; which, above all, is one of the richest, if not the richest, country in the world in precious stones and minerals of all kinds, and which was originally peopled only by barbarians–this country has always been attractive to Europeans. For 200 years, Boer and Englishman, we have been populating and steadily taking possession of the land, moving steadily northwards. Our progress has not been made by a series of world-striking coups d'etat, it has been slow, but it has been the more healthy, the more sure, the more deeply rooted, because of its gradual and natural development.</p><p>
Those superb pioneers of South Africa, its Boers, have continued to move, as they have always moved, northward: our English colonists have been steadily building up their villages, founding their educational institutions, and establishing a liberal and progressive Government. We have not exhausted or even yet opened up many of the mineral resources of our country; they are still here for the use of our own and future generations; but so far as the colonists, Dutch and English, have populated the land, our progress, though slow, has been wholesome; and the land as a whole has been kept free from many of those crushing evils which afflict the older civilisations of Europe, and even affect some of the younger dependencies.</p><p>
There is a sense in which we have been a poor people. We have had no mass of surplus wealth wrung from the labour of a working class, but we have been a very rich people, perhaps one of the richest on the earth, in the fact that grinding poverty, and the enormous and superfluous wealth of individuals, were equally unknown among us. Our people as a whole led a simple but comfortable life; our labouring classes were engaged in no unhealthy occupation; starvation and want were unknown among us; we were progressing steadily, if slowly, and keeping our national wealth for the people as a whole, and for all who should labour among us.</p><p>
But a new element has burst into South African life.
</p>
<h4>RETROGRESSIVE FACTORS:<br> II. THE MONOPOLIST.</h4>
<p>
When diamonds were first discovered here, in the true old South African manner, the find was considered as one for the people at large. For years there flocked to the Diamond-fields colonists from every part of the country, and the wealth discovered went back to the homes of the people. That wealth rebuilt many a Colonial homestead; it educated many a Colonial child; it enabled landowners to carry out improvements otherwise impossible; it saved from insolvency many a Colonial firm which had sent members to dig; it spread throughout the country a glow of well-being, owing to the general diffusion in small sums of the wealth made by South Africa from the diamonds. Something analogous took place in the early days at the Transvaal gold-fields ; and gold-digging has never yet become quite so complete a monopoly in the hands of a few as the diamond industry.</p><p>
Time forbids that I should enter into a detailed account of the way in which these industries passed from their early and healthy condition; the
facts are well known to you all. There were in South Africa certain men from Europe, of great shrewdness, and with large abilities for speculation, who saw at once the possibilities our natural industries opened out before them. The many small original possessors of the wealth of South Africa were not men of vast means, and were rather hardworkers than sharp financial speculators; and the keensighted strangers quickly discerned that, could they buy oUt the small interests one by one and then amalgamate among themselves, slowly but surely the wealth of the country would pass into their hands.</p><p>
It needed no vast capital to buy out the original possessors.</p><p>
To-day a small, resolute, and keen body of men, amalgamated into Rings and Trusts, are quickly and surely setting their hands round the mineral wealth of South Africa. Our diamonds are already a complete monopoly in their hands; our gold, our coal, the richest portions of our soil, and even our public works, are tending to fall into the grasp of our great amalgamators. Not only are these men not South Africans by birth, which would in itself matter nothing, but in the majority of cases they are men who regard South Africa merely as a field for the making of wealth and the furthering of their own designs. When they have attained their end they do not feel themselves bound to the spot which has enriched them, but in most cases retire to Europe to expend the wealth of South Africa in the purchase of social distinction and in the luxuries of old-world life, or in further increasing their command over South African resources.
</p><p>
And South Africa grows poorer!</p><p>
Yet, were this all, we should be inclined to say, What ground have we for complaint? These men are but taking advantage of that competitive system which we to-day still uphold. If the men of South Africa are not skilled enough in the methods of gathering together the wealth of a people; and if they have not that fellow-feeling to be able to defeat them, which would enable them to combine, and so retain the land for the people at large; can we blame the men who take advantage of our ignorance and disunion? They are but carrying out their operations on the most approved financial principles! In truth, were this all, we should merely be suffering in a most exaggerated degree from a disease common to many other countries.
</p>
<h4>THE UNION OF THE TWO FACTORS.</h4>
<p>
But our evil has not stopped here. Owing to the mental capacity of some of these speculators, and to certain conditions in South African public life, the conception suggested itself to them: that were it possible to obtain complete control of the political machinery in any African State (notably of the Cape Colony), and could they hold the reins of Government in their own hands, their power for increasing their wealth, for resisting taxation upon those industries of which they possessed monopolies, and for extending their commercial exploitations into adjoining territories, would be immeasurably increased.</p><p>
This conception has been seized and carried out.</p><p>
The means of its accomplishment in the Cape Colony has been through the complete control gained by the Monopolists over the only group in South Africa whom they could hope to guide, and whom, in view of their extra-colonial plans, it was necessary to keep pacified and well in hand.</p><p>
It is this command of the political machinery of the country by the Monopolist, owing to his union with one section, which constitutes the real disease from which the Cape Colony is suffering. It
is this which lies at the back of our Retrogressive Movement.</p><p>
For the Monopolist Party, determined to obtain control of the political machinery, could only do so by purchasing the co-operation of some truly South African body. The more shrewd and modern section of South Africans–professional men, merchants, go ahead newspaper-reading farmers–are, very many of them, unpurchasable; and those who are not would demand a high price in concessions local and personal, and even then could not be blindly led. Our working population being mainly native, and very slightly enfranchised, is not at the present day, and will not be for a long time to come, a party powerful enough to make its support a strength to any leader. Then there remained for the Speculatist and Monopolist Party but one body to whom it could turn with any hope that it would place it in power. This body was the Retrogressive Element in the Bond Party. It was purchased, not by the outlay of capital, nor by offers of place and power to its members, but, much more cheaply for the Monopolist, by the simple expedient of offering to support those Retrogressive measures which without his aid could never have found a place on our Colonial Statute-book.</p><p> The Kafir's back and the poor man's enhanced outlay on the necessaries of life pay the Monopolist's bribe.</p><p>
On the other hand, the Retrogressive Element, once enabled to pass such measures as lay nearest its heart by the co-operation of the Monopolist with his skill and intelligence, is willing to give him a perfectly free hand, and support him in all measures which do not touch its Retrogressive instincts. We thus have the Retrogressive Party supporting the Monopolist in carrying out measures in which he has no interest or concern, and the Monopolist assisting the Retrogressive Party in setting upon the Statute-book measures which are repugnant to his own common sense and shrewd modern outlook. Taking advantage of
that childlike simplicity which is at once the weakness and the greatest charm of the Boer, he leads him whither he would and also whither he would not.</p><p>
It is from this unnatural marriage that are born those evils under which the Colony groans to-day. It is a marriage which must end in rupture when the Retrogressive Party discover how, instead of a union of affection, they have been led into one of convenience, and that the bridegroom is quite ready to forsake his bride when she has nothing more to give him.</p><p>
Nevertheless, to-day it is this coalition which is unpicking the progressive enactments of the past, which is enabling the Monopolist Party to carry out unhampered its financial depredations here and in the Northern Territories. It is this coalition which, by giving political power to enormously wealthy individuals, is corroding our public life, till the principle that every man has his price and call be squared, if you call only find his figure, is becoming an established dogma.</p><p>
Worse than any of those retrogressive measures which the Bondsman, in simplicity and sincerity, desires to see enacted are those measures which he allows others to take, who are neither simple nor sincere.
</p>
<h4>"BUT ARE THEY NOT ANGLICISING AFRICA?"</h4>
<p>
But I am aware it may be contended : "Granting what has been stated as being exactly true; allowing that the Monopolist has filched away the wealth of South Africa; and granting that his party, by coalescing with the extreme Retrogressive Party, has given it for the time being an unhealthy preponderance; granting, further, that to retain control over the Colonial Legislature squaring in all its multiple forms has been, and is, a necessity on the part of the Monopolist Party; granting that this is disastrous to our public and social life–yet is it not worth our while to connive at all these conditions, and to abstain from disturbing them, as long as the Monopolist Party is quietly and persistently moving in a direction which tends to annihilate the independence of two adjoining States, which shall ultimately render the Englishman dominant throughout South Africa? At the cost of whatever evils or injustice, is it not well to see extending northward the territory more or less under British rule?"</p><p>
We are all aware that this is often put forth plainly and in so many words as a reason for abstaining from interference with the Monopolist Party. It is said frequently, "I am for Rhodes, because, whatever he may or may not be, he is slowly but surely undermining the Bond. Rhodes, and he only, will within our lifetime so manipulate, that the neighbouring Republics shall fall into our hands, and the English Party in South Africa be dominant. And, after all, is not this extension to the northward a very fine thing for the Colony?"</p><p>
To this I would first reply: Is the undermining and breaking up of the Bond, even if this should result from the alliance, worth the continual passing of such measures as we shall have in the future to undo? Is the breaking up of the Bond itself wholly to be desired? And if it were, is splitting the Bond worth causing deep racial unrest and suspicion where none before existed, between ourselves and our native fellow-inhabitants, the labouring class of South Africa, by the passing of laws which seem to express an animus towards them which we do not feel; and which constitute a course which, though for the moment it call work us no practical evil, may in years to come, when too late, be the cause of bitter regret? Is it worth while so vitiating the streams of our public life that we have to look back with regret and almost incredulity at the nature of our public life in years gone by, feeling its tone something almost too high ever to have existed in South Africa? Is all this worth paying, even if we<em> are</em> undermining the Bond?</p><p>
I, for one, hold strongly that
it is not. I do not wish to see
the Bond broken.</p><p>
What I wish to see is the Bond holding its own manfully on all subjects, social and political, and exercising that influence upon the Legislature and public life of this colony which is proportionate to its numbers and intelligence; thereby preventing legislation from taking a course which might in any respect be unjust, or opposed to the benefit of an important and respected section of the community.</p><p>
Is the forced annexation of
the neighbouring States worth the price we are paying for it? If it be true, which I question, that the union of the South African States can only be attained by keeping at the head of affairs the Monopolist Party, is it worth keeping them there?</p><p> I, for one, assert emphatically that it is not. I believe the confederation of the South African States to be a desirable consummation; and I believe further that it is one which will inevitably take place sooner or later. Confederation <em>now</em> might have its advantages, and it would have its disadvantages; but no confederation, however much we desire it, would pay
us for the internal disintegration we are producing within our own State, through the support of the Monopolist Party. When confederation does take place I believe it will be desirable that it should take place, not as the result of skilful manipulations analogous to those by which one shrewd speculator out-speculates another, but through the gradual growth of a consciousness in the people of South Africa that their interests are one, and that in union lies their strength. Such a confederacy will, I believe, be as healthful, as strong,as beneficent as a union brought about by sleight-of-hand and dissimulation will be unstable and pernicious.
</p>
<h4>IS IT WORTH THE COST?</h4>
<p>
Further, and finally: Is it worth while for us, as Cape Colonists, to submit to the dominion of the Monopolist, with all that pertains to it, simply because we believe that party, in annexing and apportioning the lands north of the Transvaal and the Cape Colony, is thereby extending the territories under the British flag?</p><p>
I, for one, have not only a cordial affection for my own nation, but also for British rule. I believe that, with all its faults, it is often a beneficent and a generous rule; and were it possible to annex to-morrow, without injustice to others, or heavy moral and social loss to ourselves, the whole of Africa, from the Straits of Gibraltar and the Isthmus of Suez to the Cape Colony, and place it under the English rule, I, for one, should cordially welcome that possibility.</p><p>
But a nation, like an individual, may pay too dearly for desirable objects. It is highly probable that Naboth's vineyard, lying as it did contiguous to the domains of Ahab, formed an exceedingly desirable adjunct to that property. The mistake in Jezebel's calculation lay in the fact that the price ultimately to be paid for the annexation somewhat exceeded the value of the land.</p><p>
I hold, much as I desire to see the extension of the British Empire, that the Colony is in this case paying too dearly for this extension. I hold that no possible accretion of <em>kudos</em> and racial gratification can ever repay us for the heavy price in the demoralisation of our institutions, and the retrogression in our legislation, which the Cape Colony is paying to support the Monopolist Group, and enable it to undertake its annexations.</p><p>
Further, leaving this point of view for a moment, and taking the lower and purely monetary standpoint, let us see what the Colony really has to gain commercially by these annexations south of the Zambesi.</p><p>
It appears to me there is a good deal of misunderstanding upon this point. I cannot see, from this lower standpoint–nor have I ever yet met a man who could explain to me how he saw–that the taking over of Mashonaland and Matabeleland by the Chartered Company would increase the wealth of the men and women of the Cape Colony. It appears to me more than probable, when we study the map, and other conditions of the problem, that the opening up of these territories, so far from increasing the wealth and influence of the Cape Colony, will ultimately subtract from both. If Rhodesia and the country north of the Transvaal should become populated and important, I cannot for a moment conceive that they will still continue to draw up their supplies from the very toe of South Africa; that new routes will not be formed, along which trade will make its way to Central and Eastern South Africa, without coming into contact with the extreme south of the Continent.</p><p>
Further, we as Cape Colonists have <em>now</em> more land than we require; our need is for men, and I do not see how the annexation of the Chartered Company tends to draw them
into the Cape Colony. I take it that, however wire-pullings may avail for a few years, ultimately the traffic both in passengers and in goods to East and Central South Africa will find the shortest and cheapest routes, which will not be through the Cape Colony; and the Cape Colony, denuded to a large extent of its trade and its importance in South Africa, will have to depend solely upon its internal resources, which,
abundant though they be, are now allowed to lie undeveloped, while the people's eyes follow this northern will-o'-the wisp.</p><p>
But it may be said, and said very truly: "Granting that the Cape Colony does not gain either directly or indirectly through the possession of Rhodesia by the Chartered Company, and even that it loses heavily in the material sense, there is yet no reason, from the broadest humanitarian standpoint, why it should not support the movement."</p><p>
Now, I fully allow that it may be right and desirable that a portion of a people should sacrifice itself for the benefit of the whole, or that a whole nation should sacrifice itself for the benefit of humanity at large. That this has not yet been done in the history of the world by no means proves that it is undesirable or may not yet be done. But what I most strongly hold is that in this instance sacrifice on the part of the Cape Colony of its internal interests, social and material, if undertaken to enable the Chartered Company to obtain possession of the territories north of the Transvaal, will be sacrifice thrown away.</p><p>
I know that it will be said, "But think of the terrible contingency had the Boers entered that country and started a new republic there! "
</p>
<h4>CHARTERED VERSUS BOER
RULE.</h4>
<p>
I believe I shall not be suspected of unreasonable advocacy of Boer rule; but I do contend that South Africa as a whole, and the English-speaking world at large, would have lost less by the civilisation of these countries under the auspices of the Boer flag than under that of the Chartered Company. Boer rule has its evils; the Boer is seldom just and considerate to the aborigines of a country which he annexes
(though, as a rule,I do not know whether they tend to disappear faster under his rule than under that of other white men); but as far as the European is concerned,the rule in a Boer republic is, in most respects, healthy and natural. The Cape Colonist or foreigner from Europe has never been refused admittance to these republics; and if in the Transvaal the civic franchise has been somewhat injudiciously withheld from certain newcomers, they possess every other privilege and right. As time passes the little racial line between English colonists and their forerunners will pass away throughout South Africa; the English language will be universally used by all cultured persons; English manners and customs will prevail (Pretoria is to-day more English than Cape Town!); and in the long run, which in this case will only be a run of thirty or forty years, it will make no difference whether any part of this country was first civilised under the flag of the Boer or the Englishman. The incoming streams of English-speaking men and women will slowly but continuously mingle themselves with the body of earlier settlers, and in forty years' time, whether we wish it or do not, there will be no Boer or Englishman as such in South Africa–only the great South African people, speaking the English tongue, following English precedents, and as closely united to England as Australia or Canada.</p><p>
This process of amalgamation and growth was in progress long before the European speculator arrived among us, and it will go on were the Fates to remove him from us to-morrow.</p><p>
Had Dutch Voortrekkers taken possession of the regions between the Zambesi and Transvaal there would not, on the whole, have been greater loss of native life, nor more perfidy in dealing with them, than under the Chartered Company; and one gigantic evil which is now fixing itself upon those territories would not have come into existence. The Boer tradition, like that of the genuine English settler all over the world, has been this: that, in the new lands they inhabited, the soil and the valuable productions of the land should be apportioned fairly among the men who came personally to dwell and labour on it with their wives and families. Rare minerals have not even as a rule been regarded as the property of the individuals in whose lands they were found, but they have been regarded as the property of the community, to ally member of which it was open to obtain a share in that property if he were willing to expend his own labour upon it. In States founded in this manner the land and its wealth tended to be distributed with tolerable equality throughout the community. <em>This will never be in Rhodesia.</em> By the time the mass of men from the Colony or Europe enter the country they will find everything of value–mines, fertile lands, town properties–all in the hands of a small knot of men headed by the leaders of the Chartered Company, consisting in part of persons who have never seen South Africa, such as the Duke of Fife and others.</p><p>
The great evil is not that these men possess the country as shareholders and directors in the Chartered Company, nor that they retain the right to levy a tribute of 50 per cent, on all precious stones and minerals found in the entire territory, and that for many years to come they will hold extensive control over the whole government of the country; but, what is immeasurably more disastrous, before the country can be peopled by the ordinary colonist a small knot of men (not the body of shareholders as a whole, but that small body in whose interest the Chartered Company was formed, and for whose benefit it is worked) will, either in their own persons or by means of their emissaries, have gone over the whole land, and whatever of real value these lands contain will be their private property. If the Chartered Company were in ten or fifteen years' time, or much sooner, to explode, and as a company to loosen its control over the land and people, it would yet be found that the whole real wealth of the country was appropriated and in the hands of a few private individuals forming syndicates and trusts.</p><p>
The worst social diseases which afflict the old countries of Europe will make their appearance full grown in this virgin African land at the outset of its career. That unequal division of wealth, which bestows vast riches upon some individuals while the majority of the community are in abject poverty, is, in those old countries, the outcome of institutions which are the growth of centuries, and it is often softened by traditions binding the owners of wealth to the land itself, and those who labour on it. In these new territories no traditions will bind the owner to the land and soften his relations with the people; the financial possessors of the wealth of the country will exhibit on a colossal scale the worst evils of absentee ownership, or the possession of a country by men who regard land and people merely as a means for acquiring wealth.</p><p>
The political life in these territories will be diseased. Even in the Cape to-day we have seen how disastrous are the effects of gigantic wealth held in a young country by a few individuals. There may be no deliberate intention to bribe, but the mere possession of wealth which is enormous in comparison to the wealth of the whale community (if the possessors be not singularly large and impersonal in their aims, and if they interest themselves at all in politics) throws into their hands a power of conferring benefits or inflicting evils which will inevitibly lead to an undue subjection to their will; to the vitiation of representative institutions, and the destruction of independent public life.</p><p>
The colonist and the stranger from Europe will arrive and settle in these territories, but they will discover that its townships, its valuable mines, its richest lands have already been taken possession of. They will find it a cake from which all the plums have been carefully extracted, or like a body when the vultures have visited it, leaving nothing but bare bones.</p><p>
Is it for colonisation carried out on such lines as <em>these</em> that the Cape Colony is to be asked to sacrifice its internal political and social welfare? Is it to aid and abet a handful of men in gaining this disastrous control over South Africa and its resources that the Cape Colony is to obliterate itself? Is it to submit to any use which may be made of it, so it only affords a stepping-stone, and gives prestige in Europe by allowing its public appointments held by them?</p><p>
I think not.</p>
<h4>CHARTERED VERSUS FOREIGN RULE.</h4>
<p>
We all know what a bugbear to some even perfectly sincere minds is the conception of the possibility of Boer, Portuguese, German, or French occupation of African territories, and we all know what use is frequently made of this bugbear by those interested in annexations. But I think no practical man who carefully examines the question can really think that the Cape Colonists as such have anything to fear from the annexations of other European Powers in Africa. And I would go further. I would say–If all English colonisation had been, or were in the future to be, carried out along the lines and according to the methods of the Chartered Company, that I cannot see wherein South Africa would gain by aiding and abetting such a form of colonisation over that inaugurated by other European nations. Colonisation by the British people is not the same thing as colonisation under the Chartered Company. The first is supposed to have as its object the development of the people it takes under its rule, and the planting of a free and untrammelled branch of the Anglo-Saxon race upon the land; the aim of the Chartered Company is to make wealth out of land and people.</p><p>
But last of all, it may be said (and this criticism appears to me profoundly just): "It is very well to blame the Monopolist, with his ready brains and his quick wit, for the uses which he is making of South Africa; it is very well to blame the Retrogressive Party for playing into his hands, and making possible his monopolies and increasing acquisitions, making him a permanent institution in the land, which the South
Africa of the future may hopelessly endeavour to rid herself of; it is very well to blame the Monopolist and Retrogressionist–but how did they gain, and how do they maintain, this absolute domination over the land Do they comprise within themselves all the intelligence, all the determination of South Africa? Are they our only political units? "</p><p>
I can but say in reply, I believe it is not just to throw the whole blame of our position either upon the Monopolist or the Retrogressionist. The Monopolist is simply the acute business man who has been enabled to carry out his plans successfully and on a colossal scale, owing to the possession of tact and foresight, and, perhaps, unusual disregard of collateral issues. The high intellectual capacity shown by many of these men compels admiration and awakens our sympathy; and we call only regret that abilities which in some cases amount to genius should not be employed in a direction more productive of good to humanity. The Monopolist of genius is often like a great body of waters expending itself in causing inundations where it might produce fertility.</p><p>
For the Retrogressionist there is yet more unlimited excuse. He has been somewhat hardly dealt with in the past. That he should desire to make his influence felt when at last the opportunity offers itself, and that he should use his power without full consideration for the rights of others, is not unnatural. He alone among South Africans has, during the last years, shown a capacity for standing resolutely by his principles; and we can only feel regret that so much integrity and manly determination is not expended on our side, but against us.</p><p>
But there are two other sections of our population upon whom it appears to me unlimited blame rests, and for whom it is difficult to see an excuse.
</p>
<h4>TWO OTHER CULPRITS. </h4>
<p>
Firstly. There is that section of the general public which, knowing that we are governed by representative institutions, and that every citizen, however humble, is more or less responsible for the well-being of the State, yet regards public affairs with apathy; and, absorbed in personal interests, is absolutely ungrateful of its citizens' duties.</p><p>
Secondly (and for this section it appears to me that no reprobation can be too strong). We have a party of men through-out South Africa, by education and natural bias, Liberals; by public profession, Progressives; men who on their own showing see clearly the evils of Retrogressive and Monopolist principles, and who constitute part of our so-called Progressive Party. These men, in spite of their profession, are continually found, as public men and leaders, using the subtlest methods of the Monopolist, coquetting with any and every party which appears likely to aid them to office and power. Without the genius of the Monopolist, they sink to his opportunism for the attainment of the smallest ends; as private individuals they oppose such progressive measures which would entail inconvenience upon themselves, personally or locally, and connive at certain retrogressive measures when doing so confers benefit upon themselves, without the true Retrogressive's excuse of earnest conviction. It is these men, whether politicians, progressive farmers, or enlightened commercial men, to whom we should naturally look for deliverance from the evils which oppress the Colony; yet it is exactly these men who in some instances have made possible the despotism of the Monopolist, and the triumph of the
Retrogressionist, by their complete absorption in their own small aims, and their wilful disregard of impersonal obligations. The Monopolist may be organically incapacitated for seeing further; the Retrogressionist, in spite of his sincerity, cannot see further; the so-called Progressive sees further, but refuses to act at any cost to himself. Such men are the bane of the country.</p><p>
There is, however, yet another section of our community distinct from all those we have noticed. It is to this section, I think, that we must look to inaugurate a truly Progressive movement in Colonial affairs.
And this brings us back to the question with which we started: HOW IS THE RETROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN THE
CAFE COLONY TO BE STAYED?
</p>
<h3>PART II.</h3>
<h4>HOW IS THE RETROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT TO BE STAYED</h4>
<p>
To this question the reply seems obvious: That in a country with representative institutions Retrogressive legislation must be prevented, if prevented at all, by the intervention of such Progressive Elements as exist within the community itself.
</p>
<h4>IS THERE A PROGRESSIVE
FACTOR?</h4>
<p>
But when we look at the Cape Colony at the present day, the doubt at first forces itself upon us whether there is a Progressive Element at all. Would this unbroken spell of Retrogressive legislation and
political flaccidity be possible were really Progressive Elements existent in the country?</p><p>
In times past there was such an element. Small but united, there was a Progressive Party of which no advanced European people need have been ashamed. From the days of Pringle and Fairbairn to the days of Sir George Grey and Saul Solomon, not only was South Africa not wanting in liberal and advanced individuals, but these individuals had their influential following. It was by these men and their party that our most advanced institutions were created, our comparatively broad basis of enfranchisement instituted, our most beneficent educational establishments, native and otherwise, founded, and the recognition on our Statute-book of the fact that to all men, irrespective of race and colour, the law should deal out an even-handed justice–this and much more was the work of these men.
</p><p>
When to-day we see how steadily we are undoing this work, and legislating in opposition to it, and how entirely opposed to the Progressive spirit of the past is that which guides our public councils to-day, the suggestion will force itself upon us: "Is not the Progressive Element dying or dead among us?"</p><p>
For years past Retrogressive measure after Retrogressive measure has stained our Statute-book; undesirable commercial contracts have been entered into, subjecting public interests to personal gains; the name and prestige of the Cape Colony have been used for the attainment of extra-colonial ends in a manner we do not desire-yet we have remained passive. In town or village no public meetings have been called to protest against these courses of action. In no case have even the smallest knots of men been found banded together to defend the country against these changes. If we except the recent protest against the bread and meat tax and against the appointment of one of the Monopolist Party to the highest function of the State, the country has remained in condition of deadly passivity and almost comatose inertia.</p><p>
On the surface I allow it appears that there is no progressive element in South Africa, but I believe this appearance is not a reality.</p><p>
I believe that in every town, and in every district and village, will be found (though not invariably among its most important or wealthy members) a certain body of men and women, from the bank clerk to the clergyman, from the shop assistant to the small tradesman, from the schoolmaster or mistress to the enterprising young farmer, Dutch or English, from the working mall to the wholesale merchant, who are as essentially advanced in their view as any body of men or women in any country: persons wholly unaffected by the disease which seems eating the core of our national life–that fevered desire to grow wealthy without labour, as individuals by reckless speculation, and as a nation by annexations.</p><p>
And if it be asked( how, if this Progressive Element exists among us, it has become so completely inoperative, my reply is simply–<em>Because it lacks organisation.</em></p><p>
At the time of the Restoration there were not fewer advanced and progressive Republicans in England than there had been in the lifetime of Oliver Cromwell. They had not died nor emigrated at the accession of Charles the Second; they were still there, holding their views with the same strength and with perhaps an added bitterness, but as a power in the land they were annihilated. They had lost their leader; they had lost their organisation; and the extreme Retrogressive Party had attained to both of these. That mass of persons, indifferent to reforms and public interests, which is found in every country, and which sides with each dominant party because it has the power of conferring benefits and inflicting injuries, went over to the Royalists as it had before gone over to the Republicans. The Democratic Party for years was inoperative in England, but it was not dead, only disorganised; it came to life again, more democratic than ever.</p><p>
So, looking nearer there were not, eleven years ago, fewer non-progressive and reactionary persons in the Colony than at the present day: there were probably more.</p><p>
The men who have raised the franchise, who have taxed the necessaries of life, who have crushed all endeavours to contend with scab, who session by session attempt to pass a Flogging Bill which would disgrace
a semi-barbarous people, have not sprung into existence to-day; they were here, holding their views if possible more ardently than to-day, but they were powerless; they could not even materially impede Progressive legislation, because they were unorganised.</p><p>
This position is ours to-day. Exactly as the Anti-Progressive individual sat on his farm, unable to give expression to his views, because he sat alone, and had no means of communicating with his like-thinking and like-feeling fellows, so to-day the Progressive men and women stand alone in this country; they are not aware of their own numbers; they are not aware of the intensity of common conviction which would bind them into a solid body were they once in touch.</p><p>
The organisation of these now scattered and isolated units into one united whole is, I believe, the one and only means of staying the Retrogressive Movement in this country. And the great practical question before us now is–How is this to be done?</p><p>
I allow that I see great difficulties in the way.
</p><p>
WANTED: A LEADER.</p><p>
One of the first and most essential conditions for organising a party is the possession of a leader; we will not say of an Oliver Cromwell, but at least of a progressive J. H. Hofmeyr; of a mall profoundly in sympathy with the movement, with a gift for organisation, and a willingness to sink his own personal interests to a large extent in that of his work. It is such a man the Progressive Element in this country looks for. We have not found him yet. We have more than one public mall of undoubted ability; and we have at least one man who carries with him the confidence and affection of every Progressive in the country; but either from some peculiarity of nature, from absence of leisure, or other circumstances, none of these men stand forward, devoting time and energy to the formation of such a party throughout the country. We have not a man to whom the Progressive can turn and say: "Organise and lead us; we will follow!" The necessity is therefore imposed upon us of organising ourselves. Nor do I know that this is wholly a calamity.</p><p>
The most vital and worldwide movements of the present day, such as those of labour and woman, have not been organised or led by one commanding intellect. They have sprung up spontaneously, as it were, in a thousand centres, and then slowly interorganised. It is a healthy indication of a profound necessity when men at independent centres organise themselves, guided by a common impulse without any coercing leadership.</p><p>
This is exactly what we see taking place in the Colony today. The imposition of the bread and meat tax and the appointment of Sir Hercules Robinson have drawn together small knots of Progressive men to protest against these things; and in such towns as Port Elizabeth and in Cape Town, under the presidency of Mr. J. Rose-Innes, powerful Progressive Associations have been started.</p><p>
And the time is, I believe, now ripe for drawing together all the scattered Progressive Elements of the country, and uniting them as a wide and non-parochial whole. One, and not the least, of the great advantages of such union would be its tendency to prevent the growth in the Progressive Party of that spirit of localism which seems to rest as an incubus upon all Colonial endeavours, and which would be entirely at variance with the true spirit of a Progressive Organisation.</p><p>
To place at the head of the united branches no man could be found more admirably suited than Mr. J. Rose-Innes, the president of the South African Political Association of Cape Town, if he were found willing to accept the post.</p>
<h4> FORM ASSOCIATIONS.</h4>
<p>
I think as a first and practical step towards this larger union it would be desirable that wherever possible, in towns or districts, a few progressive men should join together and form Progressive Associations, however small in size, analogous to those now existing in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. It would then be desirable that these bodies should enter into communication with each other, and draw up a body of principles broad enough to make it possible for every really progressive individual to subscribe to them, and distinct enough to make it quite impossible for any thoroughly non-progressive person to enter the organisation. These principles, I think, should be made the basis of all future organisation.</p><p>
As a second step, I think it would be advisable that, if possible, a delegate should be appointed to visit each town and village in the Colony to attempt to inaugurate a branch of our organisation, however small, in that place. The advantage of this course is obvious. It is often difficult for any individual in a small Colonial town to rise up and inaugurate a movement of any kind, unless he chance to be of exceptional importance, monetarily or otherwise, in the place. In many towns there may be even a large number of individuals, progressive at heart, who would join such an organisation, and who would labour for it vigorously and be able to extend its growth, who yet might not feel themselves in a position to rise up and take the initiative in instating it.</p><p>
It may be objected that, in places where the branch would at first consist of only a dozen individuals, it would be useless, and serve only to show the barrenness of the land!</p><p>
But, firstly, while an organisation consisting of a dozen isolated individuals in some town or village might be of small importance in itself, connected as it would ultimately be with the organisations in larger towns throughout the country, its strength would be largely increased; and it would form the germ of what might in time become an extensive growth. It is exactly that we may not lose these driblets of progressive thought and feeling all over the Colony that I would advocate the endeavour to start such small branch organisations.</p><p>
If further it be asked, What the principles are which are broad enough to unite all the Progressive Elements in the country? I think an answer will not be very difficult.</p><p>
There are one or two principles subscription to which will make a man a Liberal and Progressive in any country in the world. Their practical application will vary infinitely according to the conditions of the Society in which they are applied;but they are as simple as universal.</p><p>
The fundamental principle <a href="#2" name="a2"><span class="NOTE">[2]</span></a>
upon which Progressive Liberalism all the world over is based, whether consciously or unconsciously, and to which it must finally return if it would justify its varying forms of practical action, is the axiom, however variously worded, which asserts that the mental and physical welfare and happiness of humanity as a whole is the end of all wisely directed human effort, whether of individuals or nations; that one of the main aims of all government must be the defence of its weaker members from the depredations of the stronger, and that no course of action which bases the welfare of sections of the community on the sufferings and loss of other sections is justifiable.</p><p>
Analysis shows that it is upon this wide principle, however worded, that all forms of Modern Liberalism are ultimately based. It is by their more or less complete harmony with it that the thoroughness of their Liberalism may be tested. Nevertheless, it is perhaps too wide a principle on which to base directly a practical organisation intended for the many; more especially in a country where some men's conceptions with regard to Liberal Progressivism are somewhat indefinite–a prominent public man having declared that he considered himself a Progressive because he voted for the construction of railways which would be for his own pecuniary benefit.</p>
<h4>THREE TEST QUESTIONS.</h4><p>
In the Cape Colony, and for such an Association as we propose, there are, I think, three subjects, a man's attitude with regard to which would amply suffice to show his adherence or otherwise to this fundamental principle underlying all Liberalism; and which, I think, would be adequate as a test of the fitness of any individual for membership in a Progressive Organisation.</p><p>
The first of these is the Labour Question; the question of the relation between the propertied, and therefore powerful, class, and the less propertied, and therefore weaker, class.</p><p>
In South Africa this question assumes gigantic importance, including as it does almost the
whole of what is popularly termed the Native Question; that question being indeed only the Labour Question of Europe complicated by a difference of race and colour between the employing and propertied, and the employed and poorer classes.</p><p>
There are two attitudes with regard to the treatment of this Native Labouring Class: the one held by the Retrogressive Party in this country regards the Native as only to be tolerated in consideration of the amount of manual labour which can be extracted from him; and desires to obtain the largest amount of labour at the cheapest rate possible; and rigidly resists
all endeavours to put him on an equality with the white man in the eye of the law. The other attitude, which I hold must inevitably be that of every truly progressive individual in this country, is that which regards the Native, though an alien in race and colour and differing fundamentally from ourselves in many respects, yet as an individual to whom we are under certain obligations: it forces on us the conviction that our superior intelligence and culture render it obligatory upon us to consider his welfare; and to carry out such measures, not as shall make him merely more useful to ourselves, but such as shall tend also to raise him in the scale of existence, and bind him to ourselves in a kindlier fellowship.</p><p>
As a man takes one or other of these attitudes I believe he will find himself in accord, not merely with the Progressive Element in this country, but with the really advanced and Progressive Movement all the world over. In fact, I go so far as to think that the mere subscription to the latter mode of regarding the Labour and Native question would constitute an adequate test in this country as to a man's attitude on all other matters social and political.</p><p>
The second subject is that of Taxation.</p><p>
The Retrogressive holds, all the world over, that taxation may be levied for the benefit of the few. The Progressive attitude is that which holds that taxation should fall upon the luxuries rather than upon the necessaries of life; that it should not press more heavily upon the poor than upon the wealthy; and that the principle of protection, worked so as to increase the wealth of certain sections of the community at the expense of others, is at all points to be fought.</p><p>
The third subject upon which I believe the views of every advanced Progressive must and will coincide is that of enfranchisement.</p><p>
No man who does not hold that as a State develops its electoral basis should be extended to obviate the possibility of the claims of the unrepresented classes being ignored, and their welfare subordinated to that of represented, though smaller classes, and who does not hold that Parliamentary representation should increasingly tend to represent individuals rather than property, can find himself in harmony with the principles of any real Progressive Organisation.</p><p>
It may be said that these principles are too vague; that the articles to which a man would have to subscribe before joining such an organisation should be more detailed.</p><p>
But I think a little consideration will show that upon all the practical questions which have been brought before our Colonial Legislature during the last few years, subscription to these three principles of action would have determined a man's attitude. The Labour Tax, Haarhoff's Curfew Bell, the Bread and Meat Tax, the Strop Bill, the Scab Act, &c.–on all these a man's position will be certainly and at once determined by the fact of his being willing
to subscribe to these three principles. A more detailed test for fitness of membership in the organisation would, I think, be superfluous.</p><p>
But it may, on the other hand, be objected that these tests would be too stringent; that certain men would be found quite willing to join a so-called Progressive and anti-Bond Party who at the same time might not be willing to subscribe to one or all these tests.</p><p>
Now to these I would unhesitatingly answer: That such men are not wanted in our organisation; men who, while holding retrogressive views on the most important social questions, but prompted by an unworthy racial prejudice, would attempt to join or use the organisation for racial purposes, hoping to oppose or weaken the party behind the Bond, are precisely that class of persons we should seek to exclude from our organisation. They would weaken us, and defeat that very end for which the organisation was formed. It must of necessity be a first principle of such an association as we wish to see started that no racial or class distinction of ally kind should concern it, or be allowed to weigh with us. We should rejoice as cordially to welcome
and support the Dutchmen as the Englishmen; the newcomer as the old inhabitant of the country; the mall as the woman; the wealthy as the indigent. Our sole requirement from any individual wishing to join us, or seeking our support, should be, Does he share our principles? If he does, he is one of us; if he does not, though he should call himself a Progressive leader, and though he should be seven times over an Englishman, he is not of us.</p><p>
If it be further suggested that, by pursuing this course, we should alienate large bodies of persons who would otherwise append themselves to us, and
who might ultimately so swell our numbers as to make us the dominant party in the State, I would frankly reply that no mere increase of bulk could compensate us for degeneracy in fibre, and that we do not desire the adhesion of such individuals to our party. Our strength will not, and cannot, rest upon mere numbers. It must lie in the enthusiasm, in the superior intelligence, in the unwavering adhesion to impersonal aims, and in the close-knit union of our members.</p><p>
The Progressive Element in this country is, and must be for many years to come, necessarily in a minority, exactly as the extreme Non-Progressive Element is in a minority. Between us lies the large inert body of politicians and private persons, indifferent to any aims but those of personal success, and the person of sincere but very mixed convictions.</p><p>This body
follows to-day the Non-Progressive Party, because it is the only vigorous and unbending political organisation existent in the country. If to-morrow there were in the field a small but vigorous Progressive Party, well organised, and not willing to capitulate upon any terms, this inert, self-seeking body might also find it useful to serve us; it might
even ultimately give to us the appearance of being the majority in the State, exactly as it to-day does to the Retrogressive Party. But as from the day on which the extreme Retrogressive Party shall resign its principles, and with a feeble opportunism shall receive into its own organisation this inert mass, the day of its dissolution and disappearance from Governmental control will have arrived; so also with the Progressive Party. From the day on which it sacrifices its position as the enlightened leading minority, and modifies its principles for the purpose of making them acceptable to the indifferent majority in the country, from that moment it will have nullified the aim with which it was started, and all its powers of accomplishment.</p><p>
I think we cannot too strongly impress upon, and hold up before ourselves, the fact that such a Progressive Party as we hope to see in this country call only maintain its power by frill adhesion to its own principles, and not by any dependence on numbers.</p><p>
If it be questioned how, in default of large numbers, we expect to exert influence and make our principles operative in the country, I would reply, that for many years our primary practical aim must be the attempt to educate public opinion up to our own standpoint</p><p>
Our means for accomplishing this would, it appears to me, be mainly three.</p><p>
Firstly. We shall form a centre, however small, in every town or village from which, by the exercise of personal influence, the view of life which the organisation represents would tend to spread, and however small the branch might be, it would keep before the eye of the public the fact that such a view did exist.</p><p>
Secondly. We should use the Press.</p>
<h4> USE THE PRESS.</h4>
<p>
The great strength of such a party as the Progressive Party of South Africa must be would lie in the superior intellectual enlightenment of its members. I take it that it is not likely any large body of men will join such an organisation who have not the intelligence and culture which would enable them to somewhat deeply upon matters. I believe we should largely represent the thinking element in the community, whether our members were drawn from the labouring or wealthier class.</p><p>
Such a body, with no narrow personal ends to seek, will naturally desire the largest publicity for its views, and will also have the power of expressing them. Of such a party the main weapon is the Press. It will find one of its chief duties for many years in constantly raising and animating public discussion upon all questions, social and political, as they arise, and in unffinchingly enunciating its own views, and calling forth the enunciation of those of others a function of paramount importance in a country where men often, even in private conversation, fear to speak above their breath, lest a bird of the air should carry it.
</p><p>
We shall make rich use of all the public journals in the country. But if the Progressive Party is to become a power which shall make itself felt, I believe its most powerful weapon must be the possession of a journal devoted entirely to its principles.</p><p>
With a very few exceptions there is a generous attitude maintained in Colonial papers, and their columns are freely open to correspondents. We are rich in able and liberal editors, and our Press in many ways is in advance of other Colonial institutions. But the fact, which all who have been behind the scenes of Press life in this country are aware of (and of which the public appears not to be aware!), is that no editor, however able and advanced, has, as a rule, an absolute control over his paper. In the vast majority of cases in the Colony, as in England, the newspaper is a property held by a larger or smaller number of shareholders; it is finally theirs, and should the editor himself be a large shareholder, he has yet not always an independent and free hand. A certain amount of liberty is granted him, and he may imagine himself independent, but when crucial commercial or political questions arise, at the
very moment when he would most desire to stand firm, and unqualifiedly to express his own views, those persons with whom the real and ultimate control rests may step in; and whether simply fearing that the commercial value of the paper may decline if an unpopular course be persisted in; or, immeasurably worse still, actuated by personal motives, may desire to use the paper for their own commercial or political benefit–then he may be required to alter his tone or remain silent.</p><p>
No knowledge of the high principle and personal integrity of an editor can give the public assurance that personal influences may not be compelling him to modify his course. He is often but an able and highly accredited agent; and he may, under these circumstances, conscientiously feel that he is not justified in pursuing a course which would result in commercial loss to those whose property he manages. He may throw up his control (which is often impossible), or he must remain silent. Men who would be incorruptible before any conceivable species of bribe might, nay, almost must, be amenable to this pressure of circumstances and obligations.</p><p>
If a paper is to represent undeviatingly and sincerely a certain body of opinions, it is absolutely necessary either that it should be completely under the control of one man who is wholly devoted to the body of principles to be maintained, or it must be the property of an organisation representing these principles. Even in this case, were the shares held by members of the organisation, it would be necessary for them to safeguard themselves from the possibility of individual shareholders being induced to sell their shares to the persons, or emissaries of the persons, who would be interested in vitiating the standpoint of the paper.</p><p>
It would be necessary to make it impossible for any shareholder to dispose of a share without the consent of either the Executive Committee of the Organisation, or of all other shareholders, and for any individual shareholder to possess more than a certain limited number of shares. It would then be open only to the personal corruption of individual shareholders,–a contingency against which no foresight or caution can avail, but of which there would be little danger were the original shareholders carefully selected.</p><p>
A paper safeguarded through one or other of these conditions is, I believe, absolutely essential
to the real success of a Progressive Organisation. Such paper the Progressive Element in South Africa possessed when Saul Solomon had absolute control of the <em>Cape Argus;</em> and such a paper must yet be the rallying point of the Progressive Party in this country.</p><p>
The third method by which the association could impress itself upon the country would be by the share it would take in political life.
</p>
<h4>INFLUENCE POLITICIANS!</h4><p>
If it be questioned how, if our numbers be too small to return a majority to the Legislative Councils and to place our men in office, we propose to influence political life, I would reply, that we neither expect nor, for many years to come, desire to see a Ministry formed of our own men.</p><p>
The truly Progressive Element in this country is to-day in a minority, of about the same numerical strength as the extreme Retrogressive Party; neither of these parties to-day is strong enough to put into office and to support, even for a time, a Ministry of its own, consistently carrying out its views. Neither of them could command so completely the Intermediate or Colourless Party as to give it a working majority, save by bartering away the very principles, the support of which formed the sole cause of its existence.</p><p>
The extreme Retrogressive Party in this country has maintained its power, as all conscientious minorities must do, by not seeking to grasp in its hands the ostensible reins of Government, and by its leaders being willing to forego the sweets of office for the sake of effectively impressing the views of the party upon successive Ministries.</p><p>
By such a course of action the Irish Party, composing a minority in the Imperial Parliament, has yet for years made itself a power, courted and feared by successive Liberal and Conservative Governments, and has been able to force its views before the public. Had its
leaders as individuals thirsted, not for the success of the principles they represented, but merely to attain office in some incoming Government, they would either have had to desert their party, or their party would have been compelled to rest content with the pleasure of saying, "There are Irishmen in the Government," in place of seeing their aims upheld. Had the people of Ireland set before themselves as their main end the seeing of certain of their representatives on the Government benches, they could
only have attained it by their representatives ceasing to be Irishmen in everything but name; and the Irish vote would have been annihilated at the very moment of a shallow seeming triumph.</p><p>
Such would be the fate of the truly Progressive or truly Non-Progressive party in this country, if it should set before itself, as its chief end, the placing of its own men in office.</p><p>
In a country with representative institutions a minority, unless it uses force or bribery, <em>cannot</em> place its men in office, and maintain them there for even the shortest period, without sacrificing its very existence. This is trite and obvious, but we dwell upon it because it appears often completely overlooked in the discussion of political affairs in this country; and the fatuous conception seems to prevail that a party can only affect the country and the course of legislation if some person, or persons, who ostensibly belong to its organisation, at whatever cost to its principles, hold office in the Government of the day.</p><p>
The truly Progressive Element in this country will not contain within itself the large majority of the inhabitants for the next five, ten, or perhaps even fifteen years. If the majority of our inhabitants stand, in fifteen years' time, where the majority of the inhabitants of New Zealand stand to-day, we shall feel that the richest hopes of the Progressives of this country have been fulfilled.</p><p>
The part which the Progressive Association in this country will have to play, perhaps for many years, is that of a small, united party, strong in its intelligence and determination, and, above all, in the absolutely unpurchasable nature of its members. A small but united body, it would have to be
reckoned with by each successive Ministry as it took office, and, because it could neither be purchased or bent, would be a thorn in the side of every Government intent upon carrying out measures at variance with its views.</p><p>
If it be asked by what exact means we could make our influence felt by these successive Ministries, I would reply that we should influence them, firstly, by our free and uncompromising discussion in the Colonial and European press of their methods of action and the measures which they introduced. In a country which is rotten with opportunism, and where we have reached a point in which a man dares hardly to give utterance in whispers to his political convictions, and in which hundreds of men and women sit spell-bound, afraid of losing their daily bread if they utter a word in condemnation of existing powers, the fact of persistent and fearless discussion of governmental methods would render the continuance of certain existing lines of action on the part of Government almost impossible. Autocratic Governments have nothing so much to dread as free criticism.</p><p>
Secondly: Our branches would form centres in every
town and village for the prompt calling of public meetIngs to protest against undesirable measures. Had such an organisation been in existence recently when the news reached this Colony of an unpopular appointment, instead of a knot of Progressive men in a few Colonial towns having to organise themselves into small bodies for that particular purpose, it would merely have been necessary to send the news to all branches, and within forty eight hours, in almost every town and village in the Colony, those men who were opposed to the appointment would have met and discussed the
matter, and sent forth their protests.</p><p>
Thirdly: We should influence the political world through our electoral functions.
</p>
<h4>A GROUP OF TWELVE.</h4>
<p>
I do not doubt that there would be tell or a dozen men in Parliament who would represent our views, some or all of them belonging to our organisation. These men, feeling that they had a considerable body behind them, might more easily be induced to stand firmly, and refuse all offers of office, or local and personal benefits, which could be accepted only at the
cost of laying aside their functions of criticism.</p><p>
At elections we should exert our influence. In every instance we should, if we were true to our principles, throw our weight, small though it might be, into the scale of that man, whether Dutchman or Englishman, whom we could most depend upon to act in accordance with our principles or do least violence to them. Where we could not possibly return a member of our own we could, by throwing our weight in the scale of the man most desirable or least objectionable, turn many elections. If, as an organisation, we stood firm to our convictions, we should frequently have the casting vote.</p><p>
I think it will be necessary for us to set clearly before ourselves from the very start the fact that we have trot organised ourselves to support any given body of politicians, but to see our policy enforced; that we have nailed to our mast-head, not the names of individuals, but a declaration of our principles. While a man acts in accordance with these, he is one of us; when he does not, then he ceases to be of us. We could as little have supported the recent Ministry under Mr. Rhodes, because three of the ablest and most liberal men of the country bore office in it, as we could the present Ministry. The bitterest wrong which leaders can inflict upon their crew is when they take service on the enemy's ship, and prevent their fellows from attacking it, for fear of wounding them. Under such circumstances there is nothing to be done but to fire, regardless whether you bring down your own absconded leaders or the enemy; and this, even though they may have been partly actuated by a desire to impede the enemy's sailing powers when they took service.</p><p>
As Progressives, we should not be moved an inch out of
our path by the fact that any man calls himself an Oppositionist, or is the member of any existing Government. We should endeavour to support or oppose any man or Ministry with strict impartiality, exactly as it opposed or supported the principles we represent. As long as a man, in any single instance, supported them, did he call himself Bondsman or Retrogressive, he should have our steadfast approval.</p><p>
That captious criticism, and disingenuous judgment, which would condemn any measure brought in or supported by a member of an opposing political faction, and which is almost inevitable where men have turned politics into a game, and are playing to make points, should be wholly foreign to the spirit of such an organisation as our own, whose chief end should be the passing of those measures we believe beneficial, and not the seeing of those men who call themselves our representatives for the moment captains in the political game.</p><p>
Were such an organisation as I have suggested formed which would draw into itself the scattered Progressive Elements throughout the whole country, despising none; and which should seek to draw its strength, not from numbers, but from the determination and the impersonal aims of its members; which should endeavour to influence political life without throwing itself into the whirlpool of political ambitions; and which should stand outside, consistently fighting for its own principles–such an organisation, though including perhaps at first not many noted political names, but formed of the people and for the people, would, I believe, slowly and surely grow. For the first two years our occupation would be mainly that of self-organisation, and the education of public feeling. I believe that in five years' time we should be a power in the land, able to restore the Retrogressive Influences to that healthy and natural position in which they would form a conservative safeguard, preventing the inauguration of measures too far in advance of the social condition of the community. I believe that in fifteen or twenty years' time our aims, which now appear chimerical to a part of the community, will be then but an attempt to give voice to the convictions of the people. And this I believe is worth working and waiting for.</p>
<hr class="base">
<h4>Footnotes</h4>
<p>
<a href="#a1" name="1"><span class="NOTE">[1]</span></a>
The Franchise Act, introduced and voted for unanimously by the last Ministry, Mr. Rhodes being Premier, raised the monetary qualification from £25 to £75 per annum.
</p>
<p>
<a href="#a2" name="2"><span class="NOTE">[2]</span></a>
There is also that ancient categorical imperative which has lain behind the Liberalism of ail religious natures from the days of Buddha and Confucius to that of Jesus and the Socialistic movement of to-day–"Do ye unto others as ye would they should do unto you"–and which, perhaps, after all, is the most satisfactory statement of the fundamental principle of Liberalism yet formulated.
</p>
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Olive Shreiner
The Political Situation
Source: The Political Situation, T. Fisher Unwin, 1896;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org in 2000.
PART I.
LET US glance first at the conditions of this Retrogressive Movement, and see if its cause be discoverable.
That such a movement has taken place admits of no doubt.
Many of the measures passed have not only shown no tendency to accord with the movement known as Liberal or Progressive in all countries inhabited by Europeans; but they have shown a persistent tendency to
move in a contrary direction, and even to undo the more advanced and progressive legislative enactments of the past.
RETROGRESSIVE LEGISLATION.
While in all civilised countries where representative institutions prevail the tendency is to move without intermission in the direction of a broadened electoral basis,[1]
so that in several of the English colonies to-day we find manhood suffrage, or one man one vote, or adult suffrage; and while even the most backward of European countries are rapidly tending year by year towards these conditions–we, I believe, alone among civilised people have deliberately, during the last few years, narrowed our basis,I and undone the progressive work of the last generation.
So also while in all enlightened countries during the past sixty years public opinion has been steadily advancing in the direction of doing away with the lash as a punishment for minor offences, we in this country have not only, during the last years, possessed certain individuals in our Legislative Councils who have striven to introduce an Act making legal the infliction of corporal punishment for the smallest offences towards master or mistress on the part of household or other servants, and which, if passed would be merely a recurrence to slavery under a new name–but this Act was voted for by three members in the last Ministry, two of them being Englishmen, and one the Premier, Mr. Cecil Rhodes.
Again, while in ail civilised countries the tendency, as each country advances, is to consider more and more the welfare of its labouring classes; to remove oppressive restrictions; to endeavour by every lawful means to increase their wages; and to regard the labourer, not merely as a means for increasing the wealth of other sections of the community, but to legislate for his welfare, and to regard his happiness as one of the pressing considerations of the State–we in this country have, under the Glen Grey Act of last year, brought in and supported by Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his following, an enactment which compels even the self-supporting and industrious native to work for the white man for a certain time every year, whether he will or no; laying himself open to imprisonment or fine
if he refuse, even though his going out to labour for the white man should entail the neglect of his own cultivated lands.
So again, with regard to land tenure; while in all progressive countries there is a tendency to obtain and retain as large a part as possible of lands, mines, and great public works as the property of, and to be worked for the benefit of, the nation as a whole–we, in this country, are for ever and completely alienating our public lands, our minerals, our precious stones, and even our public works.
And further, not only are we alienating them within our own boundaries, and allowing almost without a struggle a small band of Monopolists to gain possession and control of that wealth which should be ours and our children's to employ for the benefit of the nation that shall be, but we are enabling them to grasp adjacent territories still uninhabited by the white man, so that when the mass of civilised men shall enter into occupation there, they will find nothing of value left for themselves in that state which, by their labour, they will have to build up; the alien will already have set his grasp upon all that is fair or rich. For not as in other countries has the Monopolist risen up
among us, a growth of our own , he comes from a foreign clime, and sweeps bare the virgin land before him like the locust; and, like the locust, leaves nothing for his successors but the barren earth.
While in New Zealand and Other advanced colonies every legislative effort is being made to retain the land for the people, we are quietly allowing ourselves to be stripped bare session after session, and are confiding our possession into the hands of the Speculator and Monopolist.
Lastly, while in enlightened countries there is a continually increasing tendency to raise the revenue, not by taxing the primary necessaries of life, upon which almost the whole income of the labouring classes is necessarily expended, but to raise it through the taxation of luxuries, whether by means of Excise or Import dues, we in this country find that not only are our necessaries of life already taxed to an appalling extent, but a heavy additional tax on wheat and flour, and an almost prohibitive tax on imported meat, is being levied upon us; while diamonds (forming a monopoly of which the Prime Minister is the head) and the Intoxicating liquors, inferior in quality, so largely produced in this country, are allowed to go untaxed.
So also in small matters.
In Australia, where the material welfare of the country largely depends on its wool, it has been clearly seen that to allow the land to be partially ruined by the existence of an easily eradicated disease in the Stock was scandalous and immoral; and they have legislated so successfully that in certain Australian colonies the insect which causes the disease has
been exterminated. It has been felt in those countries that the man who refuses to exterminate scab in his flocks inflicts a merciless wrong and injustice upon his fellows whose flocks his own infect; and the Australians have, by stringent legislation, made such conduct impossible.
It is not necessary to say that in this country all attempts to legislate in defence of the man who endeavours to keep his flocks healthy have been crushed or emasculated.
Many other matters will suggest themselves to every one in which our legislation has shown this retrograde tendency. We have no time now to enter into
details with regard to such measures as Haarhoff's Bill, which, as introduced, was intended to make it culpable for any aboriginal native, whether a domestic servant, householder, newspaper editor, or clergyman, to be found walking on pavements in our towns; and also to make it punishable for any aboriginal native to be found out of doors within a township after nine o'clock at night unless he or she had been given a pass by the Magistrate or other authorised person–a Bill which also received the support of the existing Government.
On the whole, it is evident that no impartial mind can look at the course of our legislation during
recent years the fact that of legislation in other civilised and Anglo-Saxon communities are tending to propel the car of state forwards, ours are slowly but surely running us backwards.
RETROGRESSIVE FACTORS:
I. THE BOND.
Now, when we turn to inquire of ourselves what reason of the this Retrogressive Movement may be, I think the superficial reply, given when we glance merely at the surface of our public life, would be this: that the Retrogressive Movement of late years has been entirely the work of that organisation known throughout South Africa as the Afrikander Bond ; and which has in recent years attained to such influence
that it apparently coerces Ministry after Ministry, bending them to its will. But a deeper examination will, I think, show us that the Bond alone would not have been able to produce this movement. Another influence, working into the hands of the Bond, has given it for a moment the power of forcing this retrogression upon the country.
But before we turn to consider this secondary influence, let us glance at the Bond itself.
The Afrikander Bond was in its origin one of the most beneficent and desirable institutions that have appeared in South Africa. It banded together, and aroused to healthy interest in the affairs of the State, a large body of men who, hitherto unorganised and isolated, had not taken that share in the affairs of the State, a large body of men who, hithero, had not taken that share in the government of the State which their numbers would have justified, and who were therefore unduly disregarded and possibly even unjustly dealt with.
Started originally (as was inevitable under the circumstances) as a more or less racial organisation, and opposing Boer as Boer to Englishman as Englishman, this tone, nevertheless, as time passed, quickly modified itself. To-day the organisation is merely an organisation which draws together and unites for common purposes a number of the early colonists and others holding certain views on social and political matters, and in no way is it a merely racial organisation. To this extent it forms a healthy and desirable element in our public life. Left to itself, and having no adventitious power given it by an extraneous intervention, I believe that, so far from being an evil, the existence of the Bond would awaken and maintain that healthy friction and interaction of opposing views which is necessary to keep pure and healthy the stream of political life.
But what has this extraneous influence been which has acted upon the Bond, removing it from its healthy position, and enabled it to obtain for the moment an undue power of enforcing its retrogressive views and methods upon the whole Cape Colony?
To explain this influence it will be necessary to examine carefully the nature and power of that small band of Monopolists to whom we before referred.
AFRICA BEFORE THE MONOPOLISTS.
South Africa is a country of vast resources. In spite of the dryness of much of our climate, the rocky nature of certain tracts of our soil, taking the whole of South Africa together from east to west, I do not hesitate to assert that not many countries equally desirable and suitable for human habitation
will be found. More than a compensation for the dryness of our climate is the absence of the numbing cold of extreme northern and southern lands, which for months in the year renders outdoor labour difficult;
yet more important is the absence of that moist heat which in tropical countries renders exertion almost impossible to the white man, and exhaustive to the dark. A country with temperate, stimulating climate, which favours the health and energy of Europeans, physically and mentally; which is favourable to the constitution of every species of domestic animal, and is adapted to the cultivation of almost every plant of the temperate and tropical zones; which, above all, is one of the richest, if not the richest, country in the world in precious stones and minerals of all kinds, and which was originally peopled only by barbarians–this country has always been attractive to Europeans. For 200 years, Boer and Englishman, we have been populating and steadily taking possession of the land, moving steadily northwards. Our progress has not been made by a series of world-striking coups d'etat, it has been slow, but it has been the more healthy, the more sure, the more deeply rooted, because of its gradual and natural development.
Those superb pioneers of South Africa, its Boers, have continued to move, as they have always moved, northward: our English colonists have been steadily building up their villages, founding their educational institutions, and establishing a liberal and progressive Government. We have not exhausted or even yet opened up many of the mineral resources of our country; they are still here for the use of our own and future generations; but so far as the colonists, Dutch and English, have populated the land, our progress, though slow, has been wholesome; and the land as a whole has been kept free from many of those crushing evils which afflict the older civilisations of Europe, and even affect some of the younger dependencies.
There is a sense in which we have been a poor people. We have had no mass of surplus wealth wrung from the labour of a working class, but we have been a very rich people, perhaps one of the richest on the earth, in the fact that grinding poverty, and the enormous and superfluous wealth of individuals, were equally unknown among us. Our people as a whole led a simple but comfortable life; our labouring classes were engaged in no unhealthy occupation; starvation and want were unknown among us; we were progressing steadily, if slowly, and keeping our national wealth for the people as a whole, and for all who should labour among us.
But a new element has burst into South African life.
RETROGRESSIVE FACTORS: II. THE MONOPOLIST.
When diamonds were first discovered here, in the true old South African manner, the find was considered as one for the people at large. For years there flocked to the Diamond-fields colonists from every part of the country, and the wealth discovered went back to the homes of the people. That wealth rebuilt many a Colonial homestead; it educated many a Colonial child; it enabled landowners to carry out improvements otherwise impossible; it saved from insolvency many a Colonial firm which had sent members to dig; it spread throughout the country a glow of well-being, owing to the general diffusion in small sums of the wealth made by South Africa from the diamonds. Something analogous took place in the early days at the Transvaal gold-fields ; and gold-digging has never yet become quite so complete a monopoly in the hands of a few as the diamond industry.
Time forbids that I should enter into a detailed account of the way in which these industries passed from their early and healthy condition; the
facts are well known to you all. There were in South Africa certain men from Europe, of great shrewdness, and with large abilities for speculation, who saw at once the possibilities our natural industries opened out before them. The many small original possessors of the wealth of South Africa were not men of vast means, and were rather hardworkers than sharp financial speculators; and the keensighted strangers quickly discerned that, could they buy oUt the small interests one by one and then amalgamate among themselves, slowly but surely the wealth of the country would pass into their hands.
It needed no vast capital to buy out the original possessors.
To-day a small, resolute, and keen body of men, amalgamated into Rings and Trusts, are quickly and surely setting their hands round the mineral wealth of South Africa. Our diamonds are already a complete monopoly in their hands; our gold, our coal, the richest portions of our soil, and even our public works, are tending to fall into the grasp of our great amalgamators. Not only are these men not South Africans by birth, which would in itself matter nothing, but in the majority of cases they are men who regard South Africa merely as a field for the making of wealth and the furthering of their own designs. When they have attained their end they do not feel themselves bound to the spot which has enriched them, but in most cases retire to Europe to expend the wealth of South Africa in the purchase of social distinction and in the luxuries of old-world life, or in further increasing their command over South African resources.
And South Africa grows poorer!
Yet, were this all, we should be inclined to say, What ground have we for complaint? These men are but taking advantage of that competitive system which we to-day still uphold. If the men of South Africa are not skilled enough in the methods of gathering together the wealth of a people; and if they have not that fellow-feeling to be able to defeat them, which would enable them to combine, and so retain the land for the people at large; can we blame the men who take advantage of our ignorance and disunion? They are but carrying out their operations on the most approved financial principles! In truth, were this all, we should merely be suffering in a most exaggerated degree from a disease common to many other countries.
THE UNION OF THE TWO FACTORS.
But our evil has not stopped here. Owing to the mental capacity of some of these speculators, and to certain conditions in South African public life, the conception suggested itself to them: that were it possible to obtain complete control of the political machinery in any African State (notably of the Cape Colony), and could they hold the reins of Government in their own hands, their power for increasing their wealth, for resisting taxation upon those industries of which they possessed monopolies, and for extending their commercial exploitations into adjoining territories, would be immeasurably increased.
This conception has been seized and carried out.
The means of its accomplishment in the Cape Colony has been through the complete control gained by the Monopolists over the only group in South Africa whom they could hope to guide, and whom, in view of their extra-colonial plans, it was necessary to keep pacified and well in hand.
It is this command of the political machinery of the country by the Monopolist, owing to his union with one section, which constitutes the real disease from which the Cape Colony is suffering. It
is this which lies at the back of our Retrogressive Movement.
For the Monopolist Party, determined to obtain control of the political machinery, could only do so by purchasing the co-operation of some truly South African body. The more shrewd and modern section of South Africans–professional men, merchants, go ahead newspaper-reading farmers–are, very many of them, unpurchasable; and those who are not would demand a high price in concessions local and personal, and even then could not be blindly led. Our working population being mainly native, and very slightly enfranchised, is not at the present day, and will not be for a long time to come, a party powerful enough to make its support a strength to any leader. Then there remained for the Speculatist and Monopolist Party but one body to whom it could turn with any hope that it would place it in power. This body was the Retrogressive Element in the Bond Party. It was purchased, not by the outlay of capital, nor by offers of place and power to its members, but, much more cheaply for the Monopolist, by the simple expedient of offering to support those Retrogressive measures which without his aid could never have found a place on our Colonial Statute-book. The Kafir's back and the poor man's enhanced outlay on the necessaries of life pay the Monopolist's bribe.
On the other hand, the Retrogressive Element, once enabled to pass such measures as lay nearest its heart by the co-operation of the Monopolist with his skill and intelligence, is willing to give him a perfectly free hand, and support him in all measures which do not touch its Retrogressive instincts. We thus have the Retrogressive Party supporting the Monopolist in carrying out measures in which he has no interest or concern, and the Monopolist assisting the Retrogressive Party in setting upon the Statute-book measures which are repugnant to his own common sense and shrewd modern outlook. Taking advantage of
that childlike simplicity which is at once the weakness and the greatest charm of the Boer, he leads him whither he would and also whither he would not.
It is from this unnatural marriage that are born those evils under which the Colony groans to-day. It is a marriage which must end in rupture when the Retrogressive Party discover how, instead of a union of affection, they have been led into one of convenience, and that the bridegroom is quite ready to forsake his bride when she has nothing more to give him.
Nevertheless, to-day it is this coalition which is unpicking the progressive enactments of the past, which is enabling the Monopolist Party to carry out unhampered its financial depredations here and in the Northern Territories. It is this coalition which, by giving political power to enormously wealthy individuals, is corroding our public life, till the principle that every man has his price and call be squared, if you call only find his figure, is becoming an established dogma.
Worse than any of those retrogressive measures which the Bondsman, in simplicity and sincerity, desires to see enacted are those measures which he allows others to take, who are neither simple nor sincere.
"BUT ARE THEY NOT ANGLICISING AFRICA?"
But I am aware it may be contended : "Granting what has been stated as being exactly true; allowing that the Monopolist has filched away the wealth of South Africa; and granting that his party, by coalescing with the extreme Retrogressive Party, has given it for the time being an unhealthy preponderance; granting, further, that to retain control over the Colonial Legislature squaring in all its multiple forms has been, and is, a necessity on the part of the Monopolist Party; granting that this is disastrous to our public and social life–yet is it not worth our while to connive at all these conditions, and to abstain from disturbing them, as long as the Monopolist Party is quietly and persistently moving in a direction which tends to annihilate the independence of two adjoining States, which shall ultimately render the Englishman dominant throughout South Africa? At the cost of whatever evils or injustice, is it not well to see extending northward the territory more or less under British rule?"
We are all aware that this is often put forth plainly and in so many words as a reason for abstaining from interference with the Monopolist Party. It is said frequently, "I am for Rhodes, because, whatever he may or may not be, he is slowly but surely undermining the Bond. Rhodes, and he only, will within our lifetime so manipulate, that the neighbouring Republics shall fall into our hands, and the English Party in South Africa be dominant. And, after all, is not this extension to the northward a very fine thing for the Colony?"
To this I would first reply: Is the undermining and breaking up of the Bond, even if this should result from the alliance, worth the continual passing of such measures as we shall have in the future to undo? Is the breaking up of the Bond itself wholly to be desired? And if it were, is splitting the Bond worth causing deep racial unrest and suspicion where none before existed, between ourselves and our native fellow-inhabitants, the labouring class of South Africa, by the passing of laws which seem to express an animus towards them which we do not feel; and which constitute a course which, though for the moment it call work us no practical evil, may in years to come, when too late, be the cause of bitter regret? Is it worth while so vitiating the streams of our public life that we have to look back with regret and almost incredulity at the nature of our public life in years gone by, feeling its tone something almost too high ever to have existed in South Africa? Is all this worth paying, even if we are undermining the Bond?
I, for one, hold strongly that
it is not. I do not wish to see
the Bond broken.
What I wish to see is the Bond holding its own manfully on all subjects, social and political, and exercising that influence upon the Legislature and public life of this colony which is proportionate to its numbers and intelligence; thereby preventing legislation from taking a course which might in any respect be unjust, or opposed to the benefit of an important and respected section of the community.
Is the forced annexation of
the neighbouring States worth the price we are paying for it? If it be true, which I question, that the union of the South African States can only be attained by keeping at the head of affairs the Monopolist Party, is it worth keeping them there? I, for one, assert emphatically that it is not. I believe the confederation of the South African States to be a desirable consummation; and I believe further that it is one which will inevitably take place sooner or later. Confederation now might have its advantages, and it would have its disadvantages; but no confederation, however much we desire it, would pay
us for the internal disintegration we are producing within our own State, through the support of the Monopolist Party. When confederation does take place I believe it will be desirable that it should take place, not as the result of skilful manipulations analogous to those by which one shrewd speculator out-speculates another, but through the gradual growth of a consciousness in the people of South Africa that their interests are one, and that in union lies their strength. Such a confederacy will, I believe, be as healthful, as strong,as beneficent as a union brought about by sleight-of-hand and dissimulation will be unstable and pernicious.
IS IT WORTH THE COST?
Further, and finally: Is it worth while for us, as Cape Colonists, to submit to the dominion of the Monopolist, with all that pertains to it, simply because we believe that party, in annexing and apportioning the lands north of the Transvaal and the Cape Colony, is thereby extending the territories under the British flag?
I, for one, have not only a cordial affection for my own nation, but also for British rule. I believe that, with all its faults, it is often a beneficent and a generous rule; and were it possible to annex to-morrow, without injustice to others, or heavy moral and social loss to ourselves, the whole of Africa, from the Straits of Gibraltar and the Isthmus of Suez to the Cape Colony, and place it under the English rule, I, for one, should cordially welcome that possibility.
But a nation, like an individual, may pay too dearly for desirable objects. It is highly probable that Naboth's vineyard, lying as it did contiguous to the domains of Ahab, formed an exceedingly desirable adjunct to that property. The mistake in Jezebel's calculation lay in the fact that the price ultimately to be paid for the annexation somewhat exceeded the value of the land.
I hold, much as I desire to see the extension of the British Empire, that the Colony is in this case paying too dearly for this extension. I hold that no possible accretion of kudos and racial gratification can ever repay us for the heavy price in the demoralisation of our institutions, and the retrogression in our legislation, which the Cape Colony is paying to support the Monopolist Group, and enable it to undertake its annexations.
Further, leaving this point of view for a moment, and taking the lower and purely monetary standpoint, let us see what the Colony really has to gain commercially by these annexations south of the Zambesi.
It appears to me there is a good deal of misunderstanding upon this point. I cannot see, from this lower standpoint–nor have I ever yet met a man who could explain to me how he saw–that the taking over of Mashonaland and Matabeleland by the Chartered Company would increase the wealth of the men and women of the Cape Colony. It appears to me more than probable, when we study the map, and other conditions of the problem, that the opening up of these territories, so far from increasing the wealth and influence of the Cape Colony, will ultimately subtract from both. If Rhodesia and the country north of the Transvaal should become populated and important, I cannot for a moment conceive that they will still continue to draw up their supplies from the very toe of South Africa; that new routes will not be formed, along which trade will make its way to Central and Eastern South Africa, without coming into contact with the extreme south of the Continent.
Further, we as Cape Colonists have now more land than we require; our need is for men, and I do not see how the annexation of the Chartered Company tends to draw them
into the Cape Colony. I take it that, however wire-pullings may avail for a few years, ultimately the traffic both in passengers and in goods to East and Central South Africa will find the shortest and cheapest routes, which will not be through the Cape Colony; and the Cape Colony, denuded to a large extent of its trade and its importance in South Africa, will have to depend solely upon its internal resources, which,
abundant though they be, are now allowed to lie undeveloped, while the people's eyes follow this northern will-o'-the wisp.
But it may be said, and said very truly: "Granting that the Cape Colony does not gain either directly or indirectly through the possession of Rhodesia by the Chartered Company, and even that it loses heavily in the material sense, there is yet no reason, from the broadest humanitarian standpoint, why it should not support the movement."
Now, I fully allow that it may be right and desirable that a portion of a people should sacrifice itself for the benefit of the whole, or that a whole nation should sacrifice itself for the benefit of humanity at large. That this has not yet been done in the history of the world by no means proves that it is undesirable or may not yet be done. But what I most strongly hold is that in this instance sacrifice on the part of the Cape Colony of its internal interests, social and material, if undertaken to enable the Chartered Company to obtain possession of the territories north of the Transvaal, will be sacrifice thrown away.
I know that it will be said, "But think of the terrible contingency had the Boers entered that country and started a new republic there! "
CHARTERED VERSUS BOER
RULE.
I believe I shall not be suspected of unreasonable advocacy of Boer rule; but I do contend that South Africa as a whole, and the English-speaking world at large, would have lost less by the civilisation of these countries under the auspices of the Boer flag than under that of the Chartered Company. Boer rule has its evils; the Boer is seldom just and considerate to the aborigines of a country which he annexes
(though, as a rule,I do not know whether they tend to disappear faster under his rule than under that of other white men); but as far as the European is concerned,the rule in a Boer republic is, in most respects, healthy and natural. The Cape Colonist or foreigner from Europe has never been refused admittance to these republics; and if in the Transvaal the civic franchise has been somewhat injudiciously withheld from certain newcomers, they possess every other privilege and right. As time passes the little racial line between English colonists and their forerunners will pass away throughout South Africa; the English language will be universally used by all cultured persons; English manners and customs will prevail (Pretoria is to-day more English than Cape Town!); and in the long run, which in this case will only be a run of thirty or forty years, it will make no difference whether any part of this country was first civilised under the flag of the Boer or the Englishman. The incoming streams of English-speaking men and women will slowly but continuously mingle themselves with the body of earlier settlers, and in forty years' time, whether we wish it or do not, there will be no Boer or Englishman as such in South Africa–only the great South African people, speaking the English tongue, following English precedents, and as closely united to England as Australia or Canada.
This process of amalgamation and growth was in progress long before the European speculator arrived among us, and it will go on were the Fates to remove him from us to-morrow.
Had Dutch Voortrekkers taken possession of the regions between the Zambesi and Transvaal there would not, on the whole, have been greater loss of native life, nor more perfidy in dealing with them, than under the Chartered Company; and one gigantic evil which is now fixing itself upon those territories would not have come into existence. The Boer tradition, like that of the genuine English settler all over the world, has been this: that, in the new lands they inhabited, the soil and the valuable productions of the land should be apportioned fairly among the men who came personally to dwell and labour on it with their wives and families. Rare minerals have not even as a rule been regarded as the property of the individuals in whose lands they were found, but they have been regarded as the property of the community, to ally member of which it was open to obtain a share in that property if he were willing to expend his own labour upon it. In States founded in this manner the land and its wealth tended to be distributed with tolerable equality throughout the community. This will never be in Rhodesia. By the time the mass of men from the Colony or Europe enter the country they will find everything of value–mines, fertile lands, town properties–all in the hands of a small knot of men headed by the leaders of the Chartered Company, consisting in part of persons who have never seen South Africa, such as the Duke of Fife and others.
The great evil is not that these men possess the country as shareholders and directors in the Chartered Company, nor that they retain the right to levy a tribute of 50 per cent, on all precious stones and minerals found in the entire territory, and that for many years to come they will hold extensive control over the whole government of the country; but, what is immeasurably more disastrous, before the country can be peopled by the ordinary colonist a small knot of men (not the body of shareholders as a whole, but that small body in whose interest the Chartered Company was formed, and for whose benefit it is worked) will, either in their own persons or by means of their emissaries, have gone over the whole land, and whatever of real value these lands contain will be their private property. If the Chartered Company were in ten or fifteen years' time, or much sooner, to explode, and as a company to loosen its control over the land and people, it would yet be found that the whole real wealth of the country was appropriated and in the hands of a few private individuals forming syndicates and trusts.
The worst social diseases which afflict the old countries of Europe will make their appearance full grown in this virgin African land at the outset of its career. That unequal division of wealth, which bestows vast riches upon some individuals while the majority of the community are in abject poverty, is, in those old countries, the outcome of institutions which are the growth of centuries, and it is often softened by traditions binding the owners of wealth to the land itself, and those who labour on it. In these new territories no traditions will bind the owner to the land and soften his relations with the people; the financial possessors of the wealth of the country will exhibit on a colossal scale the worst evils of absentee ownership, or the possession of a country by men who regard land and people merely as a means for acquiring wealth.
The political life in these territories will be diseased. Even in the Cape to-day we have seen how disastrous are the effects of gigantic wealth held in a young country by a few individuals. There may be no deliberate intention to bribe, but the mere possession of wealth which is enormous in comparison to the wealth of the whale community (if the possessors be not singularly large and impersonal in their aims, and if they interest themselves at all in politics) throws into their hands a power of conferring benefits or inflicting evils which will inevitibly lead to an undue subjection to their will; to the vitiation of representative institutions, and the destruction of independent public life.
The colonist and the stranger from Europe will arrive and settle in these territories, but they will discover that its townships, its valuable mines, its richest lands have already been taken possession of. They will find it a cake from which all the plums have been carefully extracted, or like a body when the vultures have visited it, leaving nothing but bare bones.
Is it for colonisation carried out on such lines as these that the Cape Colony is to be asked to sacrifice its internal political and social welfare? Is it to aid and abet a handful of men in gaining this disastrous control over South Africa and its resources that the Cape Colony is to obliterate itself? Is it to submit to any use which may be made of it, so it only affords a stepping-stone, and gives prestige in Europe by allowing its public appointments held by them?
I think not.
CHARTERED VERSUS FOREIGN RULE.
We all know what a bugbear to some even perfectly sincere minds is the conception of the possibility of Boer, Portuguese, German, or French occupation of African territories, and we all know what use is frequently made of this bugbear by those interested in annexations. But I think no practical man who carefully examines the question can really think that the Cape Colonists as such have anything to fear from the annexations of other European Powers in Africa. And I would go further. I would say–If all English colonisation had been, or were in the future to be, carried out along the lines and according to the methods of the Chartered Company, that I cannot see wherein South Africa would gain by aiding and abetting such a form of colonisation over that inaugurated by other European nations. Colonisation by the British people is not the same thing as colonisation under the Chartered Company. The first is supposed to have as its object the development of the people it takes under its rule, and the planting of a free and untrammelled branch of the Anglo-Saxon race upon the land; the aim of the Chartered Company is to make wealth out of land and people.
But last of all, it may be said (and this criticism appears to me profoundly just): "It is very well to blame the Monopolist, with his ready brains and his quick wit, for the uses which he is making of South Africa; it is very well to blame the Retrogressive Party for playing into his hands, and making possible his monopolies and increasing acquisitions, making him a permanent institution in the land, which the South
Africa of the future may hopelessly endeavour to rid herself of; it is very well to blame the Monopolist and Retrogressionist–but how did they gain, and how do they maintain, this absolute domination over the land Do they comprise within themselves all the intelligence, all the determination of South Africa? Are they our only political units? "
I can but say in reply, I believe it is not just to throw the whole blame of our position either upon the Monopolist or the Retrogressionist. The Monopolist is simply the acute business man who has been enabled to carry out his plans successfully and on a colossal scale, owing to the possession of tact and foresight, and, perhaps, unusual disregard of collateral issues. The high intellectual capacity shown by many of these men compels admiration and awakens our sympathy; and we call only regret that abilities which in some cases amount to genius should not be employed in a direction more productive of good to humanity. The Monopolist of genius is often like a great body of waters expending itself in causing inundations where it might produce fertility.
For the Retrogressionist there is yet more unlimited excuse. He has been somewhat hardly dealt with in the past. That he should desire to make his influence felt when at last the opportunity offers itself, and that he should use his power without full consideration for the rights of others, is not unnatural. He alone among South Africans has, during the last years, shown a capacity for standing resolutely by his principles; and we can only feel regret that so much integrity and manly determination is not expended on our side, but against us.
But there are two other sections of our population upon whom it appears to me unlimited blame rests, and for whom it is difficult to see an excuse.
TWO OTHER CULPRITS.
Firstly. There is that section of the general public which, knowing that we are governed by representative institutions, and that every citizen, however humble, is more or less responsible for the well-being of the State, yet regards public affairs with apathy; and, absorbed in personal interests, is absolutely ungrateful of its citizens' duties.
Secondly (and for this section it appears to me that no reprobation can be too strong). We have a party of men through-out South Africa, by education and natural bias, Liberals; by public profession, Progressives; men who on their own showing see clearly the evils of Retrogressive and Monopolist principles, and who constitute part of our so-called Progressive Party. These men, in spite of their profession, are continually found, as public men and leaders, using the subtlest methods of the Monopolist, coquetting with any and every party which appears likely to aid them to office and power. Without the genius of the Monopolist, they sink to his opportunism for the attainment of the smallest ends; as private individuals they oppose such progressive measures which would entail inconvenience upon themselves, personally or locally, and connive at certain retrogressive measures when doing so confers benefit upon themselves, without the true Retrogressive's excuse of earnest conviction. It is these men, whether politicians, progressive farmers, or enlightened commercial men, to whom we should naturally look for deliverance from the evils which oppress the Colony; yet it is exactly these men who in some instances have made possible the despotism of the Monopolist, and the triumph of the
Retrogressionist, by their complete absorption in their own small aims, and their wilful disregard of impersonal obligations. The Monopolist may be organically incapacitated for seeing further; the Retrogressionist, in spite of his sincerity, cannot see further; the so-called Progressive sees further, but refuses to act at any cost to himself. Such men are the bane of the country.
There is, however, yet another section of our community distinct from all those we have noticed. It is to this section, I think, that we must look to inaugurate a truly Progressive movement in Colonial affairs.
And this brings us back to the question with which we started: HOW IS THE RETROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN THE
CAFE COLONY TO BE STAYED?
PART II.
HOW IS THE RETROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT TO BE STAYED
To this question the reply seems obvious: That in a country with representative institutions Retrogressive legislation must be prevented, if prevented at all, by the intervention of such Progressive Elements as exist within the community itself.
IS THERE A PROGRESSIVE
FACTOR?
But when we look at the Cape Colony at the present day, the doubt at first forces itself upon us whether there is a Progressive Element at all. Would this unbroken spell of Retrogressive legislation and
political flaccidity be possible were really Progressive Elements existent in the country?
In times past there was such an element. Small but united, there was a Progressive Party of which no advanced European people need have been ashamed. From the days of Pringle and Fairbairn to the days of Sir George Grey and Saul Solomon, not only was South Africa not wanting in liberal and advanced individuals, but these individuals had their influential following. It was by these men and their party that our most advanced institutions were created, our comparatively broad basis of enfranchisement instituted, our most beneficent educational establishments, native and otherwise, founded, and the recognition on our Statute-book of the fact that to all men, irrespective of race and colour, the law should deal out an even-handed justice–this and much more was the work of these men.
When to-day we see how steadily we are undoing this work, and legislating in opposition to it, and how entirely opposed to the Progressive spirit of the past is that which guides our public councils to-day, the suggestion will force itself upon us: "Is not the Progressive Element dying or dead among us?"
For years past Retrogressive measure after Retrogressive measure has stained our Statute-book; undesirable commercial contracts have been entered into, subjecting public interests to personal gains; the name and prestige of the Cape Colony have been used for the attainment of extra-colonial ends in a manner we do not desire-yet we have remained passive. In town or village no public meetings have been called to protest against these courses of action. In no case have even the smallest knots of men been found banded together to defend the country against these changes. If we except the recent protest against the bread and meat tax and against the appointment of one of the Monopolist Party to the highest function of the State, the country has remained in condition of deadly passivity and almost comatose inertia.
On the surface I allow it appears that there is no progressive element in South Africa, but I believe this appearance is not a reality.
I believe that in every town, and in every district and village, will be found (though not invariably among its most important or wealthy members) a certain body of men and women, from the bank clerk to the clergyman, from the shop assistant to the small tradesman, from the schoolmaster or mistress to the enterprising young farmer, Dutch or English, from the working mall to the wholesale merchant, who are as essentially advanced in their view as any body of men or women in any country: persons wholly unaffected by the disease which seems eating the core of our national life–that fevered desire to grow wealthy without labour, as individuals by reckless speculation, and as a nation by annexations.
And if it be asked( how, if this Progressive Element exists among us, it has become so completely inoperative, my reply is simply–Because it lacks organisation.
At the time of the Restoration there were not fewer advanced and progressive Republicans in England than there had been in the lifetime of Oliver Cromwell. They had not died nor emigrated at the accession of Charles the Second; they were still there, holding their views with the same strength and with perhaps an added bitterness, but as a power in the land they were annihilated. They had lost their leader; they had lost their organisation; and the extreme Retrogressive Party had attained to both of these. That mass of persons, indifferent to reforms and public interests, which is found in every country, and which sides with each dominant party because it has the power of conferring benefits and inflicting injuries, went over to the Royalists as it had before gone over to the Republicans. The Democratic Party for years was inoperative in England, but it was not dead, only disorganised; it came to life again, more democratic than ever.
So, looking nearer there were not, eleven years ago, fewer non-progressive and reactionary persons in the Colony than at the present day: there were probably more.
The men who have raised the franchise, who have taxed the necessaries of life, who have crushed all endeavours to contend with scab, who session by session attempt to pass a Flogging Bill which would disgrace
a semi-barbarous people, have not sprung into existence to-day; they were here, holding their views if possible more ardently than to-day, but they were powerless; they could not even materially impede Progressive legislation, because they were unorganised.
This position is ours to-day. Exactly as the Anti-Progressive individual sat on his farm, unable to give expression to his views, because he sat alone, and had no means of communicating with his like-thinking and like-feeling fellows, so to-day the Progressive men and women stand alone in this country; they are not aware of their own numbers; they are not aware of the intensity of common conviction which would bind them into a solid body were they once in touch.
The organisation of these now scattered and isolated units into one united whole is, I believe, the one and only means of staying the Retrogressive Movement in this country. And the great practical question before us now is–How is this to be done?
I allow that I see great difficulties in the way.
WANTED: A LEADER.
One of the first and most essential conditions for organising a party is the possession of a leader; we will not say of an Oliver Cromwell, but at least of a progressive J. H. Hofmeyr; of a mall profoundly in sympathy with the movement, with a gift for organisation, and a willingness to sink his own personal interests to a large extent in that of his work. It is such a man the Progressive Element in this country looks for. We have not found him yet. We have more than one public mall of undoubted ability; and we have at least one man who carries with him the confidence and affection of every Progressive in the country; but either from some peculiarity of nature, from absence of leisure, or other circumstances, none of these men stand forward, devoting time and energy to the formation of such a party throughout the country. We have not a man to whom the Progressive can turn and say: "Organise and lead us; we will follow!" The necessity is therefore imposed upon us of organising ourselves. Nor do I know that this is wholly a calamity.
The most vital and worldwide movements of the present day, such as those of labour and woman, have not been organised or led by one commanding intellect. They have sprung up spontaneously, as it were, in a thousand centres, and then slowly interorganised. It is a healthy indication of a profound necessity when men at independent centres organise themselves, guided by a common impulse without any coercing leadership.
This is exactly what we see taking place in the Colony today. The imposition of the bread and meat tax and the appointment of Sir Hercules Robinson have drawn together small knots of Progressive men to protest against these things; and in such towns as Port Elizabeth and in Cape Town, under the presidency of Mr. J. Rose-Innes, powerful Progressive Associations have been started.
And the time is, I believe, now ripe for drawing together all the scattered Progressive Elements of the country, and uniting them as a wide and non-parochial whole. One, and not the least, of the great advantages of such union would be its tendency to prevent the growth in the Progressive Party of that spirit of localism which seems to rest as an incubus upon all Colonial endeavours, and which would be entirely at variance with the true spirit of a Progressive Organisation.
To place at the head of the united branches no man could be found more admirably suited than Mr. J. Rose-Innes, the president of the South African Political Association of Cape Town, if he were found willing to accept the post.
FORM ASSOCIATIONS.
I think as a first and practical step towards this larger union it would be desirable that wherever possible, in towns or districts, a few progressive men should join together and form Progressive Associations, however small in size, analogous to those now existing in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. It would then be desirable that these bodies should enter into communication with each other, and draw up a body of principles broad enough to make it possible for every really progressive individual to subscribe to them, and distinct enough to make it quite impossible for any thoroughly non-progressive person to enter the organisation. These principles, I think, should be made the basis of all future organisation.
As a second step, I think it would be advisable that, if possible, a delegate should be appointed to visit each town and village in the Colony to attempt to inaugurate a branch of our organisation, however small, in that place. The advantage of this course is obvious. It is often difficult for any individual in a small Colonial town to rise up and inaugurate a movement of any kind, unless he chance to be of exceptional importance, monetarily or otherwise, in the place. In many towns there may be even a large number of individuals, progressive at heart, who would join such an organisation, and who would labour for it vigorously and be able to extend its growth, who yet might not feel themselves in a position to rise up and take the initiative in instating it.
It may be objected that, in places where the branch would at first consist of only a dozen individuals, it would be useless, and serve only to show the barrenness of the land!
But, firstly, while an organisation consisting of a dozen isolated individuals in some town or village might be of small importance in itself, connected as it would ultimately be with the organisations in larger towns throughout the country, its strength would be largely increased; and it would form the germ of what might in time become an extensive growth. It is exactly that we may not lose these driblets of progressive thought and feeling all over the Colony that I would advocate the endeavour to start such small branch organisations.
If further it be asked, What the principles are which are broad enough to unite all the Progressive Elements in the country? I think an answer will not be very difficult.
There are one or two principles subscription to which will make a man a Liberal and Progressive in any country in the world. Their practical application will vary infinitely according to the conditions of the Society in which they are applied;but they are as simple as universal.
The fundamental principle [2]
upon which Progressive Liberalism all the world over is based, whether consciously or unconsciously, and to which it must finally return if it would justify its varying forms of practical action, is the axiom, however variously worded, which asserts that the mental and physical welfare and happiness of humanity as a whole is the end of all wisely directed human effort, whether of individuals or nations; that one of the main aims of all government must be the defence of its weaker members from the depredations of the stronger, and that no course of action which bases the welfare of sections of the community on the sufferings and loss of other sections is justifiable.
Analysis shows that it is upon this wide principle, however worded, that all forms of Modern Liberalism are ultimately based. It is by their more or less complete harmony with it that the thoroughness of their Liberalism may be tested. Nevertheless, it is perhaps too wide a principle on which to base directly a practical organisation intended for the many; more especially in a country where some men's conceptions with regard to Liberal Progressivism are somewhat indefinite–a prominent public man having declared that he considered himself a Progressive because he voted for the construction of railways which would be for his own pecuniary benefit.
THREE TEST QUESTIONS.
In the Cape Colony, and for such an Association as we propose, there are, I think, three subjects, a man's attitude with regard to which would amply suffice to show his adherence or otherwise to this fundamental principle underlying all Liberalism; and which, I think, would be adequate as a test of the fitness of any individual for membership in a Progressive Organisation.
The first of these is the Labour Question; the question of the relation between the propertied, and therefore powerful, class, and the less propertied, and therefore weaker, class.
In South Africa this question assumes gigantic importance, including as it does almost the
whole of what is popularly termed the Native Question; that question being indeed only the Labour Question of Europe complicated by a difference of race and colour between the employing and propertied, and the employed and poorer classes.
There are two attitudes with regard to the treatment of this Native Labouring Class: the one held by the Retrogressive Party in this country regards the Native as only to be tolerated in consideration of the amount of manual labour which can be extracted from him; and desires to obtain the largest amount of labour at the cheapest rate possible; and rigidly resists
all endeavours to put him on an equality with the white man in the eye of the law. The other attitude, which I hold must inevitably be that of every truly progressive individual in this country, is that which regards the Native, though an alien in race and colour and differing fundamentally from ourselves in many respects, yet as an individual to whom we are under certain obligations: it forces on us the conviction that our superior intelligence and culture render it obligatory upon us to consider his welfare; and to carry out such measures, not as shall make him merely more useful to ourselves, but such as shall tend also to raise him in the scale of existence, and bind him to ourselves in a kindlier fellowship.
As a man takes one or other of these attitudes I believe he will find himself in accord, not merely with the Progressive Element in this country, but with the really advanced and Progressive Movement all the world over. In fact, I go so far as to think that the mere subscription to the latter mode of regarding the Labour and Native question would constitute an adequate test in this country as to a man's attitude on all other matters social and political.
The second subject is that of Taxation.
The Retrogressive holds, all the world over, that taxation may be levied for the benefit of the few. The Progressive attitude is that which holds that taxation should fall upon the luxuries rather than upon the necessaries of life; that it should not press more heavily upon the poor than upon the wealthy; and that the principle of protection, worked so as to increase the wealth of certain sections of the community at the expense of others, is at all points to be fought.
The third subject upon which I believe the views of every advanced Progressive must and will coincide is that of enfranchisement.
No man who does not hold that as a State develops its electoral basis should be extended to obviate the possibility of the claims of the unrepresented classes being ignored, and their welfare subordinated to that of represented, though smaller classes, and who does not hold that Parliamentary representation should increasingly tend to represent individuals rather than property, can find himself in harmony with the principles of any real Progressive Organisation.
It may be said that these principles are too vague; that the articles to which a man would have to subscribe before joining such an organisation should be more detailed.
But I think a little consideration will show that upon all the practical questions which have been brought before our Colonial Legislature during the last few years, subscription to these three principles of action would have determined a man's attitude. The Labour Tax, Haarhoff's Curfew Bell, the Bread and Meat Tax, the Strop Bill, the Scab Act, &c.–on all these a man's position will be certainly and at once determined by the fact of his being willing
to subscribe to these three principles. A more detailed test for fitness of membership in the organisation would, I think, be superfluous.
But it may, on the other hand, be objected that these tests would be too stringent; that certain men would be found quite willing to join a so-called Progressive and anti-Bond Party who at the same time might not be willing to subscribe to one or all these tests.
Now to these I would unhesitatingly answer: That such men are not wanted in our organisation; men who, while holding retrogressive views on the most important social questions, but prompted by an unworthy racial prejudice, would attempt to join or use the organisation for racial purposes, hoping to oppose or weaken the party behind the Bond, are precisely that class of persons we should seek to exclude from our organisation. They would weaken us, and defeat that very end for which the organisation was formed. It must of necessity be a first principle of such an association as we wish to see started that no racial or class distinction of ally kind should concern it, or be allowed to weigh with us. We should rejoice as cordially to welcome
and support the Dutchmen as the Englishmen; the newcomer as the old inhabitant of the country; the mall as the woman; the wealthy as the indigent. Our sole requirement from any individual wishing to join us, or seeking our support, should be, Does he share our principles? If he does, he is one of us; if he does not, though he should call himself a Progressive leader, and though he should be seven times over an Englishman, he is not of us.
If it be further suggested that, by pursuing this course, we should alienate large bodies of persons who would otherwise append themselves to us, and
who might ultimately so swell our numbers as to make us the dominant party in the State, I would frankly reply that no mere increase of bulk could compensate us for degeneracy in fibre, and that we do not desire the adhesion of such individuals to our party. Our strength will not, and cannot, rest upon mere numbers. It must lie in the enthusiasm, in the superior intelligence, in the unwavering adhesion to impersonal aims, and in the close-knit union of our members.
The Progressive Element in this country is, and must be for many years to come, necessarily in a minority, exactly as the extreme Non-Progressive Element is in a minority. Between us lies the large inert body of politicians and private persons, indifferent to any aims but those of personal success, and the person of sincere but very mixed convictions.This body
follows to-day the Non-Progressive Party, because it is the only vigorous and unbending political organisation existent in the country. If to-morrow there were in the field a small but vigorous Progressive Party, well organised, and not willing to capitulate upon any terms, this inert, self-seeking body might also find it useful to serve us; it might
even ultimately give to us the appearance of being the majority in the State, exactly as it to-day does to the Retrogressive Party. But as from the day on which the extreme Retrogressive Party shall resign its principles, and with a feeble opportunism shall receive into its own organisation this inert mass, the day of its dissolution and disappearance from Governmental control will have arrived; so also with the Progressive Party. From the day on which it sacrifices its position as the enlightened leading minority, and modifies its principles for the purpose of making them acceptable to the indifferent majority in the country, from that moment it will have nullified the aim with which it was started, and all its powers of accomplishment.
I think we cannot too strongly impress upon, and hold up before ourselves, the fact that such a Progressive Party as we hope to see in this country call only maintain its power by frill adhesion to its own principles, and not by any dependence on numbers.
If it be questioned how, in default of large numbers, we expect to exert influence and make our principles operative in the country, I would reply, that for many years our primary practical aim must be the attempt to educate public opinion up to our own standpoint
Our means for accomplishing this would, it appears to me, be mainly three.
Firstly. We shall form a centre, however small, in every town or village from which, by the exercise of personal influence, the view of life which the organisation represents would tend to spread, and however small the branch might be, it would keep before the eye of the public the fact that such a view did exist.
Secondly. We should use the Press.
USE THE PRESS.
The great strength of such a party as the Progressive Party of South Africa must be would lie in the superior intellectual enlightenment of its members. I take it that it is not likely any large body of men will join such an organisation who have not the intelligence and culture which would enable them to somewhat deeply upon matters. I believe we should largely represent the thinking element in the community, whether our members were drawn from the labouring or wealthier class.
Such a body, with no narrow personal ends to seek, will naturally desire the largest publicity for its views, and will also have the power of expressing them. Of such a party the main weapon is the Press. It will find one of its chief duties for many years in constantly raising and animating public discussion upon all questions, social and political, as they arise, and in unffinchingly enunciating its own views, and calling forth the enunciation of those of others a function of paramount importance in a country where men often, even in private conversation, fear to speak above their breath, lest a bird of the air should carry it.
We shall make rich use of all the public journals in the country. But if the Progressive Party is to become a power which shall make itself felt, I believe its most powerful weapon must be the possession of a journal devoted entirely to its principles.
With a very few exceptions there is a generous attitude maintained in Colonial papers, and their columns are freely open to correspondents. We are rich in able and liberal editors, and our Press in many ways is in advance of other Colonial institutions. But the fact, which all who have been behind the scenes of Press life in this country are aware of (and of which the public appears not to be aware!), is that no editor, however able and advanced, has, as a rule, an absolute control over his paper. In the vast majority of cases in the Colony, as in England, the newspaper is a property held by a larger or smaller number of shareholders; it is finally theirs, and should the editor himself be a large shareholder, he has yet not always an independent and free hand. A certain amount of liberty is granted him, and he may imagine himself independent, but when crucial commercial or political questions arise, at the
very moment when he would most desire to stand firm, and unqualifiedly to express his own views, those persons with whom the real and ultimate control rests may step in; and whether simply fearing that the commercial value of the paper may decline if an unpopular course be persisted in; or, immeasurably worse still, actuated by personal motives, may desire to use the paper for their own commercial or political benefit–then he may be required to alter his tone or remain silent.
No knowledge of the high principle and personal integrity of an editor can give the public assurance that personal influences may not be compelling him to modify his course. He is often but an able and highly accredited agent; and he may, under these circumstances, conscientiously feel that he is not justified in pursuing a course which would result in commercial loss to those whose property he manages. He may throw up his control (which is often impossible), or he must remain silent. Men who would be incorruptible before any conceivable species of bribe might, nay, almost must, be amenable to this pressure of circumstances and obligations.
If a paper is to represent undeviatingly and sincerely a certain body of opinions, it is absolutely necessary either that it should be completely under the control of one man who is wholly devoted to the body of principles to be maintained, or it must be the property of an organisation representing these principles. Even in this case, were the shares held by members of the organisation, it would be necessary for them to safeguard themselves from the possibility of individual shareholders being induced to sell their shares to the persons, or emissaries of the persons, who would be interested in vitiating the standpoint of the paper.
It would be necessary to make it impossible for any shareholder to dispose of a share without the consent of either the Executive Committee of the Organisation, or of all other shareholders, and for any individual shareholder to possess more than a certain limited number of shares. It would then be open only to the personal corruption of individual shareholders,–a contingency against which no foresight or caution can avail, but of which there would be little danger were the original shareholders carefully selected.
A paper safeguarded through one or other of these conditions is, I believe, absolutely essential
to the real success of a Progressive Organisation. Such paper the Progressive Element in South Africa possessed when Saul Solomon had absolute control of the Cape Argus; and such a paper must yet be the rallying point of the Progressive Party in this country.
The third method by which the association could impress itself upon the country would be by the share it would take in political life.
INFLUENCE POLITICIANS!
If it be questioned how, if our numbers be too small to return a majority to the Legislative Councils and to place our men in office, we propose to influence political life, I would reply, that we neither expect nor, for many years to come, desire to see a Ministry formed of our own men.
The truly Progressive Element in this country is to-day in a minority, of about the same numerical strength as the extreme Retrogressive Party; neither of these parties to-day is strong enough to put into office and to support, even for a time, a Ministry of its own, consistently carrying out its views. Neither of them could command so completely the Intermediate or Colourless Party as to give it a working majority, save by bartering away the very principles, the support of which formed the sole cause of its existence.
The extreme Retrogressive Party in this country has maintained its power, as all conscientious minorities must do, by not seeking to grasp in its hands the ostensible reins of Government, and by its leaders being willing to forego the sweets of office for the sake of effectively impressing the views of the party upon successive Ministries.
By such a course of action the Irish Party, composing a minority in the Imperial Parliament, has yet for years made itself a power, courted and feared by successive Liberal and Conservative Governments, and has been able to force its views before the public. Had its
leaders as individuals thirsted, not for the success of the principles they represented, but merely to attain office in some incoming Government, they would either have had to desert their party, or their party would have been compelled to rest content with the pleasure of saying, "There are Irishmen in the Government," in place of seeing their aims upheld. Had the people of Ireland set before themselves as their main end the seeing of certain of their representatives on the Government benches, they could
only have attained it by their representatives ceasing to be Irishmen in everything but name; and the Irish vote would have been annihilated at the very moment of a shallow seeming triumph.
Such would be the fate of the truly Progressive or truly Non-Progressive party in this country, if it should set before itself, as its chief end, the placing of its own men in office.
In a country with representative institutions a minority, unless it uses force or bribery, cannot place its men in office, and maintain them there for even the shortest period, without sacrificing its very existence. This is trite and obvious, but we dwell upon it because it appears often completely overlooked in the discussion of political affairs in this country; and the fatuous conception seems to prevail that a party can only affect the country and the course of legislation if some person, or persons, who ostensibly belong to its organisation, at whatever cost to its principles, hold office in the Government of the day.
The truly Progressive Element in this country will not contain within itself the large majority of the inhabitants for the next five, ten, or perhaps even fifteen years. If the majority of our inhabitants stand, in fifteen years' time, where the majority of the inhabitants of New Zealand stand to-day, we shall feel that the richest hopes of the Progressives of this country have been fulfilled.
The part which the Progressive Association in this country will have to play, perhaps for many years, is that of a small, united party, strong in its intelligence and determination, and, above all, in the absolutely unpurchasable nature of its members. A small but united body, it would have to be
reckoned with by each successive Ministry as it took office, and, because it could neither be purchased or bent, would be a thorn in the side of every Government intent upon carrying out measures at variance with its views.
If it be asked by what exact means we could make our influence felt by these successive Ministries, I would reply that we should influence them, firstly, by our free and uncompromising discussion in the Colonial and European press of their methods of action and the measures which they introduced. In a country which is rotten with opportunism, and where we have reached a point in which a man dares hardly to give utterance in whispers to his political convictions, and in which hundreds of men and women sit spell-bound, afraid of losing their daily bread if they utter a word in condemnation of existing powers, the fact of persistent and fearless discussion of governmental methods would render the continuance of certain existing lines of action on the part of Government almost impossible. Autocratic Governments have nothing so much to dread as free criticism.
Secondly: Our branches would form centres in every
town and village for the prompt calling of public meetIngs to protest against undesirable measures. Had such an organisation been in existence recently when the news reached this Colony of an unpopular appointment, instead of a knot of Progressive men in a few Colonial towns having to organise themselves into small bodies for that particular purpose, it would merely have been necessary to send the news to all branches, and within forty eight hours, in almost every town and village in the Colony, those men who were opposed to the appointment would have met and discussed the
matter, and sent forth their protests.
Thirdly: We should influence the political world through our electoral functions.
A GROUP OF TWELVE.
I do not doubt that there would be tell or a dozen men in Parliament who would represent our views, some or all of them belonging to our organisation. These men, feeling that they had a considerable body behind them, might more easily be induced to stand firmly, and refuse all offers of office, or local and personal benefits, which could be accepted only at the
cost of laying aside their functions of criticism.
At elections we should exert our influence. In every instance we should, if we were true to our principles, throw our weight, small though it might be, into the scale of that man, whether Dutchman or Englishman, whom we could most depend upon to act in accordance with our principles or do least violence to them. Where we could not possibly return a member of our own we could, by throwing our weight in the scale of the man most desirable or least objectionable, turn many elections. If, as an organisation, we stood firm to our convictions, we should frequently have the casting vote.
I think it will be necessary for us to set clearly before ourselves from the very start the fact that we have trot organised ourselves to support any given body of politicians, but to see our policy enforced; that we have nailed to our mast-head, not the names of individuals, but a declaration of our principles. While a man acts in accordance with these, he is one of us; when he does not, then he ceases to be of us. We could as little have supported the recent Ministry under Mr. Rhodes, because three of the ablest and most liberal men of the country bore office in it, as we could the present Ministry. The bitterest wrong which leaders can inflict upon their crew is when they take service on the enemy's ship, and prevent their fellows from attacking it, for fear of wounding them. Under such circumstances there is nothing to be done but to fire, regardless whether you bring down your own absconded leaders or the enemy; and this, even though they may have been partly actuated by a desire to impede the enemy's sailing powers when they took service.
As Progressives, we should not be moved an inch out of
our path by the fact that any man calls himself an Oppositionist, or is the member of any existing Government. We should endeavour to support or oppose any man or Ministry with strict impartiality, exactly as it opposed or supported the principles we represent. As long as a man, in any single instance, supported them, did he call himself Bondsman or Retrogressive, he should have our steadfast approval.
That captious criticism, and disingenuous judgment, which would condemn any measure brought in or supported by a member of an opposing political faction, and which is almost inevitable where men have turned politics into a game, and are playing to make points, should be wholly foreign to the spirit of such an organisation as our own, whose chief end should be the passing of those measures we believe beneficial, and not the seeing of those men who call themselves our representatives for the moment captains in the political game.
Were such an organisation as I have suggested formed which would draw into itself the scattered Progressive Elements throughout the whole country, despising none; and which should seek to draw its strength, not from numbers, but from the determination and the impersonal aims of its members; which should endeavour to influence political life without throwing itself into the whirlpool of political ambitions; and which should stand outside, consistently fighting for its own principles–such an organisation, though including perhaps at first not many noted political names, but formed of the people and for the people, would, I believe, slowly and surely grow. For the first two years our occupation would be mainly that of self-organisation, and the education of public feeling. I believe that in five years' time we should be a power in the land, able to restore the Retrogressive Influences to that healthy and natural position in which they would form a conservative safeguard, preventing the inauguration of measures too far in advance of the social condition of the community. I believe that in fifteen or twenty years' time our aims, which now appear chimerical to a part of the community, will be then but an attempt to give voice to the convictions of the people. And this I believe is worth working and waiting for.
Footnotes
[1]
The Franchise Act, introduced and voted for unanimously by the last Ministry, Mr. Rhodes being Premier, raised the monetary qualification from £25 to £75 per annum.
[2]
There is also that ancient categorical imperative which has lain behind the Liberalism of ail religious natures from the days of Buddha and Confucius to that of Jesus and the Socialistic movement of to-day–"Do ye unto others as ye would they should do unto you"–and which, perhaps, after all, is the most satisfactory statement of the fundamental principle of Liberalism yet formulated.
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<h4>Olive Shreiner</h4>
<h3>The South African Question</h3><br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<strong>Written:</strong> June, 1899;<br>
<strong>Source:</strong> <em>The South African Question,</em> Charles H. Sergel Co, 1899;<br>
<strong>Transcribed:</strong> <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/sryan.htm">Sally Ryan</a> for marxists.org in 2000.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>
Many views have found expression in the columns of papers during the last weeks. The working man only a few weeks or months from England has expressed his opposition to those stratagems with war for their aim which would leave him without the defence he has at present from the pressure of employers. Journalists only a few years, months, or weeks from Europe, have written, not perhaps expressing a desire for war, but implying it might be well if the wave swept across South Africa, and especially across that portion which is richest in mineral wealth, and, therefore, more to be desired.
South Africans and men from Europe alike have written deprecating war, because of the vast suffering and loss it would occasion to individuals. Dutch and English South Africans have written (as one in an able and powerful letter dated from Vrededorp, which appeared a few days ago) proving the injustice that would be inflicted on the people of Africa, the violation of treaties and trust. But, amid all this chorus of opinion there is one voice which, though heard, has not yet been heard with that distinctness and fulness which its authority demands–it is the voice of the African-born Englishman who loves England, the man who, born in South Africa, and loving it as all men, who are men, love their birthland, is yet an Englishman, bound to England not only by ties of blood, but
that much more intense passion which springs from personal contact alone. Our position is unique, and it would seem that we are marked out, at the present juncture of South African affairs, for an especial function, which imposes on us, at whatever cost to ourselves, the duty of making our voices heard and taking our share in the life of our two nations, at their
</p><p>
MOST CRITICAL JUNCTURE.
</p><p>
For, let us consider what exactly our position is.</p><p>
Born in South Africa, our eyes first opened on these African hills and plains; around us, of other parentage but born with us in the land, our birthfellows, were men of another white race; and we grew up side by side with them. Is it strange that, like all men
living, who have the hearts of men, we learnt to love this land in which we first saw light? In after years, when we left it, and lived months or years across the seas, is it strange we carried it with us in our hearts? When we stood on the Alps and looked down on the lakes and forests of Switzerland, that we have said, "This is fair, but South Africa to us is fairer?" That when oil the top of Milan Cathedral and we have looked out across the wide plains of Lombardy, we have said, "This is noble, but nobler to us are the broad plains of Africa, with their brown kopjes shimmering in the translucent sunshine?" Is it strange that when, after long years of absence, years it may be of success and the joy which springs from human fellowship and youth, our ship has cast its anchor in sight of Table Bay, and the great front of Table Mountain has reared up before us, a cry of passionate joy has welled up within us; and when we saw the black men with their shining skins unloading in the docks, and the rugged faces of South Africans, browned with our African sun, we put our foot on the dear old earth again, and our hearts have cried: "We are South Africans! We have come back again to our land and to our people?" Is it strange that when we are in other lands and we fear that death approaches us, we say: "Take me back! We may live away from her, but when we are dead we must lie on her breast. Bury us among the kopjes where we played when we were children, and let the iron stones and red sand cover us?" Is it strange that wherever we live we all want to go home to die; and that the time comes when we know that dearer far to us than fame or success is one little handful of our own red South African earth? Is it strange that, when the
</p><p>
TIME OF STRESS AND DANGER
</p><p>
comes to our land, we realize what, perhaps, we were but dimly conscious of before, that we are Africans, that for this land and people we could live–if need be, we could die?</p><p>
Is it strange we should feel this? The Scotchman feels it for his heathery hills, the Swiss for his valleys. All men who are men feel it for the land of their birth!</p><p>
What is strange is not that we have this feeling, but that, side by side with it, we have another. We love Africa, but we love England also. It is not
merely that when for the first time we visit the old nesting place of our people it is rich for us with associations, that we tread it for the first time with something of the awe and reverence with which men tread an old cathedral, rich with remains of the great dead and past; it is not merely that the associations of language and literature bind us to it, nor that in some city or country churchyard we stand beside the graves of our forefathers, and trace on mould-eaten stones the names we have been familiar with in Africa, and bear as our own; nor is it that we can linger yet on the steps of the church where our parents were united before they moved to the far South, and made of us South Africans. Beyond all these impersonal, and more or less intellectual ties, we form a personal one with England. Whether we have gone home as students to college or university, or for purposes of art, literature, or professional labor, as time passes there springs up around us
</p><p>
A NETWORK OF TENDER BONDS;
</p><p>
there are formed the closest friendships our hearts will ever know, such as are formed only in the spring time of life; there is gained our first deep knowledge of life, and there grow up within us passions and modes of thought we will carry with us to our graves. After
years, it may be after many years, when we return, on the walls of our study in South Africa we still keep fastened in memory of the past the old oar with which we won our first boating victory or Cam or Thames; and the faces of the men who shared our victory with us still look down at us from our walls. Not dearer to any Englishman is the memory of his Alma Mater than to him who sits thousands of miles off in the South, and who, as he smokes his last pipe of African Boer or Transvaal tobacco, is visited often by memories of days that will never fade, evenings on the river with bright faces and soft voices, long midnight conclaves over glimmering fires, when, with voices and hearts as young and glowing as our own, we discussed all problems of the universe and longed to go out into life that we might settle them–they come hack to us with all the glitter and light which hangs only about the remembrances of youth: and for many of us the memory of fog-smitten London is inextricably blended with the all profoundest emotions, the most passionate endeavors, noblest relations our hearts will ever know. The steamers that come weekly to South Africa are not for us merely vessels bringing news from foreign lands; nor do they merely bring for us the intellectual pabulum which feeds our mental life; they bring us
</p><p>
"NEWS FROM HOME."
</p><p>
In London houses, in country cottages, in English manufacturing towns, are men and women whose life and labor, whose joy and sorrows our hearts will follow to the end, as theirs will follow ours to the end, and across the seas our hands will always be interknit with theirs. Our labor, our homes, our material interests, may all be in South Africa, but a bond of love so strong that six thousand miles of sea can only
stretch it, but never sever it, binds us to the land and the friends we loved in our youth. We are South Africans, but intellectual sympathies, habits, personal emotions, have made us strike deep roots across the sea; and when the thought flashes on us, we may not walk the old streets again or press the old hands, pain rises which those only know whose hearts are divided between two lands. We are South Africans, but we are not South Africans only–we are Englishmen also:
</p><p>
Dear little Island,<br>
Our heart in the sea!
</p><p>
If to-morrow hostile fleets encompassed England, and the tread of foreign troops was on her soil, she would not need to call to us; we would stand beside her before she had spoken. This is
</p><p>
OUR EXACT POSITION.</p><p>
Side by side with us in South Africa are other South Africans whose position is not and cannot be exactly what ours is. Shading away from us by imperceptible degrees, stand, on one side of us, those English South Africans who, racially English, yet know nothing or little personally of her; the grandparents, and not the parents of such men, have left England; they are proud of being Englishmen, proud of England's great record and great names, as a man is proud of his grandmother's family, but they are before all things essentially South African. They desire to see England increase and progress, and to remain in harmony and union with her while she does not interfere with internal affairs of South Africa, but they do not and cannot feel
to her as those of us do whose love is personal and whose intellectual sympathies center largely in England.</p><p>
Yet further from us on the same side stand our oldest white fellow South Africans; who were, many, not of English blood originally, though among that body of early white settlers, men who preceded us in South Africa by three centuries, were a few with English names, and though by intermarriage Dutch and English South Africans are daily and hourly blending, the bulk of these folk were Dutchmen from Holland and Friesland, with a few Swedes, Germans and Danes, and later was intermingled with them a strong strain of Huguenot blood from France. These men were mainly of that folk which, in the sixteenth century, held Philip and the Spanish Empire at bay, and struck the first death-blow into the heart of that mighty Imperial system whose death-gasp we have witnessed to-day. A brave, free, fearless folk with the
</p><p>
BLOOD OF THE OLD SEA KINGS
</p><p>
in their veins; a branch of that old Teutonic race which came with the Angles and Saxons into England and subdued the Britons, and who, in the persons of the Franks, entered Gaul, and spread its blood across Europe. They are a people most nearly akin to the English of all European folk, in language, form and feature resembling them, and in a certain dogged persistence, and an inalienable indestructible air of personal freedom.</p><p>
Even under the early Dutch Government of the East India Company, they were not always restful and resented interference and external control. They frequently felt themselves "ondergedrukt," [oppressed] and, taking their guns, and getting together wife and children and all that they had, and inspanning their wagons, they trekked away from the scant boards of civilization into the wilderness, to form homes of freedom for themselves and their descendants.</p><p>
In 1795 England obtained the Cape as the result of European complications, and the South African people, without request or desire on their part, were given over to England. England retired from the Cape in 1803, but, owing to other changes in Europe, she took the Cape again in 1806, and has since then been the
</p><p>
GUARDIAN OF OUR SEAS,</p><p>
and the strongest power in our land. Since that time, for the last ninety years, Englishmen have slowly been added to the population, but the men of Dutch descent still form the majority of white South Africans throughout the Cape Colony, Free State, and Transvaal, outnumbering at the present day, even with the accession of the foreigners (Uitlanders mean foreigners in Dutch) to the goldfields of the Transvaal, those of English descent, as probably about two to one.</p><p>
So we of England became stepmother to this South African people. We English are a virile race. There is perhaps no one with a drop of English blood in his veins who does not feel pride in that knowledge. We are a brave and, for ourselves, a freedom-loving race; the best of us have nobler qualities yet–we love justice; we admire courage and the love of freedom in others as well as ourselves; and we find it difficult to put our foot on the weak, it refuses to go down. At times, whether as individuals or as a nation, we are capable of the</p><p>
MOST HEROIC MORAL ACTION.
</p><p>
The heart swells with pride when we remember what has been done by Englishmen, at different times and in different places, in the cause of freedom and justice, when they could meet with no reward and had nothing to gain. Such an act of justice on the part of the English nation was done in 1881 when Gladstone gave back to the Transvaal the independence which had been mistakenly taken. I would not say policy had no part in the action of the wise old man. No doubt that keen eagle-eye had fixed itself closely on the truth which all history teaches that a colony of Teutonic folk cannot be kept permanently in harmony and union with the Mother Country by any bond but that of love, mutual sympathy and honor. The child may be reduced by force to obedience; but time passes and the child becomes a youth; the youth may be coerced; but the day comes when the youth becomes a man, and there can be no coercion then. If the mother wishes to retain the affection of the man, she must win it from the youth. This the wise old man saw; but I believe that, over and above the wisdom, he saw the right, and the action was no less heroic because it was wise; for other men see truth who have not the courage to follow her, and accept present loss for a gain which lies across the centuries.</p><p>
We English are a fearless folk, and in the main I think we seek after justice, but we have our faults. We are not a sympathetic or a quickly comprehending people; we are slow and we are proud; we are shut in by a certain
</p><p>
SHELL OF HARD RESERVE.
</p><p>
There are probably few of us who have not some consciousness of this defect in our own persons; it may be a fault allied to our highest virtues, but it is a fault, and a serious one as regards our relations with peoples who come under our rule. We may and do generally sincerely desire justice; we may have no wish to oppress, but Re do not readily understand wants and conditions distinct from our own. Here and there great Englishmen have appeared in South African history as elsewhere (such as Sir William Porter and Sir George Grey) who have been able to throw themselves sympathetically into the entire life of the people about, to love them, and so to comprehend their wants and win their affections. Such men are the burning and shining lights of our Imperial and Colonial system, but they are not common. Undoubtedly the officials sent out to rule the Cape in the old days were generally men who earnestly desired to do their duty; but they did not always understand the folk they had to rule. They were generally simple soldiers, brave, fearless and honorable as the English soldier is apt to be, but with hard military conceptions of government and discipline. Our
Dutch fellow South Africans are a strange folk. Virile, resolute, passionate with a passion hid far below the surface, they are at once the gentlest and the most determined of peoples. When you try to coerce them they are hard as steel encased in iron, but with a large and generous response to affection and sympathy which perhaps no other European folk gives. They may easily be deceived once; but never twice. Under the roughest exterior of the upcountry Boer lies a nature strangely sensitive and conscious of personal dignity; a people who never forgets a kindness and does
</p><p>
NOT EASILY FORGET A WRONG.
</p><p>
Our officials did not always understand them; they made no allowances for a race of brave, free men inhabiting a country which by the might of their own right hand they had won from savages and wild beasts, and who were given over into the hands of a strange government without their consent or desire; and the peculiarities which arose from their wild free life were not always sympathetically understood; even their little language, the South African "Taal," a South African growth so dear to their hearts, and to all those of us who love indigenous and South African growths, was not sympathetically and gently dealt with. The men, well meaning, but military, tried with this fierce, gentle, sensitive, free folk force, where they should have exercised a broad and comprehensive humanity; and when they did right (as when the slaves were freed), they did it often in such manner, that it became practically wrong. A little of that tact of the higher and larger kind, which springs from a human comprehension of another's difficulties and needs, might, exercised in the old days, have saved South Africa from all whiterace problems; it was not, perhaps under the conditions, could not, be exercised. The people's hearts ached under the uncompromising iron rule. In 1815 there was a rising, and it was put down. As the traveler passes by train along the railway from Port Elizabeth to Kimberley, he will come, a few miles beyond Cookhouse, to a gap between two hills; to his right flows the Fish River; to his left, binding the two hills, is a ridge of land called in South Africa a "nek." It is a spot the thoughtful Englishman passes with deep pain. In the year 1815 here were hanged five South Africans who had taken part in the rising, and the women who had fought beside them (for the South African woman has ever stood beside the man in all his labors and struggles) were compelled to stand by and look on. The crowd of fellow South Africans who stood by them believed,
</p><p>
HOPED AGAINST HOPE,
</p><p>
to the last moment, that a reprieve would come. Lord Charles Somerset sent none, and the tragedy was completed. The place is called to-day "Schlachter's Nek," or "Butcher's Ridge." Every South African child knows the story. Technically, any government has the right to hang those who rise against its rule. Superficially it is a short way of ending a difficulty for all governments. Historically it
has often been found to be the method for perpetrating them. We may submerge for a moment that which rises again more formidably for its blood bath. The mistake made by Lord Charles Somerset in 1815 was as the mistake would have been by President Kruger if, in 1896, instead of exercising the large prerogative of mercy and magnanimity, he had destroyed the handful of conspirators who attempted to destroy the State. Both would have been within their legal right, but the Transvaal would have failed to find that path which runs higher than the path of mere law and leads towards light. Fortunately for South Africa our little Republic found it.</p><p>
The reign of stern military rule at the Cape had this effect, that men and women, with a sore in their proud
hearts, continued to move away from a controlling power that did not understand them. Some moved across the Orange River and joined the old "Voortrekkers" that had already gone into that country which is now the Free State. England kept a certain virtual sovereignty over that territory, till, in 1854, she grew weary of the expense it cost her, and withdrew from it in spite of the representations of certain of its inhabitants who sent a deputation to England to request her to retain it. Thereupon the folk organized an independent State and Government; and the little land, peopled mainly by men of Dutch descent, but largely intermingled with English who lived with them on terms of the greatest affection and unity, has become one of the most
</p><p>
PROSPEROUS, WELL-GOVERNED AND PEACEFUL
</p><p>
communities on earth. Others, much the larger part of the people, moved further; they crossed the Vaal River, and in that wild northern land, where no Englishman's foot had passed, they founded after some years the gallant little Republic we all know to-day as the Transvaal. How that Republic was founded is a story we all know. Alone, unbacked by any great Imperial or national power, with their old flint-lock guns in their hands as their only weapons, with wife and children, they passed into that yet untrodden land. The terrible story of their struggles, the death of Piet Retief and his brave followers, killed by treachery by the Zulu Chief, Dingaan, the victory of the survivors over him, which is still commemorated by their children as Dingaan's Day, the whole, perhaps, the most thrilling record of the struggle and suffering of a people in founding their State that the world can anywhere produce. Paul Kruger can still remember how, after that terrible fight, women and children left alone in the fortified laager, he himself being but a child, they carried on bushes to fortify the laager, women with children in their arms, or pregnant, laboring with strength of men to entrench themselves against evil worse than death. Here in the wilderness they planted their homes, and founded their little State. Men and women are still living who can remember how, sixty years ago, the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands was a great silence where they drew up their wagon and planted their little home, and
</p><p>
FOUGHT INCH BY INCH
</p><p>
with wild beasts to reclaim the desert. In this great northern land, which no white man had entered or desired, they planted their people, and loving it as men only can love the land they have suffered and bled for, the gallant little Republic they raised they love to-day as the Swiss loves his mountain home and the Hollander his dykes. It is theirs, the best land on earth to them.</p><p>
They had fought not for money but for homes for their wives and children; when they battled, the wives reloaded the old flint-lock guns and handed them down from the front chest of their wagon for the men who stood around defending them. It was a wild free
fight, on even terms; there were no Maxim gulls to mow down ebony figures by the hundred at the turn of a handle; a free even stand up fight; and there were times when it almost seemed the assagai would overcome the old flint-lock, and the voortrekkers would be swept away. The panther and the jaguar rolled together on the ground, and, if one conquered instead of the other, it was yet a fair fight, and South Africa has no reason to be ashamed of the way either her black men or her white men fought it.</p><p>
If it be asked, has the Dutch South African always dealt gently and generously with the native folks with whom he came into contact, we answer, "No, he has not"–neither has any other white race of whom we have record in history. He kept slaves in the early days! Yes, and a century ago England wished to make war on her American subjects in Virginia for refusing to take the slaves she sent. There was a time when we might have vaunted some superiority in the English-African method of dealing with the native.
</p><p>
THAT DAY IS PAST.
</p><p>
The terrible events of the last five years in South Africa have left us silent. There is undoubtedly a score laid against us on this matter, Dutch and English South Africans alike; for the moment it is in abeyance; in fifty or a hundred years it will probably be presented for payment as other bills are, and the white man of Africa will have to settle it. It has been run up as heavily north of the Limpopo as south; and when our sons stand up to settle it, it will be Dutchmen and Englishmen together who have to pay for the sins of their fathers.</p><p>
Such is the history of our fellow South Africans of Dutch extraction, who to-day cover South Africa from Capetown to the Limpopo. In the Cape Colony, and increasingly in the two Republics, are found enormous numbers of cultured and polished Dutch-descended South Africans, using English as their daily form of speech, and in no way distinguishable from the rest of the nineteenth century Europeans. Our most noted judges, our most eloquent lawyers, our most skillful physicians, are frequently men of this blood; the lists of the yearly examinations of our Cape University are largely filled with Dutch names, and women, as well as men, rank high in the order of merit. It would sometimes almost seem as if the long repose the people has had from the heated life of cities, with the large tax upon the nervous system, had sent them back to the world of intellectual occupations with more than the ordinary grasp of power. In many cases they go home to Europe to study, and doubtless their college life and English friendships bind Britain close to their hearts as to ours who are English-born. The present State Attorney of the Transvaal is a man who has taken some of the highest honors Cambridge can bestow. Besides, there exist still our old simple farmers or Boers, found in the greatest perfection in the midland districts of the Colony, in the Transvaal and Free State, who constitute a large part of the virile backbone of South Africa. Clinging to their old seventeenth century faiths and manners, and speaking their African taal, they are yet tending to pass rapidly away, displaced by their own cultured modern children; but they still form a large and powerful body. Year by year the lines dividing the South Africans from their more lately arrived English-descent brothers are
</p><p>
PASSING AWAY.
</p><p>
Love, not figuratively but literally, is obliterating the line of distinction; month by month, week by week, one might say hour by hour, men and women of the two races are meeting. In the Colony there are few families which have not their Dutch or English connections by marriage; in another generation the fusion will be complete. There will be no Dutchmen then and
no Englishmen in South Africa, but only the great blended South African people of the future, speaking the English tongue, and holding in reverend memory its founders of the past, whether Dutch or English. Already, but for the sorrowful mistakes of the last years, the line of demarcation would have faded out of sight; external impediments may tend to delay it, but they can never prevent this fusion; we are one people. In thirty years' time, the daughter of the man who landed yesterday in South Africa will carry at her heart the child of a de Villiers, and the son of the Cornish miner who lands this week will have given the name of her English grandmother to his daughter, whose mother was a le Roux. There will be nothing in forty years but the great blended race of Africans.</p><p>
* * * * * * * </p><p>
These South Africans, together with those of English descent, but who have been more than two generations in the country and have had no–or very little–personal and intimate knowledge and intercourse with England, may be taken as standing on one side of us. They are before all things South Africans. They have–both Dutch and English–in many cases a deep and sincere affection for the English language, English institutions, and a sincere affection for England herself. They are grateful to her for her watch over their seas; and were a Russian fleet to appear in Table Bay to-morrow and attempt to land troops, it would fly as quickly from Dutch as English bullets. Neither Dutch nor English South Africans desire to see any other power installed in the place of England. Cultured Dutch and English Africans alike are fed on English literature, and England is their intellectual home. Even with our simplest Dutch-descent Africans the memories of
</p><p>
THE OLD BITTER DAYS
</p><p>
had almost faded, when the ghastly events, which are too well known to need referring to, awoke the old ache at the heart a few years ago. But even they would see quietly no other power standing in the place of England. "It is a strange thing," said a well-known Dutch South African to us twenty-one years ago, "that when I went to Europe to study I went to Holland, and loved the land and the people, but I felt a stranger; it was the same in Germany, the same in France. But when I landed in England I said, 'I am at home!'" That man was once a passionate lover of England, but he is now a heart-sore man. There have been representatives of England in South Africa who have been loved as dearly by the Dutch as by the English. When a few years ago there was a talk of Sir George Grey visiting South Africa on his way home from New Zealand to England, old grey-headed Dutchmen in the Free State expressed their resolve to take one more long train journey and go down to Capetown only once more to shake the hand of the old man who more than forty years before had been Governor of the Cape Colony. So deeply had a great Englishman, upholding the loftiest traditions of English justice and humanity, endeared himself to the hearts of South Africans. "God's Englishman"–not of the Stock Exchange and the Gatling gun, but of the great heart.</p><p>
But great as is the bond between South Africans, whether Dutch or English, and England, caused by language, sentiments, interest and the noble record left by those large Englishmen who have labored among us, the South African pure and simple, whether English or Dutch, cannot feel to England just as we do. Their material interest may bind them to England as much as it binds us, but that deep passion for her honor, the consciousness that she represents a large spiritual factor in our lives, which, once gone, nothing replaces for us; that her right-doing is ours, and her wrong-
doing is also ours; that in a manner her flag does not represent anything we have an interest in, or even that we love, but that in a curious may it is ourselves–this they cannot know. Therefore, while on our side we are connected with them by our affection for South Africa and our resolute desire for its good, our position remains not exactly as theirs. Our standpoint is at once broader and more impartial in dealing with South African questions, in that we are bound by two-fold sympathies.</p><p>
On the other hand of us, who are at once South Africans and Englishmen, stand in South Africa another body of individuals who are not South African, in any sense or only partially, but to whom from our peculiar position we also stand closely bound.</p><p>
Ever since the time when England took over the Cape, there has been slowly entering the country a thin stream of new settlers, English mainly, but largely reinforced by people of other nationalities. Eighty years ago, in 1820, a comparatively large body of Englishmen arrived at once, and are known as the British Settlers. They settled at first mainly in Albany, and certain of their descendants are to-day, in some senses, almost as truly and typically South African as the older Dutch settlers.</p><p>
THEIR LOVE FOR AFRICA
</p><p>
is intense. Some years later a large body of Germans were brought to the Kingwilliams town division of South Africa. They, too, became farmers, and their descendants are already true South Africans. For the rest, for years men continually dribbled in slowly and singly from other countries. Whether they came out in search of health, as clergymen, missionaries, or doctors, or in search of manual employment, or as farmers, they almost all became, or tended to become almost immediately, South Africans. They settled in the land permanently among people who were permanent inhabitants, they often married women born in South Africa, and their roots soon sank deeply into it. They brought us no new problem to South Africa. They have settled among us, living as we live, sharing our lives and interests. It is said that it takes thirty years to make a South African, and in a manner this is true. Even now, more especially in times of stress or danger, it is easy to distinguish the African-born man from the man of whatever race and however long in the country who has not been born here. But in the main these newcomers have become South Africans with quickness and to an astonishing degree, and coming in in driblets they were, so to speak, easily digested by South Africa.</p><p>
But during the last few years
</p><p>
A NEW PHENOMENON HAS STARTED
</p><p>
up in South African life. The discovery of vast stores of mineral wealth in South Africa, more especially gold, has attracted suddenly to its shores a large population which is not and cannot, at least at once, be South African. This body is known under the name of the Uitlanders (literally "Foreigners").</p><p>
Through a misfortune, and by no fault of its own, the mass of this gold has been discovered mainly along the Witwatersrand, within the territory of the Transvaal Republic, and more especially at the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands, thus throwing upon the little Republic the main pressure of the new arrivals.</p><p>
To those who know the great mining camps of Klondike and Western America, it is perhaps not necessary to describe Johannesburg. Here are found that diverse and many-shaded body of humans, who appear wherever in the world gold is discovered. The Chinaman with his pigtail, the Indian Coolie, the manly Kafir, and the Half-caste; all forms of dark and colored folk are here, and outnumber considerably the white. Nor is the white population less multifarious and complex. On first
walking the streets, one has a strange sense of having left South Africa, and being merely in some cosmopolitan center, which might be anywhere where all nations and colors gather round the yellow king. Russian Jews and Poles are here by thousands, seeking in South Africa the freedom from oppression that was denied that much-wronged race of men in their own birth-land; Cornish and Northumberland miners; working men from all parts of the earth; French, German and English tradesmen; while on the Stock Exchange men of every European nationality are found, though the Jew predominates. The American strangers are not large in number, but are represented by perhaps the most cultured and enlightened class in the camp, the mining engineer and large importers of
mining machinery being often of that race; our lawyers and doctors are of all nationalities, while in addition to all foreigners, there is a certain admixture of English and Dutch South Africans. In the course of a day one is brought into contact with men of every species. Your household servant may he a Kafir, your washerwoman is a Half-caste, your butcher is a Hungarian, your baker English, the man who soles your boots a German, you buy your vegetables and fruit from an Indian Coolie, your coals from the Chinaman round the corner, your grocer is a Russian Jew, your dearest friend an American. This is an actual, and not an imaginary, description. Here are found the most noted prostitutes of Chicago; and that sad sisterhood created by the dislocation of our yet uncoordinated civilization, and known in Johannesburg under the name of continental women, have thronged here in hundreds from Paris and the rest of Europe. Gambling, as in all mining camps, is rife; not merely men but even women put their money into the totalisator, and
</p><p>
A LOW FEVER OF ANXIETY
</p><p>
for chance wealth feeds on us. Crimes of violence are not unknown; but, if one may speak with authority who has known only one other great mining center in its early condition, and whose information on this matter has therefore been gathered largely from books, Johannesburg compares favorably, and <em>very</em> favorably, with other large mining camps in the same stage of their existence. The life of culture and impersonal thought is largely and of necessity among a new and nomadic population absent; art and science are of necessity unrepresented; but a general alertness and keenness characterizes our population. In the bulk of our miners and working men, of our young men in banks and houses of business, we have a large mass of solid, intelligent, and invaluable social material which counter-balances that large mass of human flotsam and jetsam found in this, as in all other mining catnps; while among our professional men and mining officials is found a large amount of the highest professional knowledge and efficiency. Happy would it be for the gallant little Transvaal Republic, and well for South Africa as a whole, if the bulk of this little human nature could become ours forever, if they were here to stay with us, drink out of our cup and sup out of our platter. But in most cases this is not so. The bulk of the population, and especially its most valuable and cultured elements, are here temporarily; as persons who go to Italy or the south of France for health or sunshine, who, even when they go year after year, or buy villas and settle there for a time, yet go to seek merely health and sunshine, not strike root there; and as men go to Italy for health and sunshine, the bulk of us here come to seek gold or a temporary livelihood, and for nothing more. Even our miners and working men in Johannesburg, the most stable and possibly permanent element in our population, have, in many instances, their wives and families in Cornwall or elsewhere; and when they have them here they still think of the return home for good in after years; while with the wealthier classes this is practically universal. Not only have our leading mining engineers and the great speculators not the slightest intention of staying in Johannesburg permanently; most have their wives and families in England, America, or on the Continent, and project as soon as possible a retirement from business, and return to the fashionable circles of Europe or America. Even among South African-born men the large majority of us intend returning to our own more lovely birthplaces and homes in the Colony sooner or later; and the only element which will probably form any integral part of the South African nation of the future and become subject to the Transvaal Republic is the poorer, which, from the larger advantages for labor here, will
be unable to return to its natural home.</p><p>
The nomadic population of Johannesburg undoubtedly consists of men who are brave and loyal citizens in their own States and nations. To-morrow,
</p><p>
IF AMERICA WERE IN DANGER,
</p><p>
probably almost every American citizen would troop back to her bosom, and spend not only life, but the wealth he had gained in South Africa from South African soil, in defending her. Every German would go home to the Fatherland; every Englishman, every Frenchman, would, as all brave men in the world's history have done, when the cry arises, "The birthland in danger!" The few Spaniards here trooped back to Spain as soon as the news of war arrived.</p><p>
One of the most brilliant and able of
English journalists (a man whose opinion on any subject touching his own land we would receive almost with the reverence accruing to the mall who speaks of a subject he knows well and has studied with superior abilities; but who had been only a few months in our land, and, therefore, had not full grasp of either our people or our problems, which from their complexity and many-sidedness are subjects for a life's devotion) that man, three and a half years ago, when brave little Jameson–brave, however mistaken–was sent in to capture the mines of Johannesburg for his master, and when the great mixed population of Johannesburg, Germans and French, English and Jews, Arabs and Chinamen, refused to arise and go to aid him, and when hundreds of Englishmen, Cornishmen and others fled from Johannesburg, fearing that Jameson might arrive and cause a disturbance – said that Johannesburg would be known forever in history by the name of <em>Judasburg!</em> and that the Cornish and other Englishmen who fled from the place were poltroons and cowards. But he was mistaken.
</p><p>
JOHANNESBURG IS NOT JUDASBURG,
</p><p>
and the Englishmen who fled were not poltroons. There ran in them blood as brave as any in England, and if to-morrow a hostile force attacked their birthland, those very Cornish miners and English working men would die in the last ditch defending their land. Those men were strangers here; they came to earn the bread they could with difficulty win in their own land; they were friendly treated by South Africa and made money here; but were they bound to die in a foreign land for causes which they neither knew nor cared for?</p><p>
One thing only can possibly justify war and the destruction of our fellows to the enlightened and humane denizen of the nineteenth century; the unavoidable conviction that by no other means can we preserve our own life and freedom from a stronger power, or defend a weaker state or individual from a
stronger. Nothing can even palliate it but so intense a conviction of a right so great to be maintained that we are willing, not merely to hire other men to fight and die for us, but to risk our own lives,</p><p>
A LIFE FOR A LIFE.</p><p>
This the Englishmen in Johannesburg and foreigners of all nations could not possibly feel. They were not more
bound to die to obtain control of the gold mines of Johannesburg for a man already wealthy or his confederates, than to assist South Africans in defending them; or than we who visit the south of France or Italy for health should feel ourselves bound to remain and die if war breaks out between the Bonapartists and the Republicans, or the Pope and the King. If by a process of abstract thought we have arrived at a strong conviction of a right or human justice to be maintained by a cause with which we have no practical concern, we may feel morally compelled to take a part in it; but no
man can throw it in our teeth if we refuse to die in a strange land for
</p><p>
A CAUSE THAT IS NOT OURS. </p><p>The Englishmen and others who refused to fight in Johannesburg, or fled rather than run the risk of remaining, pursued the only course open to wise and honorable men. Had they resolved to remain permanently in South Africa, and to become citizens of the Transvaal Republic, the case might have been otherwise. As it was, they could not run a knife into the heart of a people which had hospitably received them, and attempt to destroy a land in which they had found nothing but greater wealth and material comfort than in their own; and they could also not enter upon a deadly raid for a man whom personally the workers of Johannesburg cared nothing for, and with whom they had not a sympathy or interest in common. In leaving Johannesburg and refusing to fight, they pursued the only course left open to them by justice and
honor.</p><p>
Rightly to understand the problem before the little Transvaal Republic today, it is necessary for Englishmen to imagine not merely that, within the space of ten or twelve years, forty millions of Russians, Frenchmen and Germans should enter England, not in driblets and in time extending over half a century, so that they might, in a measure, be absorbed and digested into the original population, but instantaneously and at once; not merely, that the large bulk of them did not intend to remain in England, and were there merely to extract wealth; not merely, that the bulk of this wealth was exported at once to other countries enriching Russia, France and Germany out of the products of English soil; that would be comparatively a small matter–but, that the bulk of the wealth extracted was in the hands of a few persons, and that these persons were opposed to the continued freedom and independence of England, and were attempting by the use of the wealth they extracted from England to stir up Russia and France against her, that through the loss of her freedom they might the better obtain the command of her wealth and lands. When the Englishman has vividly drawn this future for himself, he will hold, as nearly as is possible, in a nutshell an image of the problem which the people and government of the Transvaal Republic are called on to face to-day; and we put it straightly to him whether this problem is not one of
</p><p>
INFINITE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY?
</p><p>
Much unfortunate misunderstanding has arisen from the simple use of the terms "capitalist" and "monopolist" in the discussion of South African matters. Without the appending of explanation, they convey a false impression. These terms, so familiar to the students of social phenomena in Europe and America, are generally used in connection with a larger, but a quite distinct body of problems. The terms "capitalism," "monopolist," and "millionaire" are now generally associated with the question of the forming of "trusts," "corners," etc., and the question whether it is desirable that society should so organize itself that one man may easily obtain possession of twenty millions, while the bulk of
equally intelligent and equally laborious men obtain little or nothing from the labor of humanity. This question is n world-wide question; it is not one in any sense peculiarly South African; it is a world-wide problem, which, as the result of much thought, careful consideration and many experiments, the nations of the civilized world will be called to adjudicate upon during the twentieth century; but it is not the question with which South Africa lands face to face at this moment. The question before us is not: Shall one South African possess twenty millions, live in his palace, live on champagne, have his yacht in Table Bay, and deck women with a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewels, while the South African next door has nothing?
This is not our question. Our problem is not the problem of America. In America there are many individuals possessing wealth amounting to many millions, but when the United States in their entirety is taken the £40,000,000 of the richest individual sink to nothing; and, were it the desire of the richest millionaire in the States
</p><p>
TO CORRUPT AND PURCHASE
</p><p>
the whole population for political purposes, he could not pay so much as £1 a head to the 80,000,000 inhabitants of the country. Further, the bulk of American millionaires are American! They differ in no respect, except in their possession of large wealth, in interest or affections, from the shoemaker in the alley or the farmer at his plough. They are American citizens; their fate is bound up with that of the
land they live in; their ambitions are American. If a great misfortune should overtake America to-morrow there is no reason to suppose that the heart of a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt would not ache as that of the simplest cowboy in the States. When they die, it is to American institutions that they leave their munificent donations, and the colleges and public institutions of America are endowed by them. The mass even of that wealth they expend on themselves is expended in America, and, whether they will or no, returns to the people of the country in many forms. The millionaires of America are and remain Americans; and the J. Gould who should expend his millions in stirring up war between the North and South, or in urging England to attack and slay American citizens, would be dealt with by his fellow-subjects, whether millionaires or paupers, with expedition. The question whether the conditions which lead to such vast accretions of fortune in the hands of private individuals is a desirable one and of social benefit is an open one, and a fair field for impartial discussion; but, whatever decision is arrived at with regard to millionaires and private monopoly as they exist in Europe or the United States, it has little or no bearing on the problem of South Africa, which is totally distinct.</p><p>
South Africa is a young country, and taken as a whole it is an arid, barren country agriculturally. Our unrivalled climate, our sublime and rugged natural
scenery,
</p><p>
THE JOY AND PRIDE</p><p>
of the South African heart, is largely the result of this very aridity and rockiness. Parts are fruitful, but we have no vast corn-producing plains, which
for generations may be cultivated almost without replenishing, as in Russia and America; we have few facilities for producing those vast supplies of flesh which are poured forth from Australia and New Zealand; already we import a large portion of the grain and flesh we consume. We may, with care, become a great fruit-producing country, and create some rich and heavy wines, but, on the whole, agriculturally, we are, and must remain, as compared with most other countries, a poor nation. Nor have we any great inland lakes, seas, and rivers, or arms of the sea, to enable us to become a great maritime or carrying people. One thing only we have which saves us from being the poorest country on the earth, and should make us one of the richest. We have our vast stores of mineral wealth, of gold and diamonds, and probably of other wealth yet unfound. This is all we have. Nature has given us nothing else; we are a poor people but for these. Out of the veins running through rocks and hills, and the mud-beds, heavy with jewels, that lie in our arid plains, must be reared and created our great national institutions, our colleges and museums, our art galleries and universities; by means of these our system of education must be extended; and on the material side, out of these must the great future of South Africa be built up–or not at all. The discovery of our mineral wealth came
somewhat suddenly upon us. We were not prepared for its appearance by wise legislative enactments, as in New Zealand or some other countries. Before the people of South Africa as a whole had had time to wake up to the truth and to learn the first
</p><p>
GREAT AND TERRIBLE LESSON,
</p><p>
our diamonds should have taught us the gold mines of the Transvaal were discovered.</p><p>
We South Africans, Dutch and English alike, are a curious folk, strong, brave, with a terrible intensity and perseverance, but we are not a sharp people well versed in the movements of the speculative world. In a few years the entire wealth of South Africa, its mines of gold and diamonds, its coal fields, and even its most intractable lands, from the lovely Hex River Valley to Magaliesberg, had largely passed into the hands of a very small knot of speculators. In hardly any instances are they South Africans. That they were not South African-born would in itself matter less than nothing, had they thrown in their lot with us, if in sympathies, hopes, and fears they were one with us. They are not. It is not merely that the wealth which should have made us one of the richest peoples in the world has left us one of the poorest, and is exported to other countries, that it builds palaces in Park Lane, buys yachts in the Mediterranean, fills the bags of the croupiers at Monte Carlo, decks foreign women with jewels, while our citizens toil in poverty; this is a small matter. But those men are not of us! That South Africa we love
whose great future is dearer to us than our own interests, in the thought of whose great and noble destiny lies the source of our patriotism and highest inspiration, for whose good in a far distant future we, Dutch and English alike, would sacrifice all in the present–this future is no more to them than the future of the Galapagos Islands. We are a hunting ground to them, a field for extracting wealth, for
</p><p>
BUILDING UP FAME AND FORTUNE;
</p><p>
nothing more. This matter does not touch the Transvaal alone; from the lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, north, and south, our lands are being taken from us, and passing into the hands of men who not only care nothing for South Africa, but apply the vast wealth they have drawn from South African soil in an attempt to corrupt our public life and put their own nominees into our parliaments, to grasp the reins of power, that their wealth may yet more increase. Is it strange that from the hearts of South Africans, English and Dutch alike, there is arising an exceedingly great and bitter cry: "We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage ! The lands, the mineral wealth which should have been ours to build up the great Africa of the future has gone into strange hands! And they use the gold they gain out of us to enslave us, they strike at our hearts with a sword gilded with South African gold! While the gold and stones remained undiscovered in the bosom of our earth, it was saved up for us and for our grandchildren to build up the great future; it is going from us never
to return; and when they have rifled our earth and picked the African hones bare as the vultures clear the carcass of their prey, they will leave us with the broken skeleton!"</p><p>
I think there is no broad-minded and sympathetic man who can hear this cry without sympathy. The South African question is far other than the question: Shall one man possess twenty millions while his brother possesses none? It is one far deeper.</p><p>
Nevertheless, there is another side to the question. Nations, like individuals, suffer, and must pay the price, yet more for their ignorance and stupidity than their wilful crimes. He who sits supine and intellectually inert, while great evils are being accomplished, sins wholly as much as he whose positive action produces them, and must pay the same
price. The man at the helm who goes to sleep cannot blame the rock when the ship is thrown upon it, though it be torn asunder. He should have known the rock was there, and steered clear of it. It is perhaps natural
</p><p>
A GREAT BITTERNESS
</p><p>
should have arisen in our hearts towards the men who have disinherited us; but is it always just? Personally, and in private life, they may be far from being inhuman or unjust; they may be rich in such qualities; at most they remain men and brothers who differ in no way from the majority of us. We made certain laws and regulations; they took advantage of them for their own success; they have but pursued the universal laws of the business world, and of the struggle of competition. It was we who did not defend ourselves, and must take the consequences. As long as any of these men merely use the wealth they extract from Africa for their own pleasures anti interest, we have not much to complain of, and must bear the fruit of our folly. The speculators who rule in Mashonaland were wiser than we; they ordained that 50 per cent of all gold mining profits should go to the government, and they retained all diamonds found as a government monopoly. We were not wise enough to do so, and the nation must suffer. But poverty is not the worst thing that call overtake an individual or a nation. In that harsh school the noblest lessons and the sturdiest virtues are learnt. The greatest nations, like the greatest individuals have often been the poorest; and with wealth comes often what is more terrible than poverty–corruption. Not all the millionaires of Europe can prevent one man of genius being born in this land to illuminate it; not all the gold of Africa can keep us from being the bravest, freest nation on earth; no man living can shut out from our eyes the glories of our African sky, or kill one throb of our exultant joy in our great African plains; nor can all earth prevent us from growing into a great, free, wise people. The faults of the past we cannot undo; but
</p><p>
THE FUTURE IS OURS.
</p><p>
But when the men, who came penniless to our shores and have acquired millions out of our substance, are not content with their gains; when they seek to dye the South African soil which has received them with the blood of its citizens–when they seek her freedom–the matter is otherwise.</p><p>
This is the problem, the main weight of which has fallen on the little South African Republic. It was that little ship which received the main blow when eighty thousand souls of all nationalities leaped aboard at once; and gallantly the taut little crait, if for a moment she shivered from stem to stern, has held on her course to shore, with all souls on board.</p><p>
We put it, not to the mall in the street, who, for lack of time or interest, may have given no thought to such matters, but to all statesmen, of whatever nationality, who have gone deeply into the problems of social structure and the practical science of government, and to all thinkers who have devoted
time and study to the elucidation of social problems and the structure of societies and nations, whether the problem placed suddenly for solution before this little State does not exceed in complexity and difficulty that which it has almost ever been a necessity that the people of any country in the past or present should deal with? When we remember how gravely is discussed the arrival of a few hundred thousand Chinamen in America, who are soon lost in the vast bulk of the population, as a handful of chaff is lost in a bag of corn; when we recall the fact that the appearance in England of a few thousand labouring Polish and Russian Jews amidst a vast population, into which they will be absorbed in less than two generations forming good and leal English subjects, has been solemnly adverted upon as
</p><p>
A GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY,
</p><p>
and measures have been weightily discussed for forcibly excluding them, it will assuredly be clear, to all impartial and truth loving minds, that the problem which the Transvaal Republic has suddenly had to deal with is one of transcendent complexity and difficulty. We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, the sympathy which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path–and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large, impartial, truth seeking spirit, in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?</p><p>
We put it further to such intelligent minds as have impartially watched the action and endeavors of the little Republic in dealing with its great problems, whether, when all the many sides and complex conditions are considered, it has not manfully and wonderfully endeavored to solve them?</p><p>
It is sometimes said that when one
stands looking from the edge of this hill at the grant mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountains high, its minings chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kafirs, and its eighty thousand men and women, white or colored, of all nationalities gathered here in the space of a few years, on the spot where
fifteen years ago the Boer's son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer's wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth. And it is wonderful; but, as we look at it, the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet–the marvelous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft, or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavored to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that
</p><p>
CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT
</p><p>
for statecraft and the organization and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the northeast of the continent of Europe, where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise, could have made it possible. We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus; but it has today, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. And, we do again repeat, that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them.
</p><p>
Let us take as an example one of the simplest elements of the question, the enfranchisement of the new arrivals. Even those of us, who with the present writer are sometimes denominated "the fanatics of the franchise," who hold that that state is healthiest and strongest, in the majority of cases, in which every adult citizen, irrespective of sex or position, possesses a vote, base our assertion on the fact that each individual forming an integral part of the community has their all at stake in that community; that the woman's stake is likely to be as large as the man's, and the poor man's as the rich; for each has only his all, his life; and that their devotion to its future good, and their concern in its health is likely to be equal; that the state gains by giving voice to all its integral parts. But the ground is cut from under our feet when a large mass of persons concerned are not integral portions of the State, hut merely temporarily connected with it, have no interest in its remote future, and only a commercial interest in its present. We may hold (and we personally very strongly hold) that the moment a stranger lands in a country, however ignorant he may be of its laws, usages, and interests, if he intends to remain permanently in it, and incorporates all his life and interest with it, he becomes an integral part of the State, and should as soon as possible be given the power of expressing his will through its legislature; but the
</p><p>
PRACTICAL AND OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY
</p><p>
at once arises of determining who, in an uncertain stream of strangers who suddenly flow into a land, <em>is</em> so situated ! I may go to Italy, accompanied by two friends; we may hire the same house between us (to use a homely illustration); there may be no external evidence of difference in our attitude; yet I may have determined to live and die in Italy; I may feel a most intense affection for its people and its institutions, and a great solicitude over its future. The first man who accompanies me may feel perfectly indifferent to land and people, and be there merely for health, leaving again as soon as it is restored. The second may be animated by an intense hatred of Italy and Italians; he not only may not wish well to the nation, but may desire to see it downtrodden by Austria, and its inhabitants destroyed. By enfranchising me the moment I arrived,
the Italian nation would gain a faithful and devoted citizen, who would sacrifice all for her in time of danger, and devote thought in times of peace; in enfranchising immediately the second man, they would perform an act entirely negative and indifferent without loss or gain either way; in enfranchising the third man, they would perform an act of minor social suicide. Yet it would be impossible at once, and from any superficial study to discover our differences!
</p><p>
THE GREAT SISTER REPUBLIC
</p><p>
across the water has met these difficulties by instituting a probationary residence of two years, after which by taking a solemn oath renouncing all allegiance to any foreign sovereign or land, more especially to the ruler of England and the English nation, and declaring their wish to live and die citizens of the United States, the new comers are, after a further residence of another three years, fully enfranchised, and become citizens of the American Republic. In this, as in many other cases, it would appear that the great Republic has struck on a wise and practical solution to a complex problem; and in this matter, as in many others, we, personally, should like to see the action of the great sister Republic followed. But thoughtful minds may suggest, on the other hand, that, while in America, at least at the present day, the newly enfranchised burgher receives but one-sixteen millionth of the State power and of governmental control on his enfranchisement, in a small state like the Transvaal each new burgher receives
over eight hundred times that power in the government and control of the country, and that this makes a serious difference in the importance of making sure of the loyalty and sincerity of your citizen before you enfranchise him. We see this, and there is something to be said for it. It has been held by many sincerely desirous of arriving at a just and balanced conclusion, that, in a Republic situated as the Transvaal is, a longer residence and the votes of a certain proportion of the already enfranchised citizens are necessary before the vast rights conferred by citizenship in a small purely democratic State are granted. The terms for the enfranchisement for foreigners in England yield us no instructive analogy; for, in a country with an hereditary sovereign and an hereditary Upper House the enfranchised foreigner receives only a minute fraction of the power conferred on the elector in a pure democracy. The little Russian Jew who has a vote given him in London can never become the supreme head of the State, can never sit in or vote for members of the Upper House, and receives only the minute fractional power of voting for members of the lower. It is
</p><p>
IN A PURE DEMOCRACY
</p><p>
where the people are the sovereign and represent in themselves the hereditary ruler, the hereditary Upper House, and the Lower House combined, that the personnel of each accredited citizen becomes all important. The greater the stability and immobility at one end of a State, the greater the mobility and instability which may be allowed at the other end, without endangering the stability of the State as a whole, or the healthy performance of its functions. Even on this comparatively small question of the franchise it is evident that the problem before the little Transvaal Republic is one of much complexity, and on which minds broadly liberal and sincerely desirous of attaining to the wisest and most humane and most enlightened judgment may sincerely differ.</p><p>
Of those other and far more serious problems which the Republic faces in common with South Africa, there is no necessity here to speak further; the thoughtful mind may follow them out for itself. Time and experiment must be allowed for the balance of things to adjust themselves.</p><p>
South Africa has need of more citizens leal and true. Whoever enters South Africa and desires to become one of us, to drink from our cup and sup from our platter, to mix his seed with ours and build up the South Africa of the future–him let us receive with open arms. From great mixtures of races spring great peoples. The scorned and oppressed Russian Jew, landing here today, vivified by our fresh South African breezes, may yet be the progenitor of the Spinoza and Maimonides of the great future South Africa, who shall lead the world in philosophy and thought. The pale German cobbler who with his wife and children lands today, so he stays with us and becomes one with us, may yet be the father of the greater Hans Sachs of Africa; and the half-starved Irish peasant become the forerunner of our future Burkes
and William Porters. The rough Cornish miner, who is looking out with surprised eyes at our new South African world to-day, may yet give to us our greatest statesmen and noblest leader. The great African nation of the future will have its foundations laid on stones from many lands. Even to the Coolie and the Chinaman, so he comes among us, we personally should say: Stretch forth the hand of brotherhood. We may not desire him, we may not intentionally bring him among us, but, so he comes to remain with us, let South Africa be home to him.</p><p>
"Be not unmindful to entertain strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unawares."
</p><p>* * * * *
</p><p>
We, English South Africans of to-day, who are truly South African, loving</p><p>
THE LAND OF OUR BIRTH,</p><p>
and men inhabiting it, yet bound by intense and loving ties, not only of intellectual affinity but of personal passion, to the homeland from which our parents came, and where the richest formative years of our life were passed, we stand to-day midway between these two great sections of South African folk, the old who have been here long and the new who have only come; between the home-land of our fathers and the love-land of our birth; and it would seem as though, through no advantage of wisdom or intellectual knowledge on our part, but simply as the result of the accident of our position and of our double affections, we are fitted to fulfil a certain function at the present day, to stand, as it were, as mediators and interpreters between those our position compels us to sympathize with and so understand, as they may not, perhaps, be able to understand each other.</p><p>
Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position invests us with.</p><p>
* * *</p><p>
If it be asked, why at this especial moment we feel it incumbent on us not to maintain silence, and what that is which compels our action and speech, the answer may he given in one word–WAR!</p><p>
The air of South Africa is
</p><p>
HEAVY WITH RUMORS;</p><p>
inconceivable, improbable, we refuse to believe them; yet, again and again they return.</p><p>
There are some things the mind refuses seriously to entertain, as the man who has long loved and revered his mother would refuse to accept the assertion of the first passer-by that there was any possibility of her raising up her hand to strike his wife or destroy his child. But much repetition may at last awaken doubt; and the man may begin to look out anxiously for further
evidence.</p><p>* * *
</p><p>
We English South Africans are stunned; we are amazed; we say there can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to ask ourselves: "What means this unwonted tread of armed and hired soldiers on South African soil? Why are they here?" And the only answer that comes back to us, however remote and seemingly impossible is–WAR !</p><p>
To-night we laugh at it, and to-morrow when we rise up it stands before us again, the ghastly doubt–war!–war, and in South Africa! War–between white men and white ! War!–Why?-Whence is the cause?–For whom?–For what–And the question gains no answer.</p><p>
We fall to considering, who gains by war?</p><p>
Has our race in Africa and our race in England interests so diverse that any calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon us, as war? Is any position possible, that could make necessary that mother and daughter must rise up in one horrible embrace, and rend, if it be possible, each other's vitals?.. Believing it impossible, we fall to considering, who is it gains by war?</p><p>
There is peace to-day in the land; the two great white races, day by day, hour by hour, are blending their blood, and both are mixing with the stranger. No
day passes but from the veins of some Dutch South African woman the English South African man's child is being fed; not a week passes but the birth cry of the English South African woman's child gives voice to the Dutchman's offspring; not an hour passes but on farm, and in town and village, Dutch hearts are winding about English
</p><p>
AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH. </p><p>If the Angel of Death should spread his wings across the land and strike dead in one night every man and woman and child of either the Dutch or the English blood, leaving the other alive, the land would be a land of mourning. There would be not one household nor the heart of an African born man or woman that would not be weary with grief. We should weep the friends of our childhood, the companions of our early life, our grandchildren, our kindred, the souls who have loved us and whom we have loved. In destroying the one race he would have isolated the other. Time, the great healer of all differences, is blending us into a great mutual people, and love is moving faster than time. It is no growing hatred between Dutch and English South African born men and women that calls for war. On the lips of our babes we salute both races daily.</p><p>
Then we look round through the political world, and we ask ourselves: what great and terrible and sudden crime has been committed, what reckless slaughter and torture of the innocents, that blood can alone wash out blood?</p><p>
And we find none.</p><p>
And still we look, asking what great and terrible difference has suddenly arisen, so mighty that the human intellect cannot solve it by means of peace, that the highest and noblest diplomacy falls powerless before it, and the wisdom and justice of humanity cannot reach it, save by the mother's drawing a sword and planting it in the heart of the daughter?</p><p>
We can find none.</p><p>
And again, we ask ourselves</p><p>
WHO GAIN BY WAR?</p><p>
What is it for? Who is there that desires it? Do men shed streams of human blood as children cut off poppyheads to see the white juice flow?
</p><p>
WH0 GAINS BY WAR?
</p><p>
Not England ! She has a great young nation's heart to lose. She has a cable of fellowship which stretches across the seas to rupture. She has treaties to violate. She has the great traditions of her past to part with. Whoever plays to win, she loses.</p><p>
WHO GAINS BY WAR?</p><p>
Not Africa ! The great young nation, quickening to-day to its first consciousness of life, to be torn and rent, and bear upon its limb, into its fully ripened manhood, the marks of the wounds–wounds from a mother's hands!
</p><p>
WHO GAINS BY WAR?</p><p>
Not the great woman whose eighty years to-night completes," who would carry with her to her grave the remembrance of the longest reign and the purest; who would have that when the nations gather round her bier, the whisper should go round, "That was a mother's hand; it struck no child."</p><p>
WHO GAINS BY WAR?</p><p>
Not the brave English soldier; there are no laurels for them here. The dying lad with hands fresh from the plough; the old man tottering to the grave, who seizes up the gun to die with it; the simple farmer who as he falls hears yet his wife's last whisper, "For freedom and our land!" and dies hearing it–these men can bind no laurels on a soldier's brow! They may be shot, not conquered–fame rests with them. Go, gallant soldiers and defend the shores of that small island that we love; there are no laurels for you here!
</p><p>
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
</p><p>
Not we the Africans, whose hearts are knit to England. We love all. Each hired soldier's bullet that strikes down a South African, does more; it finds a billet here in our hearts. It takes one African's life–in another it kills that which will never live again.
</p><p>
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
</p><p>
There are some who think they gain! In the background we catch sight of misty figures; we know the old tread; we hear the rustle of paper, passing from hand to hand, and we know the fall of gold; it is all old familiar sound in Africa; we know it now! There are some who <em>think</em> they gain! Will they gain?</p><p>
* * *</p><p>
But it may be said, "What matter who goads England on, or in whose cause she undertakes war against Africans; this at least is certain, she can win. We have the ships, we have the men, we have the money."</p><p>
We answer, "Yes, might generally conquers–for a time at least." The greatest empire upon earth, on which the sun never sets, with its five hundred million subjects, may rise up in its full majesty of power and glory, and crush thirty thousand farmers. It may not be a victory, but at least it will be a slaughter. We ought to win. We have the ships, we have the men, and we have the money. May there not he something else we need? The Swiss had it when they fought with Austria; the three hundred had it at Thermopylae, although not a man was saved; it goes to make a victory. Is it worth fighting if we have not got it?</p><p>
I suppose there is no man who to-day loves his country who has not perceived that in the life of the nation, as in the life of the individual, the hour of external success may be the hour of irrevocable failure, and that the hour of death, whether to nations or individuals, is often the hour of immortality. When William the Silent, with his little band of Dutchmen, rose up to face the whole Empire of Spain, I think there is no man who does not recognize that the hour of their greatest victory was not when they had conquered Spain, and hurled backward the greatest Empire of the world to meet its slow imperial death; it was the hour when that little band stood alone with the waters over their homes,
</p><p>
FACING DEATH AND DESPAIR,
</p><p>
and stood, facing it. It is that hour that has made Holland immortal, and her history the property of all human hearts.</p><p>
It may be said, "But what has England to fear in a campaign with a country like Africa? Can she not send out a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand men and walk over the land? She can sweep it by mere numbers." We answer yes–she might do it. Might generally conquers; not always. (I have seen a little muur kat attacked by a mastiff, the first joint of
whose leg it did not reach. I have seen it taken in the dog's mouth, so that hardly any part of it was visible, and thought the creature was dead. But it fastened its tiny teeth inside the dog's throat, and the mastiff dropped it, and, mauled and wounded and covered with gore and saliva, I saw it creep back into its hole in the red African earth.) But might generally conquers, and there is no doubt that England might send out sixty or a hundred thousand hired soldiers to South Africa, and they could bombard our towns and destroy our villages; they could shoot down men in the prime of life, and old men and boys, till there was hardly a kopje in the country without its stain of blood, and the Karoo bushes grew up greener on the spot where men from the midlands, who had come to help their fellows, fell,
never to go home. I suppose it would be quite possible for the soldiers to shoot all male South Africans who appeared in arms against them. It might not be easy, a great many might fall, but a great Empire could always import more to take their places; we could not import more, because it would be our husbands and sons and fathers who were falling, and when they were done we could not produce more. Then the war would be over. There would not be a house in Africa–where African born men and women lived–without its mourners, from Sea Point to the Limpopo; but South Africa would be pacified–as Cromwell pacified Ireland three centuries ago, and she has been being pacified ever since! As Virginia
was pacified in 1677; its handful of men and women in defence of their freedom were soon silenced by hired soldiers. "I care that for the power of England,"
said "a notorious and wicked rebel" called Sarah Drummond, as she took a small stick and broke it and lay it on the ground. A few months later her husband and all the men with him were made prisoners, and the war was over. "I am glad to see you," said Berkely, the English Governor, "I have long wished to meet you; you will be hanged in half an hour! and he was hanged
and twenty-one others with him, and Virginia was pacified. But a few generations later in that State of Virginia was born George Washington, and on the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the battle of Lexington–where once the embattled farmers stood, and fired a shot, heard round the world,"–and the greatest crime and the greatest folly of England's career was completed England acknowledges it now. A hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand imported soldiers might walk over South Africa; it would not be an easy walk; but it could be done. Then from east and west and north and south would come men of pure English blood to stand beside the boys they had played with at school and the friends they had loved; and a great despairing cry would rise from the heart of Africa. But we are still few. When the war was over the imported soldiers might leave the land–not all; some must be left to keep the remaining people down. There would be quiet in the land. South Africa would rise up silently, and count her dead, and bury them. She would know the places where she found them.
South Africa would be peaceful. There would be silence, the silence of a long exhaustion–but not peace! Have the dead no voices? In a thousand farm houses black robed women would hold memory of the count, and outside under African stones would lie the African men to whom South African women gave birth under our blue sky. There would be silence, but no peace.</p><p>
You say that all the fighting men in arms might have been shot. Yes, but what of the women? If there were left but five thousand pregnant South African-born women, and all the rest of their people destroyed, those women would breed up again a race like to the first.
</p><p>
OH, LION-HEART OF THE NORTH, </p><p>do you not recognize your own lineage in these whelps of the South? We cannot live if we are not free!</p><p>
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who lay under the stones (who will not be English then nor Dutch, but only Africans), will say, as they pass those heaps: "There lie our fathers, or great-grandfathers who died in the first great War of Independence," and the descendants of the men
who lay there will be the aristocracy of Africa. Men will count back to them and say: My father or my great-grandfather lay in one of those graves. We shall know no more of Dutch or English then, we shall know only one great African people. And <em>we?</em> We, the South Africans of to-day, who are still English, who have been proud to do the smallest good so it might bring honor to England, who have vowed our vows on the honor of Englishmen, and by the faith of Englishmen–what of <em>us?</em></p><p>
What of us? We, too, have had our vision of Empire. We have seen as in a dream the Empire of England as a great banyan tree; silently with the falling of the dew and the dropping of the rain it has extended itself; its branches have drooped down and rooted themselves in the earth; in it all the fowl of Heaven have taken refuge, and under its shade all the hasts of the field have lain down to rest. Call we change it for an upas tree, whose leaves distill poison and which spells death to those who have lain down in peace under its shadow?</p><p>
You have no right to take our dream from us; you have no right to kill our faith! Of all the sins England will sin if she makes war on South Africa, the greatest will be towards us.</p><p>
Of what importance is the honor and faith we have given her? You say, we are but few! Yes, we are few; but all the gold of Witwatersrand would not buy one throb of that love and devotion we have given her.</p><p>
Do not think that when imported soldiers walk across South African plains to take the lives of South African men and women, that it is only African sand and African hushes that are cracking beneath their tread: at each step they are breaking the fibres, invisible as air, but strong as steel, which bind the hearts of South Africans to England. Once broken they can never be made whole again; they are living things; broken, they will be dead. Each bullet which a soldier sends to the heart of a South African to take his life, wakes up another who did not know he was an African. You will not kill us with your Lee-Metfords: you will make us. There are men who do not know they love a Dutchman; but the first three hundred that fall, they will know it.</p><p>
Do not say, "But you are English, you have nothing to fear: we have no war with you!"</p><p>
There are hundreds of us, men and women, who have loved England; we would have, given our lives for her; but, rather than strike down one South African man fighting for freedom, we would take this right hand and hold it in the fire, till nothing was left of it but a charred and blackened bone.</p><p>
I know of no more graphic image in the history of the world than
</p><p>
THE FIGURE OF FRANKLIN</p><p> when he stood before the Lords of Council in England, giving evidence,
striving, fighting, to save America for England. Browheaten, flouted, jeered at by the courtiers, his words hurled back at him as lies, he stood there fighting far England. England recognizes now that it was he who tried to save an Empire for her; and that the men who flouted and browbeat him, lost it. There is nothing more pathetic than the way in which Americans who loved England, Washington and Franklin, strove to keep the maiden vessel moored close to the mother's side, bound by the bonds of love and sympathy, that alone could bind them. Their hands were beaten down, bruised and bleeding, wounded by the very men they came to save, till they let go the mother ship and drifted
away on their own great imperial course across the seas of time.</p><p>
England knows now w:hat those men strove to do for her, and the names of Washington and Franklin will ever stand high in honor where the English tongue is spoken. The names of Hutchinson, and North, and Grafton are not forgotten also; it might be well for them if they were!</p><p>
Do not say to us: "You are Englishmen; when the war is over, you can wrap the mantle of our imperial glory round you and walk about boasting that the victory is yours."</p><p>
We could never wrap that mantle round us again. We have worn it with pride. We could never wear it then. There would be blood upon it, and the blood would be our brothers'.</p><p>
We put it to the men of England.
In that day where should we be found; we who have to maintain English honor in the South? Judge for us, and by your judgment we will abide. Remember, we are Englishmen!</p><p>
* * * *</p><p>
Looking around to-day along the somewhat over-clouded horizon of South African life, one figure strikes the eye, new to the circle of our existence here; and we eye it with something of that hope and sympathy with which a man is bound to view the new and unknown, which may be of vast possible good and beauty.</p><p>
What have we in this man, who represents English honor and English wisdom in South Africa? To a certain extent we know.</p><p>
We have a man honorable in the relations of personal life, loyal to friend, and above all charm of gold; wise with the knowledge of books and men; a man who could not violate a promise or strike in the dark. This we know we have, and it is much to know this; but what have we more?</p><p>
The man of whom South Africa has need to-day to sustain England's honor and her Empire of the future, is a man who must possess more than the knowledge and wisdom of the intellect.</p><p>
When a woman rules a household with none but the children of her own body in it, her task is easy; let her obey nature and she will not fail. But the woman who finds herself in a large strange household, where children and step-children are blended, and where all have passed the stage of childhood and have entered on that stage of adolescence where coercion can no more
avail, but where sympathy and comprehension are the more needed, that woman has need of large and rare qualities springing more from the heart than from the head. She who call win the love of her strange household in its adolescence will keep its loyalty and sympathy when adult years are reached and will he rich indeed.</p><p>
There have been Englishmen in Africa who had those dualities. Will
</p><p>
THIS NEW ENGLISHMAN OF OURS
</p><p>
evince them and save an Empire for England and heal South Africa's wounds? Are we asking too much when we turn our eyes with hope to him?
Further off also, across the sea we look with hope. The last of the race of great statesmen was not put into the ground with the old man of Hawarden; the great breed of Chatham and Burke is not extinct; the hour must surely bring forth the man.</p><p>
We look further yet with confidence, from the individual to the great heart of England, the people. The great fierce freedom-loving heart of England is not dead yet. Under a thin veneer of gold we still hear it beat. Behind the shrivelled and puny English Hyde who
cries only "gold," rises the great English Jekyll, who cries louder yet "Justice and honor." We appeal to him; history shall not repeat itself.</p><p>
Nearer home, we turn to one whom all South Africans are proud of, and we would say to Paul Kruger, "Great old man, first but not last of South Africa's great line of rulers, you have shown us you could fight for freedom; show us you can win peace. On the foot of that great statue which in the future the men and women of South Africa will raise to you let this stand written: 'This man loved freedom, and fought for it; but his heart was large;he could forget injuries and deal generously."'</p><p>
And to our fellow Dutch South Africans, whom we have learnt to love so much during the time of stress and danger, we would say. "Brothers, you have shown the world that you know how to fight; show it you know how to govern; forget the past; in that Great Book which you have taken for your guide in life, turn to Leviticus, and read there in the 19th chapter, 34th verse: 'But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.'"</p><p>
Be strong, be fearless, be patient.</p><p>
We would say to you in the words of the wise dead President of the Free State which have become the symbol of South Africa, "Wacht een beetje, alles zal recht kom." (Wait a little, all will come right.)</p><p>
On our great African flag let us emblazon these words, never to talk them down, "FREEDOM, JUSTICE, LOVE"; great are the two first, but without the last they are not complete.</p><p>
Olive Schreiner,<br>
2 Primrose Terrace,<br>
Berea Estate,<br>
Johannesburg,<br>
South African Republic.<br>
June, 1899.
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Olive Shreiner
The South African Question
Written: June, 1899;
Source: The South African Question, Charles H. Sergel Co, 1899;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org in 2000.
Many views have found expression in the columns of papers during the last weeks. The working man only a few weeks or months from England has expressed his opposition to those stratagems with war for their aim which would leave him without the defence he has at present from the pressure of employers. Journalists only a few years, months, or weeks from Europe, have written, not perhaps expressing a desire for war, but implying it might be well if the wave swept across South Africa, and especially across that portion which is richest in mineral wealth, and, therefore, more to be desired.
South Africans and men from Europe alike have written deprecating war, because of the vast suffering and loss it would occasion to individuals. Dutch and English South Africans have written (as one in an able and powerful letter dated from Vrededorp, which appeared a few days ago) proving the injustice that would be inflicted on the people of Africa, the violation of treaties and trust. But, amid all this chorus of opinion there is one voice which, though heard, has not yet been heard with that distinctness and fulness which its authority demands–it is the voice of the African-born Englishman who loves England, the man who, born in South Africa, and loving it as all men, who are men, love their birthland, is yet an Englishman, bound to England not only by ties of blood, but
that much more intense passion which springs from personal contact alone. Our position is unique, and it would seem that we are marked out, at the present juncture of South African affairs, for an especial function, which imposes on us, at whatever cost to ourselves, the duty of making our voices heard and taking our share in the life of our two nations, at their
MOST CRITICAL JUNCTURE.
For, let us consider what exactly our position is.
Born in South Africa, our eyes first opened on these African hills and plains; around us, of other parentage but born with us in the land, our birthfellows, were men of another white race; and we grew up side by side with them. Is it strange that, like all men
living, who have the hearts of men, we learnt to love this land in which we first saw light? In after years, when we left it, and lived months or years across the seas, is it strange we carried it with us in our hearts? When we stood on the Alps and looked down on the lakes and forests of Switzerland, that we have said, "This is fair, but South Africa to us is fairer?" That when oil the top of Milan Cathedral and we have looked out across the wide plains of Lombardy, we have said, "This is noble, but nobler to us are the broad plains of Africa, with their brown kopjes shimmering in the translucent sunshine?" Is it strange that when, after long years of absence, years it may be of success and the joy which springs from human fellowship and youth, our ship has cast its anchor in sight of Table Bay, and the great front of Table Mountain has reared up before us, a cry of passionate joy has welled up within us; and when we saw the black men with their shining skins unloading in the docks, and the rugged faces of South Africans, browned with our African sun, we put our foot on the dear old earth again, and our hearts have cried: "We are South Africans! We have come back again to our land and to our people?" Is it strange that when we are in other lands and we fear that death approaches us, we say: "Take me back! We may live away from her, but when we are dead we must lie on her breast. Bury us among the kopjes where we played when we were children, and let the iron stones and red sand cover us?" Is it strange that wherever we live we all want to go home to die; and that the time comes when we know that dearer far to us than fame or success is one little handful of our own red South African earth? Is it strange that, when the
TIME OF STRESS AND DANGER
comes to our land, we realize what, perhaps, we were but dimly conscious of before, that we are Africans, that for this land and people we could live–if need be, we could die?
Is it strange we should feel this? The Scotchman feels it for his heathery hills, the Swiss for his valleys. All men who are men feel it for the land of their birth!
What is strange is not that we have this feeling, but that, side by side with it, we have another. We love Africa, but we love England also. It is not
merely that when for the first time we visit the old nesting place of our people it is rich for us with associations, that we tread it for the first time with something of the awe and reverence with which men tread an old cathedral, rich with remains of the great dead and past; it is not merely that the associations of language and literature bind us to it, nor that in some city or country churchyard we stand beside the graves of our forefathers, and trace on mould-eaten stones the names we have been familiar with in Africa, and bear as our own; nor is it that we can linger yet on the steps of the church where our parents were united before they moved to the far South, and made of us South Africans. Beyond all these impersonal, and more or less intellectual ties, we form a personal one with England. Whether we have gone home as students to college or university, or for purposes of art, literature, or professional labor, as time passes there springs up around us
A NETWORK OF TENDER BONDS;
there are formed the closest friendships our hearts will ever know, such as are formed only in the spring time of life; there is gained our first deep knowledge of life, and there grow up within us passions and modes of thought we will carry with us to our graves. After
years, it may be after many years, when we return, on the walls of our study in South Africa we still keep fastened in memory of the past the old oar with which we won our first boating victory or Cam or Thames; and the faces of the men who shared our victory with us still look down at us from our walls. Not dearer to any Englishman is the memory of his Alma Mater than to him who sits thousands of miles off in the South, and who, as he smokes his last pipe of African Boer or Transvaal tobacco, is visited often by memories of days that will never fade, evenings on the river with bright faces and soft voices, long midnight conclaves over glimmering fires, when, with voices and hearts as young and glowing as our own, we discussed all problems of the universe and longed to go out into life that we might settle them–they come hack to us with all the glitter and light which hangs only about the remembrances of youth: and for many of us the memory of fog-smitten London is inextricably blended with the all profoundest emotions, the most passionate endeavors, noblest relations our hearts will ever know. The steamers that come weekly to South Africa are not for us merely vessels bringing news from foreign lands; nor do they merely bring for us the intellectual pabulum which feeds our mental life; they bring us
"NEWS FROM HOME."
In London houses, in country cottages, in English manufacturing towns, are men and women whose life and labor, whose joy and sorrows our hearts will follow to the end, as theirs will follow ours to the end, and across the seas our hands will always be interknit with theirs. Our labor, our homes, our material interests, may all be in South Africa, but a bond of love so strong that six thousand miles of sea can only
stretch it, but never sever it, binds us to the land and the friends we loved in our youth. We are South Africans, but intellectual sympathies, habits, personal emotions, have made us strike deep roots across the sea; and when the thought flashes on us, we may not walk the old streets again or press the old hands, pain rises which those only know whose hearts are divided between two lands. We are South Africans, but we are not South Africans only–we are Englishmen also:
Dear little Island,
Our heart in the sea!
If to-morrow hostile fleets encompassed England, and the tread of foreign troops was on her soil, she would not need to call to us; we would stand beside her before she had spoken. This is
OUR EXACT POSITION.
Side by side with us in South Africa are other South Africans whose position is not and cannot be exactly what ours is. Shading away from us by imperceptible degrees, stand, on one side of us, those English South Africans who, racially English, yet know nothing or little personally of her; the grandparents, and not the parents of such men, have left England; they are proud of being Englishmen, proud of England's great record and great names, as a man is proud of his grandmother's family, but they are before all things essentially South African. They desire to see England increase and progress, and to remain in harmony and union with her while she does not interfere with internal affairs of South Africa, but they do not and cannot feel
to her as those of us do whose love is personal and whose intellectual sympathies center largely in England.
Yet further from us on the same side stand our oldest white fellow South Africans; who were, many, not of English blood originally, though among that body of early white settlers, men who preceded us in South Africa by three centuries, were a few with English names, and though by intermarriage Dutch and English South Africans are daily and hourly blending, the bulk of these folk were Dutchmen from Holland and Friesland, with a few Swedes, Germans and Danes, and later was intermingled with them a strong strain of Huguenot blood from France. These men were mainly of that folk which, in the sixteenth century, held Philip and the Spanish Empire at bay, and struck the first death-blow into the heart of that mighty Imperial system whose death-gasp we have witnessed to-day. A brave, free, fearless folk with the
BLOOD OF THE OLD SEA KINGS
in their veins; a branch of that old Teutonic race which came with the Angles and Saxons into England and subdued the Britons, and who, in the persons of the Franks, entered Gaul, and spread its blood across Europe. They are a people most nearly akin to the English of all European folk, in language, form and feature resembling them, and in a certain dogged persistence, and an inalienable indestructible air of personal freedom.
Even under the early Dutch Government of the East India Company, they were not always restful and resented interference and external control. They frequently felt themselves "ondergedrukt," [oppressed] and, taking their guns, and getting together wife and children and all that they had, and inspanning their wagons, they trekked away from the scant boards of civilization into the wilderness, to form homes of freedom for themselves and their descendants.
In 1795 England obtained the Cape as the result of European complications, and the South African people, without request or desire on their part, were given over to England. England retired from the Cape in 1803, but, owing to other changes in Europe, she took the Cape again in 1806, and has since then been the
GUARDIAN OF OUR SEAS,
and the strongest power in our land. Since that time, for the last ninety years, Englishmen have slowly been added to the population, but the men of Dutch descent still form the majority of white South Africans throughout the Cape Colony, Free State, and Transvaal, outnumbering at the present day, even with the accession of the foreigners (Uitlanders mean foreigners in Dutch) to the goldfields of the Transvaal, those of English descent, as probably about two to one.
So we of England became stepmother to this South African people. We English are a virile race. There is perhaps no one with a drop of English blood in his veins who does not feel pride in that knowledge. We are a brave and, for ourselves, a freedom-loving race; the best of us have nobler qualities yet–we love justice; we admire courage and the love of freedom in others as well as ourselves; and we find it difficult to put our foot on the weak, it refuses to go down. At times, whether as individuals or as a nation, we are capable of the
MOST HEROIC MORAL ACTION.
The heart swells with pride when we remember what has been done by Englishmen, at different times and in different places, in the cause of freedom and justice, when they could meet with no reward and had nothing to gain. Such an act of justice on the part of the English nation was done in 1881 when Gladstone gave back to the Transvaal the independence which had been mistakenly taken. I would not say policy had no part in the action of the wise old man. No doubt that keen eagle-eye had fixed itself closely on the truth which all history teaches that a colony of Teutonic folk cannot be kept permanently in harmony and union with the Mother Country by any bond but that of love, mutual sympathy and honor. The child may be reduced by force to obedience; but time passes and the child becomes a youth; the youth may be coerced; but the day comes when the youth becomes a man, and there can be no coercion then. If the mother wishes to retain the affection of the man, she must win it from the youth. This the wise old man saw; but I believe that, over and above the wisdom, he saw the right, and the action was no less heroic because it was wise; for other men see truth who have not the courage to follow her, and accept present loss for a gain which lies across the centuries.
We English are a fearless folk, and in the main I think we seek after justice, but we have our faults. We are not a sympathetic or a quickly comprehending people; we are slow and we are proud; we are shut in by a certain
SHELL OF HARD RESERVE.
There are probably few of us who have not some consciousness of this defect in our own persons; it may be a fault allied to our highest virtues, but it is a fault, and a serious one as regards our relations with peoples who come under our rule. We may and do generally sincerely desire justice; we may have no wish to oppress, but Re do not readily understand wants and conditions distinct from our own. Here and there great Englishmen have appeared in South African history as elsewhere (such as Sir William Porter and Sir George Grey) who have been able to throw themselves sympathetically into the entire life of the people about, to love them, and so to comprehend their wants and win their affections. Such men are the burning and shining lights of our Imperial and Colonial system, but they are not common. Undoubtedly the officials sent out to rule the Cape in the old days were generally men who earnestly desired to do their duty; but they did not always understand the folk they had to rule. They were generally simple soldiers, brave, fearless and honorable as the English soldier is apt to be, but with hard military conceptions of government and discipline. Our
Dutch fellow South Africans are a strange folk. Virile, resolute, passionate with a passion hid far below the surface, they are at once the gentlest and the most determined of peoples. When you try to coerce them they are hard as steel encased in iron, but with a large and generous response to affection and sympathy which perhaps no other European folk gives. They may easily be deceived once; but never twice. Under the roughest exterior of the upcountry Boer lies a nature strangely sensitive and conscious of personal dignity; a people who never forgets a kindness and does
NOT EASILY FORGET A WRONG.
Our officials did not always understand them; they made no allowances for a race of brave, free men inhabiting a country which by the might of their own right hand they had won from savages and wild beasts, and who were given over into the hands of a strange government without their consent or desire; and the peculiarities which arose from their wild free life were not always sympathetically understood; even their little language, the South African "Taal," a South African growth so dear to their hearts, and to all those of us who love indigenous and South African growths, was not sympathetically and gently dealt with. The men, well meaning, but military, tried with this fierce, gentle, sensitive, free folk force, where they should have exercised a broad and comprehensive humanity; and when they did right (as when the slaves were freed), they did it often in such manner, that it became practically wrong. A little of that tact of the higher and larger kind, which springs from a human comprehension of another's difficulties and needs, might, exercised in the old days, have saved South Africa from all whiterace problems; it was not, perhaps under the conditions, could not, be exercised. The people's hearts ached under the uncompromising iron rule. In 1815 there was a rising, and it was put down. As the traveler passes by train along the railway from Port Elizabeth to Kimberley, he will come, a few miles beyond Cookhouse, to a gap between two hills; to his right flows the Fish River; to his left, binding the two hills, is a ridge of land called in South Africa a "nek." It is a spot the thoughtful Englishman passes with deep pain. In the year 1815 here were hanged five South Africans who had taken part in the rising, and the women who had fought beside them (for the South African woman has ever stood beside the man in all his labors and struggles) were compelled to stand by and look on. The crowd of fellow South Africans who stood by them believed,
HOPED AGAINST HOPE,
to the last moment, that a reprieve would come. Lord Charles Somerset sent none, and the tragedy was completed. The place is called to-day "Schlachter's Nek," or "Butcher's Ridge." Every South African child knows the story. Technically, any government has the right to hang those who rise against its rule. Superficially it is a short way of ending a difficulty for all governments. Historically it
has often been found to be the method for perpetrating them. We may submerge for a moment that which rises again more formidably for its blood bath. The mistake made by Lord Charles Somerset in 1815 was as the mistake would have been by President Kruger if, in 1896, instead of exercising the large prerogative of mercy and magnanimity, he had destroyed the handful of conspirators who attempted to destroy the State. Both would have been within their legal right, but the Transvaal would have failed to find that path which runs higher than the path of mere law and leads towards light. Fortunately for South Africa our little Republic found it.
The reign of stern military rule at the Cape had this effect, that men and women, with a sore in their proud
hearts, continued to move away from a controlling power that did not understand them. Some moved across the Orange River and joined the old "Voortrekkers" that had already gone into that country which is now the Free State. England kept a certain virtual sovereignty over that territory, till, in 1854, she grew weary of the expense it cost her, and withdrew from it in spite of the representations of certain of its inhabitants who sent a deputation to England to request her to retain it. Thereupon the folk organized an independent State and Government; and the little land, peopled mainly by men of Dutch descent, but largely intermingled with English who lived with them on terms of the greatest affection and unity, has become one of the most
PROSPEROUS, WELL-GOVERNED AND PEACEFUL
communities on earth. Others, much the larger part of the people, moved further; they crossed the Vaal River, and in that wild northern land, where no Englishman's foot had passed, they founded after some years the gallant little Republic we all know to-day as the Transvaal. How that Republic was founded is a story we all know. Alone, unbacked by any great Imperial or national power, with their old flint-lock guns in their hands as their only weapons, with wife and children, they passed into that yet untrodden land. The terrible story of their struggles, the death of Piet Retief and his brave followers, killed by treachery by the Zulu Chief, Dingaan, the victory of the survivors over him, which is still commemorated by their children as Dingaan's Day, the whole, perhaps, the most thrilling record of the struggle and suffering of a people in founding their State that the world can anywhere produce. Paul Kruger can still remember how, after that terrible fight, women and children left alone in the fortified laager, he himself being but a child, they carried on bushes to fortify the laager, women with children in their arms, or pregnant, laboring with strength of men to entrench themselves against evil worse than death. Here in the wilderness they planted their homes, and founded their little State. Men and women are still living who can remember how, sixty years ago, the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands was a great silence where they drew up their wagon and planted their little home, and
FOUGHT INCH BY INCH
with wild beasts to reclaim the desert. In this great northern land, which no white man had entered or desired, they planted their people, and loving it as men only can love the land they have suffered and bled for, the gallant little Republic they raised they love to-day as the Swiss loves his mountain home and the Hollander his dykes. It is theirs, the best land on earth to them.
They had fought not for money but for homes for their wives and children; when they battled, the wives reloaded the old flint-lock guns and handed them down from the front chest of their wagon for the men who stood around defending them. It was a wild free
fight, on even terms; there were no Maxim gulls to mow down ebony figures by the hundred at the turn of a handle; a free even stand up fight; and there were times when it almost seemed the assagai would overcome the old flint-lock, and the voortrekkers would be swept away. The panther and the jaguar rolled together on the ground, and, if one conquered instead of the other, it was yet a fair fight, and South Africa has no reason to be ashamed of the way either her black men or her white men fought it.
If it be asked, has the Dutch South African always dealt gently and generously with the native folks with whom he came into contact, we answer, "No, he has not"–neither has any other white race of whom we have record in history. He kept slaves in the early days! Yes, and a century ago England wished to make war on her American subjects in Virginia for refusing to take the slaves she sent. There was a time when we might have vaunted some superiority in the English-African method of dealing with the native.
THAT DAY IS PAST.
The terrible events of the last five years in South Africa have left us silent. There is undoubtedly a score laid against us on this matter, Dutch and English South Africans alike; for the moment it is in abeyance; in fifty or a hundred years it will probably be presented for payment as other bills are, and the white man of Africa will have to settle it. It has been run up as heavily north of the Limpopo as south; and when our sons stand up to settle it, it will be Dutchmen and Englishmen together who have to pay for the sins of their fathers.
Such is the history of our fellow South Africans of Dutch extraction, who to-day cover South Africa from Capetown to the Limpopo. In the Cape Colony, and increasingly in the two Republics, are found enormous numbers of cultured and polished Dutch-descended South Africans, using English as their daily form of speech, and in no way distinguishable from the rest of the nineteenth century Europeans. Our most noted judges, our most eloquent lawyers, our most skillful physicians, are frequently men of this blood; the lists of the yearly examinations of our Cape University are largely filled with Dutch names, and women, as well as men, rank high in the order of merit. It would sometimes almost seem as if the long repose the people has had from the heated life of cities, with the large tax upon the nervous system, had sent them back to the world of intellectual occupations with more than the ordinary grasp of power. In many cases they go home to Europe to study, and doubtless their college life and English friendships bind Britain close to their hearts as to ours who are English-born. The present State Attorney of the Transvaal is a man who has taken some of the highest honors Cambridge can bestow. Besides, there exist still our old simple farmers or Boers, found in the greatest perfection in the midland districts of the Colony, in the Transvaal and Free State, who constitute a large part of the virile backbone of South Africa. Clinging to their old seventeenth century faiths and manners, and speaking their African taal, they are yet tending to pass rapidly away, displaced by their own cultured modern children; but they still form a large and powerful body. Year by year the lines dividing the South Africans from their more lately arrived English-descent brothers are
PASSING AWAY.
Love, not figuratively but literally, is obliterating the line of distinction; month by month, week by week, one might say hour by hour, men and women of the two races are meeting. In the Colony there are few families which have not their Dutch or English connections by marriage; in another generation the fusion will be complete. There will be no Dutchmen then and
no Englishmen in South Africa, but only the great blended South African people of the future, speaking the English tongue, and holding in reverend memory its founders of the past, whether Dutch or English. Already, but for the sorrowful mistakes of the last years, the line of demarcation would have faded out of sight; external impediments may tend to delay it, but they can never prevent this fusion; we are one people. In thirty years' time, the daughter of the man who landed yesterday in South Africa will carry at her heart the child of a de Villiers, and the son of the Cornish miner who lands this week will have given the name of her English grandmother to his daughter, whose mother was a le Roux. There will be nothing in forty years but the great blended race of Africans.
* * * * * * *
These South Africans, together with those of English descent, but who have been more than two generations in the country and have had no–or very little–personal and intimate knowledge and intercourse with England, may be taken as standing on one side of us. They are before all things South Africans. They have–both Dutch and English–in many cases a deep and sincere affection for the English language, English institutions, and a sincere affection for England herself. They are grateful to her for her watch over their seas; and were a Russian fleet to appear in Table Bay to-morrow and attempt to land troops, it would fly as quickly from Dutch as English bullets. Neither Dutch nor English South Africans desire to see any other power installed in the place of England. Cultured Dutch and English Africans alike are fed on English literature, and England is their intellectual home. Even with our simplest Dutch-descent Africans the memories of
THE OLD BITTER DAYS
had almost faded, when the ghastly events, which are too well known to need referring to, awoke the old ache at the heart a few years ago. But even they would see quietly no other power standing in the place of England. "It is a strange thing," said a well-known Dutch South African to us twenty-one years ago, "that when I went to Europe to study I went to Holland, and loved the land and the people, but I felt a stranger; it was the same in Germany, the same in France. But when I landed in England I said, 'I am at home!'" That man was once a passionate lover of England, but he is now a heart-sore man. There have been representatives of England in South Africa who have been loved as dearly by the Dutch as by the English. When a few years ago there was a talk of Sir George Grey visiting South Africa on his way home from New Zealand to England, old grey-headed Dutchmen in the Free State expressed their resolve to take one more long train journey and go down to Capetown only once more to shake the hand of the old man who more than forty years before had been Governor of the Cape Colony. So deeply had a great Englishman, upholding the loftiest traditions of English justice and humanity, endeared himself to the hearts of South Africans. "God's Englishman"–not of the Stock Exchange and the Gatling gun, but of the great heart.
But great as is the bond between South Africans, whether Dutch or English, and England, caused by language, sentiments, interest and the noble record left by those large Englishmen who have labored among us, the South African pure and simple, whether English or Dutch, cannot feel to England just as we do. Their material interest may bind them to England as much as it binds us, but that deep passion for her honor, the consciousness that she represents a large spiritual factor in our lives, which, once gone, nothing replaces for us; that her right-doing is ours, and her wrong-
doing is also ours; that in a manner her flag does not represent anything we have an interest in, or even that we love, but that in a curious may it is ourselves–this they cannot know. Therefore, while on our side we are connected with them by our affection for South Africa and our resolute desire for its good, our position remains not exactly as theirs. Our standpoint is at once broader and more impartial in dealing with South African questions, in that we are bound by two-fold sympathies.
On the other hand of us, who are at once South Africans and Englishmen, stand in South Africa another body of individuals who are not South African, in any sense or only partially, but to whom from our peculiar position we also stand closely bound.
Ever since the time when England took over the Cape, there has been slowly entering the country a thin stream of new settlers, English mainly, but largely reinforced by people of other nationalities. Eighty years ago, in 1820, a comparatively large body of Englishmen arrived at once, and are known as the British Settlers. They settled at first mainly in Albany, and certain of their descendants are to-day, in some senses, almost as truly and typically South African as the older Dutch settlers.
THEIR LOVE FOR AFRICA
is intense. Some years later a large body of Germans were brought to the Kingwilliams town division of South Africa. They, too, became farmers, and their descendants are already true South Africans. For the rest, for years men continually dribbled in slowly and singly from other countries. Whether they came out in search of health, as clergymen, missionaries, or doctors, or in search of manual employment, or as farmers, they almost all became, or tended to become almost immediately, South Africans. They settled in the land permanently among people who were permanent inhabitants, they often married women born in South Africa, and their roots soon sank deeply into it. They brought us no new problem to South Africa. They have settled among us, living as we live, sharing our lives and interests. It is said that it takes thirty years to make a South African, and in a manner this is true. Even now, more especially in times of stress or danger, it is easy to distinguish the African-born man from the man of whatever race and however long in the country who has not been born here. But in the main these newcomers have become South Africans with quickness and to an astonishing degree, and coming in in driblets they were, so to speak, easily digested by South Africa.
But during the last few years
A NEW PHENOMENON HAS STARTED
up in South African life. The discovery of vast stores of mineral wealth in South Africa, more especially gold, has attracted suddenly to its shores a large population which is not and cannot, at least at once, be South African. This body is known under the name of the Uitlanders (literally "Foreigners").
Through a misfortune, and by no fault of its own, the mass of this gold has been discovered mainly along the Witwatersrand, within the territory of the Transvaal Republic, and more especially at the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands, thus throwing upon the little Republic the main pressure of the new arrivals.
To those who know the great mining camps of Klondike and Western America, it is perhaps not necessary to describe Johannesburg. Here are found that diverse and many-shaded body of humans, who appear wherever in the world gold is discovered. The Chinaman with his pigtail, the Indian Coolie, the manly Kafir, and the Half-caste; all forms of dark and colored folk are here, and outnumber considerably the white. Nor is the white population less multifarious and complex. On first
walking the streets, one has a strange sense of having left South Africa, and being merely in some cosmopolitan center, which might be anywhere where all nations and colors gather round the yellow king. Russian Jews and Poles are here by thousands, seeking in South Africa the freedom from oppression that was denied that much-wronged race of men in their own birth-land; Cornish and Northumberland miners; working men from all parts of the earth; French, German and English tradesmen; while on the Stock Exchange men of every European nationality are found, though the Jew predominates. The American strangers are not large in number, but are represented by perhaps the most cultured and enlightened class in the camp, the mining engineer and large importers of
mining machinery being often of that race; our lawyers and doctors are of all nationalities, while in addition to all foreigners, there is a certain admixture of English and Dutch South Africans. In the course of a day one is brought into contact with men of every species. Your household servant may he a Kafir, your washerwoman is a Half-caste, your butcher is a Hungarian, your baker English, the man who soles your boots a German, you buy your vegetables and fruit from an Indian Coolie, your coals from the Chinaman round the corner, your grocer is a Russian Jew, your dearest friend an American. This is an actual, and not an imaginary, description. Here are found the most noted prostitutes of Chicago; and that sad sisterhood created by the dislocation of our yet uncoordinated civilization, and known in Johannesburg under the name of continental women, have thronged here in hundreds from Paris and the rest of Europe. Gambling, as in all mining camps, is rife; not merely men but even women put their money into the totalisator, and
A LOW FEVER OF ANXIETY
for chance wealth feeds on us. Crimes of violence are not unknown; but, if one may speak with authority who has known only one other great mining center in its early condition, and whose information on this matter has therefore been gathered largely from books, Johannesburg compares favorably, and very favorably, with other large mining camps in the same stage of their existence. The life of culture and impersonal thought is largely and of necessity among a new and nomadic population absent; art and science are of necessity unrepresented; but a general alertness and keenness characterizes our population. In the bulk of our miners and working men, of our young men in banks and houses of business, we have a large mass of solid, intelligent, and invaluable social material which counter-balances that large mass of human flotsam and jetsam found in this, as in all other mining catnps; while among our professional men and mining officials is found a large amount of the highest professional knowledge and efficiency. Happy would it be for the gallant little Transvaal Republic, and well for South Africa as a whole, if the bulk of this little human nature could become ours forever, if they were here to stay with us, drink out of our cup and sup out of our platter. But in most cases this is not so. The bulk of the population, and especially its most valuable and cultured elements, are here temporarily; as persons who go to Italy or the south of France for health or sunshine, who, even when they go year after year, or buy villas and settle there for a time, yet go to seek merely health and sunshine, not strike root there; and as men go to Italy for health and sunshine, the bulk of us here come to seek gold or a temporary livelihood, and for nothing more. Even our miners and working men in Johannesburg, the most stable and possibly permanent element in our population, have, in many instances, their wives and families in Cornwall or elsewhere; and when they have them here they still think of the return home for good in after years; while with the wealthier classes this is practically universal. Not only have our leading mining engineers and the great speculators not the slightest intention of staying in Johannesburg permanently; most have their wives and families in England, America, or on the Continent, and project as soon as possible a retirement from business, and return to the fashionable circles of Europe or America. Even among South African-born men the large majority of us intend returning to our own more lovely birthplaces and homes in the Colony sooner or later; and the only element which will probably form any integral part of the South African nation of the future and become subject to the Transvaal Republic is the poorer, which, from the larger advantages for labor here, will
be unable to return to its natural home.
The nomadic population of Johannesburg undoubtedly consists of men who are brave and loyal citizens in their own States and nations. To-morrow,
IF AMERICA WERE IN DANGER,
probably almost every American citizen would troop back to her bosom, and spend not only life, but the wealth he had gained in South Africa from South African soil, in defending her. Every German would go home to the Fatherland; every Englishman, every Frenchman, would, as all brave men in the world's history have done, when the cry arises, "The birthland in danger!" The few Spaniards here trooped back to Spain as soon as the news of war arrived.
One of the most brilliant and able of
English journalists (a man whose opinion on any subject touching his own land we would receive almost with the reverence accruing to the mall who speaks of a subject he knows well and has studied with superior abilities; but who had been only a few months in our land, and, therefore, had not full grasp of either our people or our problems, which from their complexity and many-sidedness are subjects for a life's devotion) that man, three and a half years ago, when brave little Jameson–brave, however mistaken–was sent in to capture the mines of Johannesburg for his master, and when the great mixed population of Johannesburg, Germans and French, English and Jews, Arabs and Chinamen, refused to arise and go to aid him, and when hundreds of Englishmen, Cornishmen and others fled from Johannesburg, fearing that Jameson might arrive and cause a disturbance – said that Johannesburg would be known forever in history by the name of Judasburg! and that the Cornish and other Englishmen who fled from the place were poltroons and cowards. But he was mistaken.
JOHANNESBURG IS NOT JUDASBURG,
and the Englishmen who fled were not poltroons. There ran in them blood as brave as any in England, and if to-morrow a hostile force attacked their birthland, those very Cornish miners and English working men would die in the last ditch defending their land. Those men were strangers here; they came to earn the bread they could with difficulty win in their own land; they were friendly treated by South Africa and made money here; but were they bound to die in a foreign land for causes which they neither knew nor cared for?
One thing only can possibly justify war and the destruction of our fellows to the enlightened and humane denizen of the nineteenth century; the unavoidable conviction that by no other means can we preserve our own life and freedom from a stronger power, or defend a weaker state or individual from a
stronger. Nothing can even palliate it but so intense a conviction of a right so great to be maintained that we are willing, not merely to hire other men to fight and die for us, but to risk our own lives,
A LIFE FOR A LIFE.
This the Englishmen in Johannesburg and foreigners of all nations could not possibly feel. They were not more
bound to die to obtain control of the gold mines of Johannesburg for a man already wealthy or his confederates, than to assist South Africans in defending them; or than we who visit the south of France or Italy for health should feel ourselves bound to remain and die if war breaks out between the Bonapartists and the Republicans, or the Pope and the King. If by a process of abstract thought we have arrived at a strong conviction of a right or human justice to be maintained by a cause with which we have no practical concern, we may feel morally compelled to take a part in it; but no
man can throw it in our teeth if we refuse to die in a strange land for
A CAUSE THAT IS NOT OURS. The Englishmen and others who refused to fight in Johannesburg, or fled rather than run the risk of remaining, pursued the only course open to wise and honorable men. Had they resolved to remain permanently in South Africa, and to become citizens of the Transvaal Republic, the case might have been otherwise. As it was, they could not run a knife into the heart of a people which had hospitably received them, and attempt to destroy a land in which they had found nothing but greater wealth and material comfort than in their own; and they could also not enter upon a deadly raid for a man whom personally the workers of Johannesburg cared nothing for, and with whom they had not a sympathy or interest in common. In leaving Johannesburg and refusing to fight, they pursued the only course left open to them by justice and
honor.
Rightly to understand the problem before the little Transvaal Republic today, it is necessary for Englishmen to imagine not merely that, within the space of ten or twelve years, forty millions of Russians, Frenchmen and Germans should enter England, not in driblets and in time extending over half a century, so that they might, in a measure, be absorbed and digested into the original population, but instantaneously and at once; not merely, that the large bulk of them did not intend to remain in England, and were there merely to extract wealth; not merely, that the bulk of this wealth was exported at once to other countries enriching Russia, France and Germany out of the products of English soil; that would be comparatively a small matter–but, that the bulk of the wealth extracted was in the hands of a few persons, and that these persons were opposed to the continued freedom and independence of England, and were attempting by the use of the wealth they extracted from England to stir up Russia and France against her, that through the loss of her freedom they might the better obtain the command of her wealth and lands. When the Englishman has vividly drawn this future for himself, he will hold, as nearly as is possible, in a nutshell an image of the problem which the people and government of the Transvaal Republic are called on to face to-day; and we put it straightly to him whether this problem is not one of
INFINITE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY?
Much unfortunate misunderstanding has arisen from the simple use of the terms "capitalist" and "monopolist" in the discussion of South African matters. Without the appending of explanation, they convey a false impression. These terms, so familiar to the students of social phenomena in Europe and America, are generally used in connection with a larger, but a quite distinct body of problems. The terms "capitalism," "monopolist," and "millionaire" are now generally associated with the question of the forming of "trusts," "corners," etc., and the question whether it is desirable that society should so organize itself that one man may easily obtain possession of twenty millions, while the bulk of
equally intelligent and equally laborious men obtain little or nothing from the labor of humanity. This question is n world-wide question; it is not one in any sense peculiarly South African; it is a world-wide problem, which, as the result of much thought, careful consideration and many experiments, the nations of the civilized world will be called to adjudicate upon during the twentieth century; but it is not the question with which South Africa lands face to face at this moment. The question before us is not: Shall one South African possess twenty millions, live in his palace, live on champagne, have his yacht in Table Bay, and deck women with a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewels, while the South African next door has nothing?
This is not our question. Our problem is not the problem of America. In America there are many individuals possessing wealth amounting to many millions, but when the United States in their entirety is taken the £40,000,000 of the richest individual sink to nothing; and, were it the desire of the richest millionaire in the States
TO CORRUPT AND PURCHASE
the whole population for political purposes, he could not pay so much as £1 a head to the 80,000,000 inhabitants of the country. Further, the bulk of American millionaires are American! They differ in no respect, except in their possession of large wealth, in interest or affections, from the shoemaker in the alley or the farmer at his plough. They are American citizens; their fate is bound up with that of the
land they live in; their ambitions are American. If a great misfortune should overtake America to-morrow there is no reason to suppose that the heart of a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt would not ache as that of the simplest cowboy in the States. When they die, it is to American institutions that they leave their munificent donations, and the colleges and public institutions of America are endowed by them. The mass even of that wealth they expend on themselves is expended in America, and, whether they will or no, returns to the people of the country in many forms. The millionaires of America are and remain Americans; and the J. Gould who should expend his millions in stirring up war between the North and South, or in urging England to attack and slay American citizens, would be dealt with by his fellow-subjects, whether millionaires or paupers, with expedition. The question whether the conditions which lead to such vast accretions of fortune in the hands of private individuals is a desirable one and of social benefit is an open one, and a fair field for impartial discussion; but, whatever decision is arrived at with regard to millionaires and private monopoly as they exist in Europe or the United States, it has little or no bearing on the problem of South Africa, which is totally distinct.
South Africa is a young country, and taken as a whole it is an arid, barren country agriculturally. Our unrivalled climate, our sublime and rugged natural
scenery,
THE JOY AND PRIDE
of the South African heart, is largely the result of this very aridity and rockiness. Parts are fruitful, but we have no vast corn-producing plains, which
for generations may be cultivated almost without replenishing, as in Russia and America; we have few facilities for producing those vast supplies of flesh which are poured forth from Australia and New Zealand; already we import a large portion of the grain and flesh we consume. We may, with care, become a great fruit-producing country, and create some rich and heavy wines, but, on the whole, agriculturally, we are, and must remain, as compared with most other countries, a poor nation. Nor have we any great inland lakes, seas, and rivers, or arms of the sea, to enable us to become a great maritime or carrying people. One thing only we have which saves us from being the poorest country on the earth, and should make us one of the richest. We have our vast stores of mineral wealth, of gold and diamonds, and probably of other wealth yet unfound. This is all we have. Nature has given us nothing else; we are a poor people but for these. Out of the veins running through rocks and hills, and the mud-beds, heavy with jewels, that lie in our arid plains, must be reared and created our great national institutions, our colleges and museums, our art galleries and universities; by means of these our system of education must be extended; and on the material side, out of these must the great future of South Africa be built up–or not at all. The discovery of our mineral wealth came
somewhat suddenly upon us. We were not prepared for its appearance by wise legislative enactments, as in New Zealand or some other countries. Before the people of South Africa as a whole had had time to wake up to the truth and to learn the first
GREAT AND TERRIBLE LESSON,
our diamonds should have taught us the gold mines of the Transvaal were discovered.
We South Africans, Dutch and English alike, are a curious folk, strong, brave, with a terrible intensity and perseverance, but we are not a sharp people well versed in the movements of the speculative world. In a few years the entire wealth of South Africa, its mines of gold and diamonds, its coal fields, and even its most intractable lands, from the lovely Hex River Valley to Magaliesberg, had largely passed into the hands of a very small knot of speculators. In hardly any instances are they South Africans. That they were not South African-born would in itself matter less than nothing, had they thrown in their lot with us, if in sympathies, hopes, and fears they were one with us. They are not. It is not merely that the wealth which should have made us one of the richest peoples in the world has left us one of the poorest, and is exported to other countries, that it builds palaces in Park Lane, buys yachts in the Mediterranean, fills the bags of the croupiers at Monte Carlo, decks foreign women with jewels, while our citizens toil in poverty; this is a small matter. But those men are not of us! That South Africa we love
whose great future is dearer to us than our own interests, in the thought of whose great and noble destiny lies the source of our patriotism and highest inspiration, for whose good in a far distant future we, Dutch and English alike, would sacrifice all in the present–this future is no more to them than the future of the Galapagos Islands. We are a hunting ground to them, a field for extracting wealth, for
BUILDING UP FAME AND FORTUNE;
nothing more. This matter does not touch the Transvaal alone; from the lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, north, and south, our lands are being taken from us, and passing into the hands of men who not only care nothing for South Africa, but apply the vast wealth they have drawn from South African soil in an attempt to corrupt our public life and put their own nominees into our parliaments, to grasp the reins of power, that their wealth may yet more increase. Is it strange that from the hearts of South Africans, English and Dutch alike, there is arising an exceedingly great and bitter cry: "We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage ! The lands, the mineral wealth which should have been ours to build up the great Africa of the future has gone into strange hands! And they use the gold they gain out of us to enslave us, they strike at our hearts with a sword gilded with South African gold! While the gold and stones remained undiscovered in the bosom of our earth, it was saved up for us and for our grandchildren to build up the great future; it is going from us never
to return; and when they have rifled our earth and picked the African hones bare as the vultures clear the carcass of their prey, they will leave us with the broken skeleton!"
I think there is no broad-minded and sympathetic man who can hear this cry without sympathy. The South African question is far other than the question: Shall one man possess twenty millions while his brother possesses none? It is one far deeper.
Nevertheless, there is another side to the question. Nations, like individuals, suffer, and must pay the price, yet more for their ignorance and stupidity than their wilful crimes. He who sits supine and intellectually inert, while great evils are being accomplished, sins wholly as much as he whose positive action produces them, and must pay the same
price. The man at the helm who goes to sleep cannot blame the rock when the ship is thrown upon it, though it be torn asunder. He should have known the rock was there, and steered clear of it. It is perhaps natural
A GREAT BITTERNESS
should have arisen in our hearts towards the men who have disinherited us; but is it always just? Personally, and in private life, they may be far from being inhuman or unjust; they may be rich in such qualities; at most they remain men and brothers who differ in no way from the majority of us. We made certain laws and regulations; they took advantage of them for their own success; they have but pursued the universal laws of the business world, and of the struggle of competition. It was we who did not defend ourselves, and must take the consequences. As long as any of these men merely use the wealth they extract from Africa for their own pleasures anti interest, we have not much to complain of, and must bear the fruit of our folly. The speculators who rule in Mashonaland were wiser than we; they ordained that 50 per cent of all gold mining profits should go to the government, and they retained all diamonds found as a government monopoly. We were not wise enough to do so, and the nation must suffer. But poverty is not the worst thing that call overtake an individual or a nation. In that harsh school the noblest lessons and the sturdiest virtues are learnt. The greatest nations, like the greatest individuals have often been the poorest; and with wealth comes often what is more terrible than poverty–corruption. Not all the millionaires of Europe can prevent one man of genius being born in this land to illuminate it; not all the gold of Africa can keep us from being the bravest, freest nation on earth; no man living can shut out from our eyes the glories of our African sky, or kill one throb of our exultant joy in our great African plains; nor can all earth prevent us from growing into a great, free, wise people. The faults of the past we cannot undo; but
THE FUTURE IS OURS.
But when the men, who came penniless to our shores and have acquired millions out of our substance, are not content with their gains; when they seek to dye the South African soil which has received them with the blood of its citizens–when they seek her freedom–the matter is otherwise.
This is the problem, the main weight of which has fallen on the little South African Republic. It was that little ship which received the main blow when eighty thousand souls of all nationalities leaped aboard at once; and gallantly the taut little crait, if for a moment she shivered from stem to stern, has held on her course to shore, with all souls on board.
We put it, not to the mall in the street, who, for lack of time or interest, may have given no thought to such matters, but to all statesmen, of whatever nationality, who have gone deeply into the problems of social structure and the practical science of government, and to all thinkers who have devoted
time and study to the elucidation of social problems and the structure of societies and nations, whether the problem placed suddenly for solution before this little State does not exceed in complexity and difficulty that which it has almost ever been a necessity that the people of any country in the past or present should deal with? When we remember how gravely is discussed the arrival of a few hundred thousand Chinamen in America, who are soon lost in the vast bulk of the population, as a handful of chaff is lost in a bag of corn; when we recall the fact that the appearance in England of a few thousand labouring Polish and Russian Jews amidst a vast population, into which they will be absorbed in less than two generations forming good and leal English subjects, has been solemnly adverted upon as
A GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY,
and measures have been weightily discussed for forcibly excluding them, it will assuredly be clear, to all impartial and truth loving minds, that the problem which the Transvaal Republic has suddenly had to deal with is one of transcendent complexity and difficulty. We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, the sympathy which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path–and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large, impartial, truth seeking spirit, in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?
We put it further to such intelligent minds as have impartially watched the action and endeavors of the little Republic in dealing with its great problems, whether, when all the many sides and complex conditions are considered, it has not manfully and wonderfully endeavored to solve them?
It is sometimes said that when one
stands looking from the edge of this hill at the grant mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountains high, its minings chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kafirs, and its eighty thousand men and women, white or colored, of all nationalities gathered here in the space of a few years, on the spot where
fifteen years ago the Boer's son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer's wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth. And it is wonderful; but, as we look at it, the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet–the marvelous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft, or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavored to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that
CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT
for statecraft and the organization and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the northeast of the continent of Europe, where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise, could have made it possible. We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus; but it has today, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. And, we do again repeat, that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them.
Let us take as an example one of the simplest elements of the question, the enfranchisement of the new arrivals. Even those of us, who with the present writer are sometimes denominated "the fanatics of the franchise," who hold that that state is healthiest and strongest, in the majority of cases, in which every adult citizen, irrespective of sex or position, possesses a vote, base our assertion on the fact that each individual forming an integral part of the community has their all at stake in that community; that the woman's stake is likely to be as large as the man's, and the poor man's as the rich; for each has only his all, his life; and that their devotion to its future good, and their concern in its health is likely to be equal; that the state gains by giving voice to all its integral parts. But the ground is cut from under our feet when a large mass of persons concerned are not integral portions of the State, hut merely temporarily connected with it, have no interest in its remote future, and only a commercial interest in its present. We may hold (and we personally very strongly hold) that the moment a stranger lands in a country, however ignorant he may be of its laws, usages, and interests, if he intends to remain permanently in it, and incorporates all his life and interest with it, he becomes an integral part of the State, and should as soon as possible be given the power of expressing his will through its legislature; but the
PRACTICAL AND OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY
at once arises of determining who, in an uncertain stream of strangers who suddenly flow into a land, is so situated ! I may go to Italy, accompanied by two friends; we may hire the same house between us (to use a homely illustration); there may be no external evidence of difference in our attitude; yet I may have determined to live and die in Italy; I may feel a most intense affection for its people and its institutions, and a great solicitude over its future. The first man who accompanies me may feel perfectly indifferent to land and people, and be there merely for health, leaving again as soon as it is restored. The second may be animated by an intense hatred of Italy and Italians; he not only may not wish well to the nation, but may desire to see it downtrodden by Austria, and its inhabitants destroyed. By enfranchising me the moment I arrived,
the Italian nation would gain a faithful and devoted citizen, who would sacrifice all for her in time of danger, and devote thought in times of peace; in enfranchising immediately the second man, they would perform an act entirely negative and indifferent without loss or gain either way; in enfranchising the third man, they would perform an act of minor social suicide. Yet it would be impossible at once, and from any superficial study to discover our differences!
THE GREAT SISTER REPUBLIC
across the water has met these difficulties by instituting a probationary residence of two years, after which by taking a solemn oath renouncing all allegiance to any foreign sovereign or land, more especially to the ruler of England and the English nation, and declaring their wish to live and die citizens of the United States, the new comers are, after a further residence of another three years, fully enfranchised, and become citizens of the American Republic. In this, as in many other cases, it would appear that the great Republic has struck on a wise and practical solution to a complex problem; and in this matter, as in many others, we, personally, should like to see the action of the great sister Republic followed. But thoughtful minds may suggest, on the other hand, that, while in America, at least at the present day, the newly enfranchised burgher receives but one-sixteen millionth of the State power and of governmental control on his enfranchisement, in a small state like the Transvaal each new burgher receives
over eight hundred times that power in the government and control of the country, and that this makes a serious difference in the importance of making sure of the loyalty and sincerity of your citizen before you enfranchise him. We see this, and there is something to be said for it. It has been held by many sincerely desirous of arriving at a just and balanced conclusion, that, in a Republic situated as the Transvaal is, a longer residence and the votes of a certain proportion of the already enfranchised citizens are necessary before the vast rights conferred by citizenship in a small purely democratic State are granted. The terms for the enfranchisement for foreigners in England yield us no instructive analogy; for, in a country with an hereditary sovereign and an hereditary Upper House the enfranchised foreigner receives only a minute fraction of the power conferred on the elector in a pure democracy. The little Russian Jew who has a vote given him in London can never become the supreme head of the State, can never sit in or vote for members of the Upper House, and receives only the minute fractional power of voting for members of the lower. It is
IN A PURE DEMOCRACY
where the people are the sovereign and represent in themselves the hereditary ruler, the hereditary Upper House, and the Lower House combined, that the personnel of each accredited citizen becomes all important. The greater the stability and immobility at one end of a State, the greater the mobility and instability which may be allowed at the other end, without endangering the stability of the State as a whole, or the healthy performance of its functions. Even on this comparatively small question of the franchise it is evident that the problem before the little Transvaal Republic is one of much complexity, and on which minds broadly liberal and sincerely desirous of attaining to the wisest and most humane and most enlightened judgment may sincerely differ.
Of those other and far more serious problems which the Republic faces in common with South Africa, there is no necessity here to speak further; the thoughtful mind may follow them out for itself. Time and experiment must be allowed for the balance of things to adjust themselves.
South Africa has need of more citizens leal and true. Whoever enters South Africa and desires to become one of us, to drink from our cup and sup from our platter, to mix his seed with ours and build up the South Africa of the future–him let us receive with open arms. From great mixtures of races spring great peoples. The scorned and oppressed Russian Jew, landing here today, vivified by our fresh South African breezes, may yet be the progenitor of the Spinoza and Maimonides of the great future South Africa, who shall lead the world in philosophy and thought. The pale German cobbler who with his wife and children lands today, so he stays with us and becomes one with us, may yet be the father of the greater Hans Sachs of Africa; and the half-starved Irish peasant become the forerunner of our future Burkes
and William Porters. The rough Cornish miner, who is looking out with surprised eyes at our new South African world to-day, may yet give to us our greatest statesmen and noblest leader. The great African nation of the future will have its foundations laid on stones from many lands. Even to the Coolie and the Chinaman, so he comes among us, we personally should say: Stretch forth the hand of brotherhood. We may not desire him, we may not intentionally bring him among us, but, so he comes to remain with us, let South Africa be home to him.
"Be not unmindful to entertain strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unawares."
* * * * *
We, English South Africans of to-day, who are truly South African, loving
THE LAND OF OUR BIRTH,
and men inhabiting it, yet bound by intense and loving ties, not only of intellectual affinity but of personal passion, to the homeland from which our parents came, and where the richest formative years of our life were passed, we stand to-day midway between these two great sections of South African folk, the old who have been here long and the new who have only come; between the home-land of our fathers and the love-land of our birth; and it would seem as though, through no advantage of wisdom or intellectual knowledge on our part, but simply as the result of the accident of our position and of our double affections, we are fitted to fulfil a certain function at the present day, to stand, as it were, as mediators and interpreters between those our position compels us to sympathize with and so understand, as they may not, perhaps, be able to understand each other.
Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position invests us with.
* * *
If it be asked, why at this especial moment we feel it incumbent on us not to maintain silence, and what that is which compels our action and speech, the answer may he given in one word–WAR!
The air of South Africa is
HEAVY WITH RUMORS;
inconceivable, improbable, we refuse to believe them; yet, again and again they return.
There are some things the mind refuses seriously to entertain, as the man who has long loved and revered his mother would refuse to accept the assertion of the first passer-by that there was any possibility of her raising up her hand to strike his wife or destroy his child. But much repetition may at last awaken doubt; and the man may begin to look out anxiously for further
evidence.* * *
We English South Africans are stunned; we are amazed; we say there can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to ask ourselves: "What means this unwonted tread of armed and hired soldiers on South African soil? Why are they here?" And the only answer that comes back to us, however remote and seemingly impossible is–WAR !
To-night we laugh at it, and to-morrow when we rise up it stands before us again, the ghastly doubt–war!–war, and in South Africa! War–between white men and white ! War!–Why?-Whence is the cause?–For whom?–For what–And the question gains no answer.
We fall to considering, who gains by war?
Has our race in Africa and our race in England interests so diverse that any calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon us, as war? Is any position possible, that could make necessary that mother and daughter must rise up in one horrible embrace, and rend, if it be possible, each other's vitals?.. Believing it impossible, we fall to considering, who is it gains by war?
There is peace to-day in the land; the two great white races, day by day, hour by hour, are blending their blood, and both are mixing with the stranger. No
day passes but from the veins of some Dutch South African woman the English South African man's child is being fed; not a week passes but the birth cry of the English South African woman's child gives voice to the Dutchman's offspring; not an hour passes but on farm, and in town and village, Dutch hearts are winding about English
AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH. If the Angel of Death should spread his wings across the land and strike dead in one night every man and woman and child of either the Dutch or the English blood, leaving the other alive, the land would be a land of mourning. There would be not one household nor the heart of an African born man or woman that would not be weary with grief. We should weep the friends of our childhood, the companions of our early life, our grandchildren, our kindred, the souls who have loved us and whom we have loved. In destroying the one race he would have isolated the other. Time, the great healer of all differences, is blending us into a great mutual people, and love is moving faster than time. It is no growing hatred between Dutch and English South African born men and women that calls for war. On the lips of our babes we salute both races daily.
Then we look round through the political world, and we ask ourselves: what great and terrible and sudden crime has been committed, what reckless slaughter and torture of the innocents, that blood can alone wash out blood?
And we find none.
And still we look, asking what great and terrible difference has suddenly arisen, so mighty that the human intellect cannot solve it by means of peace, that the highest and noblest diplomacy falls powerless before it, and the wisdom and justice of humanity cannot reach it, save by the mother's drawing a sword and planting it in the heart of the daughter?
We can find none.
And again, we ask ourselves
WHO GAIN BY WAR?
What is it for? Who is there that desires it? Do men shed streams of human blood as children cut off poppyheads to see the white juice flow?
WH0 GAINS BY WAR?
Not England ! She has a great young nation's heart to lose. She has a cable of fellowship which stretches across the seas to rupture. She has treaties to violate. She has the great traditions of her past to part with. Whoever plays to win, she loses.
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
Not Africa ! The great young nation, quickening to-day to its first consciousness of life, to be torn and rent, and bear upon its limb, into its fully ripened manhood, the marks of the wounds–wounds from a mother's hands!
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
Not the great woman whose eighty years to-night completes," who would carry with her to her grave the remembrance of the longest reign and the purest; who would have that when the nations gather round her bier, the whisper should go round, "That was a mother's hand; it struck no child."
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
Not the brave English soldier; there are no laurels for them here. The dying lad with hands fresh from the plough; the old man tottering to the grave, who seizes up the gun to die with it; the simple farmer who as he falls hears yet his wife's last whisper, "For freedom and our land!" and dies hearing it–these men can bind no laurels on a soldier's brow! They may be shot, not conquered–fame rests with them. Go, gallant soldiers and defend the shores of that small island that we love; there are no laurels for you here!
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
Not we the Africans, whose hearts are knit to England. We love all. Each hired soldier's bullet that strikes down a South African, does more; it finds a billet here in our hearts. It takes one African's life–in another it kills that which will never live again.
WHO GAINS BY WAR?
There are some who think they gain! In the background we catch sight of misty figures; we know the old tread; we hear the rustle of paper, passing from hand to hand, and we know the fall of gold; it is all old familiar sound in Africa; we know it now! There are some who think they gain! Will they gain?
* * *
But it may be said, "What matter who goads England on, or in whose cause she undertakes war against Africans; this at least is certain, she can win. We have the ships, we have the men, we have the money."
We answer, "Yes, might generally conquers–for a time at least." The greatest empire upon earth, on which the sun never sets, with its five hundred million subjects, may rise up in its full majesty of power and glory, and crush thirty thousand farmers. It may not be a victory, but at least it will be a slaughter. We ought to win. We have the ships, we have the men, and we have the money. May there not he something else we need? The Swiss had it when they fought with Austria; the three hundred had it at Thermopylae, although not a man was saved; it goes to make a victory. Is it worth fighting if we have not got it?
I suppose there is no man who to-day loves his country who has not perceived that in the life of the nation, as in the life of the individual, the hour of external success may be the hour of irrevocable failure, and that the hour of death, whether to nations or individuals, is often the hour of immortality. When William the Silent, with his little band of Dutchmen, rose up to face the whole Empire of Spain, I think there is no man who does not recognize that the hour of their greatest victory was not when they had conquered Spain, and hurled backward the greatest Empire of the world to meet its slow imperial death; it was the hour when that little band stood alone with the waters over their homes,
FACING DEATH AND DESPAIR,
and stood, facing it. It is that hour that has made Holland immortal, and her history the property of all human hearts.
It may be said, "But what has England to fear in a campaign with a country like Africa? Can she not send out a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand men and walk over the land? She can sweep it by mere numbers." We answer yes–she might do it. Might generally conquers; not always. (I have seen a little muur kat attacked by a mastiff, the first joint of
whose leg it did not reach. I have seen it taken in the dog's mouth, so that hardly any part of it was visible, and thought the creature was dead. But it fastened its tiny teeth inside the dog's throat, and the mastiff dropped it, and, mauled and wounded and covered with gore and saliva, I saw it creep back into its hole in the red African earth.) But might generally conquers, and there is no doubt that England might send out sixty or a hundred thousand hired soldiers to South Africa, and they could bombard our towns and destroy our villages; they could shoot down men in the prime of life, and old men and boys, till there was hardly a kopje in the country without its stain of blood, and the Karoo bushes grew up greener on the spot where men from the midlands, who had come to help their fellows, fell,
never to go home. I suppose it would be quite possible for the soldiers to shoot all male South Africans who appeared in arms against them. It might not be easy, a great many might fall, but a great Empire could always import more to take their places; we could not import more, because it would be our husbands and sons and fathers who were falling, and when they were done we could not produce more. Then the war would be over. There would not be a house in Africa–where African born men and women lived–without its mourners, from Sea Point to the Limpopo; but South Africa would be pacified–as Cromwell pacified Ireland three centuries ago, and she has been being pacified ever since! As Virginia
was pacified in 1677; its handful of men and women in defence of their freedom were soon silenced by hired soldiers. "I care that for the power of England,"
said "a notorious and wicked rebel" called Sarah Drummond, as she took a small stick and broke it and lay it on the ground. A few months later her husband and all the men with him were made prisoners, and the war was over. "I am glad to see you," said Berkely, the English Governor, "I have long wished to meet you; you will be hanged in half an hour! and he was hanged
and twenty-one others with him, and Virginia was pacified. But a few generations later in that State of Virginia was born George Washington, and on the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the battle of Lexington–where once the embattled farmers stood, and fired a shot, heard round the world,"–and the greatest crime and the greatest folly of England's career was completed England acknowledges it now. A hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand imported soldiers might walk over South Africa; it would not be an easy walk; but it could be done. Then from east and west and north and south would come men of pure English blood to stand beside the boys they had played with at school and the friends they had loved; and a great despairing cry would rise from the heart of Africa. But we are still few. When the war was over the imported soldiers might leave the land–not all; some must be left to keep the remaining people down. There would be quiet in the land. South Africa would rise up silently, and count her dead, and bury them. She would know the places where she found them.
South Africa would be peaceful. There would be silence, the silence of a long exhaustion–but not peace! Have the dead no voices? In a thousand farm houses black robed women would hold memory of the count, and outside under African stones would lie the African men to whom South African women gave birth under our blue sky. There would be silence, but no peace.
You say that all the fighting men in arms might have been shot. Yes, but what of the women? If there were left but five thousand pregnant South African-born women, and all the rest of their people destroyed, those women would breed up again a race like to the first.
OH, LION-HEART OF THE NORTH, do you not recognize your own lineage in these whelps of the South? We cannot live if we are not free!
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who lay under the stones (who will not be English then nor Dutch, but only Africans), will say, as they pass those heaps: "There lie our fathers, or great-grandfathers who died in the first great War of Independence," and the descendants of the men
who lay there will be the aristocracy of Africa. Men will count back to them and say: My father or my great-grandfather lay in one of those graves. We shall know no more of Dutch or English then, we shall know only one great African people. And we? We, the South Africans of to-day, who are still English, who have been proud to do the smallest good so it might bring honor to England, who have vowed our vows on the honor of Englishmen, and by the faith of Englishmen–what of us?
What of us? We, too, have had our vision of Empire. We have seen as in a dream the Empire of England as a great banyan tree; silently with the falling of the dew and the dropping of the rain it has extended itself; its branches have drooped down and rooted themselves in the earth; in it all the fowl of Heaven have taken refuge, and under its shade all the hasts of the field have lain down to rest. Call we change it for an upas tree, whose leaves distill poison and which spells death to those who have lain down in peace under its shadow?
You have no right to take our dream from us; you have no right to kill our faith! Of all the sins England will sin if she makes war on South Africa, the greatest will be towards us.
Of what importance is the honor and faith we have given her? You say, we are but few! Yes, we are few; but all the gold of Witwatersrand would not buy one throb of that love and devotion we have given her.
Do not think that when imported soldiers walk across South African plains to take the lives of South African men and women, that it is only African sand and African hushes that are cracking beneath their tread: at each step they are breaking the fibres, invisible as air, but strong as steel, which bind the hearts of South Africans to England. Once broken they can never be made whole again; they are living things; broken, they will be dead. Each bullet which a soldier sends to the heart of a South African to take his life, wakes up another who did not know he was an African. You will not kill us with your Lee-Metfords: you will make us. There are men who do not know they love a Dutchman; but the first three hundred that fall, they will know it.
Do not say, "But you are English, you have nothing to fear: we have no war with you!"
There are hundreds of us, men and women, who have loved England; we would have, given our lives for her; but, rather than strike down one South African man fighting for freedom, we would take this right hand and hold it in the fire, till nothing was left of it but a charred and blackened bone.
I know of no more graphic image in the history of the world than
THE FIGURE OF FRANKLIN when he stood before the Lords of Council in England, giving evidence,
striving, fighting, to save America for England. Browheaten, flouted, jeered at by the courtiers, his words hurled back at him as lies, he stood there fighting far England. England recognizes now that it was he who tried to save an Empire for her; and that the men who flouted and browbeat him, lost it. There is nothing more pathetic than the way in which Americans who loved England, Washington and Franklin, strove to keep the maiden vessel moored close to the mother's side, bound by the bonds of love and sympathy, that alone could bind them. Their hands were beaten down, bruised and bleeding, wounded by the very men they came to save, till they let go the mother ship and drifted
away on their own great imperial course across the seas of time.
England knows now w:hat those men strove to do for her, and the names of Washington and Franklin will ever stand high in honor where the English tongue is spoken. The names of Hutchinson, and North, and Grafton are not forgotten also; it might be well for them if they were!
Do not say to us: "You are Englishmen; when the war is over, you can wrap the mantle of our imperial glory round you and walk about boasting that the victory is yours."
We could never wrap that mantle round us again. We have worn it with pride. We could never wear it then. There would be blood upon it, and the blood would be our brothers'.
We put it to the men of England.
In that day where should we be found; we who have to maintain English honor in the South? Judge for us, and by your judgment we will abide. Remember, we are Englishmen!
* * * *
Looking around to-day along the somewhat over-clouded horizon of South African life, one figure strikes the eye, new to the circle of our existence here; and we eye it with something of that hope and sympathy with which a man is bound to view the new and unknown, which may be of vast possible good and beauty.
What have we in this man, who represents English honor and English wisdom in South Africa? To a certain extent we know.
We have a man honorable in the relations of personal life, loyal to friend, and above all charm of gold; wise with the knowledge of books and men; a man who could not violate a promise or strike in the dark. This we know we have, and it is much to know this; but what have we more?
The man of whom South Africa has need to-day to sustain England's honor and her Empire of the future, is a man who must possess more than the knowledge and wisdom of the intellect.
When a woman rules a household with none but the children of her own body in it, her task is easy; let her obey nature and she will not fail. But the woman who finds herself in a large strange household, where children and step-children are blended, and where all have passed the stage of childhood and have entered on that stage of adolescence where coercion can no more
avail, but where sympathy and comprehension are the more needed, that woman has need of large and rare qualities springing more from the heart than from the head. She who call win the love of her strange household in its adolescence will keep its loyalty and sympathy when adult years are reached and will he rich indeed.
There have been Englishmen in Africa who had those dualities. Will
THIS NEW ENGLISHMAN OF OURS
evince them and save an Empire for England and heal South Africa's wounds? Are we asking too much when we turn our eyes with hope to him?
Further off also, across the sea we look with hope. The last of the race of great statesmen was not put into the ground with the old man of Hawarden; the great breed of Chatham and Burke is not extinct; the hour must surely bring forth the man.
We look further yet with confidence, from the individual to the great heart of England, the people. The great fierce freedom-loving heart of England is not dead yet. Under a thin veneer of gold we still hear it beat. Behind the shrivelled and puny English Hyde who
cries only "gold," rises the great English Jekyll, who cries louder yet "Justice and honor." We appeal to him; history shall not repeat itself.
Nearer home, we turn to one whom all South Africans are proud of, and we would say to Paul Kruger, "Great old man, first but not last of South Africa's great line of rulers, you have shown us you could fight for freedom; show us you can win peace. On the foot of that great statue which in the future the men and women of South Africa will raise to you let this stand written: 'This man loved freedom, and fought for it; but his heart was large;he could forget injuries and deal generously."'
And to our fellow Dutch South Africans, whom we have learnt to love so much during the time of stress and danger, we would say. "Brothers, you have shown the world that you know how to fight; show it you know how to govern; forget the past; in that Great Book which you have taken for your guide in life, turn to Leviticus, and read there in the 19th chapter, 34th verse: 'But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.'"
Be strong, be fearless, be patient.
We would say to you in the words of the wise dead President of the Free State which have become the symbol of South Africa, "Wacht een beetje, alles zal recht kom." (Wait a little, all will come right.)
On our great African flag let us emblazon these words, never to talk them down, "FREEDOM, JUSTICE, LOVE"; great are the two first, but without the last they are not complete.
Olive Schreiner,
2 Primrose Terrace,
Berea Estate,
Johannesburg,
South African Republic.
June, 1899.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>Solidarity with South African workers</h1>
<h3>(September 1985)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Militant</strong>, No. 767b, 27 September 1985, p. 15.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">Over the past five years many Labour Party and trade union
branches have shown appreciation of the work of the Southern African
Labour Education Project (SALEP).</p>
<p>SALEP produces vitally needed socialist education materials for
the workers and youth movement in South Africa. It also helps to
build links between the growing trade union and youth movement in
South Africa and other workers throughout the world.</p>
<p>But on 27 March this year, Labour’s National Executive Committee
(NEC) resolved to direct that “Regions, CLPs and affiliates have no
contacts with SALEP, do not use its materials or allow it
facilities”. In effect a ban has been introduced.</p>
<p>The NEC said SALEP were outside “mainstream progressive opinion
both within and outside South Africa”, for among other things
linking the end of apartheid with the end of capitalism and for
building links between workers in South Africa and elsewhere.</p>
<p>During the British miners’ strike, striking Staffordshire miner
Roy Jones was invited by the South African NUM to visit South African
miners. The black mineworkers gave a generous donation to the British
miners’ strike and Roy met SA NUM leaders, conference delegates,
stewards and rank and file.</p>
<p>The NEC report claimed that SALEP were not building links at all
levels and that Roy was a “white unrepresentative member” of the
British NUM. The South African NUM on the other hand made him their
first white member.</p>
<p>The NEC also claim that SALEP’s expenditure is diverting
resources from the liberation movement. The claim is nonsense.</p>
<p>The African National Congress (ANC) receives big grants from a
number of governments including a million kroner a year from the
Swedish government, dwarfing SALEP’s £5,000 a year spending.<br>
</p>
<h4>New federation</h4>
<p class="fst">The NEC report echoes the view put forward in the Stalinist SA
Communist Party through the ANC and South African Congress of Trade
Unions (SACTU) in exile.</p>
<p>Instead of taking organisational action against SALEP on the
advice of a body dominated by the SA Communist Party, the Labour
Party should look to the new federation of independent trade unions
being formed this November, which, drawing together up to half a
million black workers, will constitute the most powerful organisation
of black workers in South Africa’s history.</p>
<p>The unions making up this ‘super union’ all advocate direct
links between workers internationally and particularly between
organised workers in the same multinationals.</p>
<p>How can the NEC now justify its statement that “it is the duty
of the international trade union movement to consult and accept the
advice of SACTU” when the organised black workers have their own
directly elected representatives?</p>
<p>SALEP makes no apology for advocating direct links and direct
support for the non-racial trade unions in their struggle against
oppression and the capitalist monopolies. At the same time it
supports the ANC and the United Democratic Front (UDF) whose leaders
are on trial for treason.</p>
<p>Both these organisations endorse the Freedom Charter which calls
for the nationalisation of the monopolies and banks. While the
leadership of the ANC fudges this question and talks of ‘breaking
the monopolies’, SALEP supports the full implementation of the
ANC’s freedom charter as do the hundreds of thousands of activists
in the country.</p>
<p>As a group carrying out socialist education, SALEP is helping to
prepare black workers for the task of leading their unions, community
organisations and the UDF on a programme of national liberation and
socialism. As a FOSATU speaker said at a May Day rally this year:
“Capitalism is our enemy!” (<strong>Star</strong>, 2 May 1985).</p>
<p>It is these ideas of the mass movement, strengthened and explained
in SALEPs material, which the NEC has condemned in banning SALEP and
the campaigns for direct links.</p>
<p>Delegates should read the letter of protest from left-wing members
of the NEC available from SALEP and oppose the right wings
suppression of socialist education.</p>
<p>Speakers from SALEP should be invited to the GMC, regional
parties, wards and trade unions to hear their reply and report on the
exciting developments in the Labour movement in South Africa, which
dooms apartheid and capitalism to destruction.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em>Nimrod Sejake</em><br>
(Former organiser of Transvaal steelworkers)</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="link"> <br>
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Nimrod Sejake
Solidarity with South African workers
(September 1985)
From Militant, No. 767b, 27 September 1985, p. 15.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Over the past five years many Labour Party and trade union
branches have shown appreciation of the work of the Southern African
Labour Education Project (SALEP).
SALEP produces vitally needed socialist education materials for
the workers and youth movement in South Africa. It also helps to
build links between the growing trade union and youth movement in
South Africa and other workers throughout the world.
But on 27 March this year, Labour’s National Executive Committee
(NEC) resolved to direct that “Regions, CLPs and affiliates have no
contacts with SALEP, do not use its materials or allow it
facilities”. In effect a ban has been introduced.
The NEC said SALEP were outside “mainstream progressive opinion
both within and outside South Africa”, for among other things
linking the end of apartheid with the end of capitalism and for
building links between workers in South Africa and elsewhere.
During the British miners’ strike, striking Staffordshire miner
Roy Jones was invited by the South African NUM to visit South African
miners. The black mineworkers gave a generous donation to the British
miners’ strike and Roy met SA NUM leaders, conference delegates,
stewards and rank and file.
The NEC report claimed that SALEP were not building links at all
levels and that Roy was a “white unrepresentative member” of the
British NUM. The South African NUM on the other hand made him their
first white member.
The NEC also claim that SALEP’s expenditure is diverting
resources from the liberation movement. The claim is nonsense.
The African National Congress (ANC) receives big grants from a
number of governments including a million kroner a year from the
Swedish government, dwarfing SALEP’s £5,000 a year spending.
New federation
The NEC report echoes the view put forward in the Stalinist SA
Communist Party through the ANC and South African Congress of Trade
Unions (SACTU) in exile.
Instead of taking organisational action against SALEP on the
advice of a body dominated by the SA Communist Party, the Labour
Party should look to the new federation of independent trade unions
being formed this November, which, drawing together up to half a
million black workers, will constitute the most powerful organisation
of black workers in South Africa’s history.
The unions making up this ‘super union’ all advocate direct
links between workers internationally and particularly between
organised workers in the same multinationals.
How can the NEC now justify its statement that “it is the duty
of the international trade union movement to consult and accept the
advice of SACTU” when the organised black workers have their own
directly elected representatives?
SALEP makes no apology for advocating direct links and direct
support for the non-racial trade unions in their struggle against
oppression and the capitalist monopolies. At the same time it
supports the ANC and the United Democratic Front (UDF) whose leaders
are on trial for treason.
Both these organisations endorse the Freedom Charter which calls
for the nationalisation of the monopolies and banks. While the
leadership of the ANC fudges this question and talks of ‘breaking
the monopolies’, SALEP supports the full implementation of the
ANC’s freedom charter as do the hundreds of thousands of activists
in the country.
As a group carrying out socialist education, SALEP is helping to
prepare black workers for the task of leading their unions, community
organisations and the UDF on a programme of national liberation and
socialism. As a FOSATU speaker said at a May Day rally this year:
“Capitalism is our enemy!” (Star, 2 May 1985).
It is these ideas of the mass movement, strengthened and explained
in SALEPs material, which the NEC has condemned in banning SALEP and
the campaigns for direct links.
Delegates should read the letter of protest from left-wing members
of the NEC available from SALEP and oppose the right wings
suppression of socialist education.
Speakers from SALEP should be invited to the GMC, regional
parties, wards and trade unions to hear their reply and report on the
exciting developments in the Labour movement in South Africa, which
dooms apartheid and capitalism to destruction.
Nimrod Sejake
(Former organiser of Transvaal steelworkers)
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>The power of the workers</h1>
<h3>(September 1984)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Militant</strong>, No 716, 14 September 1984, p. 11.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst"><strong>NIMROD SEJAKE, a black South African union activist for many
years will be speaking at Militant’s 20th anniversary rally at
Wembley on 20 October (see page 13 for details).</strong></p>
<p><strong>In this article he tells of some of his experiences in the
1950s.</strong></p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">I was the secretary of the iron and steel union in the Transvaal,
in Johannesburg. We faced a vicious law, the Bantu Labour Settlement
of Disputes Act which stipulated if Africans went on strike, the
strike was immediately illegal, and their trade union movement not recognised.</p>
<p>There was no law that we could use as a channel for negotiations
with the employers, but we had to face the employers all the time. So
we organised workers to strike, not only to improve the terrible
wages and conditions, but also in particular to disobey this Act.<br>
</p>
<h4>Fight for our rights</h4>
<p class="fst">We always made it clear to the workers that we should not face the
employers from a position of weakness; the law was not on our side.
To succeed we had to organise say a section 100% first and then
tabulate the demands of the workers, and approach the employer. At
one factory, called African Lamps, where a strike was organised the
employers told me that according to the law I had no right to put
forward the workers demands.</p>
<p>I said ‘OK, I know there is a law to that effect, but the crux
of the matter is that you have entered a contract between management
and the workers you employed but who are now members of a union even
if you do not recognise it. You have to pay the wages for what they
give you in exchange for these wages, which is essentially their
labour power.’</p>
<p>Management felt insulted that I could talk like that to them when
I was an African so I said: ‘If workers feel that you don’t pay
them the wages commensary with their labour power they have the right
to withhold that labour power’. This infuriated the management even more.</p>
<p>They threatened to call in the police because I was ‘illegally’
on the precinct of the factory even though I had gone asking them to
have negotiations. After management had called the police and told
their story the police told me, ‘Nimrod you are under arrest for trespass’.</p>
<p>But our workers were properly organised and the law could not
stand in their way. The police took me to the charge office and the
workers came out on strike.</p>
<p>While I was trying, despite police opposition, to telephone our
lawyer informing her I was arrested, a telephone call arrived from
the factory management, asking the police to bring me back to the
factory because there was a strike!<br>
</p>
<h4>Causing a commotion</h4>
<p class="fst">‘Look Nimrod’, they told me, ‘you’ve caused a commotion at
the factory!’ For some time I said I would not go back to the
factory unless I was properly charged but the police begged me to go.
At the factory, management begged me to ask the workers to return.</p>
<p>I spoke to the workers but in their own language, saying they
should carry on with the decision they had taken and I would go on
with the mandate to negotiate but that I was still under arrest.
Management expected workers to meekly return to work but one worker
who had been mandated to speak told management they would do nothing
until my arrest had been explained.</p>
<p>Already the white workers had been sent home showing that the
whole factory depended on the power of the black working class. When
they saw the workers were determined to go on striking, the police
suddenly discovered there was nothing they could do, they could not
arrest me for trespass because I was there for a legal purpose even
though the Disputes Act and other laws were on their side! In reality
it as because we had used the power of the working class.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="note"><em>Nimrod Sejake will continue the lessons of the African Lamps
dispute and others in a <a href="defying.html" target="new">future issue</a>.</em></p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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Nimrod Sejake
The power of the workers
(September 1984)
From Militant, No 716, 14 September 1984, p. 11.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
NIMROD SEJAKE, a black South African union activist for many
years will be speaking at Militant’s 20th anniversary rally at
Wembley on 20 October (see page 13 for details).
In this article he tells of some of his experiences in the
1950s.
I was the secretary of the iron and steel union in the Transvaal,
in Johannesburg. We faced a vicious law, the Bantu Labour Settlement
of Disputes Act which stipulated if Africans went on strike, the
strike was immediately illegal, and their trade union movement not recognised.
There was no law that we could use as a channel for negotiations
with the employers, but we had to face the employers all the time. So
we organised workers to strike, not only to improve the terrible
wages and conditions, but also in particular to disobey this Act.
Fight for our rights
We always made it clear to the workers that we should not face the
employers from a position of weakness; the law was not on our side.
To succeed we had to organise say a section 100% first and then
tabulate the demands of the workers, and approach the employer. At
one factory, called African Lamps, where a strike was organised the
employers told me that according to the law I had no right to put
forward the workers demands.
I said ‘OK, I know there is a law to that effect, but the crux
of the matter is that you have entered a contract between management
and the workers you employed but who are now members of a union even
if you do not recognise it. You have to pay the wages for what they
give you in exchange for these wages, which is essentially their
labour power.’
Management felt insulted that I could talk like that to them when
I was an African so I said: ‘If workers feel that you don’t pay
them the wages commensary with their labour power they have the right
to withhold that labour power’. This infuriated the management even more.
They threatened to call in the police because I was ‘illegally’
on the precinct of the factory even though I had gone asking them to
have negotiations. After management had called the police and told
their story the police told me, ‘Nimrod you are under arrest for trespass’.
But our workers were properly organised and the law could not
stand in their way. The police took me to the charge office and the
workers came out on strike.
While I was trying, despite police opposition, to telephone our
lawyer informing her I was arrested, a telephone call arrived from
the factory management, asking the police to bring me back to the
factory because there was a strike!
Causing a commotion
‘Look Nimrod’, they told me, ‘you’ve caused a commotion at
the factory!’ For some time I said I would not go back to the
factory unless I was properly charged but the police begged me to go.
At the factory, management begged me to ask the workers to return.
I spoke to the workers but in their own language, saying they
should carry on with the decision they had taken and I would go on
with the mandate to negotiate but that I was still under arrest.
Management expected workers to meekly return to work but one worker
who had been mandated to speak told management they would do nothing
until my arrest had been explained.
Already the white workers had been sent home showing that the
whole factory depended on the power of the black working class. When
they saw the workers were determined to go on striking, the police
suddenly discovered there was nothing they could do, they could not
arrest me for trespass because I was there for a legal purpose even
though the Disputes Act and other laws were on their side! In reality
it as because we had used the power of the working class.
Nimrod Sejake will continue the lessons of the African Lamps
dispute and others in a future issue.
Top of page
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<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>“Sabotaging machinery” is not the workers’ method</h1>
<h3>(February 1988)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Inqaba ya Basebenzi</strong>, No. 18/19, February 1988, pp. 86–7.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst"><strong>A broadcast by the ANC’s <em>Radio Freedom</em> has called on
workers to “intensify their strike actions by sabotaging machinery,
destroying documents, and making sure that commodities coming off
assembly lines are useless ...” (quoted in <em>Anti-Apartheid News</em>,
September 1985)</strong></p>
<p><strong>“By so doing we will force the capitalists to realise that
ours is a country at war, and that their profits are in danger,”
the broadcast said.</strong></p>
<p><strong>NIMROD SEJAKE, a founder member of SACTU, secretary of the
Transvaal Iron and Steel Workers’ Union and an ANC Treason Trialist
in the 1950s, explains why this call by the ANC leadership is wrong
and cannot advance the liberation struggle of the working people.</strong></p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">It is dangerous to the revolution, self-defeating and an act of
desperation for the ANC leadership in exile to exhort the working
class in South Africa to “sabotage industry”. Destruction of
machinery is not the working-class method of combat against the
capitalists who exploit them.</p>
<p>Sabotaging machinery was a method of resistance attempted by
workers against their employers in Europe <em>when the workers’
movement was in its infancy and workers lacked a sense of their
collective power to take strike action</em>. Machine-breaking (e.g. by
the ‘Luddites’ in England) died out well over a century ago
because it was ineffective.</p>
<p>Engels explained that such actions were inevitably isolated and,
“When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of social
power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its
heart’s content ...” (<strong>Collected Works</strong>, vol. 4, p. 503)</p>
<p>In <strong>Capital</strong> (vol. I, ch. XIII) Marx wrote: “Time
and experience were needed before the workers could ... come to
direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of
production (machines), but against the particular social form in
which these instruments are used” – namely capitalist
exploitation itself.<br>
</p>
<h4>Strike action</h4>
<p class="fst">The classic method of <em>such</em> a struggle, developed by the
working class, is to combine in large numbers and use their power as
the producers of wealth to halt production <em>through strike action</em>.</p>
<p>When workers doing forced labour under <em>fascist</em> regimes in
the past have smashed machinery, this was in a situation where their
organisations had been destroyed and they could not take collective
action. Does anyone still think that is the situation in South Africa
– after more than a decade of successfully rebuilding strong
democratic organisations in the factories and townships, and after
the launch of COSATU uniting half a million workers?</p>
<p>Does “sabotaging machinery” or “making sure that commodities
coming off assembly lines are useless” in any way add to or
“intensify” <em>strike action</em>, as the ANC broadcast claimed?
The answer is no.</p>
<p>The very moment that strike action is effectively mounted there is
an absolute cessation of production. Absolutely nothing is produced
through the assembly lines at that point in time and for so long as
the condition lasts. How can “commodities” be “coming off
assembly lines” when labour is at a standstill?</p>
<p>Sabotaging machinery, rendering commodities “useless” etc.,
would be a sign of the <em>weakness</em> or ineffectiveness of strike
action – of the inability of workers in that place or at that time
to unite and use their collective power. Far from “intensifying”
strike action, sabotage is the method of individuals or isolated
groups who divert attention away from the real task – which is to
organise and mobilise the working class to use its full social power
in mass actions.</p>
<p>Once that mass power is asserted, once labour is withheld by the
workers as in the case of strike action, sabotage of factories only
introduces confusion and division into the ranks of the workers
because it <em>adds nothing</em> to the strength of the action while
<em>threatening the very existence of the workers’ jobs</em>.</p>
<p>If machines are damaged, obviously the employers would be given
the excuse of simply calling in the police to arrest the workers
nearest to the broken machinery. The workers involved would easily be
replaced and production soon continued.</p>
<p>The aim of sabotaging machinery, according to the broadcast, would
be to “force the capitalists to realise ... that their profits are
in danger.” Effective strike action forces the capitalists to
realise precisely that. Mass action is what terrifies them. Why
should industrial sabotage, which has historically proved
ineffective, achieve more than that?</p>
<p>Besides, the point is not to frighten the capitalists but to
prepare the working class to take power and end both apartheid and
capitalism. Sabotage of machinery etc. does not advance but obstructs
that struggle.</p>
<p>The capitalists are rich and own factories because they exploit
the working class. They pay the workers less than the value which the
workers’ labour produces. Their profits are the <em>unpaid labour of
the working class</em>.</p>
<p>When they accumulate capital, investing profits in factories and
machinery, they are accumulating value stolen from the working class.</p>
<p>This they use to sustain their power and exploit the workers
further. The workers’ task is to organise to take power and seize
the means of production.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, over the years, the ANC leadership has failed to
understand the enormous power of the working class and its tasks in
the struggle for national and social liberation in South Africa.</p>
<p>Hence the leadership, backed up by the so-called ‘Communist’
Party, clings with amazing bulldog tenacity to the erroneous
two-stage theory of struggle. They believe it will be possible to
“achieve national liberation first” while postponing a workers’
revolution and socialism to some unknown future period.<br>
</p>
<h4>State power</h4>
<p class="fst">That is a wrong approach to revolution flowing from ignorance of
the science of Marxism. The nature of our struggle in South Africa is
unequivocally a class struggle – a struggle that must be led by the
working class for the <em>conquest of state power</em>, the elimination
of apartheid, the achievement of democracy and national liberation by
the black majority, and the overthrow of capitalism.</p>
<p>National liberation will only be won by using the method of <em>class struggle</em>.</p>
<p>Since the dissolution of the primeval communistic (early tribal)
society, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggle”. (Marx)</p>
<p>If one advocates the destruction of machinery, that can only
amount to a senseless act of vandalism. It is a blow against the
working class itself, devastating their property, namely, the means
of production: factory plants, machines, etc., which are absolutely
necessary for the production of the means of consumption to sustain
the people – without which any “liberation” would be meaningless.</p>
<p>They are the very foundation on which a healthy, well-planned
socialist economy must be constructed.</p>
<p>The means of production are the workers’ inalienable legitimate
property, which they and they alone have created and must retrieve
intact. They have been stolen by the capitalist ruling class through
exploiting workers. The need therefore arises for a socialist
revolution spearheaded by the working class, in the period ahead to
recover their property.</p>
<p>The speech delivered on the occasion of the launching of COSATU by
its first President, comrade Elijah Barayi, that “COSATU will
nationalise the mines and even take over some of the big businesses,”
has a mighty echo in the ranks of the revolutionary working class of
the world, who are flexing their muscles to retrieve their stolen
property.</p>
<p>Comrade Barayi’s speech is a barometer indicating the unfolding
events of the new era of socialist ideas.</p>
<p>The launching of COSATU is the crossing of the Rubicon. The way
forward now is through a clear direction of Marxism, the building of
direct links on an ever increasing international scale to overthrow
world capitalism and all the evils of apartheid starting with the
immoral pass laws.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>Forward to Socialism!</strong></p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
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Nimrod Sejake
“Sabotaging machinery” is not the workers’ method
(February 1988)
From Inqaba ya Basebenzi, No. 18/19, February 1988, pp. 86–7.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A broadcast by the ANC’s Radio Freedom has called on
workers to “intensify their strike actions by sabotaging machinery,
destroying documents, and making sure that commodities coming off
assembly lines are useless ...” (quoted in Anti-Apartheid News,
September 1985)
“By so doing we will force the capitalists to realise that
ours is a country at war, and that their profits are in danger,”
the broadcast said.
NIMROD SEJAKE, a founder member of SACTU, secretary of the
Transvaal Iron and Steel Workers’ Union and an ANC Treason Trialist
in the 1950s, explains why this call by the ANC leadership is wrong
and cannot advance the liberation struggle of the working people.
It is dangerous to the revolution, self-defeating and an act of
desperation for the ANC leadership in exile to exhort the working
class in South Africa to “sabotage industry”. Destruction of
machinery is not the working-class method of combat against the
capitalists who exploit them.
Sabotaging machinery was a method of resistance attempted by
workers against their employers in Europe when the workers’
movement was in its infancy and workers lacked a sense of their
collective power to take strike action. Machine-breaking (e.g. by
the ‘Luddites’ in England) died out well over a century ago
because it was ineffective.
Engels explained that such actions were inevitably isolated and,
“When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of social
power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its
heart’s content ...” (Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 503)
In Capital (vol. I, ch. XIII) Marx wrote: “Time
and experience were needed before the workers could ... come to
direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of
production (machines), but against the particular social form in
which these instruments are used” – namely capitalist
exploitation itself.
Strike action
The classic method of such a struggle, developed by the
working class, is to combine in large numbers and use their power as
the producers of wealth to halt production through strike action.
When workers doing forced labour under fascist regimes in
the past have smashed machinery, this was in a situation where their
organisations had been destroyed and they could not take collective
action. Does anyone still think that is the situation in South Africa
– after more than a decade of successfully rebuilding strong
democratic organisations in the factories and townships, and after
the launch of COSATU uniting half a million workers?
Does “sabotaging machinery” or “making sure that commodities
coming off assembly lines are useless” in any way add to or
“intensify” strike action, as the ANC broadcast claimed?
The answer is no.
The very moment that strike action is effectively mounted there is
an absolute cessation of production. Absolutely nothing is produced
through the assembly lines at that point in time and for so long as
the condition lasts. How can “commodities” be “coming off
assembly lines” when labour is at a standstill?
Sabotaging machinery, rendering commodities “useless” etc.,
would be a sign of the weakness or ineffectiveness of strike
action – of the inability of workers in that place or at that time
to unite and use their collective power. Far from “intensifying”
strike action, sabotage is the method of individuals or isolated
groups who divert attention away from the real task – which is to
organise and mobilise the working class to use its full social power
in mass actions.
Once that mass power is asserted, once labour is withheld by the
workers as in the case of strike action, sabotage of factories only
introduces confusion and division into the ranks of the workers
because it adds nothing to the strength of the action while
threatening the very existence of the workers’ jobs.
If machines are damaged, obviously the employers would be given
the excuse of simply calling in the police to arrest the workers
nearest to the broken machinery. The workers involved would easily be
replaced and production soon continued.
The aim of sabotaging machinery, according to the broadcast, would
be to “force the capitalists to realise ... that their profits are
in danger.” Effective strike action forces the capitalists to
realise precisely that. Mass action is what terrifies them. Why
should industrial sabotage, which has historically proved
ineffective, achieve more than that?
Besides, the point is not to frighten the capitalists but to
prepare the working class to take power and end both apartheid and
capitalism. Sabotage of machinery etc. does not advance but obstructs
that struggle.
The capitalists are rich and own factories because they exploit
the working class. They pay the workers less than the value which the
workers’ labour produces. Their profits are the unpaid labour of
the working class.
When they accumulate capital, investing profits in factories and
machinery, they are accumulating value stolen from the working class.
This they use to sustain their power and exploit the workers
further. The workers’ task is to organise to take power and seize
the means of production.
Unfortunately, over the years, the ANC leadership has failed to
understand the enormous power of the working class and its tasks in
the struggle for national and social liberation in South Africa.
Hence the leadership, backed up by the so-called ‘Communist’
Party, clings with amazing bulldog tenacity to the erroneous
two-stage theory of struggle. They believe it will be possible to
“achieve national liberation first” while postponing a workers’
revolution and socialism to some unknown future period.
State power
That is a wrong approach to revolution flowing from ignorance of
the science of Marxism. The nature of our struggle in South Africa is
unequivocally a class struggle – a struggle that must be led by the
working class for the conquest of state power, the elimination
of apartheid, the achievement of democracy and national liberation by
the black majority, and the overthrow of capitalism.
National liberation will only be won by using the method of class struggle.
Since the dissolution of the primeval communistic (early tribal)
society, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggle”. (Marx)
If one advocates the destruction of machinery, that can only
amount to a senseless act of vandalism. It is a blow against the
working class itself, devastating their property, namely, the means
of production: factory plants, machines, etc., which are absolutely
necessary for the production of the means of consumption to sustain
the people – without which any “liberation” would be meaningless.
They are the very foundation on which a healthy, well-planned
socialist economy must be constructed.
The means of production are the workers’ inalienable legitimate
property, which they and they alone have created and must retrieve
intact. They have been stolen by the capitalist ruling class through
exploiting workers. The need therefore arises for a socialist
revolution spearheaded by the working class, in the period ahead to
recover their property.
The speech delivered on the occasion of the launching of COSATU by
its first President, comrade Elijah Barayi, that “COSATU will
nationalise the mines and even take over some of the big businesses,”
has a mighty echo in the ranks of the revolutionary working class of
the world, who are flexing their muscles to retrieve their stolen
property.
Comrade Barayi’s speech is a barometer indicating the unfolding
events of the new era of socialist ideas.
The launching of COSATU is the crossing of the Rubicon. The way
forward now is through a clear direction of Marxism, the building of
direct links on an ever increasing international scale to overthrow
world capitalism and all the evils of apartheid starting with the
immoral pass laws.
Forward to Socialism!
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>The best traditions of socialist struggle</h1>
<h3>(December 1985)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Militant</strong>, No. 778, 13 December 1985, p. 10.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">The formation of COSATU, uniting half a million trade union
members, takes up the workers’ struggle for democracy and socialism
that SACTU was forced to leave off after the 1950’s. The big
difference is that COSATU has ten times the forces.</p>
<p>The fact that the workers have now rejected the name South African
Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) for their new federation is not a
rejection of the past traditions of SACTU. But it is a rejection of a
link to an exiled “leadership” which has failed to build inside
the country.</p>
<p>The leadership has opposed international workers’ links with the
unions making up COSATU and denigrated the workers’ leadership
emerging in the country.</p>
<p>COSATU now embodies all the best traditions of SACTU. All sections
of the workers to whom SACTU could historically lay claim are now in
COSATU. The use of the word “Congress” in COSATU shows the
workers want to build the ANC as a force for transformation of society.</p>
<p>The exiled “SACTU” leaders have now served their time and can
no longer lay false claim to leadership of the movement in the
country. They should now give unqualified support to COSATU as the
recognised trade union body of South African workers nationally and internationally.</p>
<p>SACTU is now dead: long live COSATU!</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="note">Nimrod Sejake was a founder member of SACTU, an ANC treason
trialist, and secretary of Transvaal Iron and Steel Workers’ Union
in the 1950s.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
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</body> |
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Nimrod Sejake
The best traditions of socialist struggle
(December 1985)
From Militant, No. 778, 13 December 1985, p. 10.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The formation of COSATU, uniting half a million trade union
members, takes up the workers’ struggle for democracy and socialism
that SACTU was forced to leave off after the 1950’s. The big
difference is that COSATU has ten times the forces.
The fact that the workers have now rejected the name South African
Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) for their new federation is not a
rejection of the past traditions of SACTU. But it is a rejection of a
link to an exiled “leadership” which has failed to build inside
the country.
The leadership has opposed international workers’ links with the
unions making up COSATU and denigrated the workers’ leadership
emerging in the country.
COSATU now embodies all the best traditions of SACTU. All sections
of the workers to whom SACTU could historically lay claim are now in
COSATU. The use of the word “Congress” in COSATU shows the
workers want to build the ANC as a force for transformation of society.
The exiled “SACTU” leaders have now served their time and can
no longer lay false claim to leadership of the movement in the
country. They should now give unqualified support to COSATU as the
recognised trade union body of South African workers nationally and internationally.
SACTU is now dead: long live COSATU!
Nimrod Sejake was a founder member of SACTU, an ANC treason
trialist, and secretary of Transvaal Iron and Steel Workers’ Union
in the 1950s.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>Defying apartheid laws</h1>
<h3>(September 1984)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Militant</strong>, No. 717, 21 September 1984, p. 11.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst"><strong>IN <em>MILITANT</em>, 14 September, a leading member of the
steelworkers union in South Africa in the ’50s, <a href="power.html" target="new">described</a> how
workers who were denied by law the right to trade unions organised at
the African Lamps factory.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Here he takes up the story after he had been arrested for
“trespass” while negotiating with management. The workers had
downed tools on his arrest.</strong></p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">When it became clear that the workers were not going to end their
strike, the police decided they could not take any action against me.
My arrest was dropped even though I was breaking the Bantu Labour
Settlement of Disputes Act 1953.</p>
<p>The next week, the workers met and we discussed strategy and
tactics for the new offensive. We then received an indictment. I was
accused number one. But we found out a very funny thing; every time
we went to court, the factory stopped because everyone was in the union.</p>
<p>The <strong>Rand Daily Mail</strong> which covered our court case said that
the iron and steel workers were the first African union to break the
1953 Act, so we felt our tactics were right were convicted
nonetheless and fined £3 each. We had decided the day before to go
to jail rather than pay the fine. We would say we had no money,
because we knew we would have no scabs in our workplace so the
factory could not work.</p>
<p>The employer was forced, not by the law, but by the conditions we
had created to pay our fines himself! We knew he couldn’t raise the
same number of workers with the same skill and expertise overnight.</p>
<p>But the employer thought it was all right to deduct a certain
amount from our pay packet every week until the £3 was paid back to
him. He did that but we appealed to the Supreme Court in Pretoria,
which found against the employer who had to refund every worker their
£3! What is more, wages went up, only by a penny an hour but by the
standard of wages for black workers in South Africa then it was
something to be proud of.</p>
<p>We had beaten the bosses in their own court, the Supreme Court,
after conviction in the magistrates court. But more importantly we
had won with our own weapon, the strike.</p>
<p>We learnt that when workers were properly organised, they were
strong; they could beat the bosses at the factory, they could get an
official out of the clutches of the police so the law was not all
powerful.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="note"><em><strong>Nimrod Sejake will be one of the speakers at Militant’s
20th anniversary rally on 20 October.</strong></em></p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
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Nimrod Sejake
Defying apartheid laws
(September 1984)
From Militant, No. 717, 21 September 1984, p. 11.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
IN MILITANT, 14 September, a leading member of the
steelworkers union in South Africa in the ’50s, described how
workers who were denied by law the right to trade unions organised at
the African Lamps factory.
Here he takes up the story after he had been arrested for
“trespass” while negotiating with management. The workers had
downed tools on his arrest.
When it became clear that the workers were not going to end their
strike, the police decided they could not take any action against me.
My arrest was dropped even though I was breaking the Bantu Labour
Settlement of Disputes Act 1953.
The next week, the workers met and we discussed strategy and
tactics for the new offensive. We then received an indictment. I was
accused number one. But we found out a very funny thing; every time
we went to court, the factory stopped because everyone was in the union.
The Rand Daily Mail which covered our court case said that
the iron and steel workers were the first African union to break the
1953 Act, so we felt our tactics were right were convicted
nonetheless and fined £3 each. We had decided the day before to go
to jail rather than pay the fine. We would say we had no money,
because we knew we would have no scabs in our workplace so the
factory could not work.
The employer was forced, not by the law, but by the conditions we
had created to pay our fines himself! We knew he couldn’t raise the
same number of workers with the same skill and expertise overnight.
But the employer thought it was all right to deduct a certain
amount from our pay packet every week until the £3 was paid back to
him. He did that but we appealed to the Supreme Court in Pretoria,
which found against the employer who had to refund every worker their
£3! What is more, wages went up, only by a penny an hour but by the
standard of wages for black workers in South Africa then it was
something to be proud of.
We had beaten the bosses in their own court, the Supreme Court,
after conviction in the magistrates court. But more importantly we
had won with our own weapon, the strike.
We learnt that when workers were properly organised, they were
strong; they could beat the bosses at the factory, they could get an
official out of the clutches of the police so the law was not all
powerful.
Nimrod Sejake will be one of the speakers at Militant’s
20th anniversary rally on 20 October.
Top of page
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake & Fergus Cassidy</h2>
<h1>Irish workers strike to support boycott of SA goods</h1>
<h3>(June 1984)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Inqaba ya Basebenzi</strong>, No. 14, June–August 1984, p. 20.<br>
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">Dear comrade,</p>
<p class="fst">The Dunnes Stores empire in Ireland is recognised as having
anti-worker and anti-union bosses. On July 19, a worker in the Henry
Street store in Dublin was indefinitely suspended for refusing to
handle South African goods.</p>
<p>The majority of union members – a total of 11 – then began an
official strike. It is the policy of their union, the Irish
Distributive and Administrative trade union, to boycott South African goods.</p>
<p>The strikers are young workers and 10 of them are women.</p>
<p>So far they have been intimidated and harassed by scabs and on at
least two occasions vans have been driven at them. Indeed management
have resorted to bringing in food in trucks used for dumping rubbish!</p>
<p>Public support is very good and business is down 56%. Over IR£80
(R128.00) a day is collected in buckets at the entrances.</p>
<p>The workers are aware of the conditions faced by their class
brothers and sisters in South Africa. They are absolutely determined
that their bosses will be taught not to stock South African goods.</p>
<p>A number of fellow union members in other stores are refusing to
handle the goods and the bosses are afraid to do anything.</p>
<p>The strikers hope that workers in South Africa will learn of their struggle.</p>
<p>They are determined to show their solidarity in the face of their
own vicious bosses.</p>
<p>Messages of support can be sent to: Karen Gearon (shop-steward),
c/o I.D.A.T.U., 9, Cavendish Row, Dublin 1, Ireland.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst">Fraternally,<br>
Nimrod Sejake (Irish Labour Party)<br>
Fergus Cassidy (Irish Labour Youth)</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
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<p class="updat">Last updated: 9 August 2016</p>
</body> |
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Nimrod Sejake & Fergus Cassidy
Irish workers strike to support boycott of SA goods
(June 1984)
From Inqaba ya Basebenzi, No. 14, June–August 1984, p. 20.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Dear comrade,
The Dunnes Stores empire in Ireland is recognised as having
anti-worker and anti-union bosses. On July 19, a worker in the Henry
Street store in Dublin was indefinitely suspended for refusing to
handle South African goods.
The majority of union members – a total of 11 – then began an
official strike. It is the policy of their union, the Irish
Distributive and Administrative trade union, to boycott South African goods.
The strikers are young workers and 10 of them are women.
So far they have been intimidated and harassed by scabs and on at
least two occasions vans have been driven at them. Indeed management
have resorted to bringing in food in trucks used for dumping rubbish!
Public support is very good and business is down 56%. Over IR£80
(R128.00) a day is collected in buckets at the entrances.
The workers are aware of the conditions faced by their class
brothers and sisters in South Africa. They are absolutely determined
that their bosses will be taught not to stock South African goods.
A number of fellow union members in other stores are refusing to
handle the goods and the bosses are afraid to do anything.
The strikers hope that workers in South Africa will learn of their struggle.
They are determined to show their solidarity in the face of their
own vicious bosses.
Messages of support can be sent to: Karen Gearon (shop-steward),
c/o I.D.A.T.U., 9, Cavendish Row, Dublin 1, Ireland.
Fraternally,
Nimrod Sejake (Irish Labour Party)
Fergus Cassidy (Irish Labour Youth)
Top of page
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Last updated: 9 August 2016
|
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<h1>Obituaries for Nimrod Sejake</h1>
<h3>(2004)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">Copied from <a href="http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodObit2.htm">http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodObit2.htm</a> by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<h2>Black South African workers’ leader and fighter for socialism</h2>
<p class="fst">The CWI is sad to announce the death of Nimrod Sejake, a life-long
fighter against apartheid in South Africa, and a committed socialist.
Nimrod died on 27 May 2004, aged 83 years.</p>
<p>During the 1950s, Nimrod was a black workers’ leader in South
Africa under the former apartheid regime, a leading member of the
South African Congress of Trade Unions, and of the ANC in the Soweto Township.</p>
<p>Forced into exile, Nimrod eventually arrived in Ireland in the
1980s. He became a supporter of the ‘Militant’, the forerunner of
the Socialist Party (CWI affiliate), and joined the Marxist Workers’
Tendency of the ANC.</p>
<p>Nimrod was a well-known and loved figure on the left in Ireland.
He regularly travelled across the country, south and north, to speak
at public meetings on the struggle of the black South African working
class. Nimrod also regularly attended international meetings
throughout Europe. At all times, he was an inspiration, particularly
to youth.</p>
<p>Following the removal of the apartheid regime in the 1990s, Nimrod
was eventually allowed to return to South Africa. But for Nimrod the
struggle was not over, once back in South Africa he continued to
campaign for a socialist society.</p>
<p>The following is an obituary article on Nimrod that recently
appeared in the <strong>Irish Times</strong> newspaper. It indicates the
stature Nimrod has in Ireland, amongst the anti-apartheid movement
and the left.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h2>Tireless activist who spent 30 years in exile</h2>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="author">From the <strong>Irish Times</strong>, 19 June 2004</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Nimrod Sejake:</strong> Nimrod Sekeramane Sejake, who has died aged
83, was a South African political refugee in Ireland during the
1980s, when he became widely known in trade union and socialist
circles for his campaigning work to raise the profile of the new
South African unions.</p>
<p>Born in August 1920 in Evaton, south of Johannesburg, to Basotho
parents, he attended mission school in Evaton, worked as building
site clerk, trained as a teacher, married, and settled in Jabavu, Soweto.</p>
<p>As the National Party came to power in 1949 and sought to impose
unprecedented racial discrimination under the rubric “apartheid”,
Sejake joined the opposition. Noted for his ability as a union
organiser, he became secretary of the non-racial, though mainly
African, Iron and Steel Workers Union, affiliated to the South
African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). His militant,
uncompromising approach is recorded in <strong>Organise or Starve</strong>, the
history of SACTU.</p>
<p>Sejake joined the African National Congress (ANC) and was active
throughout the 1950s in its increasingly radical Defiance Campaign of
demonstrations, strikes and burning of the hated pass books. He was
active also in the Congress of the People of 1955 when the ANC
proclaimed the <em>Freedom Charter</em> at Kliptown.</p>
<p>Sejake shared a cell with Nelson Mandela, when they were both
arrested with 156 leaders of the ANC, SACTU and the Communist Party
(SACP), accused of treason in the famous treason trial of 1956–61.
The NP government sought the death penalty for treason and, as
oppression intensified, limiting the possibilities for legal
political work, Sejake and others left the country through the then
Basutoland for training in the Soviet Union. The treason trial
accused were acquitted but the die was cast and Umkhonto We Sizwe
(MK), the ANC’s military wing, was founded to begin armed struggle
against the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Sejake spent a period studying Marxism in the USSR. He had been
influenced by a teacher in Evaton in the 1930s, Johannes Nkosi, a
leading member of the Communist Party. Nkosi had been sent to the
Soviet Union where he fell foul of the Stalinist teachers and died in
suspicious circumstances. Like others of the ANC and similar
liberation movements, Sejake found that only the “communist”
states were prepared to provide arms and training, whatever
criticisms they had of the system were not voiced then.</p>
<p>Sejake returned to Africa as political commissar in the ANC
training camp in Morogoro, Tanzania. He was convinced of the central
role of the organised working class in the liberation of South
Africa, and insisted their priority should be to send trained
activists back to organise militant trade unions to bring down the
regime. Such views led to a clash with the more conservative exiled
leadership which prioritised the armed struggle and appeals to the
United Nations.</p>
<p>Sejake was removed from his post. The President, Julius Nyerere,
ordered his expulsion from Tanzania, a decision probably influenced
by Mr. Sejake’s involvement in a Marxist circle at Dar es Salaam
University which was critical of Nyerere’s “Ujaama”, or African
Socialism. Participants included Zanzibarian A.M. Babu, later jailed
by Nyerere, and Walter Rodney, author of the influential <strong>How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa</strong>, and assassinated by the CIA in
Guyana in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Exiled to Zambia, Sejake worked with the South African
Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), and travelled to China and Albania,
seeking support for the organisation, before being deported to Egypt,
where he lived in poverty while appealing for political asylum in
Europe. In these difficult times, he was greatly heartened by the
uprising of the South African school students in Soweto, 1976 and by
the rapid growth of the independent trade unions.</p>
<p>In the late 1970s, Sejake was offered asylum in three European
countries and chose Ireland, remembering that his sister worked for
an Irish family as a domestic servant. They treated her well and he
was impressed when they told her Ireland was a country oppressed by
the British Empire!</p>
<p>Living in the Red Cross Hostel in Ballsbridge, Sejake loved
Ireland and never experienced racial abuse. He attended AGMs of the
Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement but was disappointed to find no
recognition of the now hugely significant independent unions. He
found kindred thinkers in the Militant Tendency of the Labour Party
[forerunners of the Socialist Party] which had direct links, through
South African exiles, with these rapidly growing unions. A “retying
of the knot”, he would say, after 25 years in exile.</p>
<p>He devoted himself energetically to solidarity work with the
struggle in South Africa, speaking at meetings the length and breadth
of Ireland and Britain, taking particular pleasure in engaging with
young people. He made speaking tours throughout Europe, the US and
Brazil, and during the 1984/85 anti-apartheid strike at Dunnes
Stores, was regularly found on the picket line.</p>
<p>In 1989 he spoke by phone to his wife and family with whom he had
not been in contact for 30 years. The ANC was legalised, Mandela
walked free, and the exiles returned, although his own return was
delayed for months when he refused to complete the application for
indemnity. He complained, “they are asking me which crimes I wish
to be indemnified for!” Eventually he returned to South Africa in
November 1991.</p>
<p>Reunited with his family, though 71 years of age, Sejake again
threw himself into the struggle and was elected secretary of the
Soweto ANC Veterans League and led delegations from Evaton to
Pretoria to seek compensation for land seized during the 1950s. He
also re-established links with the workers in heavy industry through
the Metal and Allied Workers Union.</p>
<p>Although he voted for the ANC in the 1994 election, he insisted
that the massive vote for the party would not be enough to transform
life for the poor in South Africa. He remained a committed socialist
and marxist, believing that only the overthrow of capitalist economic
relations would end inequality and he was involved in campaigning for
the Congress of South African Trade Unions to build a mass workers party.</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>Nimrod Sejake:</strong> born August 8th, 1920; died May 27th, 2004.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
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</body> |
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Obituaries for Nimrod Sejake
(2004)
Copied from http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodObit2.htm by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Black South African workers’ leader and fighter for socialism
The CWI is sad to announce the death of Nimrod Sejake, a life-long
fighter against apartheid in South Africa, and a committed socialist.
Nimrod died on 27 May 2004, aged 83 years.
During the 1950s, Nimrod was a black workers’ leader in South
Africa under the former apartheid regime, a leading member of the
South African Congress of Trade Unions, and of the ANC in the Soweto Township.
Forced into exile, Nimrod eventually arrived in Ireland in the
1980s. He became a supporter of the ‘Militant’, the forerunner of
the Socialist Party (CWI affiliate), and joined the Marxist Workers’
Tendency of the ANC.
Nimrod was a well-known and loved figure on the left in Ireland.
He regularly travelled across the country, south and north, to speak
at public meetings on the struggle of the black South African working
class. Nimrod also regularly attended international meetings
throughout Europe. At all times, he was an inspiration, particularly
to youth.
Following the removal of the apartheid regime in the 1990s, Nimrod
was eventually allowed to return to South Africa. But for Nimrod the
struggle was not over, once back in South Africa he continued to
campaign for a socialist society.
The following is an obituary article on Nimrod that recently
appeared in the Irish Times newspaper. It indicates the
stature Nimrod has in Ireland, amongst the anti-apartheid movement
and the left.
Tireless activist who spent 30 years in exile
From the Irish Times, 19 June 2004
Nimrod Sejake: Nimrod Sekeramane Sejake, who has died aged
83, was a South African political refugee in Ireland during the
1980s, when he became widely known in trade union and socialist
circles for his campaigning work to raise the profile of the new
South African unions.
Born in August 1920 in Evaton, south of Johannesburg, to Basotho
parents, he attended mission school in Evaton, worked as building
site clerk, trained as a teacher, married, and settled in Jabavu, Soweto.
As the National Party came to power in 1949 and sought to impose
unprecedented racial discrimination under the rubric “apartheid”,
Sejake joined the opposition. Noted for his ability as a union
organiser, he became secretary of the non-racial, though mainly
African, Iron and Steel Workers Union, affiliated to the South
African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). His militant,
uncompromising approach is recorded in Organise or Starve, the
history of SACTU.
Sejake joined the African National Congress (ANC) and was active
throughout the 1950s in its increasingly radical Defiance Campaign of
demonstrations, strikes and burning of the hated pass books. He was
active also in the Congress of the People of 1955 when the ANC
proclaimed the Freedom Charter at Kliptown.
Sejake shared a cell with Nelson Mandela, when they were both
arrested with 156 leaders of the ANC, SACTU and the Communist Party
(SACP), accused of treason in the famous treason trial of 1956–61.
The NP government sought the death penalty for treason and, as
oppression intensified, limiting the possibilities for legal
political work, Sejake and others left the country through the then
Basutoland for training in the Soviet Union. The treason trial
accused were acquitted but the die was cast and Umkhonto We Sizwe
(MK), the ANC’s military wing, was founded to begin armed struggle
against the apartheid regime.
Sejake spent a period studying Marxism in the USSR. He had been
influenced by a teacher in Evaton in the 1930s, Johannes Nkosi, a
leading member of the Communist Party. Nkosi had been sent to the
Soviet Union where he fell foul of the Stalinist teachers and died in
suspicious circumstances. Like others of the ANC and similar
liberation movements, Sejake found that only the “communist”
states were prepared to provide arms and training, whatever
criticisms they had of the system were not voiced then.
Sejake returned to Africa as political commissar in the ANC
training camp in Morogoro, Tanzania. He was convinced of the central
role of the organised working class in the liberation of South
Africa, and insisted their priority should be to send trained
activists back to organise militant trade unions to bring down the
regime. Such views led to a clash with the more conservative exiled
leadership which prioritised the armed struggle and appeals to the
United Nations.
Sejake was removed from his post. The President, Julius Nyerere,
ordered his expulsion from Tanzania, a decision probably influenced
by Mr. Sejake’s involvement in a Marxist circle at Dar es Salaam
University which was critical of Nyerere’s “Ujaama”, or African
Socialism. Participants included Zanzibarian A.M. Babu, later jailed
by Nyerere, and Walter Rodney, author of the influential How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and assassinated by the CIA in
Guyana in the 1970s.
Exiled to Zambia, Sejake worked with the South African
Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), and travelled to China and Albania,
seeking support for the organisation, before being deported to Egypt,
where he lived in poverty while appealing for political asylum in
Europe. In these difficult times, he was greatly heartened by the
uprising of the South African school students in Soweto, 1976 and by
the rapid growth of the independent trade unions.
In the late 1970s, Sejake was offered asylum in three European
countries and chose Ireland, remembering that his sister worked for
an Irish family as a domestic servant. They treated her well and he
was impressed when they told her Ireland was a country oppressed by
the British Empire!
Living in the Red Cross Hostel in Ballsbridge, Sejake loved
Ireland and never experienced racial abuse. He attended AGMs of the
Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement but was disappointed to find no
recognition of the now hugely significant independent unions. He
found kindred thinkers in the Militant Tendency of the Labour Party
[forerunners of the Socialist Party] which had direct links, through
South African exiles, with these rapidly growing unions. A “retying
of the knot”, he would say, after 25 years in exile.
He devoted himself energetically to solidarity work with the
struggle in South Africa, speaking at meetings the length and breadth
of Ireland and Britain, taking particular pleasure in engaging with
young people. He made speaking tours throughout Europe, the US and
Brazil, and during the 1984/85 anti-apartheid strike at Dunnes
Stores, was regularly found on the picket line.
In 1989 he spoke by phone to his wife and family with whom he had
not been in contact for 30 years. The ANC was legalised, Mandela
walked free, and the exiles returned, although his own return was
delayed for months when he refused to complete the application for
indemnity. He complained, “they are asking me which crimes I wish
to be indemnified for!” Eventually he returned to South Africa in
November 1991.
Reunited with his family, though 71 years of age, Sejake again
threw himself into the struggle and was elected secretary of the
Soweto ANC Veterans League and led delegations from Evaton to
Pretoria to seek compensation for land seized during the 1950s. He
also re-established links with the workers in heavy industry through
the Metal and Allied Workers Union.
Although he voted for the ANC in the 1994 election, he insisted
that the massive vote for the party would not be enough to transform
life for the poor in South Africa. He remained a committed socialist
and marxist, believing that only the overthrow of capitalist economic
relations would end inequality and he was involved in campaigning for
the Congress of South African Trade Unions to build a mass workers party.
Nimrod Sejake: born August 8th, 1920; died May 27th, 2004.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>No Retreat from the <em>Freedom Charter</em></h1>
<h3>(September 1988)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Militant</strong>, September 1988.<br>
Copied from <a href="http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodFC.htm">http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodFC.htm</a> by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">On the 18th of September 1955, members of the African National
Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions and the South
African Communist Party, met in the Trades Hall, Commissioner Street,
Johannesburg, to discuss the <em>Freedom Charter</em> and the way forward.</p>
<p>On 26th June 1955, we had all gathered at Kliptown to formulate
from aspirations gathered door-to-door all over our country, our
constitution for a Liberated South Africa. We called it the <em>Freedom Charter</em>.</p>
<p>Since 1955, this document has been an inspiration to millions of
oppressed Black people in South Africa and to some whites who
supported us. In the past two years in South Africa, it has been
accepted by trade unions representing a million workers in COSATU,
the Congress of South African Trades Unions, as the minimum programme
of the workers' movement.</p>
<p>Our <em>Freedom Charter</em> is specific. “The banks, all monopoly
industry, mining and mineral wealth shall be transferred to the
ownership of the people as a whole ... the land shall be owned by
those who work it.” For me, and for millions since 1955, this has
always meant a socialist South Africa.</p>
<p>In the Trades Hall during the debate, I argued that the <em>Freedom
Charter</em> could only be implemented by action, that signatures on
petitions were inadequate to force the state to concede freedom.
While I was speaking the South African Police broke up the meeting
and seized my written notes for my speech.</p>
<p>Later when I was on trial with Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli and
Oliver Tambo in the Treason Trail, this speech was one of the major
exhibits used by the state to try to hang us.</p>
<p>I have just received this speech from South Africa after 33 years
and reading it again after more than three decades I can see how
relevant it still is. I have been shocked, but not surprised, by the
retreat of the ANC leadership from the <em>Freedom Charter</em>, which
is clearly demonstrated now by the proposed 'guidelines for a
port-apartheid constitution' which have been produced by the ANC.</p>
<p>Our Constitution, our <em>Freedom Charter</em>, for three decades a
beacon for the oppressed masses of downtrodden black people, is being
abandoned by the exiled leadership. It is not surprising because we
had to struggle all through 1955 to get them to accept it in the
first place.</p>
<p>I defended the <em>Freedom Charter</em> than as Secretary of the
Iron and Steel Union and Secretary of the White City, Jabavu branch
of the African National Congress and what I said in the Trades Hall,
Johannesburg is as relevant today as it was 33 years ago.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“One million signatures alone are not enough. Action is
the correct dose. Our one million signatures must be one million
blows, that will shake apartheid a million times to pieces and bring
South Africa and its enslaved people a million years of prosperity
and freedom ...</p>
<p class="quote">“It is all very well to say: 'The state shall recognise
the right and the duty of all to work, and to draw unemployment
benefits,' but it is quite a different story to make the state do
these things ...</p>
<p class="quote">“It requires hard practical work and sacrifice of the
noblest order. One must be prepared to clash with the state, namely
the police, and if the struggle assumes very large countrywide
dimensions one will clash even with the armed forces. That is the
test we must pass before there can be work and security ...</p>
<p class="quote">“The working class understands. The working class is
ready. The necessary conditions have arisen. Time is becoming more
and more opportune.” [<strong>Treason Trial Transcript</strong>,
Witwatersrand University, pages 7577–8428]</p>
<p class="fst">The leadership in exile may be disheartened after many blows. They
have capitulated believing that the Botha regime is too strong. The
workers inside South Africa will not accept it. I am heartened by a
letter from a Johannesburg worker printed in the August 25th South
African <strong>Weekly Mail</strong>, headed 'ANC neglecting workers' in which
the worker writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“(the proposed constitution). In practical terms it
offers workers nothing that they have not won for themselves over the
last twenty years within the framework of apartheid capitalism ... It
is no accident that the document is welcomed by the representatives
of big capital like Zach De Beer.”</p>
<p class="fst">P.W. Botha's government tried to claw back the gains this worker
refers to when they tried to force through the Labour Bill, three
months ago.</p>
<p>From the 6th to 8th June, three million workers in a general
strike used their industrial muscle to say No! They have not allowed
Botha to take back their hard won rights and they will not allow the
ANC leadership in exile to abandon our <em>Freedom Charter</em>.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
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Nimrod Sejake
No Retreat from the Freedom Charter
(September 1988)
From Militant, September 1988.
Copied from http://redlug.com/LabHist/NimrodFC.htm by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On the 18th of September 1955, members of the African National
Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions and the South
African Communist Party, met in the Trades Hall, Commissioner Street,
Johannesburg, to discuss the Freedom Charter and the way forward.
On 26th June 1955, we had all gathered at Kliptown to formulate
from aspirations gathered door-to-door all over our country, our
constitution for a Liberated South Africa. We called it the Freedom Charter.
Since 1955, this document has been an inspiration to millions of
oppressed Black people in South Africa and to some whites who
supported us. In the past two years in South Africa, it has been
accepted by trade unions representing a million workers in COSATU,
the Congress of South African Trades Unions, as the minimum programme
of the workers' movement.
Our Freedom Charter is specific. “The banks, all monopoly
industry, mining and mineral wealth shall be transferred to the
ownership of the people as a whole ... the land shall be owned by
those who work it.” For me, and for millions since 1955, this has
always meant a socialist South Africa.
In the Trades Hall during the debate, I argued that the Freedom
Charter could only be implemented by action, that signatures on
petitions were inadequate to force the state to concede freedom.
While I was speaking the South African Police broke up the meeting
and seized my written notes for my speech.
Later when I was on trial with Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli and
Oliver Tambo in the Treason Trail, this speech was one of the major
exhibits used by the state to try to hang us.
I have just received this speech from South Africa after 33 years
and reading it again after more than three decades I can see how
relevant it still is. I have been shocked, but not surprised, by the
retreat of the ANC leadership from the Freedom Charter, which
is clearly demonstrated now by the proposed 'guidelines for a
port-apartheid constitution' which have been produced by the ANC.
Our Constitution, our Freedom Charter, for three decades a
beacon for the oppressed masses of downtrodden black people, is being
abandoned by the exiled leadership. It is not surprising because we
had to struggle all through 1955 to get them to accept it in the
first place.
I defended the Freedom Charter than as Secretary of the
Iron and Steel Union and Secretary of the White City, Jabavu branch
of the African National Congress and what I said in the Trades Hall,
Johannesburg is as relevant today as it was 33 years ago.
“One million signatures alone are not enough. Action is
the correct dose. Our one million signatures must be one million
blows, that will shake apartheid a million times to pieces and bring
South Africa and its enslaved people a million years of prosperity
and freedom ...
“It is all very well to say: 'The state shall recognise
the right and the duty of all to work, and to draw unemployment
benefits,' but it is quite a different story to make the state do
these things ...
“It requires hard practical work and sacrifice of the
noblest order. One must be prepared to clash with the state, namely
the police, and if the struggle assumes very large countrywide
dimensions one will clash even with the armed forces. That is the
test we must pass before there can be work and security ...
“The working class understands. The working class is
ready. The necessary conditions have arisen. Time is becoming more
and more opportune.” [Treason Trial Transcript,
Witwatersrand University, pages 7577–8428]
The leadership in exile may be disheartened after many blows. They
have capitulated believing that the Botha regime is too strong. The
workers inside South Africa will not accept it. I am heartened by a
letter from a Johannesburg worker printed in the August 25th South
African Weekly Mail, headed 'ANC neglecting workers' in which
the worker writes:
“(the proposed constitution). In practical terms it
offers workers nothing that they have not won for themselves over the
last twenty years within the framework of apartheid capitalism ... It
is no accident that the document is welcomed by the representatives
of big capital like Zach De Beer.”
P.W. Botha's government tried to claw back the gains this worker
refers to when they tried to force through the Labour Bill, three
months ago.
From the 6th to 8th June, three million workers in a general
strike used their industrial muscle to say No! They have not allowed
Botha to take back their hard won rights and they will not allow the
ANC leadership in exile to abandon our Freedom Charter.
Top of page
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<h2>Laurence Coates</h2>
<h4>South Africa: Interview with Nimrod Sejake</h4>
<h1>“The ANC has sold out!”</h1>
<h3>(February 2000)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Offensiv</strong>, No. 385, 10th February 2000.<br>
Copied from <a href="http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod.htm">http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod.htm</a> by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">Nimrod Sejake is something of a living legend. At 79 years-old,
the former leader of the metal workers’ union in South Africa, is
still fighting for socialism as an active member of the CWI’s South
African section, Socialist Alternative. I met Nimrod at his small
house in White City, Soweto. The same house that the police raided
early one morning in December 1956, to arrest Nimrod for “high
treason”. He was placed in a cell with a young lawyer by the name
of Nelson Mandela!</p>
<p>“155 others were arrested that day” he explained, “Nelson
was the only one I knew, ‘Nimrod, are you here too?’ he said when
they brought me in.” “Even before this time I was active in the
trade union movement. I was a founder member of SACTU (South African
Congress of Trade Unions) in 1955. I organised the workers into the
union, that was my job. The employers asked me ‘who is a member of
your committee?’, I said the whole factory are members, at that
time we called our union the Non-European Iron and Steel workers’
union.” Trade union organisation has never been a picnic, but
Nimrod’s comrades faced severe problems for which special methods
and tactics had to be improvised. “I had my differences with the
ANC leadership, for not following the class struggle. They criticised
me because I advocated breaking the law, which even stated that
‘black workers have no right to strike’. The ANC leadership
didn’t back me up, they said: ‘Nimrod, you must negotiate’,
they didn’t approve of the fact that there were strikes every week
in the Iron and Steel sector – that was my sector.”</p>
<p>The trade unions played a decisive role in the struggle against
apartheid, especially the formation of Cosatu in the 1980s. Today
this is an incontestable fact. But South African marxists, like
Nimrod, argued this many years ago while the ANC leadership placed
their faith in a completely different strategy – a combination of
guerilla warfare organised from camps outside the country, and
international diplomacy.</p>
<p>Nimrod was forced to go into exile in 1962. I first met him in
Liverpool, England in the 1980s when he made a visit during the
famous struggle against the Thatcher government. He spent many years
as a refugee in Ireland.</p>
<p>“I’ve been battling all my adult life”, he told me, “When
I came back to South Africa in 1992 I found that many comrades I knew
had left the country or died. The ANC branches had collapsed.”</p>
<p>Up until the early 1990s the CWI in South Africa supported the ANC
and was known as the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC. But the
sharp rightward shift of the ANC in the 1990s led them to a total
break and to raise the call for a new workers’ party.</p>
<p>Nimrod is active in his local community Everton, in Soweto,
fighting for the restoration of land which was illegally sold by the
apartheid regime. He launched the Everton Forum for Reconstruction
and Socialism, whose office also serves as a centre for the comrades
of Socialist Alternative.</p>
<p>So, after over six years of ANC government, what does he think of
the way things have turned out?</p>
<p>“It’s a sell out. A straightforward sell out!”, he says
angrily, “The ANC’s Freedom Charter states explicitly that all
the mineral wealth beneath the earth belongs to the people-Nelson did
away with it! It’s been undemocratically thrown into the dustbin
and replaced with naked capitalism, the so called GEAR programme,
privatisation etc. That’s a sell out! We didn’t fight all those
years to retain apartheid.”</p>
<p>There are people whose life has involved far fewer sacrifices, for
whom the betrayals experienced by Nimrod and his comrades would have
produced cynicism. But not him! After a lifetime of struggle he and
his wife live on a pension of 750 kronor a month. He still speaks
enthusiastically of battles to come: “All we have to do is see to
it that we organise the workers – internationally – to see to it
that we bring about a socialist alternative. There’s more and more
talk about the need to create a workers’ party – that’s what’s
going on!”</p>
<p>Within days of talking to Nimrod, major class battles erupted in
the country. Cosatu’s leaders launched a programme of rolling
strikes, threatening a general strike on 10th May. The alliance
between Cosatu and the ANC – they sit together in the government –
is under the most severe strains ever. President Mbeki, under orders
from the stock exchange and international speculators, is attempting
to impose wage restraint, attack employment rights and central
bargaining. Last year saw more strikes than at any time since the ANC
took power in 1994. This year could see a further increase.</p>
<p>“One thing has always been in my mind,” Nimrod had told me,
“we will never become free without the class struggle. I’ve
fought for fifty years with this idea in mind. The ideas of Karl
Marx, our ideas, have stood the test of history. Now it’s time for
a new generation of youth to take up the struggle.”</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
<p class="linkback"><a href="../../index.htm">Nimrod Sejake Archive</a> | <a href="../../../../index.htm">ETOL Main Page</a></p>
<p class="updat">Last updated: 9 August 2016</p>
</body> |
Nimrod Sejake Archive | ETOL Main Page
Laurence Coates
South Africa: Interview with Nimrod Sejake
“The ANC has sold out!”
(February 2000)
From Offensiv, No. 385, 10th February 2000.
Copied from http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod.htm by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Nimrod Sejake is something of a living legend. At 79 years-old,
the former leader of the metal workers’ union in South Africa, is
still fighting for socialism as an active member of the CWI’s South
African section, Socialist Alternative. I met Nimrod at his small
house in White City, Soweto. The same house that the police raided
early one morning in December 1956, to arrest Nimrod for “high
treason”. He was placed in a cell with a young lawyer by the name
of Nelson Mandela!
“155 others were arrested that day” he explained, “Nelson
was the only one I knew, ‘Nimrod, are you here too?’ he said when
they brought me in.” “Even before this time I was active in the
trade union movement. I was a founder member of SACTU (South African
Congress of Trade Unions) in 1955. I organised the workers into the
union, that was my job. The employers asked me ‘who is a member of
your committee?’, I said the whole factory are members, at that
time we called our union the Non-European Iron and Steel workers’
union.” Trade union organisation has never been a picnic, but
Nimrod’s comrades faced severe problems for which special methods
and tactics had to be improvised. “I had my differences with the
ANC leadership, for not following the class struggle. They criticised
me because I advocated breaking the law, which even stated that
‘black workers have no right to strike’. The ANC leadership
didn’t back me up, they said: ‘Nimrod, you must negotiate’,
they didn’t approve of the fact that there were strikes every week
in the Iron and Steel sector – that was my sector.”
The trade unions played a decisive role in the struggle against
apartheid, especially the formation of Cosatu in the 1980s. Today
this is an incontestable fact. But South African marxists, like
Nimrod, argued this many years ago while the ANC leadership placed
their faith in a completely different strategy – a combination of
guerilla warfare organised from camps outside the country, and
international diplomacy.
Nimrod was forced to go into exile in 1962. I first met him in
Liverpool, England in the 1980s when he made a visit during the
famous struggle against the Thatcher government. He spent many years
as a refugee in Ireland.
“I’ve been battling all my adult life”, he told me, “When
I came back to South Africa in 1992 I found that many comrades I knew
had left the country or died. The ANC branches had collapsed.”
Up until the early 1990s the CWI in South Africa supported the ANC
and was known as the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC. But the
sharp rightward shift of the ANC in the 1990s led them to a total
break and to raise the call for a new workers’ party.
Nimrod is active in his local community Everton, in Soweto,
fighting for the restoration of land which was illegally sold by the
apartheid regime. He launched the Everton Forum for Reconstruction
and Socialism, whose office also serves as a centre for the comrades
of Socialist Alternative.
So, after over six years of ANC government, what does he think of
the way things have turned out?
“It’s a sell out. A straightforward sell out!”, he says
angrily, “The ANC’s Freedom Charter states explicitly that all
the mineral wealth beneath the earth belongs to the people-Nelson did
away with it! It’s been undemocratically thrown into the dustbin
and replaced with naked capitalism, the so called GEAR programme,
privatisation etc. That’s a sell out! We didn’t fight all those
years to retain apartheid.”
There are people whose life has involved far fewer sacrifices, for
whom the betrayals experienced by Nimrod and his comrades would have
produced cynicism. But not him! After a lifetime of struggle he and
his wife live on a pension of 750 kronor a month. He still speaks
enthusiastically of battles to come: “All we have to do is see to
it that we organise the workers – internationally – to see to it
that we bring about a socialist alternative. There’s more and more
talk about the need to create a workers’ party – that’s what’s
going on!”
Within days of talking to Nimrod, major class battles erupted in
the country. Cosatu’s leaders launched a programme of rolling
strikes, threatening a general strike on 10th May. The alliance
between Cosatu and the ANC – they sit together in the government –
is under the most severe strains ever. President Mbeki, under orders
from the stock exchange and international speculators, is attempting
to impose wage restraint, attack employment rights and central
bargaining. Last year saw more strikes than at any time since the ANC
took power in 1994. This year could see a further increase.
“One thing has always been in my mind,” Nimrod had told me,
“we will never become free without the class struggle. I’ve
fought for fifty years with this idea in mind. The ideas of Karl
Marx, our ideas, have stood the test of history. Now it’s time for
a new generation of youth to take up the struggle.”
Top of page
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Last updated: 9 August 2016
|
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<h2>Nimrod Sejake</h2>
<h1>Workers’ Power and the crisis of leadership</h1>
<h3>(November 1983)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Inqaba ya Basebenzi</strong>, the journal of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the African National Congress, No. 12, November 1983–February 1984.<br>
Copied from <a href="http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod1983.htm">http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod1983.htm</a> by Iain Dalton.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<p class="fst">It was from my organising work on the Reef that I came to see the
enormous power of the working class. During those days African trade
unions were not recognised and strikes by African workers were
illegal. But this was no barrier to the workers, if they were
properly organised.</p>
<p>Our motto in the Iron and Steel Union was that we should never go
to an employer with our demands unless we know our power, and that
power was to be found only when the workers were fully organised with
an understanding of how to go about a strike.</p>
<p>Then they can beat the employers in their own field. Even though
there are laws which are barriers, the workers break them, and with
intent. Even if the police are called in they cannot put into effect
their powers because the workers can make their powers ineffective.</p>
<p>Through our union experience we understood that only when you face
the employers from a position of strength can you change society in
South Africa. And if this was done all over the country, with clear
sense of direction, no power can impede the forward march of the
working class.<br>
</p>
<h4>White workers</h4>
<p class="fst">There is an important thing that we learned in the Iron and Steel
Union. We said to the black workers when they went on strike to talk
with white workers and tell them why we are striking. They should
explain that we are underpaid, discriminated against as a nation and
oppressed as a class. He laws dehumanise us, and make us mere
chattels of society.</p>
<p>Look, we would say to the white workers, you have the law on your
side, you have people you elect to of to the parliament to legislate,
and they legislate against us. You do skilled work, but according to
the law we are not allowed to do it.</p>
<p>Our struggle is not only about wages, but it is a political
question. We want to destroy the laws in this country, to make it fit
for workers of all races. And we are showing today that we can stop
this factory. We said this, for example, in the strikes at African
lamps and at Phoenix Foundry.</p>
<p>“As you can see,” the African workers said to the white
workers, “we stopped management from doing anything. We are the
bosses today. You can see you are being told to go home and not work
precisely because of our power. We can make you redundant” – this
is the word the workers used.</p>
<p>We were aware that the racist regime gets a great deal of support
from white workers. But we wanted to break down this granite wall. We
were saying to the white workers, look, we want to show you we can
penetrate the barriers put before us, we can pull them down and make
the laws ineffective.</p>
<p>As a result, during these strikes, some white workers began to
say: “Look, if you succeed, we are going to succeed as well”.
Many of them voiced the correct view that there is really no
difference between black labour and white labour; we should all be
striking for workers’ rights. White workers say this behind closed
doors because they know the repercussions.</p>
<p>As far as my experiences show, the social support the regime is
enjoying from the white workers can be broken if the African workers
are strongly organised along the correct lines.<br>
</p>
<h4>ISCOR</h4>
<p class="fst">Often what the state and the employers think is impossible is made
possible by the working class! Let me give the example of huge
concerns like ISCOR. It was said in the 1950s to be impossible to
enter ISCOR, because it was always guarded. These large state
concerns are guarded precisely because if the workers could get a
grip on the, and stop production, the capitalists would be greatly affected.</p>
<p>But that impossibility as again proved by the workers to be a
paper tiger. Through the workers I entered ISCOR in Van der Bijl
Park. I organised the workers there first, not by going to the
factory, but by going to their homes. Through tem the other worker
could be brought into the movement.</p>
<p>Another strategy was making feasts or tea parties in the locations
– where we would meet and discuss. Through that I organised to go
in and distribute leaflets. It is such a huge concern that you would
not know which side of it you entered and which side you came out,
unless you were lead by the people working there.</p>
<p>So I took leaflets in a suitcase from Jo’burg. At the bus stop a
worker was there to guide me. Inside the plant the workers showed me
there we could unpack the bundles of leaflets. Before I knew it,
other workers were placing them in vantage points for workers coming
in on the next shift to find them. Then, when they knew the bus was
about to leave, they led me out to it and I left the place.</p>
<p>Here again the mighty power of the working class demonstrates
itself. Not only is it a power as far as stopping work is concerned,
but because the understanding, the creativity, the grasp of strategy
and tactics of the workers is so powerful, one they are properly
organised there is noting to fear in South Africa. In fact anywhere
in the world that the workers are properly organised with an
understanding of their tasks, they have nothing to fear.</p>
<p>So all these and many other experiences convince me that through
the power of the working class it is possible to bring SA to a
standstill, and overthrow that powerful regime. What we have to do
first is to organise the workers. Then we shall be facing battle from
a position of power, where we can tell the employers there are two
things existing here – you own the means of production, but we own
the labour-power, and if you don’t agree, we fold our hands and
your industry will be paralysed.</p>
<p>I came to see that the power of the working class was so enormous
that even if you compared it with the police, the army, the air
force, the prisons and magistrates court and judges, etc. – that
all the power cannot stand in the way of the struggle of the working
class to overthrow the state. The power lies in the working class, if
it is organised and given a direction, and that direction can only be
found in Marxism.<br>
</p>
<h4>Marxism</h4>
<p class="fst">Marxism is a scientific theory, based on the experience of the
working class. That is why fro the workers Marxism s easily accepted,
because their lives prove it – their hard lives, cruel oppression,
brutal handling in the factory, in the locations, at home – with
low wages, high rents and high prices.</p>
<p>From this angle the worker understand theory. And when revolution
comes they grasp in a day what would otherwise take years to grasp.
In the Iron and Steel Union we used to say that the very thing that
is called law in South Africa is illegal, that there is no ‘law’
as far as Africans were concerned, because the majority of the people
take no part in making it, but it is made by the capitalists to
oppress the workers.</p>
<p>The only answer to that is for the workers to organise to take
political power into their own hands with the specific aim of ending
capitalism and achieving socialism. That is what Inqaba is saying:
the workers must build the trade unions and transform the ANC. I
support this view to the hilt.</p>
<p>Because, in the 1950s I already found, unfortunately, that this
was not the position taken by the leadership of SACTU, or of the
ANC, or of the South African Communist Party. They did not have
confidence in the power of the working class.</p>
<p>As an example, I will mention a time when I had organised nine
metal factories along the Rand, with the aim that when the workers
came out on strike, they would all come out simultaneously. When they
were all organised and ready I went to the SACTU leadership to make
sure of their support for the action. There would be a lightening
strike spreading along the Rand – and factories where the workers
had experience of strike action like Africa Lamps, Phoenix Foundry
and Benoni Foundry were ready tom come out in support.</p>
<p>In Iron and Steel we saw this as a great step forward for the
trade union movement. But the SACTU leaders told me (and I am quoting
them): “Nimrod, that is too much!”</p>
<p>Or again, there was the time in 1958 when the ANC called off a
tremendous three-day strike on the first day! Called it off! I
remember buying a newspaper and seeing the headline: “Secretary
General of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, calls off strike.” I was furious.
Because, at that time, we were on bail from the treason Trial, and
one of the conditions was that we did not attend meetings or organise
in any way. But, nevertheless, we had risked organising the workers
to make the strike a success.<br>
</p>
<h4>Crisis of Leadership</h4>
<p class="fst">The leadership of the movement was lagging far behind, out of
touch with developments. That is why I support Inqaba because the
present situation requires a journal like this which puts forward
clearly the manner in which the struggle in South Africa must be
handed. We lacked that in the 1950s.</p>
<p>Inqaba puts forward a theory and a strategy which can guide the
working class movement in the struggle for power something the ANC
leadership has not done – something we can say the South African
Communist Party has <em>failed</em> to do. I say “failed” because
time and time again it has been advised by workers to change its
methods and has failed to do so.</p>
<p>The Communist Party leaders still refuse to put forward that the
task of the working class will be to take power in the revolution
that is coming in South Africa. These leaders have put forward the
position that we must struggle for a bourgeois democracy in South
Africa – and the South African Communist Party has said over and
over again that we must wait until getting that before struggling to
overthrow capitalism.</p>
<p>Workers want democratic rights of course. When in Europe I see I
can stand right next to a policeman and sell a socialist newspaper,
and he doesn’t turn a hair, it amazes me. The workers in Europe
have struggled for and won these rights – although the capitalists
are now trying to whittle them away. And I think: “If the workers
in SA had those rights just for a month, or even 24 hours, what would
they begin to do with them.”</p>
<p>But the point is: it will take a revolution in South Africa – a
revolution made by the power of the working class – to achieve full
democratic rights. And I ask: when the workers in South Africa push
back the state to that point, why should they stop there?</p>
<p>Why should they stop just because their leaders are then
scrambling for positions in the bosses parliament? The workers will
then have the power to take over the factories and mines and so on,
and to take on and destroy the bosses’ state. That is what they
will demand that their leaders carry through.</p>
<p>I came to the conclusion in the 1950s that we were faced with a
crisis of leadership. Subsequently I have discovered that the reasons
for this crisis were explained by the Russian Marxist, Trotsky.</p>
<p>Trotsky had already explained that in Russia the basic problems of
the masses could not be solved unless the working class took power.
It is the same in South Africa – race discrimination even cannot be
ended short of that. It was proved in Russia when the working class
came to power in 1917 under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party,
headed by Lenin and Trotsky.</p>
<p>Later Trotsky also explained how the workers’ democracy which
came into existence in the Soviet Union was crushed by the coming to
power of Stalin and the bureaucracy- how this led to the degeneration
of the workers’ state and the degeneration of the Communist
International, so that Communist Parties no longer stood for the
interests of the working class internationally.</p>
<p>Today it is more clear than ever that the working class can change
society, <em>if it is organised with the correct policy and
leadership</em>. The concept is held by people outside South Africa
and even inside that the regime cannot be conquered. But the working
class is proving today that it can remove it: soften it up first and
then destroy it. This is happening through the workers, not through
the so-called ‘armed struggle’.<br>
</p>
<h4>Armed Struggle</h4>
<p class="fst">One thing I must make explicitly clear. You can change nothing in
space outside the influence of force. You can’t move anything say,
from this table to that table, unless you use force.</p>
<p>To change society from one state to another, like we want to do in
South Africa; to remove racism and establish democracy, to remove
capitalism and build socialism – we need force. And that force in
my conviction is in the working class.</p>
<p>It is a question of the workers using force and violence in their
proper place. There will come a stage when, to eliminate a
highly-armed regime like the South African regime, the workers will
have to be ready militarily, trained themselves. That is inevitable.
The Russian workers in the October Revolution were not empty-handed –
they organised themselves in an armed workers’ force.</p>
<p>In anticipation of such a situation, the workers must be prepared.
The ruling class must find that they cannot spread their army all
over the country, because the workers are organised everywhere. Then,
when we are physically attacked in any area of the country, we will
be able to hit back and they will find they can no longer control us.</p>
<p>In the 1960s the ANC made me ‘political commissar’ in the
camps in Tanzania. My task was to provide political education for the
workers there. I call them workers because many of them had been
trade unionists and, even though they were militarily trained, they
still had the standpoint of workers, to overthrow the South African
regime and capitalism.</p>
<p>I put the position among these comrades that only the working
class could overthrow the state because who else could do it in
isolation from the workers. Therefore trained people infiltrated into
the country should not start to initiate battles, because they would
only be exposing themselves in front of a powerful regular army which
would just destroy you if it discovered you.</p>
<p>The proper thing to do, I said, when you enter the country is to
organise the workers – and, through them, the masses as a whole –
and to explain that only the organised working class had the power to
defeat the state. And to prepare, only, for when it would be
effective to use arms. The guerilla methods put forward by the ANC
leadership do nothing more than frighten the enemy from time to time.</p>
<p>Later on I have been to China. I have seen the cave in Yenan which
was Mao’s home and command centre in the guerilla war in China. The
situation in our country is quite different. It is a very
industrialised country, where there is no real force of opposition
other than the working class. The method of guerilla war is not the
method of working class struggle.</p>
<p>After a time in Tanzania the ANC leadership told me that I should
no longer teach Marxism. In fact the person who initiated this was
none other than the late Moses Kotane, then the General Secretary of
the South African Communist Party.</p>
<p>It astounded me that when he said we must teach instead the
‘African image’. This is ludicrous. Right back in the Communist
manifesto it was explained that “All hitherto existing history is
the history of <em>class</em> struggle.” Of course national
oppression is central in South Africa, but that does not make the
struggle against it any less a class struggle</p>
<p>Because I would not accept the position of the leadership, it was
decided to get rid of me. I was removed from the camps, and the
Tanzanian government gave me seven days to leave the country! I heard
later that at the Morogoro conference, ANC comrades asked, “Why did
Sejake leave the ANC?”, and the leadership said, “He just left
... just like that” – which is a thing serious comrades do not
believe to this day.</p>
<p>After that I was for a time in the Pan African Congress, because
the youth there were keen to study Marxism. But the same crisis
revealed itself: the nationalist leadership felt threatened by
working class ideas, and I was expelled.</p>
<p>When I look back now to the 1950s I see that the major problem was
that we, the workers, who supported and built the ANC, did not
control it. Even SACTU was under the control of middle class ANC
leaders, rather than the other way around. Everywhere the working
class movement has – <em>must have</em> – two arms: “an
industrial arm and a political arm” as the great Irish Marxist,
James Connolly, once said. Both these arms are necessary. They go
together. The one without the other will not succeed.</p>
<p>The workers, on their own account, have rebuilt a powerful trade
union movement in our country – more powerful than we ever had in
the 1950s. This is a tremendous achievement, even though there is
still a long way to go in organising the unorganised workers.</p>
<p>I have been inspired by the workers organised in the Metal and
Allied Workers Union (MAWU), who have taken forward with courage and
success the work which we began in the 1950s. I regard myself as a
member of MAWU.</p>
<p>These achievements must never be compromised or sacrificed. It is
now vital that they are taken forward in creating a new united trade
union federation, to strengthen our ability to organise and to use
the strike weapon, very intensively, all over the country. Wherever
there is a working concern, a factory, anywhere in the country, there
is the revolution – provided the working class is organised and
knows its power.</p>
<p>At the same time I agree fully with Inqaba when it says that the
trade unions should join and play their part in the United Democratic
Front (UDF), <em>transform the UDF into a mass working class movement</em>,
able to give a lead to all the oppressed – and to white workers
too.</p>
<p>The laws of history work in peculiar ways. In the 1950s, the
workers turned to the ANC as the political organisation which they
felt it was necessary to support and strengthen. Today we see the
response which just the launching of the UDF gained from the
unorganised and many others.</p>
<p>This is because workers saw here a sign of the ANC reborn in the
country, a sign of the return of nation wide organisation around the
<em>Freedom Charter</em>.</p>
<p>It is true that the leadership of the UDF as was the case with the
ANC, in the 1950s (and is still the case today), is in the hands of
the middle class. But the workers must go into the UDF – and later
into the ANC when it returns openly to South Africa – no to bow
down to the leaders’ policies, their hesitations and twists and
turns, but to <em>transform</em> the UDF and <em>transform</em> the ANC.</p>
<p>I appeal particularly to the workers in MAWU, the union to which I
belong, to press this task on their leaders and on the leaders of
FOSATU and all unions. It is only by the workers going into the UDF
at every level, in an organised and united way, that we can get rid
off the influence of the middle class leadership.</p>
<p>We must simply tell them openly that they must accept the
programme of the working class or else it is time they left their
positions. There is no problem in that. If the organised working
class can take on the big bosses and the state, there is no problem
in dealing with individuals who are an obstacle to the movement.</p>
<p>This is in the interests of the majority of the middle class too.
Only the working class can liberate them from their oppression by
racism and capitalism – by overthrowing the state and taking power.
The majority of the middle class will follow a determined lead from the workers.</p>
<p>History will not allow us to postpone this task while we sort out
merely our own ‘trade union affairs’. In fact by transforming the
UDF we will strengthen the whole workers’ movement, the trade unions too.</p>
<p>With the UDF under working class leadership, campaigning for
demands like a minimum wage, it will win the enthusiastic support of
many of the most oppressed whoa re still unorganised. On the other
hand, if the trade union movement remains divided on the question of
the UDF, this can become a barrier to forming the strongest possible
trade union unity in action.</p>
<p>But because from my experience I am confident in the power and the
understanding of the workers, I am sure we are bound to succeed in
building our two arms; the industrial arm and the political arm.</p>
<p>The success will be so tremendous and vibrant that it will shake
the whole of this globe! The South African regime is one of the worst
in the world, and if the African working class understand and apply
Marxist theory correctly they will give some meat to the working
class of the world and gain tremendous support.</p>
<p>I have found that Europe, and the whole of the capitalist West, is
no longer what we thought it was. Conditions are getting worse, in
every country, because of the grip of capitalism. Therefore the
workers are struggling against it.</p>
<p>So workers in South Africa should not look at the West simply as a
place from which imperialism exploits them, without anybody
struggling to put a stop to this. Struggle is going on!</p>
<p>But I have also found the same crisis of leadership of the
workers’ movement. Take Ireland, for example: the Labour Party is
in a coalition government with a capitalist party that has nothing in
common with the workers. It is like the SACP calling for ‘an
alliance of all classes’ – how can workers be in alliance with
their bosses?</p>
<p>Or take the example of Britain, where the Labour Party leadership
has been trying to expel Marxists. It reminds me of the action taken
by the ANC leadership against me. But I find in these countries a
growing enthusiasm for Marxist ideas, especially among the youth and
young workers, but among older workers also. Recently I went to a
Young Workers’ Assembly organised by the British Labour Party Young
Socialists, where I heard many youth and others speaking.</p>
<p>Some were real youngsters, even one ‘small boy’ (I use this
with no disrespect) whose speech made me feel that at his age I had
no idea of struggle. This is because of the change that is taking
place in the working class today. In Soweto, too, four-year-old
children are confronting the police.</p>
<p>It’s the development of a new period in the world. We have
reached the stage of the advent of world revolution. I can see this
is no longer a theory. It is a reality. I can safely say that world
revolution is approaching the doorsteps of the homes where we live
and the sooner we wake up to the occasion the better.</p>
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Nimrod Sejake
Workers’ Power and the crisis of leadership
(November 1983)
From Inqaba ya Basebenzi, the journal of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the African National Congress, No. 12, November 1983–February 1984.
Copied from http://redlug.com/LabHist/Nimrod1983.htm by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
It was from my organising work on the Reef that I came to see the
enormous power of the working class. During those days African trade
unions were not recognised and strikes by African workers were
illegal. But this was no barrier to the workers, if they were
properly organised.
Our motto in the Iron and Steel Union was that we should never go
to an employer with our demands unless we know our power, and that
power was to be found only when the workers were fully organised with
an understanding of how to go about a strike.
Then they can beat the employers in their own field. Even though
there are laws which are barriers, the workers break them, and with
intent. Even if the police are called in they cannot put into effect
their powers because the workers can make their powers ineffective.
Through our union experience we understood that only when you face
the employers from a position of strength can you change society in
South Africa. And if this was done all over the country, with clear
sense of direction, no power can impede the forward march of the
working class.
White workers
There is an important thing that we learned in the Iron and Steel
Union. We said to the black workers when they went on strike to talk
with white workers and tell them why we are striking. They should
explain that we are underpaid, discriminated against as a nation and
oppressed as a class. He laws dehumanise us, and make us mere
chattels of society.
Look, we would say to the white workers, you have the law on your
side, you have people you elect to of to the parliament to legislate,
and they legislate against us. You do skilled work, but according to
the law we are not allowed to do it.
Our struggle is not only about wages, but it is a political
question. We want to destroy the laws in this country, to make it fit
for workers of all races. And we are showing today that we can stop
this factory. We said this, for example, in the strikes at African
lamps and at Phoenix Foundry.
“As you can see,” the African workers said to the white
workers, “we stopped management from doing anything. We are the
bosses today. You can see you are being told to go home and not work
precisely because of our power. We can make you redundant” – this
is the word the workers used.
We were aware that the racist regime gets a great deal of support
from white workers. But we wanted to break down this granite wall. We
were saying to the white workers, look, we want to show you we can
penetrate the barriers put before us, we can pull them down and make
the laws ineffective.
As a result, during these strikes, some white workers began to
say: “Look, if you succeed, we are going to succeed as well”.
Many of them voiced the correct view that there is really no
difference between black labour and white labour; we should all be
striking for workers’ rights. White workers say this behind closed
doors because they know the repercussions.
As far as my experiences show, the social support the regime is
enjoying from the white workers can be broken if the African workers
are strongly organised along the correct lines.
ISCOR
Often what the state and the employers think is impossible is made
possible by the working class! Let me give the example of huge
concerns like ISCOR. It was said in the 1950s to be impossible to
enter ISCOR, because it was always guarded. These large state
concerns are guarded precisely because if the workers could get a
grip on the, and stop production, the capitalists would be greatly affected.
But that impossibility as again proved by the workers to be a
paper tiger. Through the workers I entered ISCOR in Van der Bijl
Park. I organised the workers there first, not by going to the
factory, but by going to their homes. Through tem the other worker
could be brought into the movement.
Another strategy was making feasts or tea parties in the locations
– where we would meet and discuss. Through that I organised to go
in and distribute leaflets. It is such a huge concern that you would
not know which side of it you entered and which side you came out,
unless you were lead by the people working there.
So I took leaflets in a suitcase from Jo’burg. At the bus stop a
worker was there to guide me. Inside the plant the workers showed me
there we could unpack the bundles of leaflets. Before I knew it,
other workers were placing them in vantage points for workers coming
in on the next shift to find them. Then, when they knew the bus was
about to leave, they led me out to it and I left the place.
Here again the mighty power of the working class demonstrates
itself. Not only is it a power as far as stopping work is concerned,
but because the understanding, the creativity, the grasp of strategy
and tactics of the workers is so powerful, one they are properly
organised there is noting to fear in South Africa. In fact anywhere
in the world that the workers are properly organised with an
understanding of their tasks, they have nothing to fear.
So all these and many other experiences convince me that through
the power of the working class it is possible to bring SA to a
standstill, and overthrow that powerful regime. What we have to do
first is to organise the workers. Then we shall be facing battle from
a position of power, where we can tell the employers there are two
things existing here – you own the means of production, but we own
the labour-power, and if you don’t agree, we fold our hands and
your industry will be paralysed.
I came to see that the power of the working class was so enormous
that even if you compared it with the police, the army, the air
force, the prisons and magistrates court and judges, etc. – that
all the power cannot stand in the way of the struggle of the working
class to overthrow the state. The power lies in the working class, if
it is organised and given a direction, and that direction can only be
found in Marxism.
Marxism
Marxism is a scientific theory, based on the experience of the
working class. That is why fro the workers Marxism s easily accepted,
because their lives prove it – their hard lives, cruel oppression,
brutal handling in the factory, in the locations, at home – with
low wages, high rents and high prices.
From this angle the worker understand theory. And when revolution
comes they grasp in a day what would otherwise take years to grasp.
In the Iron and Steel Union we used to say that the very thing that
is called law in South Africa is illegal, that there is no ‘law’
as far as Africans were concerned, because the majority of the people
take no part in making it, but it is made by the capitalists to
oppress the workers.
The only answer to that is for the workers to organise to take
political power into their own hands with the specific aim of ending
capitalism and achieving socialism. That is what Inqaba is saying:
the workers must build the trade unions and transform the ANC. I
support this view to the hilt.
Because, in the 1950s I already found, unfortunately, that this
was not the position taken by the leadership of SACTU, or of the
ANC, or of the South African Communist Party. They did not have
confidence in the power of the working class.
As an example, I will mention a time when I had organised nine
metal factories along the Rand, with the aim that when the workers
came out on strike, they would all come out simultaneously. When they
were all organised and ready I went to the SACTU leadership to make
sure of their support for the action. There would be a lightening
strike spreading along the Rand – and factories where the workers
had experience of strike action like Africa Lamps, Phoenix Foundry
and Benoni Foundry were ready tom come out in support.
In Iron and Steel we saw this as a great step forward for the
trade union movement. But the SACTU leaders told me (and I am quoting
them): “Nimrod, that is too much!”
Or again, there was the time in 1958 when the ANC called off a
tremendous three-day strike on the first day! Called it off! I
remember buying a newspaper and seeing the headline: “Secretary
General of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, calls off strike.” I was furious.
Because, at that time, we were on bail from the treason Trial, and
one of the conditions was that we did not attend meetings or organise
in any way. But, nevertheless, we had risked organising the workers
to make the strike a success.
Crisis of Leadership
The leadership of the movement was lagging far behind, out of
touch with developments. That is why I support Inqaba because the
present situation requires a journal like this which puts forward
clearly the manner in which the struggle in South Africa must be
handed. We lacked that in the 1950s.
Inqaba puts forward a theory and a strategy which can guide the
working class movement in the struggle for power something the ANC
leadership has not done – something we can say the South African
Communist Party has failed to do. I say “failed” because
time and time again it has been advised by workers to change its
methods and has failed to do so.
The Communist Party leaders still refuse to put forward that the
task of the working class will be to take power in the revolution
that is coming in South Africa. These leaders have put forward the
position that we must struggle for a bourgeois democracy in South
Africa – and the South African Communist Party has said over and
over again that we must wait until getting that before struggling to
overthrow capitalism.
Workers want democratic rights of course. When in Europe I see I
can stand right next to a policeman and sell a socialist newspaper,
and he doesn’t turn a hair, it amazes me. The workers in Europe
have struggled for and won these rights – although the capitalists
are now trying to whittle them away. And I think: “If the workers
in SA had those rights just for a month, or even 24 hours, what would
they begin to do with them.”
But the point is: it will take a revolution in South Africa – a
revolution made by the power of the working class – to achieve full
democratic rights. And I ask: when the workers in South Africa push
back the state to that point, why should they stop there?
Why should they stop just because their leaders are then
scrambling for positions in the bosses parliament? The workers will
then have the power to take over the factories and mines and so on,
and to take on and destroy the bosses’ state. That is what they
will demand that their leaders carry through.
I came to the conclusion in the 1950s that we were faced with a
crisis of leadership. Subsequently I have discovered that the reasons
for this crisis were explained by the Russian Marxist, Trotsky.
Trotsky had already explained that in Russia the basic problems of
the masses could not be solved unless the working class took power.
It is the same in South Africa – race discrimination even cannot be
ended short of that. It was proved in Russia when the working class
came to power in 1917 under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party,
headed by Lenin and Trotsky.
Later Trotsky also explained how the workers’ democracy which
came into existence in the Soviet Union was crushed by the coming to
power of Stalin and the bureaucracy- how this led to the degeneration
of the workers’ state and the degeneration of the Communist
International, so that Communist Parties no longer stood for the
interests of the working class internationally.
Today it is more clear than ever that the working class can change
society, if it is organised with the correct policy and
leadership. The concept is held by people outside South Africa
and even inside that the regime cannot be conquered. But the working
class is proving today that it can remove it: soften it up first and
then destroy it. This is happening through the workers, not through
the so-called ‘armed struggle’.
Armed Struggle
One thing I must make explicitly clear. You can change nothing in
space outside the influence of force. You can’t move anything say,
from this table to that table, unless you use force.
To change society from one state to another, like we want to do in
South Africa; to remove racism and establish democracy, to remove
capitalism and build socialism – we need force. And that force in
my conviction is in the working class.
It is a question of the workers using force and violence in their
proper place. There will come a stage when, to eliminate a
highly-armed regime like the South African regime, the workers will
have to be ready militarily, trained themselves. That is inevitable.
The Russian workers in the October Revolution were not empty-handed –
they organised themselves in an armed workers’ force.
In anticipation of such a situation, the workers must be prepared.
The ruling class must find that they cannot spread their army all
over the country, because the workers are organised everywhere. Then,
when we are physically attacked in any area of the country, we will
be able to hit back and they will find they can no longer control us.
In the 1960s the ANC made me ‘political commissar’ in the
camps in Tanzania. My task was to provide political education for the
workers there. I call them workers because many of them had been
trade unionists and, even though they were militarily trained, they
still had the standpoint of workers, to overthrow the South African
regime and capitalism.
I put the position among these comrades that only the working
class could overthrow the state because who else could do it in
isolation from the workers. Therefore trained people infiltrated into
the country should not start to initiate battles, because they would
only be exposing themselves in front of a powerful regular army which
would just destroy you if it discovered you.
The proper thing to do, I said, when you enter the country is to
organise the workers – and, through them, the masses as a whole –
and to explain that only the organised working class had the power to
defeat the state. And to prepare, only, for when it would be
effective to use arms. The guerilla methods put forward by the ANC
leadership do nothing more than frighten the enemy from time to time.
Later on I have been to China. I have seen the cave in Yenan which
was Mao’s home and command centre in the guerilla war in China. The
situation in our country is quite different. It is a very
industrialised country, where there is no real force of opposition
other than the working class. The method of guerilla war is not the
method of working class struggle.
After a time in Tanzania the ANC leadership told me that I should
no longer teach Marxism. In fact the person who initiated this was
none other than the late Moses Kotane, then the General Secretary of
the South African Communist Party.
It astounded me that when he said we must teach instead the
‘African image’. This is ludicrous. Right back in the Communist
manifesto it was explained that “All hitherto existing history is
the history of class struggle.” Of course national
oppression is central in South Africa, but that does not make the
struggle against it any less a class struggle
Because I would not accept the position of the leadership, it was
decided to get rid of me. I was removed from the camps, and the
Tanzanian government gave me seven days to leave the country! I heard
later that at the Morogoro conference, ANC comrades asked, “Why did
Sejake leave the ANC?”, and the leadership said, “He just left
... just like that” – which is a thing serious comrades do not
believe to this day.
After that I was for a time in the Pan African Congress, because
the youth there were keen to study Marxism. But the same crisis
revealed itself: the nationalist leadership felt threatened by
working class ideas, and I was expelled.
When I look back now to the 1950s I see that the major problem was
that we, the workers, who supported and built the ANC, did not
control it. Even SACTU was under the control of middle class ANC
leaders, rather than the other way around. Everywhere the working
class movement has – must have – two arms: “an
industrial arm and a political arm” as the great Irish Marxist,
James Connolly, once said. Both these arms are necessary. They go
together. The one without the other will not succeed.
The workers, on their own account, have rebuilt a powerful trade
union movement in our country – more powerful than we ever had in
the 1950s. This is a tremendous achievement, even though there is
still a long way to go in organising the unorganised workers.
I have been inspired by the workers organised in the Metal and
Allied Workers Union (MAWU), who have taken forward with courage and
success the work which we began in the 1950s. I regard myself as a
member of MAWU.
These achievements must never be compromised or sacrificed. It is
now vital that they are taken forward in creating a new united trade
union federation, to strengthen our ability to organise and to use
the strike weapon, very intensively, all over the country. Wherever
there is a working concern, a factory, anywhere in the country, there
is the revolution – provided the working class is organised and
knows its power.
At the same time I agree fully with Inqaba when it says that the
trade unions should join and play their part in the United Democratic
Front (UDF), transform the UDF into a mass working class movement,
able to give a lead to all the oppressed – and to white workers
too.
The laws of history work in peculiar ways. In the 1950s, the
workers turned to the ANC as the political organisation which they
felt it was necessary to support and strengthen. Today we see the
response which just the launching of the UDF gained from the
unorganised and many others.
This is because workers saw here a sign of the ANC reborn in the
country, a sign of the return of nation wide organisation around the
Freedom Charter.
It is true that the leadership of the UDF as was the case with the
ANC, in the 1950s (and is still the case today), is in the hands of
the middle class. But the workers must go into the UDF – and later
into the ANC when it returns openly to South Africa – no to bow
down to the leaders’ policies, their hesitations and twists and
turns, but to transform the UDF and transform the ANC.
I appeal particularly to the workers in MAWU, the union to which I
belong, to press this task on their leaders and on the leaders of
FOSATU and all unions. It is only by the workers going into the UDF
at every level, in an organised and united way, that we can get rid
off the influence of the middle class leadership.
We must simply tell them openly that they must accept the
programme of the working class or else it is time they left their
positions. There is no problem in that. If the organised working
class can take on the big bosses and the state, there is no problem
in dealing with individuals who are an obstacle to the movement.
This is in the interests of the majority of the middle class too.
Only the working class can liberate them from their oppression by
racism and capitalism – by overthrowing the state and taking power.
The majority of the middle class will follow a determined lead from the workers.
History will not allow us to postpone this task while we sort out
merely our own ‘trade union affairs’. In fact by transforming the
UDF we will strengthen the whole workers’ movement, the trade unions too.
With the UDF under working class leadership, campaigning for
demands like a minimum wage, it will win the enthusiastic support of
many of the most oppressed whoa re still unorganised. On the other
hand, if the trade union movement remains divided on the question of
the UDF, this can become a barrier to forming the strongest possible
trade union unity in action.
But because from my experience I am confident in the power and the
understanding of the workers, I am sure we are bound to succeed in
building our two arms; the industrial arm and the political arm.
The success will be so tremendous and vibrant that it will shake
the whole of this globe! The South African regime is one of the worst
in the world, and if the African working class understand and apply
Marxist theory correctly they will give some meat to the working
class of the world and gain tremendous support.
I have found that Europe, and the whole of the capitalist West, is
no longer what we thought it was. Conditions are getting worse, in
every country, because of the grip of capitalism. Therefore the
workers are struggling against it.
So workers in South Africa should not look at the West simply as a
place from which imperialism exploits them, without anybody
struggling to put a stop to this. Struggle is going on!
But I have also found the same crisis of leadership of the
workers’ movement. Take Ireland, for example: the Labour Party is
in a coalition government with a capitalist party that has nothing in
common with the workers. It is like the SACP calling for ‘an
alliance of all classes’ – how can workers be in alliance with
their bosses?
Or take the example of Britain, where the Labour Party leadership
has been trying to expel Marxists. It reminds me of the action taken
by the ANC leadership against me. But I find in these countries a
growing enthusiasm for Marxist ideas, especially among the youth and
young workers, but among older workers also. Recently I went to a
Young Workers’ Assembly organised by the British Labour Party Young
Socialists, where I heard many youth and others speaking.
Some were real youngsters, even one ‘small boy’ (I use this
with no disrespect) whose speech made me feel that at his age I had
no idea of struggle. This is because of the change that is taking
place in the working class today. In Soweto, too, four-year-old
children are confronting the police.
It’s the development of a new period in the world. We have
reached the stage of the advent of world revolution. I can see this
is no longer a theory. It is a reality. I can safely say that world
revolution is approaching the doorsteps of the homes where we live
and the sooner we wake up to the occasion the better.
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<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1900</p>
<h1>He is Elected</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: <em>La Feuille</em>;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Listen to the edifying story of a pretty little white ass, candidate in the capital. It isn’t a Mother Goose rhyme, or a story from Le Petit Journal. It’s a true story for the old kiddies who still vote:</p>
<p>A burro, son of the country of LaFontaine and Rabelais, an ass so white that M. Vervoort gluttonously ate it, aspired – in the electoral game – to a place as legislator. The day of the elections having arrived this burro, the very type of a candidate, answering to the name of Worthless, pulled off a last minute maneuver.</p>
<p>On this hot Sunday morning in May, when the people rushed to the polling places, the white ass, the candidate Worthless, perched on a triumphal wagon and, pulled along by voters, traversed Paris, his good city.</p>
<p>Upright on his hoofs, ears to the wind, proudly emerging from his vehicle gaudily painted with electoral posters – a vehicle in the shape of an urn – the head high between the water glass and the presidential bell, he passed through the anger, the bravos and the gibes.</p>
<p>The ass looked on a Paris that gazed on him.</p>
<p>Paris! The Paris that votes, the crowd, the people sovereign every four years...the people sufficiently foolish to believe that sovereignty consists in naming its masters.</p>
<p>As if they were parked in front of the town halls were flocks of voters, the dazed, fetishists who held the little cards with which they say: I abdicate.</p>
<p>Mr. Anyone will represent them. He will represent them all the better in that he represents no ideas. And it’ll be fine. We’ll make laws, we’ll balance the budget. The laws will mean more chains; the budget will mean new taxes...</p>
<p>Slowly the ass went through the streets.</p>
<p>Along the way the walls were being covered with posters by members of his committee, while others distributed his proclamations to the crowd:</p>
<p>“Think carefully, dear citizens. You know that your representatives are fooling you, have fooled you, will fool you – yet still you go to vote. So vote for me! Elect the ass!...I’m not any dumber than you.”</p>
<p>This frankness – a little brutal – wasn’t to everyone’s taste.</p>
<p class="indentb">“We’re being insulted,” some of them said.</p>
<p class="indentb">“Universal suffrage is being mocked,” others more accurately cried out.</p>
<p>Someone angrily brandished his fist at the ass and said:</p>
<p class="indentb">“Filthy Jew!”</p>
<p>But a sonorous laugh broke out. The candidate was being acclaimed. Bravely, the voters mocked both themselves and their elected representatives. Hats waved, canes. Women threw flowers...</p>
<p>The ass passed.</p>
<p>He descended from high in Montmartre towards the Latin Quarter. He crossed the <em>Grands Boulevards</em>, le Croissant where, without salt, the stuff is cooked that the gazettes sell. He saw the Halles where the starving – the Sovereign People – glean piles of rubbish; the quays, where the voters choose bridges as lodgings...</p>
<p>The heart and the brain! This was Paris! This was democracy!</p>
<p>We are all brothers, old vagabonds! Pity the bourgeois! He’s got gout... and he’s your brother, people without bread, man without work, worn out mother who, tonight, will go home tonight to die with the little ones...</p>
<p>We are all brothers, young conscript! It’s your brother the officer down there, with his girl’s corset and forehead covered with bars. Salute! Fix bayonets! In line! The Code awaits you – the military code. Twelve bullets in your skin for a gesture. It’s the republican tariff.</p>
<p>The ass arrived before the Senate.</p>
<p>He rolled alongside the palace, where guards pushed each other on leaving. He continued along the outside (alas!) of the too-green gardens. The he reached the Boulevard St-Michel. On the caf� terraces people clapped. The crowd, ceaselessly growing, grabbed copies of the proclamations. Students hooked themselves to the wagon; a professor pushed the wheels...</p>
<p>And as three o’clock sounded, the police appeared.</p>
<p>Since 10:00 am, from post to commissariat, the telegraph and the telephone signaled the strange passage of the subversive animal. The order to bring him in was issued: Arrest the ass! Now the city watchmen blocked the candidate’s route.</p>
<p>Near the Place St-Michel Worthless’s faithful committee was summoned by the armed forces to bring the candidate to the nearest commissariat. Naturally, the Committee passed over this order: right over the Seine, where the wagon soon stopped in front of the Palace of Justice.</p>
<p>More numerous, the <em>policemen</em> surrounded the unmoved ass. The Candidate was arrested at the gate of the Palace of Justice from which Deputies, swindlers and all the great thieves exit as free men.</p>
<p>The wagon lurched from the movements of the crowd. The agents, the brigadier in the lead, seized the shafts and put on the breast-harness. The Committee didn’t insist; they harnessed up the <em>policemen</em>.</p>
<p>It was thus that the white ass was released by his most fervent partisans. Like a vulgar politician, the animal went in the wrong direction. The police re-attached him, and Authority guided his route...From that moment on, Worthless was nothing but an official candidate. His friends no longer knew him. The Prefecture opened wide its doors, and the ass entered as if it were his home.</p>
<p>...If we speak about this today it’s to let the people know – the people of Paris and the countryside, workers, peasants, bourgeois, proud Citizens, dear lords – that the white ass Worthless has been elected. He has been elected in Paris. He has been elected in the provinces. Add up the blank and the voided ballots, add the abstentions, the voices and the silences that normally gather to signify disgust or contempt. Do some statistics, if you please, and you can easily verify that in all districts the <em>monsieur</em> who is fraudulently proclaimed deputy didn’t receive a quarter of the votes. From this flows the imbecilic locution “relative majority.” You might as well say that at night it’s relatively day.</p>
<p>And in this way the incoherent, brutal Universal Suffrage, which is based on number – and doesn’t even have that – will perish in ridicule. In speaking of the elections in France the gazettes of the entire world, without any malice, brought together the two most notable facts of the day:</p>
<p class="indentb">“In the morning, around 9:00, M. Felix Faure went to vote. In the afternoon, at 3:00, the white ass was arrested.”</p>
<p>I read this in three hundred newspapers. I was encumbered with clippings from The Argus and the <em>Courrier de la Presse</em> . There were reports in English, Wallachian, Spanish... which I nevertheless understood.</p>
<p>Each time that I read Felix Faure, I was sure that they were speaking of the ass.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Editor’s note</span>: During the electoral period the poster-program was really pasted up on the walls, and the day of the vote the satirical candidate really traversed Paris, from Montmartre to the Latin Quarter, cutting through the enthusiastic or scandalized crowd that loudly demonstrated. Boulevard du Palais, the ass was duly apprehended by the police, who set themselves to drag him to the pound. As the newspapers of the time reported, if there wasn’t a fight between the ass’s partisans and the representatives of order it’s thanks to the editor of <em>La Feuille</em> who cried out: “Don’t carry on; he’s now an official candidate.”</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="../index.htm">Zo d’Axa Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Zo d’Axa 1900
He is Elected
Source: La Feuille;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
Listen to the edifying story of a pretty little white ass, candidate in the capital. It isn’t a Mother Goose rhyme, or a story from Le Petit Journal. It’s a true story for the old kiddies who still vote:
A burro, son of the country of LaFontaine and Rabelais, an ass so white that M. Vervoort gluttonously ate it, aspired – in the electoral game – to a place as legislator. The day of the elections having arrived this burro, the very type of a candidate, answering to the name of Worthless, pulled off a last minute maneuver.
On this hot Sunday morning in May, when the people rushed to the polling places, the white ass, the candidate Worthless, perched on a triumphal wagon and, pulled along by voters, traversed Paris, his good city.
Upright on his hoofs, ears to the wind, proudly emerging from his vehicle gaudily painted with electoral posters – a vehicle in the shape of an urn – the head high between the water glass and the presidential bell, he passed through the anger, the bravos and the gibes.
The ass looked on a Paris that gazed on him.
Paris! The Paris that votes, the crowd, the people sovereign every four years...the people sufficiently foolish to believe that sovereignty consists in naming its masters.
As if they were parked in front of the town halls were flocks of voters, the dazed, fetishists who held the little cards with which they say: I abdicate.
Mr. Anyone will represent them. He will represent them all the better in that he represents no ideas. And it’ll be fine. We’ll make laws, we’ll balance the budget. The laws will mean more chains; the budget will mean new taxes...
Slowly the ass went through the streets.
Along the way the walls were being covered with posters by members of his committee, while others distributed his proclamations to the crowd:
“Think carefully, dear citizens. You know that your representatives are fooling you, have fooled you, will fool you – yet still you go to vote. So vote for me! Elect the ass!...I’m not any dumber than you.”
This frankness – a little brutal – wasn’t to everyone’s taste.
“We’re being insulted,” some of them said.
“Universal suffrage is being mocked,” others more accurately cried out.
Someone angrily brandished his fist at the ass and said:
“Filthy Jew!”
But a sonorous laugh broke out. The candidate was being acclaimed. Bravely, the voters mocked both themselves and their elected representatives. Hats waved, canes. Women threw flowers...
The ass passed.
He descended from high in Montmartre towards the Latin Quarter. He crossed the Grands Boulevards, le Croissant where, without salt, the stuff is cooked that the gazettes sell. He saw the Halles where the starving – the Sovereign People – glean piles of rubbish; the quays, where the voters choose bridges as lodgings...
The heart and the brain! This was Paris! This was democracy!
We are all brothers, old vagabonds! Pity the bourgeois! He’s got gout... and he’s your brother, people without bread, man without work, worn out mother who, tonight, will go home tonight to die with the little ones...
We are all brothers, young conscript! It’s your brother the officer down there, with his girl’s corset and forehead covered with bars. Salute! Fix bayonets! In line! The Code awaits you – the military code. Twelve bullets in your skin for a gesture. It’s the republican tariff.
The ass arrived before the Senate.
He rolled alongside the palace, where guards pushed each other on leaving. He continued along the outside (alas!) of the too-green gardens. The he reached the Boulevard St-Michel. On the caf� terraces people clapped. The crowd, ceaselessly growing, grabbed copies of the proclamations. Students hooked themselves to the wagon; a professor pushed the wheels...
And as three o’clock sounded, the police appeared.
Since 10:00 am, from post to commissariat, the telegraph and the telephone signaled the strange passage of the subversive animal. The order to bring him in was issued: Arrest the ass! Now the city watchmen blocked the candidate’s route.
Near the Place St-Michel Worthless’s faithful committee was summoned by the armed forces to bring the candidate to the nearest commissariat. Naturally, the Committee passed over this order: right over the Seine, where the wagon soon stopped in front of the Palace of Justice.
More numerous, the policemen surrounded the unmoved ass. The Candidate was arrested at the gate of the Palace of Justice from which Deputies, swindlers and all the great thieves exit as free men.
The wagon lurched from the movements of the crowd. The agents, the brigadier in the lead, seized the shafts and put on the breast-harness. The Committee didn’t insist; they harnessed up the policemen.
It was thus that the white ass was released by his most fervent partisans. Like a vulgar politician, the animal went in the wrong direction. The police re-attached him, and Authority guided his route...From that moment on, Worthless was nothing but an official candidate. His friends no longer knew him. The Prefecture opened wide its doors, and the ass entered as if it were his home.
...If we speak about this today it’s to let the people know – the people of Paris and the countryside, workers, peasants, bourgeois, proud Citizens, dear lords – that the white ass Worthless has been elected. He has been elected in Paris. He has been elected in the provinces. Add up the blank and the voided ballots, add the abstentions, the voices and the silences that normally gather to signify disgust or contempt. Do some statistics, if you please, and you can easily verify that in all districts the monsieur who is fraudulently proclaimed deputy didn’t receive a quarter of the votes. From this flows the imbecilic locution “relative majority.” You might as well say that at night it’s relatively day.
And in this way the incoherent, brutal Universal Suffrage, which is based on number – and doesn’t even have that – will perish in ridicule. In speaking of the elections in France the gazettes of the entire world, without any malice, brought together the two most notable facts of the day:
“In the morning, around 9:00, M. Felix Faure went to vote. In the afternoon, at 3:00, the white ass was arrested.”
I read this in three hundred newspapers. I was encumbered with clippings from The Argus and the Courrier de la Presse . There were reports in English, Wallachian, Spanish... which I nevertheless understood.
Each time that I read Felix Faure, I was sure that they were speaking of the ass.
Editor’s note: During the electoral period the poster-program was really pasted up on the walls, and the day of the vote the satirical candidate really traversed Paris, from Montmartre to the Latin Quarter, cutting through the enthusiastic or scandalized crowd that loudly demonstrated. Boulevard du Palais, the ass was duly apprehended by the police, who set themselves to drag him to the pound. As the newspapers of the time reported, if there wasn’t a fight between the ass’s partisans and the representatives of order it’s thanks to the editor of La Feuille who cried out: “Don’t carry on; he’s now an official candidate.”
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1895.road | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1895</p>
<h3>A Road</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: La Revue Blanche. First Quarter 1895;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitch Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2010.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Foreigners everywhere!</p>
<p>There aren’t many fewer of them in Paris than in this London where I have vegetated in the vacation of an outlaw for the past three months.</p>
<p>Here, for example, you don’t become acclimated, not even superficially. You can’t overcome the natives’ absolute reserve; you don’t in any way penetrate the surrounding environment. You feel you are materially pushed to the side. Isolation weighs on you in the compact sadness of the fog. </p>
<p>You frequent the international clubs in vain: they’re disappointing. </p>
<p>The solidarity of certain revolutionary groups has the ostentation of charity: it is nothing but a distressing spectacle. And what is more, bad tempered suspicions fly, giving any enthusiasm a cold shower. Accusations are exchanged. Argument and invective win out over discussion.</p>
<p>Mistrust rules.</p>
<p>You have to return to your room and your solitude. But the little room facing onto the courtyard on the top floor of a gloomy house is cause for nostalgia.</p>
<p>You could count the number of exiles who enjoy a comfortable home. </p>
<p>The rest unconsciously drag their feet to the area around Whitechapel, down there behind the Tower of London. They wander the poverty-stricken alleys, coming out onto the main streets when the scurrying crowd is leaving the factories and docks and then rises in a tide it would be pleasant to drown in. </p>
<p>In the big cities you pass though it’s not the wealthy boulevards or the communal buildings that are the most interesting. You rarely halt during museum visits, since rare are the works of yore that still move us. Monuments only have the beauty of their harmony, and when this proud totality no longer exists they stand there like old stones that a historic memory doesn’t suffice to magnify. </p>
<p>But it is still fascinating to seek out the salient traits of a race by making contact with the soul of the people. And you go to the poor quarters, among the shops of the lower professions, in the streets where kids run barefoot, down streets where here and there the vast buildings – popular barracks – looming over leprous mounds, look like giant hives for the wretched. </p>
<p>The cells of these hives are narrow, the walls of these hovels are close to each other and have no fireplace. The compressed life of these dumps overflows onto the muddy sidewalks, sometimes livened by a ray of sunlight. When this happens the rushing about is like a commotion of an anthill. </p>
<p>Outdoors in the daylight there’s endlessly renewed labor. Pale women wash coarse linen. Potatoes are cooking on heaters whose fire is fanned by for the meal that will later be eaten, seated on wobbly chairs in front of the door. And these people all know each other, they call out to each other, moves, exist in a special lifestyle, with its characteristic usages, determined customs, an original spirit and morals whose brutal side evokes the primitiveness of a type. </p>
<p>In London I commonly felt hostility in the gazes that fall on you as if to forbid you from approaching: “Go away!”</p>
<p>Every Englishman strangely symbolizes his country.</p>
<p>These island dwellers are so many unapproachable islands where the sap of warm colored plants sleeps.</p>
<p>It’s so monotonous, it’s so neutral, it’s so gray... and I’ve had enough of it!</p>
<p>To leave!</p>
<p>It’s not that you delude yourself by dreaming of a fraternal reception under other skies. The outlaw knows that every asylum is uncertain. He knows that he will be as suspect in Geneva as he is in Brussels, in Spain as in Italy. But when you’re tired of sojourning it’s true that you don’t need a goal to set out on the road. </p>
<p>To leave, to go anywhere...</p>
<p>The voyage! To go, fleeing spleen. In the beginning, every place has its charms. Everything is beautiful for an hour at least.</p>
<p>Wisdom resides in not staying. </p>
<p>To pass, gleaning impressions, tasting new sensations and the savor of the earth. And then go back on the road, no doubt towards some unreachable fatherland. Vagabond, pilgrim, beggar on a voyage of exploration, of conquest. Unsatisfied, like Don Juan, but with a higher love. The dress you want to tear is the veil on the horizon. </p>
<p>The green, deep Thames carries so many adventurous desires along on its waters.</p>
<p>After Westminster, after the Tower, after the docks, beyond Blackwell it opens up. The ships glide towards the sea and their whistles are calls you hear with a start.</p>
<p>It was in Blackwell that one morning, without any real plan, I took the boat to Holland. If I would have had a few more shillings I would just as well have embarked to see Sweden or take a look at Calcutta. </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>The crossing from London to Rotterdam lasts a day and a night. The price isn’t very high, fifteen francs for third class. And for a short sea voyage the lowest class is not noticeably worse than first. You enjoy standing contemplating the battle of the waves, and on the open sea watching the sky sink into the waters.</p>
<p>All places are the same for this infinite spectacle, forward as well as aft. </p>
<p>In any case, third class is imposed on you when all you have is a few <em>louis</em>. This is my case, and my baggage is light and the velvet of my suit is rustic.</p>
<p>In third class you meet few people travelling for pleasure. There are nothing but poor people being repatriated, workers hoping to find work far from their city.</p>
<p>No tourists.</p>
<p>The latter want to be pampered and comfortable. Even the most modest among them. They prefer to wait and swell their savings so they can travel in second class. They embark with their wallets full, holding a roundtrip ticket and coupons for pre-arranged hotels. Not having to rub elbows with them is the immeasurable advantage of traveling third class.</p>
<p>The insipid chatter of mighty is nowhere more pitiful that in the majesty of the open sea.</p>
<p>It’s as if you’re being pursued...</p>
<p>You’re better off with the puerile talk of the passengers in steerage, of the penniless who are free of poses and aren’t afraid to express their na�ve sentiments. None of the irritating drone or the mannered recitation of triumphant commonplaces. They speak of hope and difficulties. And according to the weather and the hour, they give free rein to colorful language.</p>
<p>And it also happens that in third class chance gives birth to camaraderie. I went down the Thames in the amiable company of some needy troubadours who paid for their transport by singing the waltzes of their country.</p>
<p>Dark heads on supple gypsy bodies of gypsies with boisterous violins. They were returning from a tour around the Scottish countryside. </p>
<p>They were emigrating, fleeing winter. </p>
<p>Some of them spoke French and told me of their nomadic life. There was beauty and seductiveness in its carefree nature. They simply kept going forward, nothing but sun, fresh air, and music. </p>
<p>I wasn’t with them long enough.</p>
<p>Seated in the front of the ship, camped on valises while their violins rested in their cloth cases, we distractedly watched the sure-handed functioning of the tugboats and the whimsicality of the sailboats.</p>
<p>Fewer factories along the river, lagoons of red earth where sheep grazed on the sparse grass. The Thames widened again. It was Greenwich, and in the evening we felt the waves’ backwash. </p>
<p>We’d reached the sea.</p>
<p>I didn’t know the strange melody my companions saluted it with. But their instruments, their voices, and the sound of the water harmonized in the rhythm of a lullaby. </p>
<p>At night, having had an aperitif of salty air, we were hungry , and they sliced off large chunks of ham and fraternally circulated a whiskey gourd.</p>
<p>Upon arriving in Rotterdam we went the next day to an inn at the port. And while they improvised a concert, I went to see the old houses with their stepped roofs, squeaky clean on the canals of this vulgar Venice. </p>
<p>The musicians soon told me they were going to stay there for two weeks. That was more than I could do. Good wishes, farewell, handshakes.</p>
<p>Not faraway, at its mouth, the Rhine sent me the clean reflection of its old castles. The same pressing desire that had caused me to go down one river pushed me to go up another. The Thames, the Rhine! Isn’t it as if they were the prolongation of a seductive highway?</p>
<h3>*</h3>
<p>From the light steamship, sparkling under the sun, we see Patras at the foot of the mountain opposite Missolonghi.</p>
<p>On the small square near the port, not far from the market, the scurry of a Sunday. Brightly colored European garb, timeless fashions. Church services were ending. The women’s beautiful faces, lost under the edifices of their hats. Old Greeks in national costumes, the short pleated skirt of a female dancer. And the polychromatic, shimmering crowd, turning like a merry-go-round on the square with its three dusty palm trees. </p>
<p>On the terrace of a Moorish caf�, where anisette and “mastic” were served amidst saucers of olives on small, low tables, I piously gave myself over to my first hookah. </p>
<p>The light tobacco is slowly consumed in the red clay chimney under the scented coal, while in the carafe with its copper armature the water purrs its strange gluggings. The hookah stands hieratically and the long tube with its triangular amber tip unfurls like the rings of some sacred serpent. </p>
<p>It’s quite a change from rotgut whiskey.</p>
<p>And I have to say that from the decorative point of view there is an analogous difference between the men of that country and the inhabitants of ours. These Greeks show signs of their pedigree. The least turkey farmer has the inbred distinction that our swells seek in vain. With his delicate features, even the peasant preserves the aristocratic imprint that imperiously expresses the glorious line of his ancestors. </p>
<p>Their proud bearing and this whimsicality in attire explain the laisser-aller that you note in the carrying out of daily tasks. Commerce doesn’t enthuse them, and their agriculture is strange. In fields I saw potatoes and lilies mixed together in the barbarous furrows. </p>
<p>The train I took to Athens on a bright sunny morning stopped at every single station. </p>
<p>Constantly getting on, getting off, renewing themselves, there were peasants snacking on coarse bread and eating goat cheese to pass the short trip. Priests and longhaired beggars filling their pockets travel from here to the next village, along with poorly dressed soldiers singing strange nasal tunes.</p>
<p>Tourists in their sleeping cars have no idea how well you get to know a people through a prolonged stay in a vulgar passenger car, and to what extent it allows you to enter into contact with them.</p>
<p>A klepht <sup class="enote"><a href="#n1">[1]</a></sup> goes to the city to stock up on gunpowder. Seated in a corner of the wagon he seems to isolate himself, his pistol butts forming commas on his leather belt.</p>
<p>He has both the burnoose and the hardiness of a Kabyle.</p>
<p>You see more and more similarities between Arabs and Greeks.</p>
<p>The free mountain man – shepherd, hunter, perhaps “collector of indirect taxation from strolling rich men” – possesses the tranquil majesty of a qadi <sup class="enote"><a href="#n2">[2]</a></sup> after a razzia <sup class="enote"><a href="#n3">[3]</a></sup>.</p>
<p>Here, on the arid plains of Megara, where the houses are cabins of red clay, you would almost think you were under the scorched trees of a Saharan oasis.</p>
<p>The d�cor changes.</p>
<p>Having gone around a hill, Athens is in view. Standing over the styleless buildings of a provincial city geometrically sliced up by the layout of the streets, stands the rock of the Acropolis, the pedestal of the Parthenon. </p>
<p>The Parthenon stands out in the impeccability of its serene columns, and the Acropolis looks like the final entrenchment of a haughty past, disdainful of the modern effort eating away at its base. </p>
<p>It’s not that I exalt the vestiges of a vanished world. It’s that I tell myself that our world will leave nothing but refuse.</p>
<p>I am a stranger to the emotional respect of archeologists before antique stones<b>. </b>The stadium led me to reminisce. Illisus made me think less of the Argonauts than of college, of homework, of teachers.</p>
<p>College. The first prison. Academic Procrustean bed, a training for the barracks, a miniature society so ugly that it is the seed of Society.</p>
<p>And anyway, how can you isolate yourself, bring the past back to life, imagine warriors and chariots in these arenas alongside the tramway? How can you dream of paganism in these temples rising from archeological digs where Orthodox tapers have religiously daubed Holy Virgins as their vestals?</p>
<p>I don’t accompany the Englishmen who stroll with their Baedeker, swooning at the sight of shapeless blocks for the sole reason that this debris is catalogued in their guidebook. They don’t miss a single piece of debris, not a single mutilated drawing. They drag their hands over the mosaics in the baths:</p>
<p>Socrates passed here! </p>
<p>I don’t frequent clinical museums: venerable pieces of statues, arm of Venus, leg of Apollo, labeled torso: all of surgical Greece.</p>
<p>As much as I appreciate those primitive works in which the essential is harmonious, which are triumphant in the esthetic of synthesis, to the same extent the race of amateurs digging into piles of illustrious crumbs appears to me grotesque. Amphora handles, brick shards, poor crumbs under glass... The sight of a stone floating down a stream in its eternal vagabondage inspires more thoughts in me.</p>
<p>I had arrived in Athens in distress.</p>
<p>I hoped to find a letter at the post office. Nothing. I had to wait several days.</p>
<p>At the doors of restaurants I melancholically contemplated the little suckling pigs grilling in the most joyful poses and satisfied myself with small portions in suburban greasy spoons. </p>
<p>Did I get to eat the finest foods of Greek antiquity? In any case I remembered the philosophers who once slept on the temple porch. One evening I went to the Parthenon and only came down the next morning. I will say in support of the renown of this client-free asylum that for morning soup we enjoyed a unique feast: the awakening of a golden countryside at the feet of Mount Hymette. </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><a name="n1"><span class="info">1.</span></a> Greek bandit</p>
<p class="information"><a name="n2"><span class="info">2.</span></a> Muslim judge</p>
<p class="information"><a name="n3"><span class="info">3.</span></a> Raid</p>
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Zo d’Axa 1895
A Road
Source: La Revue Blanche. First Quarter 1895;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2010.
Foreigners everywhere!
There aren’t many fewer of them in Paris than in this London where I have vegetated in the vacation of an outlaw for the past three months.
Here, for example, you don’t become acclimated, not even superficially. You can’t overcome the natives’ absolute reserve; you don’t in any way penetrate the surrounding environment. You feel you are materially pushed to the side. Isolation weighs on you in the compact sadness of the fog.
You frequent the international clubs in vain: they’re disappointing.
The solidarity of certain revolutionary groups has the ostentation of charity: it is nothing but a distressing spectacle. And what is more, bad tempered suspicions fly, giving any enthusiasm a cold shower. Accusations are exchanged. Argument and invective win out over discussion.
Mistrust rules.
You have to return to your room and your solitude. But the little room facing onto the courtyard on the top floor of a gloomy house is cause for nostalgia.
You could count the number of exiles who enjoy a comfortable home.
The rest unconsciously drag their feet to the area around Whitechapel, down there behind the Tower of London. They wander the poverty-stricken alleys, coming out onto the main streets when the scurrying crowd is leaving the factories and docks and then rises in a tide it would be pleasant to drown in.
In the big cities you pass though it’s not the wealthy boulevards or the communal buildings that are the most interesting. You rarely halt during museum visits, since rare are the works of yore that still move us. Monuments only have the beauty of their harmony, and when this proud totality no longer exists they stand there like old stones that a historic memory doesn’t suffice to magnify.
But it is still fascinating to seek out the salient traits of a race by making contact with the soul of the people. And you go to the poor quarters, among the shops of the lower professions, in the streets where kids run barefoot, down streets where here and there the vast buildings – popular barracks – looming over leprous mounds, look like giant hives for the wretched.
The cells of these hives are narrow, the walls of these hovels are close to each other and have no fireplace. The compressed life of these dumps overflows onto the muddy sidewalks, sometimes livened by a ray of sunlight. When this happens the rushing about is like a commotion of an anthill.
Outdoors in the daylight there’s endlessly renewed labor. Pale women wash coarse linen. Potatoes are cooking on heaters whose fire is fanned by for the meal that will later be eaten, seated on wobbly chairs in front of the door. And these people all know each other, they call out to each other, moves, exist in a special lifestyle, with its characteristic usages, determined customs, an original spirit and morals whose brutal side evokes the primitiveness of a type.
In London I commonly felt hostility in the gazes that fall on you as if to forbid you from approaching: “Go away!”
Every Englishman strangely symbolizes his country.
These island dwellers are so many unapproachable islands where the sap of warm colored plants sleeps.
It’s so monotonous, it’s so neutral, it’s so gray... and I’ve had enough of it!
To leave!
It’s not that you delude yourself by dreaming of a fraternal reception under other skies. The outlaw knows that every asylum is uncertain. He knows that he will be as suspect in Geneva as he is in Brussels, in Spain as in Italy. But when you’re tired of sojourning it’s true that you don’t need a goal to set out on the road.
To leave, to go anywhere...
The voyage! To go, fleeing spleen. In the beginning, every place has its charms. Everything is beautiful for an hour at least.
Wisdom resides in not staying.
To pass, gleaning impressions, tasting new sensations and the savor of the earth. And then go back on the road, no doubt towards some unreachable fatherland. Vagabond, pilgrim, beggar on a voyage of exploration, of conquest. Unsatisfied, like Don Juan, but with a higher love. The dress you want to tear is the veil on the horizon.
The green, deep Thames carries so many adventurous desires along on its waters.
After Westminster, after the Tower, after the docks, beyond Blackwell it opens up. The ships glide towards the sea and their whistles are calls you hear with a start.
It was in Blackwell that one morning, without any real plan, I took the boat to Holland. If I would have had a few more shillings I would just as well have embarked to see Sweden or take a look at Calcutta.
*
The crossing from London to Rotterdam lasts a day and a night. The price isn’t very high, fifteen francs for third class. And for a short sea voyage the lowest class is not noticeably worse than first. You enjoy standing contemplating the battle of the waves, and on the open sea watching the sky sink into the waters.
All places are the same for this infinite spectacle, forward as well as aft.
In any case, third class is imposed on you when all you have is a few louis. This is my case, and my baggage is light and the velvet of my suit is rustic.
In third class you meet few people travelling for pleasure. There are nothing but poor people being repatriated, workers hoping to find work far from their city.
No tourists.
The latter want to be pampered and comfortable. Even the most modest among them. They prefer to wait and swell their savings so they can travel in second class. They embark with their wallets full, holding a roundtrip ticket and coupons for pre-arranged hotels. Not having to rub elbows with them is the immeasurable advantage of traveling third class.
The insipid chatter of mighty is nowhere more pitiful that in the majesty of the open sea.
It’s as if you’re being pursued...
You’re better off with the puerile talk of the passengers in steerage, of the penniless who are free of poses and aren’t afraid to express their na�ve sentiments. None of the irritating drone or the mannered recitation of triumphant commonplaces. They speak of hope and difficulties. And according to the weather and the hour, they give free rein to colorful language.
And it also happens that in third class chance gives birth to camaraderie. I went down the Thames in the amiable company of some needy troubadours who paid for their transport by singing the waltzes of their country.
Dark heads on supple gypsy bodies of gypsies with boisterous violins. They were returning from a tour around the Scottish countryside.
They were emigrating, fleeing winter.
Some of them spoke French and told me of their nomadic life. There was beauty and seductiveness in its carefree nature. They simply kept going forward, nothing but sun, fresh air, and music.
I wasn’t with them long enough.
Seated in the front of the ship, camped on valises while their violins rested in their cloth cases, we distractedly watched the sure-handed functioning of the tugboats and the whimsicality of the sailboats.
Fewer factories along the river, lagoons of red earth where sheep grazed on the sparse grass. The Thames widened again. It was Greenwich, and in the evening we felt the waves’ backwash.
We’d reached the sea.
I didn’t know the strange melody my companions saluted it with. But their instruments, their voices, and the sound of the water harmonized in the rhythm of a lullaby.
At night, having had an aperitif of salty air, we were hungry , and they sliced off large chunks of ham and fraternally circulated a whiskey gourd.
Upon arriving in Rotterdam we went the next day to an inn at the port. And while they improvised a concert, I went to see the old houses with their stepped roofs, squeaky clean on the canals of this vulgar Venice.
The musicians soon told me they were going to stay there for two weeks. That was more than I could do. Good wishes, farewell, handshakes.
Not faraway, at its mouth, the Rhine sent me the clean reflection of its old castles. The same pressing desire that had caused me to go down one river pushed me to go up another. The Thames, the Rhine! Isn’t it as if they were the prolongation of a seductive highway?
*
From the light steamship, sparkling under the sun, we see Patras at the foot of the mountain opposite Missolonghi.
On the small square near the port, not far from the market, the scurry of a Sunday. Brightly colored European garb, timeless fashions. Church services were ending. The women’s beautiful faces, lost under the edifices of their hats. Old Greeks in national costumes, the short pleated skirt of a female dancer. And the polychromatic, shimmering crowd, turning like a merry-go-round on the square with its three dusty palm trees.
On the terrace of a Moorish caf�, where anisette and “mastic” were served amidst saucers of olives on small, low tables, I piously gave myself over to my first hookah.
The light tobacco is slowly consumed in the red clay chimney under the scented coal, while in the carafe with its copper armature the water purrs its strange gluggings. The hookah stands hieratically and the long tube with its triangular amber tip unfurls like the rings of some sacred serpent.
It’s quite a change from rotgut whiskey.
And I have to say that from the decorative point of view there is an analogous difference between the men of that country and the inhabitants of ours. These Greeks show signs of their pedigree. The least turkey farmer has the inbred distinction that our swells seek in vain. With his delicate features, even the peasant preserves the aristocratic imprint that imperiously expresses the glorious line of his ancestors.
Their proud bearing and this whimsicality in attire explain the laisser-aller that you note in the carrying out of daily tasks. Commerce doesn’t enthuse them, and their agriculture is strange. In fields I saw potatoes and lilies mixed together in the barbarous furrows.
The train I took to Athens on a bright sunny morning stopped at every single station.
Constantly getting on, getting off, renewing themselves, there were peasants snacking on coarse bread and eating goat cheese to pass the short trip. Priests and longhaired beggars filling their pockets travel from here to the next village, along with poorly dressed soldiers singing strange nasal tunes.
Tourists in their sleeping cars have no idea how well you get to know a people through a prolonged stay in a vulgar passenger car, and to what extent it allows you to enter into contact with them.
A klepht [1] goes to the city to stock up on gunpowder. Seated in a corner of the wagon he seems to isolate himself, his pistol butts forming commas on his leather belt.
He has both the burnoose and the hardiness of a Kabyle.
You see more and more similarities between Arabs and Greeks.
The free mountain man – shepherd, hunter, perhaps “collector of indirect taxation from strolling rich men” – possesses the tranquil majesty of a qadi [2] after a razzia [3].
Here, on the arid plains of Megara, where the houses are cabins of red clay, you would almost think you were under the scorched trees of a Saharan oasis.
The d�cor changes.
Having gone around a hill, Athens is in view. Standing over the styleless buildings of a provincial city geometrically sliced up by the layout of the streets, stands the rock of the Acropolis, the pedestal of the Parthenon.
The Parthenon stands out in the impeccability of its serene columns, and the Acropolis looks like the final entrenchment of a haughty past, disdainful of the modern effort eating away at its base.
It’s not that I exalt the vestiges of a vanished world. It’s that I tell myself that our world will leave nothing but refuse.
I am a stranger to the emotional respect of archeologists before antique stones. The stadium led me to reminisce. Illisus made me think less of the Argonauts than of college, of homework, of teachers.
College. The first prison. Academic Procrustean bed, a training for the barracks, a miniature society so ugly that it is the seed of Society.
And anyway, how can you isolate yourself, bring the past back to life, imagine warriors and chariots in these arenas alongside the tramway? How can you dream of paganism in these temples rising from archeological digs where Orthodox tapers have religiously daubed Holy Virgins as their vestals?
I don’t accompany the Englishmen who stroll with their Baedeker, swooning at the sight of shapeless blocks for the sole reason that this debris is catalogued in their guidebook. They don’t miss a single piece of debris, not a single mutilated drawing. They drag their hands over the mosaics in the baths:
Socrates passed here!
I don’t frequent clinical museums: venerable pieces of statues, arm of Venus, leg of Apollo, labeled torso: all of surgical Greece.
As much as I appreciate those primitive works in which the essential is harmonious, which are triumphant in the esthetic of synthesis, to the same extent the race of amateurs digging into piles of illustrious crumbs appears to me grotesque. Amphora handles, brick shards, poor crumbs under glass... The sight of a stone floating down a stream in its eternal vagabondage inspires more thoughts in me.
I had arrived in Athens in distress.
I hoped to find a letter at the post office. Nothing. I had to wait several days.
At the doors of restaurants I melancholically contemplated the little suckling pigs grilling in the most joyful poses and satisfied myself with small portions in suburban greasy spoons.
Did I get to eat the finest foods of Greek antiquity? In any case I remembered the philosophers who once slept on the temple porch. One evening I went to the Parthenon and only came down the next morning. I will say in support of the renown of this client-free asylum that for morning soup we enjoyed a unique feast: the awakening of a golden countryside at the feet of Mount Hymette.
1. Greek bandit
2. Muslim judge
3. Raid
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<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1895</p>
<h3>Without a Goal</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Zo d’Axa, De Mazas a J�rusalem</em>. Chamuel, Paris, 1895;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>“Wait a minute then,” people say, “what is their goal?”</p>
<p>And the benevolent questioner suppresses a shrug upon noting that there are young men refractory to the usages, laws and demands of current society, and who nevertheless don’t affirm a program.</p>
<p>“What do they hope for?”</p>
<p>If at least these nay-sayers without a credo had the excuse of being fanatics. And no, faith no longer wants to be blind. They discuss, they stumble, they search. Pitiful tactic! These skirmishers of the social battle, these flagless ones are so aberrant as to not proclaim that they have the formula for the universal panacea, the only one! Mangin had more wit...</p>
<p>“And I ask you: what they seeking for themselves?”</p>
<p>Let’s not even talk about it. They don’t seek mandates, positions or delegations of any kind. They aren’t candidates. Then what? Don’t make me laugh. They are held in the appropriate disdain, a disdain mixed with commiseration.</p>
<p>I too suffer from that underestimation.</p>
<p>There are a few of us who feel that we can barely glimpse the future truths.</p>
<p>Nothing attaches us to the past, but the future hasn’t yet become clear.</p>
<p>And so we carry on, as misunderstood as foreigners, and it’s both here and there, it’s everywhere that we are foreigners.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because we don’t want to recite new catechisms, and we especially don’t want to pretend to believe in the infallibility of doctrines.</p>
<p>We would need to possess a vile form of complacency to admit a group of theories without reserve. And we are not that complacent. There has been no Revelation. We are keeping our enthusiasm virgin for a fervor. Will it come?</p>
<p>And even if the final term escapes us, we won’t skimp on our work. Our era is a transitional one, and the free man has his role to play.</p>
<p>Authoritarian society is odious to us, and we are preparing the experiment of a libertarian society.</p>
<p>Uncertain of its results, we nevertheless long for the attempt, the change.</p>
<p>Instead of stagnating in this aging world where the air is heavy, where the ruins crumble as if to bury us, we hasten to the final demolition.</p>
<p>To do so is to hasten a Renaissance. </p>
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Zo d’Axa 1895
Without a Goal
Source: Zo d’Axa, De Mazas a J�rusalem. Chamuel, Paris, 1895;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
“Wait a minute then,” people say, “what is their goal?”
And the benevolent questioner suppresses a shrug upon noting that there are young men refractory to the usages, laws and demands of current society, and who nevertheless don’t affirm a program.
“What do they hope for?”
If at least these nay-sayers without a credo had the excuse of being fanatics. And no, faith no longer wants to be blind. They discuss, they stumble, they search. Pitiful tactic! These skirmishers of the social battle, these flagless ones are so aberrant as to not proclaim that they have the formula for the universal panacea, the only one! Mangin had more wit...
“And I ask you: what they seeking for themselves?”
Let’s not even talk about it. They don’t seek mandates, positions or delegations of any kind. They aren’t candidates. Then what? Don’t make me laugh. They are held in the appropriate disdain, a disdain mixed with commiseration.
I too suffer from that underestimation.
There are a few of us who feel that we can barely glimpse the future truths.
Nothing attaches us to the past, but the future hasn’t yet become clear.
And so we carry on, as misunderstood as foreigners, and it’s both here and there, it’s everywhere that we are foreigners.
Why?
Because we don’t want to recite new catechisms, and we especially don’t want to pretend to believe in the infallibility of doctrines.
We would need to possess a vile form of complacency to admit a group of theories without reserve. And we are not that complacent. There has been no Revelation. We are keeping our enthusiasm virgin for a fervor. Will it come?
And even if the final term escapes us, we won’t skimp on our work. Our era is a transitional one, and the free man has his role to play.
Authoritarian society is odious to us, and we are preparing the experiment of a libertarian society.
Uncertain of its results, we nevertheless long for the attempt, the change.
Instead of stagnating in this aging world where the air is heavy, where the ruins crumble as if to bury us, we hasten to the final demolition.
To do so is to hasten a Renaissance.
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<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1892</p>
<h3>A Sure Means to Pluck Joy Immediately:<br>
Destroy Passionately</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>L’En-Dehors</em>;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">The Bourse, the Palace of Justice, and the Chamber of Deputies are buildings of which there has been much talk these past few days. These three buildings had been especially threatened by three young men who were fortunately stopped just in time.</p>
<p>Nothing can be hidden from <em>messieurs</em> journalists; they revealed the triple conspiracy, and their colleagues in the prefecture immediately apprehended the conspirators.</p>
<p>One again the men of the press and the police have earned the gratitude of that part of the population that doesn’t yet appreciate the picturesque charm of palaces in ruin, and the strange beauty of collapsed buildings.</p>
<p>The public won’t be sparing in its thanks. The services rendered will be recognized with solid cash. Civic virtues must be encouraged. Secret funds will dance, and the cotillion will be led by society’s saviors.</p>
<p>All the better! For it is edifying to note that if there are, among our adversaries, a small number of clever exploiters, the great mass of them is made up of imbeciles who push the limits of naivet� to the horizon.</p>
<p>How could these uncouth ones believe that the anarchists thought to blow up parliament at this moment?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>At a time when the deputies are on vacation!</b></p>
<p>You have to be lower than the low to think that revolutionaries would choose such a moment.</p>
<p>If only for the sake of common courtesy, we would wait for everyone’s return after the vacation season.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the other morning the storekeepers of Paris, while straightening up their goods, said to themselves, with their robust good sense:</p>
<p class="indentb">“There’s not the least chance of error. They want to undermine the foundation of our centuries-old monuments. We are confronted with a new plot.”</p>
<p>Come, come, brave storekeepers! You wander on the plains of the absurd. This conspiracy you speak of isn’t new. If it’s a question of tearing down the worm-eaten edifices of the society we hate, well, this has been in preparation for a long time.</p>
<p>This is what we have always plotted.</p>
<p>The temple of the Bourse – where the faithful Catholics and the fervent Jews hold their meetings for the rites and things of petty commerce – the temple of the Bourse must, in fact, disappear, and soon.</p>
<p>The money-handlers will in their turn be handled by the heavy caress of the crumbling stones.</p>
<p>Then the game of the Bourse will no longer be played; those skillful strokes that bring millions to corporations – whose reason for being is to speculate on wheat and to organize famines – will be no more.</p>
<p>Those who work behind the scenes: the brokers, all the bankers – gold’s priests – will sleep their last sleep beneath the ruins of their temple.</p>
<p>In this reposeful position the financiers will be pleasing to us.</p>
<p>As for the magistrates, it’s well known that they are never so handsome as when they march towards death.</p>
<p>It’s a real pleasure to see them.</p>
<p>History is full of striking sketches in honor of prosecutors and judges who the people, from time to time, made suffer. It must be admitted these men had a decorative agony.</p>
<p>And what a superb spectacle it would be: a commotion at the Palace of Justice. Quesnay constrained by a column that will have broken his vertebrae, trying hard to assume the look of a Beaurepaire struck down during the Crusades; Cabot, quoting Balzac with his dying breath; and Anquetil, next to the witty Croupi, crying out:</p>
<p class="indentb">“Nothing is lost...we lay below our positions.”</p>
<p>The scene would have such grandeur that the good souls that we are would sincerely feel bad for the defeated. We would no longer want to remember the ignominy of the red robes – dyed with the blood of the poor. We will forget that the judiciary was cowardly and cruel.</p>
<p>It will be the ineffable pardon.</p>
<p>And if Atthalin himself – this specialist in political trials – his head slightly cracked, were to ask to be taken to a rest home, we would gallantly accede to this sick man’s wish.</p>
<p>In truth, it isn’t indispensable to feel oneself an anarchist to be seduced by the coming demolitions. </p>
<p>All those who society flagellates in the very intimacy of their being instinctively want vengeance.</p>
<p>A thousand institutions of the old world are marked with a fatal sign.</p>
<p>Those affiliated with the plot have no need to hope for a distant better future; they know a sure means to pluck joy immediately:</p>
<p>Destroy passionately!</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
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Zo d’Axa 1892
A Sure Means to Pluck Joy Immediately:
Destroy Passionately
Source: L’En-Dehors;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
The Bourse, the Palace of Justice, and the Chamber of Deputies are buildings of which there has been much talk these past few days. These three buildings had been especially threatened by three young men who were fortunately stopped just in time.
Nothing can be hidden from messieurs journalists; they revealed the triple conspiracy, and their colleagues in the prefecture immediately apprehended the conspirators.
One again the men of the press and the police have earned the gratitude of that part of the population that doesn’t yet appreciate the picturesque charm of palaces in ruin, and the strange beauty of collapsed buildings.
The public won’t be sparing in its thanks. The services rendered will be recognized with solid cash. Civic virtues must be encouraged. Secret funds will dance, and the cotillion will be led by society’s saviors.
All the better! For it is edifying to note that if there are, among our adversaries, a small number of clever exploiters, the great mass of them is made up of imbeciles who push the limits of naivet� to the horizon.
How could these uncouth ones believe that the anarchists thought to blow up parliament at this moment?
At a time when the deputies are on vacation!
You have to be lower than the low to think that revolutionaries would choose such a moment.
If only for the sake of common courtesy, we would wait for everyone’s return after the vacation season.
Nevertheless, the other morning the storekeepers of Paris, while straightening up their goods, said to themselves, with their robust good sense:
“There’s not the least chance of error. They want to undermine the foundation of our centuries-old monuments. We are confronted with a new plot.”
Come, come, brave storekeepers! You wander on the plains of the absurd. This conspiracy you speak of isn’t new. If it’s a question of tearing down the worm-eaten edifices of the society we hate, well, this has been in preparation for a long time.
This is what we have always plotted.
The temple of the Bourse – where the faithful Catholics and the fervent Jews hold their meetings for the rites and things of petty commerce – the temple of the Bourse must, in fact, disappear, and soon.
The money-handlers will in their turn be handled by the heavy caress of the crumbling stones.
Then the game of the Bourse will no longer be played; those skillful strokes that bring millions to corporations – whose reason for being is to speculate on wheat and to organize famines – will be no more.
Those who work behind the scenes: the brokers, all the bankers – gold’s priests – will sleep their last sleep beneath the ruins of their temple.
In this reposeful position the financiers will be pleasing to us.
As for the magistrates, it’s well known that they are never so handsome as when they march towards death.
It’s a real pleasure to see them.
History is full of striking sketches in honor of prosecutors and judges who the people, from time to time, made suffer. It must be admitted these men had a decorative agony.
And what a superb spectacle it would be: a commotion at the Palace of Justice. Quesnay constrained by a column that will have broken his vertebrae, trying hard to assume the look of a Beaurepaire struck down during the Crusades; Cabot, quoting Balzac with his dying breath; and Anquetil, next to the witty Croupi, crying out:
“Nothing is lost...we lay below our positions.”
The scene would have such grandeur that the good souls that we are would sincerely feel bad for the defeated. We would no longer want to remember the ignominy of the red robes – dyed with the blood of the poor. We will forget that the judiciary was cowardly and cruel.
It will be the ineffable pardon.
And if Atthalin himself – this specialist in political trials – his head slightly cracked, were to ask to be taken to a rest home, we would gallantly accede to this sick man’s wish.
In truth, it isn’t indispensable to feel oneself an anarchist to be seduced by the coming demolitions.
All those who society flagellates in the very intimacy of their being instinctively want vengeance.
A thousand institutions of the old world are marked with a fatal sign.
Those affiliated with the plot have no need to hope for a distant better future; they know a sure means to pluck joy immediately:
Destroy passionately!
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1896.us | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1896</p>
<h1>Us</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: <em>L’En-Dehors</em> 1896;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitch Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">They talk of anarchy.</p>
<p>The dailies are roused. Comrades are interviewed and “L’�clair” among other things, says that there is a split among the anarchists.</p>
<p>It’s on the matter of theft that opinions are divided.</p>
<p>Some, it is said, want to build it into a principle; others irrevocably condemn it.</p>
<p>Well! It would be impossible for us to take a position on such a question. This theft could seem to us good and should be approved; that one we could find violently repugnant.</p>
<p>There is no Absolute.</p>
<p>If the facts lead us today to specify such and such a way to see and be, every day, in the lively articles of our expressive collaborators, our determination has been clearly affirmed:</p>
<p>Neither in a party or a group.</p>
<p>Outside.</p>
<p>We go our way — individuals, without the Faith that saves and blinds. Our disgust with society doesn’t engender in us any immutable convictions. We fight for the joy of the battle, and without any dream of a better future. What do we care about tomorrows that won’t come for centuries! What do we care about our grand-nephews! We are <em>outside</em> of all laws, of all rules, of all theories — even anarchist; it’s from this instant — right away — that we want to surrender to our pity, our outbursts, our gentleness, our rages, our instincts — with the pride of being ourselves. </p>
<p>Up till now nothing has revealed to us the radiant beyond. Nothing has given us a constant criterion. Life’s panorama changes without ceasing, and the facts appear to us under a different light depending on the hour. We will never react against the attractions of contradictory points of view. It is simple. The echo of vibrant sensations resounds here. And if impetuosity disorients by its unexpectedness, it’s because we speak of the things of our time as would primitive barbarians who have suddenly fallen among them.</p>
<p>Theft!</p>
<p>It would never occur to us to pose us judges. There are thieves who displease us : that’s certain; and that we’d attack : that’s probable. But that would be for their allure rather than for the brute fact.</p>
<p>We will not put in play eternal Truth — with a capital T.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of impression.</p>
<p>A hunchback could displease me more than an amiable recidivist.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
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Zo d’Axa 1896
Us
Source: L’En-Dehors 1896;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
They talk of anarchy.
The dailies are roused. Comrades are interviewed and “L’�clair” among other things, says that there is a split among the anarchists.
It’s on the matter of theft that opinions are divided.
Some, it is said, want to build it into a principle; others irrevocably condemn it.
Well! It would be impossible for us to take a position on such a question. This theft could seem to us good and should be approved; that one we could find violently repugnant.
There is no Absolute.
If the facts lead us today to specify such and such a way to see and be, every day, in the lively articles of our expressive collaborators, our determination has been clearly affirmed:
Neither in a party or a group.
Outside.
We go our way — individuals, without the Faith that saves and blinds. Our disgust with society doesn’t engender in us any immutable convictions. We fight for the joy of the battle, and without any dream of a better future. What do we care about tomorrows that won’t come for centuries! What do we care about our grand-nephews! We are outside of all laws, of all rules, of all theories — even anarchist; it’s from this instant — right away — that we want to surrender to our pity, our outbursts, our gentleness, our rages, our instincts — with the pride of being ourselves.
Up till now nothing has revealed to us the radiant beyond. Nothing has given us a constant criterion. Life’s panorama changes without ceasing, and the facts appear to us under a different light depending on the hour. We will never react against the attractions of contradictory points of view. It is simple. The echo of vibrant sensations resounds here. And if impetuosity disorients by its unexpectedness, it’s because we speak of the things of our time as would primitive barbarians who have suddenly fallen among them.
Theft!
It would never occur to us to pose us judges. There are thieves who displease us : that’s certain; and that we’d attack : that’s probable. But that would be for their allure rather than for the brute fact.
We will not put in play eternal Truth — with a capital T.
It’s a matter of impression.
A hunchback could displease me more than an amiable recidivist.
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1896.dog | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1896</p>
<h1>The Case of the Dog</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: <em>L’En-Dehors</em>, 1896;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>It almost happened that the Commissariat of Clichy – this police office that has served as the backdrop for legendary cases of the third degree – met its end in an apotheosis of dynamite.</p>
<p>Two cute little bombs of red copper had been placed in a corridor leading to the Superintendent’s office; the fuses had been lit ... everything was going along beautifully, from the special point of view of the depositor arguing for the purification of the place, when a dog, the dog of the dog of a Superintendent, noticed the <em>al giorno</em> lighting and began vociferating. It was thus that the alarm was sounded. He barked; he barked and someone came in enough time to extinguish the threatening illumination.</p>
<p>It should be noted that, since the geese of the Capitol, there have always been animals that get involved in things that don’t concern them. The vile beasts – this is an image – always cry out: “Watch out!” at the least tumult. </p>
<p>In all fairness, I’d like to specify that the dog’s case can be pleaded: whatever the dishonorable function of his master, this faithful quadruped seeks to protect him. One should appreciate a devotion so total, and not cast solemn blame on the puppy who prevented things from totally blowing up.</p>
<p>In any case, it’s optional to fear that that the people of the commissariat of Clichy – those worthy representatives of authority who, on May 1 and July 14, conquered a bloody reputation as executioners in the suburbs- only stepped back in order to be better blown up ...</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
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Zo d’Axa 1896
The Case of the Dog
Source: L’En-Dehors, 1896;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
It almost happened that the Commissariat of Clichy – this police office that has served as the backdrop for legendary cases of the third degree – met its end in an apotheosis of dynamite.
Two cute little bombs of red copper had been placed in a corridor leading to the Superintendent’s office; the fuses had been lit ... everything was going along beautifully, from the special point of view of the depositor arguing for the purification of the place, when a dog, the dog of the dog of a Superintendent, noticed the al giorno lighting and began vociferating. It was thus that the alarm was sounded. He barked; he barked and someone came in enough time to extinguish the threatening illumination.
It should be noted that, since the geese of the Capitol, there have always been animals that get involved in things that don’t concern them. The vile beasts – this is an image – always cry out: “Watch out!” at the least tumult.
In all fairness, I’d like to specify that the dog’s case can be pleaded: whatever the dishonorable function of his master, this faithful quadruped seeks to protect him. One should appreciate a devotion so total, and not cast solemn blame on the puppy who prevented things from totally blowing up.
In any case, it’s optional to fear that that the people of the commissariat of Clichy – those worthy representatives of authority who, on May 1 and July 14, conquered a bloody reputation as executioners in the suburbs- only stepped back in order to be better blown up ...
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1898.honest-worker | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1898 </p>
<h3>The Honest Worker</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: La Feuille, No. 24, 1898;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitch Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2007.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>It’s the amazing fattening of the mass of the exploited that creates the increasing and logical ambition of the exploiters. </p>
<p>The kings of the mines, of the coalfields, and of gold would be wrong to worry. Their serfs’ resignation consecrates their authority. They no longer needs to claim that their power is be based on divine right, that decorative joke: their sovereignty is legitimated by popular consent. A workers’ plebiscite, consisting of patriotic adherence, declamatory platitudes or silent acquiescence assures the boss’s hold and the bourgeoisie’s reign. </p>
<p>In this work we can recognize the artisan. </p>
<p>Be it in the mine or the factory, the Honest Worker, that sheep, has given the herd the mange. </p>
<p>The ideal of the supervisor has perverted the instincts of the people. A sports coat on Sunday, talking politics, voting...these are the hopes that take the place of everything. Odious daily labor awakens neither hatred nor rancor. The great party of the workers hates the lazybones who badly earns the money granted him by the boss. </p>
<p>Their heart belongs to their job.</p>
<p>They’re proud of their calloused hands. </p>
<p>However deformed the fingers, the yoke has done worse to the brain: the bumps of resignation, of cowardice, of respect have grown under the leather with the rubbing of the harness<b>.</b> Vain old workers wave their certificates: forty years in the same place! We hear them telling about this as they beg for bread in the courtyards.</p>
<p>“Have pity, ladies and gentlemen, on a sick old man, a brave worker, a good Frenchman, a former non-commissioned officer who fought in the war...Have pity, ladies and gentlemen.</p>
<p>It is cold: the windows remain closed. The old man doesn’t understand.</p>
<p>Teach the people! What else is needed? His poverty has taught him nothing. As long as there are rich and poor the latter will hitch themselves up so as to fill the service demanded. The worker’s neck is used to the harness. When still young and strong they are the only domestic beasts to not run wild in their shafts. </p>
<p>The proletarian’s special honor consists in accepting all those lies in whose name he is condemned to forced labor: duty, fatherland, etc. He accepts, hoping that by doing this he will raise himself into the bourgeois class. The victim makes himself an accomplice. The unfortunate talks of the flag, beats his chest, take of his cap and spits in the air:</p>
<p>“I’m an honest worker.”</p>
<p>And it falls right back onto his face.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
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</body> |
Zo d’Axa 1898
The Honest Worker
Source: La Feuille, No. 24, 1898;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2007.
It’s the amazing fattening of the mass of the exploited that creates the increasing and logical ambition of the exploiters.
The kings of the mines, of the coalfields, and of gold would be wrong to worry. Their serfs’ resignation consecrates their authority. They no longer needs to claim that their power is be based on divine right, that decorative joke: their sovereignty is legitimated by popular consent. A workers’ plebiscite, consisting of patriotic adherence, declamatory platitudes or silent acquiescence assures the boss’s hold and the bourgeoisie’s reign.
In this work we can recognize the artisan.
Be it in the mine or the factory, the Honest Worker, that sheep, has given the herd the mange.
The ideal of the supervisor has perverted the instincts of the people. A sports coat on Sunday, talking politics, voting...these are the hopes that take the place of everything. Odious daily labor awakens neither hatred nor rancor. The great party of the workers hates the lazybones who badly earns the money granted him by the boss.
Their heart belongs to their job.
They’re proud of their calloused hands.
However deformed the fingers, the yoke has done worse to the brain: the bumps of resignation, of cowardice, of respect have grown under the leather with the rubbing of the harness. Vain old workers wave their certificates: forty years in the same place! We hear them telling about this as they beg for bread in the courtyards.
“Have pity, ladies and gentlemen, on a sick old man, a brave worker, a good Frenchman, a former non-commissioned officer who fought in the war...Have pity, ladies and gentlemen.
It is cold: the windows remain closed. The old man doesn’t understand.
Teach the people! What else is needed? His poverty has taught him nothing. As long as there are rich and poor the latter will hitch themselves up so as to fill the service demanded. The worker’s neck is used to the harness. When still young and strong they are the only domestic beasts to not run wild in their shafts.
The proletarian’s special honor consists in accepting all those lies in whose name he is condemned to forced labor: duty, fatherland, etc. He accepts, hoping that by doing this he will raise himself into the bourgeois class. The victim makes himself an accomplice. The unfortunate talks of the flag, beats his chest, take of his cap and spits in the air:
“I’m an honest worker.”
And it falls right back onto his face.
Zo d'Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1895.in-wings | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1895 </p>
<h3>In the Wings</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source</span>: De Mazas � Jerusalem, Paris 1895;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The police roundup of April, [18]92 will remain historic.</p>
<p>It is the earliest among the cynical attacks on freedom of thought in modern times.</p>
<p>We now know the behind the scenes story of the affair. </p>
<p>The government wanted to take advantage of the emotions stirred up by the explosions at the Labau barracks and on the Rue de Clichy in order to include all revolutionary militants in one gigantic political trial. The ministry and its docile procurators claimed that certain opinions constituted complicity: The writer explaining that the fact that there are those who are disinherited fatally leads to theft became a criminal himself; a thinker explaining the reasons behind propaganda of the deed became the secret associates of the lighters of the tragic fuses. </p>
<p>The philosopher no longer has the right to preach indulgence and to conceive facts without vertigo.</p>
<p>Society rid itself of those of its members who are so corrupted as to want it to be better than it is.</p>
<p>Ruling reaction could finally enjoy in peace and lets its remorse sleep- or at the very least its doubts, which will no longer be kept awake by the words of party-poopers.</p>
<p>The moment was carefully chosen.</p>
<p>The dynamite attacks terrorized the capitalist bourgeoisie, more frightened perhaps for its real estate than for itself. It was the eve of the threatening demonstrations of May. They were afraid. And the cowardly crowd would surely have applauded every summary execution.</p>
<p>The roundups took place.</p>
<p>Particularly aimed at the anarchists, these arrests also fell on men so independent as to reject every label, even that of anarchist. And so it was that I was apprehended, though I’ve never set foot in a public meeting or frequented any groups. Though I wasn’t part of any sect or school, was ON THE OUTSIDE, i.e., isolated, a seeker of the beyond, a shaker-up of ideas, that was enough. If lack of respect was truly combative, that sufficed. All agitation had to cease. One evil-doer the less: I was arrested.</p>
<p>Perfidiously conducted, the affair was cloaked in a legal appearance. The code is so elastic that they applied to us article 265 and those that follow it, aimed at associations of malefactors.</p>
<p>“Art. 266. This crime exists by the sole fact of the organization of bands or the correspondence between them and their chiefs or commandants, or of conventions tending to account for or distribute or share the products of crime.”</p>
<p>Now do we understand the insinuations of the judge who spoke about a “list of addresses” and “the sending of money?”</p>
<p>“Art. 267. Even if this crime is not accompanied by any others the authors, directors of the association and the commanders in chief or the subaltern of these bands shall be punished with forced labor.”</p>
<p>The delightful prospect of the penal colony opened before us.</p>
<p>It is obvious that we couldn’t count on the impartiality of the judges. The orders had been given. Even if we could prove not only that we weren’t cut-purses, but that no organization among us existed – not even from a political point of view – the tribunals would strike us without a care.</p>
<p>One point alone was put in doubt. In order for the operation to succeed it was indispensable that the other nations put their refractory nationals through an analogous trial.</p>
<p>But what the French Republic premeditated, Holland, England and Germany were too ashamed to do. The old monarchies didn’t cede to the incitement of a young republic that dreamed of reconstituting the International in reverse. There were unsuccessful negotiations. The hunt of the free man wasn’t decreed throughout Europe. Our fallen democracy felt that it couldn’t do worse than the worst autocrats.</p>
<p>The opportunist government hesitated, became embarrassed, like a poorly hardened rogue – and didn’t dare push things to the bitter end.</p>
<p>That day it said to itself: game postponed!</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="../index.htm">Zo d’Axa Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Zo d’Axa 1895
In the Wings
Source: De Mazas � Jerusalem, Paris 1895;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
The police roundup of April, [18]92 will remain historic.
It is the earliest among the cynical attacks on freedom of thought in modern times.
We now know the behind the scenes story of the affair.
The government wanted to take advantage of the emotions stirred up by the explosions at the Labau barracks and on the Rue de Clichy in order to include all revolutionary militants in one gigantic political trial. The ministry and its docile procurators claimed that certain opinions constituted complicity: The writer explaining that the fact that there are those who are disinherited fatally leads to theft became a criminal himself; a thinker explaining the reasons behind propaganda of the deed became the secret associates of the lighters of the tragic fuses.
The philosopher no longer has the right to preach indulgence and to conceive facts without vertigo.
Society rid itself of those of its members who are so corrupted as to want it to be better than it is.
Ruling reaction could finally enjoy in peace and lets its remorse sleep- or at the very least its doubts, which will no longer be kept awake by the words of party-poopers.
The moment was carefully chosen.
The dynamite attacks terrorized the capitalist bourgeoisie, more frightened perhaps for its real estate than for itself. It was the eve of the threatening demonstrations of May. They were afraid. And the cowardly crowd would surely have applauded every summary execution.
The roundups took place.
Particularly aimed at the anarchists, these arrests also fell on men so independent as to reject every label, even that of anarchist. And so it was that I was apprehended, though I’ve never set foot in a public meeting or frequented any groups. Though I wasn’t part of any sect or school, was ON THE OUTSIDE, i.e., isolated, a seeker of the beyond, a shaker-up of ideas, that was enough. If lack of respect was truly combative, that sufficed. All agitation had to cease. One evil-doer the less: I was arrested.
Perfidiously conducted, the affair was cloaked in a legal appearance. The code is so elastic that they applied to us article 265 and those that follow it, aimed at associations of malefactors.
“Art. 266. This crime exists by the sole fact of the organization of bands or the correspondence between them and their chiefs or commandants, or of conventions tending to account for or distribute or share the products of crime.”
Now do we understand the insinuations of the judge who spoke about a “list of addresses” and “the sending of money?”
“Art. 267. Even if this crime is not accompanied by any others the authors, directors of the association and the commanders in chief or the subaltern of these bands shall be punished with forced labor.”
The delightful prospect of the penal colony opened before us.
It is obvious that we couldn’t count on the impartiality of the judges. The orders had been given. Even if we could prove not only that we weren’t cut-purses, but that no organization among us existed – not even from a political point of view – the tribunals would strike us without a care.
One point alone was put in doubt. In order for the operation to succeed it was indispensable that the other nations put their refractory nationals through an analogous trial.
But what the French Republic premeditated, Holland, England and Germany were too ashamed to do. The old monarchies didn’t cede to the incitement of a young republic that dreamed of reconstituting the International in reverse. There were unsuccessful negotiations. The hunt of the free man wasn’t decreed throughout Europe. Our fallen democracy felt that it couldn’t do worse than the worst autocrats.
The opportunist government hesitated, became embarrassed, like a poorly hardened rogue – and didn’t dare push things to the bitter end.
That day it said to itself: game postponed!
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.unknown.any-opportunity | <body>
<p class="title">
Zo d'Axa Archive
</p>
<hr class="base" size="1">
<h3>
Any Opportunity
</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Written:</span> Unknown.
<br>
<span class="info">Source:</span> Text from RevoltLib.com.
<br>
<span class="info">Transcription/Markup:</span> Andy Carloff
<br>
<span class="info">Online Source:</span> <a href="http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10904">RevoltLib.com</a>; 2021
</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>
When you go your own way, alone, you take any opportunity to delight in saying what the average person wouldn’t dare. Concern for edifying neighbors or gossips is over. No more morality! No more games! Enough of partisan-traps...To the argument of the masses, to the catechisms of the crowds, to all of the community’s national interests: to these are opposed the Individual’s personal interests.
</p>
<p>
Which interests?
</p>
<p>
To each their own. The isolated one is careful not to preach a common rule. The defiant makes no place for a doctrine. Think for yourself! What is your situation? Your age? Your desire? Your strength? Do you need the crutches religion offers you? If so, go back to your church, from now on by your own choice, validated. Do you prefer, still a disciple, the sociologists’ dream? Fine then, tell us your plans for the year two thousand. Or rather, are you feeling insolent? So you want to live? Are you ready? Well quit waiting on somebody, go where your hatred, your joys, carry you—the joys of complete openness, of dangers and of dignity.
</p>
<p>
One marches, acts, aims, because of a combative instinct, a nostalgic sleep makes you prefer the fight. Fully aware of the limits of the code, you poach the big game: officers and judges, deer and carnivores; you flush out the herds of politicians from the forests of Bondy; you’re happy to grab a ravaging financier by the collar; at all the intersections; you release the domesticated tribe of authors and writers, furry and feathered alike, defilers of ideas, terrors of the press and the police.
</p>
<p>
With the quarrels between sects, races, and parties, every day, by the chance of events and shots to be taken, it becomes clear: <em>Dreyfus Affair!<a>[1]</a> Read all about it!</em> or the way of describing the Magistra-ture and the Army as they deserve it.... Let us celebrate the ermine and the madder! The conscious destroyers don’t specialize: in turns, according to the situation, they point right or they point left.
</p>
<p>
At the same time, <em>l’esprit de corps</em> will produce great results: the magistrates, the military, the suits, the liveries, all of the servants of Society badmouth the old madam. An office full of rumors goes sour. The robes,<a>[2]</a> rabbis and curés, the officiators, the officials and the officers, the accomplices in the antechamber juggle objects of worship. They scandalize the believers. Doubt will unstitch their eyelids. In a few months the child-people will be shocked to find that they hid “things” from them... Now confidence is dead: the bad shepherds killed it. Near the smashed flagpole, the scales of justice lie there like scrap iron next to the wood pile...
</p>
<p>
It’s in vain that, with the crisis over, the junk traders of the Fatherland try to fix anything. This practice will become increasingly rare. The farce of a France signifying, among nations, prog-ress or generosity won’t fool too many onlookers: never has there been a tribe more persistent in keeping mankind at the whipping post.
</p>
<p>
Moreover, it’s only with contradiction that one buys the legend of Dreyfusism any more—such a spectacle of real Truth. The nude woman before the mirror sees far too little in her glass. She sings the praises of legality, forgetting that they legally shoot conscripts convicted of a simple gesture; and that also legally, in our streets, on winter nights, men and little children die in front of closed doors. Down with these closed doors—the worst! As for these necessary revisions, the beautiful lady won’t say a word about them.
</p>
<p>
Always the big words: law, duty, honor, public safety—ring out in every clan, under oppos-ing banners. They use sensationalist words. It’s military music, a church song, the various couplets of a public gathering. Those men who don’t get enlisted turn their nose up at sensationalist words.Not serving in the camps, they save their passionate loyalty in the fight for the right word and the precise blow. One leadership can’t count on them any more than another. They despise diplomacy, tactics, hesitations. They are suspect: in every camp, naturally, they are viewed as loose cannons. They leave the soldiers’ pay, the stripes, and the new lies to others.
</p>
<p>
It’s a lie to continue to promise, after so many promises. The prophets and the pontiffs, the preachers, and the utopians hoodwink us and show us, off in the distance, an era of love. We’ll be dead: the promised land is the one in which we will rot. What reason, what motives are there to hypnotize ourselves? No more mirages! We want—and by all possible means, disrespectful by na-ture of laws and prejudices, we want—immediately—to conquer all the fruits and flowers that life has to offer. If later a revolution results from scattered efforts—so much the better! That would be good. Impatient, we will have preceded it.
</p>
<p>
So continue to declaim, good sirs, if it pleases you. And you, professionals, if it pleases you, cry over Society. But another grown-up, France, it seems, is also sick. Let’s not doubt it, it’s serious. Two abstractions are better than one. So go on then! Into the face of peril! Conspiracy here... cor-ruption there! Let’s hunt down the jew “who is bringing us ruin and dishonoring us.” Let’s expel the congregationalists. Flamidien! Dreyfus! What’s next? For the <em>République!</em> For Society! Long live Loubet! yada, yada, Panamada.<a>[3]</a>
</p>
<p>
The more French the merrier.
</p>
<p>
I say that in fact a fifteen year old boy who recruitment officers, hall monitors, and headmas-ters haven’t yet stupefied would be more upright than any voter. It’s all so clear. What’s happening? Nothing. A toppling society, a people drowning itself... this is of no importance:
</p>
<p>
The individual will reach the riverbank.
</p>
<p>
Standing on the solid ground that his efforts can achieve, the Escapee from social drudger-ies no longer falls into old dreams. The experiments have all been done. We’ve all seen that, barely freed from the kneeling folly of the priest, men accept the duperies of patriotism en bloc. In the name of new principles, they take that age-old yoke right back. Slavery was secularized, the yoke painted in three colors. No matter the dogma! In truth, it’s just a government procedure. They slightly adjust it to the people’s taste. But the colors quickly fade. They speak of humanity, of one family... Watch out! In honor of this family, they prepare to rig it again! And this individual I refer to, the one who knows, the one who thinks, the Escapee of social drudgeries, the one who no longer boards the bedecked ships of religion and fatherland, will not heedlessly disembark on the humanitarian rafts of the Medusa.<a>[4]</a>
</p>
<p>
Have you understood, citizen?
</p>
<p>
The notion of revolt, in this way, is not just some mania, a new faith meant to again trump your appetites and desires. It’s the individual energy to defend oneself against the masses. It’s the willful arrogance to live. It’s the art of going on one’s own—
</p>
<p>
<em>Endehors</em>—you only have to dare!
</p>
<p>
At every opportunity, in these <em>feuilles</em>, such a way of feeling and being emerges. The sparking events, clashing like flint, shed light on facets of the question along the way. And lighthearted or serious, these <em>feuilles</em> follow, cohere, and complement, in accordance with the formal scenario of Life, ever-vivid.
</p>
<p><a>[1]</a> Tr—The Dreyfus Affair is discussed in introductory materials elsewhere in this volume. D’axa makes frequent references to (and word play on) various scandals and events of the time.
</p>
<p><a>[2]</a> Tr—Robins is derogatory slang for the magistrature, meaning ‘robed ones.
</p>
<p><a>[3]</a> Tr—D’Axa uses a bit of wordplay here; in place of the phrase <em>et patati et patata</em>, meaning ‘etc.,’ he writes <em>et patati et Panama</em>. This is a reference to the Panama scandals of the 1890s, in which the French government wasted nearly a billion francs. Newspapers used similar nonsensical wordplay during the scandals.
</p>
<p><a>[4]</a> Tr—“The Raft of the Medusa” is a famous painting depicting the tragic wreck of the <em>Méduse</em>. It became a symbol of French Romanticism, dramatically featuring desperate passengers crashing onto a rocky shore atop a dilapidated raft. Leading the boat is a man waving a handkerchief, suggesting a flag.
</p>
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<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
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</p>
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Zo d'Axa Archive
Any Opportunity
Written: Unknown.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
When you go your own way, alone, you take any opportunity to delight in saying what the average person wouldn’t dare. Concern for edifying neighbors or gossips is over. No more morality! No more games! Enough of partisan-traps...To the argument of the masses, to the catechisms of the crowds, to all of the community’s national interests: to these are opposed the Individual’s personal interests.
Which interests?
To each their own. The isolated one is careful not to preach a common rule. The defiant makes no place for a doctrine. Think for yourself! What is your situation? Your age? Your desire? Your strength? Do you need the crutches religion offers you? If so, go back to your church, from now on by your own choice, validated. Do you prefer, still a disciple, the sociologists’ dream? Fine then, tell us your plans for the year two thousand. Or rather, are you feeling insolent? So you want to live? Are you ready? Well quit waiting on somebody, go where your hatred, your joys, carry you—the joys of complete openness, of dangers and of dignity.
One marches, acts, aims, because of a combative instinct, a nostalgic sleep makes you prefer the fight. Fully aware of the limits of the code, you poach the big game: officers and judges, deer and carnivores; you flush out the herds of politicians from the forests of Bondy; you’re happy to grab a ravaging financier by the collar; at all the intersections; you release the domesticated tribe of authors and writers, furry and feathered alike, defilers of ideas, terrors of the press and the police.
With the quarrels between sects, races, and parties, every day, by the chance of events and shots to be taken, it becomes clear: Dreyfus Affair![1] Read all about it! or the way of describing the Magistra-ture and the Army as they deserve it.... Let us celebrate the ermine and the madder! The conscious destroyers don’t specialize: in turns, according to the situation, they point right or they point left.
At the same time, l’esprit de corps will produce great results: the magistrates, the military, the suits, the liveries, all of the servants of Society badmouth the old madam. An office full of rumors goes sour. The robes,[2] rabbis and curés, the officiators, the officials and the officers, the accomplices in the antechamber juggle objects of worship. They scandalize the believers. Doubt will unstitch their eyelids. In a few months the child-people will be shocked to find that they hid “things” from them... Now confidence is dead: the bad shepherds killed it. Near the smashed flagpole, the scales of justice lie there like scrap iron next to the wood pile...
It’s in vain that, with the crisis over, the junk traders of the Fatherland try to fix anything. This practice will become increasingly rare. The farce of a France signifying, among nations, prog-ress or generosity won’t fool too many onlookers: never has there been a tribe more persistent in keeping mankind at the whipping post.
Moreover, it’s only with contradiction that one buys the legend of Dreyfusism any more—such a spectacle of real Truth. The nude woman before the mirror sees far too little in her glass. She sings the praises of legality, forgetting that they legally shoot conscripts convicted of a simple gesture; and that also legally, in our streets, on winter nights, men and little children die in front of closed doors. Down with these closed doors—the worst! As for these necessary revisions, the beautiful lady won’t say a word about them.
Always the big words: law, duty, honor, public safety—ring out in every clan, under oppos-ing banners. They use sensationalist words. It’s military music, a church song, the various couplets of a public gathering. Those men who don’t get enlisted turn their nose up at sensationalist words.Not serving in the camps, they save their passionate loyalty in the fight for the right word and the precise blow. One leadership can’t count on them any more than another. They despise diplomacy, tactics, hesitations. They are suspect: in every camp, naturally, they are viewed as loose cannons. They leave the soldiers’ pay, the stripes, and the new lies to others.
It’s a lie to continue to promise, after so many promises. The prophets and the pontiffs, the preachers, and the utopians hoodwink us and show us, off in the distance, an era of love. We’ll be dead: the promised land is the one in which we will rot. What reason, what motives are there to hypnotize ourselves? No more mirages! We want—and by all possible means, disrespectful by na-ture of laws and prejudices, we want—immediately—to conquer all the fruits and flowers that life has to offer. If later a revolution results from scattered efforts—so much the better! That would be good. Impatient, we will have preceded it.
So continue to declaim, good sirs, if it pleases you. And you, professionals, if it pleases you, cry over Society. But another grown-up, France, it seems, is also sick. Let’s not doubt it, it’s serious. Two abstractions are better than one. So go on then! Into the face of peril! Conspiracy here... cor-ruption there! Let’s hunt down the jew “who is bringing us ruin and dishonoring us.” Let’s expel the congregationalists. Flamidien! Dreyfus! What’s next? For the République! For Society! Long live Loubet! yada, yada, Panamada.[3]
The more French the merrier.
I say that in fact a fifteen year old boy who recruitment officers, hall monitors, and headmas-ters haven’t yet stupefied would be more upright than any voter. It’s all so clear. What’s happening? Nothing. A toppling society, a people drowning itself... this is of no importance:
The individual will reach the riverbank.
Standing on the solid ground that his efforts can achieve, the Escapee from social drudger-ies no longer falls into old dreams. The experiments have all been done. We’ve all seen that, barely freed from the kneeling folly of the priest, men accept the duperies of patriotism en bloc. In the name of new principles, they take that age-old yoke right back. Slavery was secularized, the yoke painted in three colors. No matter the dogma! In truth, it’s just a government procedure. They slightly adjust it to the people’s taste. But the colors quickly fade. They speak of humanity, of one family... Watch out! In honor of this family, they prepare to rig it again! And this individual I refer to, the one who knows, the one who thinks, the Escapee of social drudgeries, the one who no longer boards the bedecked ships of religion and fatherland, will not heedlessly disembark on the humanitarian rafts of the Medusa.[4]
Have you understood, citizen?
The notion of revolt, in this way, is not just some mania, a new faith meant to again trump your appetites and desires. It’s the individual energy to defend oneself against the masses. It’s the willful arrogance to live. It’s the art of going on one’s own—
Endehors—you only have to dare!
At every opportunity, in these feuilles, such a way of feeling and being emerges. The sparking events, clashing like flint, shed light on facets of the question along the way. And lighthearted or serious, these feuilles follow, cohere, and complement, in accordance with the formal scenario of Life, ever-vivid.
[1] Tr—The Dreyfus Affair is discussed in introductory materials elsewhere in this volume. D’axa makes frequent references to (and word play on) various scandals and events of the time.
[2] Tr—Robins is derogatory slang for the magistrature, meaning ‘robed ones.
[3] Tr—D’Axa uses a bit of wordplay here; in place of the phrase et patati et patata, meaning ‘etc.,’ he writes et patati et Panama. This is a reference to the Panama scandals of the 1890s, in which the French government wasted nearly a billion francs. Newspapers used similar nonsensical wordplay during the scandals.
[4] Tr—“The Raft of the Medusa” is a famous painting depicting the tragic wreck of the Méduse. It became a symbol of French Romanticism, dramatically featuring desperate passengers crashing onto a rocky shore atop a dilapidated raft. Leading the boat is a man waving a handkerchief, suggesting a flag.
Zo d'Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1898.suckers | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1898</p>
<h1>You Are Nothing But Suckers</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Source</span>: <em>La Feuille</em>;<br>
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitchell Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.</p>
<p class="information">The following is a document from <em>La Feuille’s</em> campaign to run a ass named Worthless for the Chamber of Deputies</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">VOTERS:</p>
<p class="fst">In presenting myself for your votes, I owe you a few words. Here they are:</p>
<p class="indentb">I come from an old French family – I dare to say – and am a pedigreed ass, anass in the good sense of the word: four paws and hair all over. </p>
<p class="indentb">My name is Worthless, which is what my competitors in this race are.</p>
<p class="indentb">I am white, as are many of the votes that have been cast and not counted, but which will now belong to me.</p>
<p class="indentb">My election is assured.</p>
<p class="indentb">You will understand that I speak frankly.</p>
<p class="fst">CITIZENS:</p>
<p class="fst">You are being fooled. It is said that the last Chamber, <em>made up of imbeciles and thieves, </em>didn’t represent the majority of voters. This is false.</p>
<p>On the contrary, a Chamber made up of deputies who are ninnies and thieves perfectly represents the voters you are. Don’t protest; a nation has the delegates it deserves.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Why did you elect them?</em></p>
<p>Amongst yourselves you don’t hesitate to say that the more things change the more they remain the same; that your representatives mock you and think only of their own interests, of vainglory, or of money.</p>
<p>So why would you elect them again tomorrow?</p>
<p>You know full well that the whole lot of those you would send to the legislature would sell their votes for a check, and would sell jobs, functions and tobacco offices.</p>
<p>But who are the tobacco offices, positions and sinecures for if not the Electoral Committees that are also paid?</p>
<p>The shepherds of the Committees are less na�ve than the flock.</p>
<p>The Chamber represents the whole.</p>
<p>Idiots and crafty devils are needed; a parliament of old fools and Robert Macaires <sup class="enote"><a href="#n1">[1]</a></sup> is needed to embody at one and the same time professional voters and depressed workers.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>And that’s what you are!</em></p>
<p>You are being fooled, good voters, you are being deceived and fawned over when you are told that you are handsome, that you are justice itself, law, national sovereignty, the people-king, free men...Your votes are bought like at a candy store, and you are the candy...Suckers.</p>
<p>You continue to be fooled. You are told that France is still France. This isn’t true.</p>
<p>With each passing day France loses all meaning in the world, all liberal meaning. It is no longer a hardy, risk-taking, idea-spreading, cult-smashing country. It’s Marianne kneeling before the throne of autocrats. It’s <em>corporalisme</em> reborn more hypocritically than in Germany: a tonsure under the kepi.</p>
<p>You are being fooled, fooled without cease. They talk to you about fraternity, and never has <em>the struggle for bread</em> been sharper or more deadly.</p>
<p>They talk to you – you who have nothing – about patriotism and our sacred patrimony.</p>
<p>They talk to you about integrity, and it’s the pirates of the press, the journalists ready to do anything, the master deceivers and blackmailers who sing of national honor.</p>
<p>The supporters of the Republic, the petit-bourgeois, the little lords are tougher on the “rogues” than the masters of the former regimes. <em>We live under the supervisors’ eye.</em></p>
<p>The weakened workers – the producers who consume nothing – content themselves with patiently sucking at the bone without marrow that is thrown to them, the bone of universal suffrage. And it’s only to tell stories, to engage in electoral discussions, that they move their jaws, the jaws that no longer know how to bite.</p>
<p>And when, on occasion, the children of the people shake themselves from their torpor they find themselves, like at Fourmies,<sup class="enote"><a href="#n2">[2]</a></sup> face to face with our brave army...and the reasoning of the Lebel guns puts lead in their heads.</p>
<p>Justice is the same for all. The honorable thieves of Panama travel in carriages and don’t know the cart. But <em>handcuffs</em> squeeze the wrists of the old workers who are arrested as vagabonds.</p>
<p>The ignominy of the present moment is such that no candidate dares defend this society. The bourgeois-leaning politicians: the reactionaries, the liberals, the masks, the false noses, the republicans, cry out that in voting for them things will work better, things will work well. Those who have already taken everything from you ask for still more.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Give your votes, Citizens!</em></p>
<p>The beggars, the candidates, the thieves, the vote-squeezers all have a special way to make and re-make the Public Good.</p>
<p>Listen to the brave workers, the party quacks; they want to conquer power...in order to better suppress it.</p>
<p>Others invoke the Revolution, and they fool themselves while fooling you. Voters will never make the Revolution. Universal suffrage was created precisely to prevent virile action. Charley has a good time voting...</p>
<p>And even if some incident drew men onto the streets; and even if by some strong act a group went into action, what could we wait and hope for of the crowd we see swarming about, the <em>cowardly and empty-headed crowd?</em></p>
<p><em>Allez</em>! Go ahead men of the crowd! Go ahead, voters! To the urns...and don’t complain. It’s enough. Don’t try to inspire pity because of the fate you imposed upon yourselves. Afterwards don’t insult the <em>Masters</em> that you gave yourselves.</p>
<p><em>These masters are your equals</em> as they steal from you. They are doubtless worth more: they’re worth 25 francs a day, not counting their small profit. And this is very good.</p>
<p><em>The voter is nothing but a failed candidate.</em></p>
<p>The little people – of small savings and small hopes, rapacious small merchants, slow-moving domestic folk – need a mediocre parliament that will mint and synthesize <em>all that is vile in the nation.</em></p>
<p>So vote, voters! Vote! Parliaments emanate from you. A thing is because it must be, because it can’t be otherwise. Put in place a Chamber in your image. A dog returns to its vomit. Return to your deputies....</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n1">1.</a></span> Character of a bandit in a popular play by Frederic Lemaitre.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n2">2.</a></span> Site of a May Day rally in 1891 that was brutally put down by the army.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="../index.htm">Zo d’Axa Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Zo d’Axa 1898
You Are Nothing But Suckers
Source: La Feuille;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
The following is a document from La Feuille’s campaign to run a ass named Worthless for the Chamber of Deputies
VOTERS:
In presenting myself for your votes, I owe you a few words. Here they are:
I come from an old French family – I dare to say – and am a pedigreed ass, anass in the good sense of the word: four paws and hair all over.
My name is Worthless, which is what my competitors in this race are.
I am white, as are many of the votes that have been cast and not counted, but which will now belong to me.
My election is assured.
You will understand that I speak frankly.
CITIZENS:
You are being fooled. It is said that the last Chamber, made up of imbeciles and thieves, didn’t represent the majority of voters. This is false.
On the contrary, a Chamber made up of deputies who are ninnies and thieves perfectly represents the voters you are. Don’t protest; a nation has the delegates it deserves.
Why did you elect them?
Amongst yourselves you don’t hesitate to say that the more things change the more they remain the same; that your representatives mock you and think only of their own interests, of vainglory, or of money.
So why would you elect them again tomorrow?
You know full well that the whole lot of those you would send to the legislature would sell their votes for a check, and would sell jobs, functions and tobacco offices.
But who are the tobacco offices, positions and sinecures for if not the Electoral Committees that are also paid?
The shepherds of the Committees are less na�ve than the flock.
The Chamber represents the whole.
Idiots and crafty devils are needed; a parliament of old fools and Robert Macaires [1] is needed to embody at one and the same time professional voters and depressed workers.
And that’s what you are!
You are being fooled, good voters, you are being deceived and fawned over when you are told that you are handsome, that you are justice itself, law, national sovereignty, the people-king, free men...Your votes are bought like at a candy store, and you are the candy...Suckers.
You continue to be fooled. You are told that France is still France. This isn’t true.
With each passing day France loses all meaning in the world, all liberal meaning. It is no longer a hardy, risk-taking, idea-spreading, cult-smashing country. It’s Marianne kneeling before the throne of autocrats. It’s corporalisme reborn more hypocritically than in Germany: a tonsure under the kepi.
You are being fooled, fooled without cease. They talk to you about fraternity, and never has the struggle for bread been sharper or more deadly.
They talk to you – you who have nothing – about patriotism and our sacred patrimony.
They talk to you about integrity, and it’s the pirates of the press, the journalists ready to do anything, the master deceivers and blackmailers who sing of national honor.
The supporters of the Republic, the petit-bourgeois, the little lords are tougher on the “rogues” than the masters of the former regimes. We live under the supervisors’ eye.
The weakened workers – the producers who consume nothing – content themselves with patiently sucking at the bone without marrow that is thrown to them, the bone of universal suffrage. And it’s only to tell stories, to engage in electoral discussions, that they move their jaws, the jaws that no longer know how to bite.
And when, on occasion, the children of the people shake themselves from their torpor they find themselves, like at Fourmies,[2] face to face with our brave army...and the reasoning of the Lebel guns puts lead in their heads.
Justice is the same for all. The honorable thieves of Panama travel in carriages and don’t know the cart. But handcuffs squeeze the wrists of the old workers who are arrested as vagabonds.
The ignominy of the present moment is such that no candidate dares defend this society. The bourgeois-leaning politicians: the reactionaries, the liberals, the masks, the false noses, the republicans, cry out that in voting for them things will work better, things will work well. Those who have already taken everything from you ask for still more.
Give your votes, Citizens!
The beggars, the candidates, the thieves, the vote-squeezers all have a special way to make and re-make the Public Good.
Listen to the brave workers, the party quacks; they want to conquer power...in order to better suppress it.
Others invoke the Revolution, and they fool themselves while fooling you. Voters will never make the Revolution. Universal suffrage was created precisely to prevent virile action. Charley has a good time voting...
And even if some incident drew men onto the streets; and even if by some strong act a group went into action, what could we wait and hope for of the crowd we see swarming about, the cowardly and empty-headed crowd?
Allez! Go ahead men of the crowd! Go ahead, voters! To the urns...and don’t complain. It’s enough. Don’t try to inspire pity because of the fate you imposed upon yourselves. Afterwards don’t insult the Masters that you gave yourselves.
These masters are your equals as they steal from you. They are doubtless worth more: they’re worth 25 francs a day, not counting their small profit. And this is very good.
The voter is nothing but a failed candidate.
The little people – of small savings and small hopes, rapacious small merchants, slow-moving domestic folk – need a mediocre parliament that will mint and synthesize all that is vile in the nation.
So vote, voters! Vote! Parliaments emanate from you. A thing is because it must be, because it can’t be otherwise. Put in place a Chamber in your image. A dog returns to its vomit. Return to your deputies....
1. Character of a bandit in a popular play by Frederic Lemaitre.
2. Site of a May Day rally in 1891 that was brutally put down by the army.
Zo d’Axa Archive
|
./articles/Zo-d’Axa/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.zo-daxa.1895.little-girls | <body>
<p class="title">Zo d’Axa 1895</p>
<h3>Little Girls</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Translated</span>: for marxists.org by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/mabidor.htm">Mitch Abidor</a>;<br>
<span class="info">CopyLeft</span>: <a href="../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons</a> (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Little girls were judged this afternoon in Milan.</p>
<p>And it wasn’t the sad trial – in absentia, of course – of a child caught on a bench with a stiff magistrate. </p>
<p>I watched the questioning as it unfolded.</p>
<p>It concerned an anarchist demonstration where, among resolute men and hardy women, two young girls of fourteen and fifteen were arrested.</p>
<p>The dark Maria had a strange charm, with her decisive air of a rascally young man, with her short curly hair, and her dark, fiery eyes. She had a way of looking at these messieurs of the court that was a form of silent, indefinable insolence – it worked better than throwing a shoe.</p>
<p>And when she spoke it wasn’t at all in a way that would make one smile. Her short phrases had meaning and were accentuated by sure gestures.</p>
<p class="indentb">“How can you talk about anarchy?” the judge muttered, “You don’t even know what it is.”</p>
<p class="indentb">“And you have studied anarchy more closely? So it exists. Will you teach me about it?”</p>
<p>No, little one, they won’t teach you anything! Revolt is instinctual. And theory is too often puerile. You know everything if you feel how filthy it is too live this bestial life.</p>
<p>Ernesta Quartirola, a year younger, has an equally characteristic beauty. Her nascent beauty is serious, enigmatic. And she could be a proud statue of the future signifying...who knows what.</p>
<p>Her silence is haughty. She makes it seem as if it has nothing to do with her. A yes, a no, a shrug of the shoulders and that’s all.</p>
<p>But the dark Maria, Maria Roda, with her defiant attitude, doesn’t allow the parade of prosecution witnesses to continue their uninterrupted march. Her replies indicate the halts. She set loose a chain of insults about the shameful informers and professional squealers.</p>
<p>She has a riposte for each of them. A riposte that reaches its mark.</p>
<p>An agent of the <i>Pubblica Sicurezza</i> recites his learned lesson against her. Miss Roda encouraged the demonstrators to rush the police, she carried on like she was possessed, she shouted at everyone, she even insulted the brigadier!</p>
<p class="indentb">“What is your answer?” the president admonished her.</p>
<p class="indentb">“I pity this guard. I pity him because he barely earns his bread, because he’s a poor devil. But it impresses me to see him go after other poor devils, his brothers...let him think about this.”</p>
<p>And with a gesture of grace towards the miserable one who had just accused her, she perhaps had just thrown a first revealing ray upon this dark spirit.</p>
<p>This is how the sisters of our companions showed themselves, they who are of an age when others have barely stopped playing with dolls, or when the daughters of bourgeois begin to amuse themselves in games of love with little cousins or some elderly friend of the family.</p>
<p>Prison was imposed<b>.</b> The men of the court were generous. Ernesta and Maria will know three months of jail – and the little ones must also pay a fine to these messieurs.</p>
<p>Three hundred francs demanded from poor little girls! </p>
<p>It’s cynical, but that’s the way it is ...</p>
<p>A moment before the Tribunal retired to consider the condemnation, the man in red said to Maria:</p>
<p class="indentb">“Do you have anything to add?”</p>
<p class="indentb">“Nothing, since it would be pointless.”</p>
<p>And that was the final word. Not gay, but flagellant<b>.</b></p>
<p>It is said over and over that Milan is a little Paris. The magistrates of Milan prove this, at least on one point; they are every bit as repugnant as their Parisian confreres.</p>
<p>And anyway, isn’t the magistracy the same everywhere? And could it be otherwise?</p>
<p>And this is probably even the reason that wherever you go the memory of the fatherland follows you. It comes upon you like nausea when you see the vileness of a judge.</p>
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Zo d’Axa 1895
Little Girls
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
Little girls were judged this afternoon in Milan.
And it wasn’t the sad trial – in absentia, of course – of a child caught on a bench with a stiff magistrate.
I watched the questioning as it unfolded.
It concerned an anarchist demonstration where, among resolute men and hardy women, two young girls of fourteen and fifteen were arrested.
The dark Maria had a strange charm, with her decisive air of a rascally young man, with her short curly hair, and her dark, fiery eyes. She had a way of looking at these messieurs of the court that was a form of silent, indefinable insolence – it worked better than throwing a shoe.
And when she spoke it wasn’t at all in a way that would make one smile. Her short phrases had meaning and were accentuated by sure gestures.
“How can you talk about anarchy?” the judge muttered, “You don’t even know what it is.”
“And you have studied anarchy more closely? So it exists. Will you teach me about it?”
No, little one, they won’t teach you anything! Revolt is instinctual. And theory is too often puerile. You know everything if you feel how filthy it is too live this bestial life.
Ernesta Quartirola, a year younger, has an equally characteristic beauty. Her nascent beauty is serious, enigmatic. And she could be a proud statue of the future signifying...who knows what.
Her silence is haughty. She makes it seem as if it has nothing to do with her. A yes, a no, a shrug of the shoulders and that’s all.
But the dark Maria, Maria Roda, with her defiant attitude, doesn’t allow the parade of prosecution witnesses to continue their uninterrupted march. Her replies indicate the halts. She set loose a chain of insults about the shameful informers and professional squealers.
She has a riposte for each of them. A riposte that reaches its mark.
An agent of the Pubblica Sicurezza recites his learned lesson against her. Miss Roda encouraged the demonstrators to rush the police, she carried on like she was possessed, she shouted at everyone, she even insulted the brigadier!
“What is your answer?” the president admonished her.
“I pity this guard. I pity him because he barely earns his bread, because he’s a poor devil. But it impresses me to see him go after other poor devils, his brothers...let him think about this.”
And with a gesture of grace towards the miserable one who had just accused her, she perhaps had just thrown a first revealing ray upon this dark spirit.
This is how the sisters of our companions showed themselves, they who are of an age when others have barely stopped playing with dolls, or when the daughters of bourgeois begin to amuse themselves in games of love with little cousins or some elderly friend of the family.
Prison was imposed. The men of the court were generous. Ernesta and Maria will know three months of jail – and the little ones must also pay a fine to these messieurs.
Three hundred francs demanded from poor little girls!
It’s cynical, but that’s the way it is ...
A moment before the Tribunal retired to consider the condemnation, the man in red said to Maria:
“Do you have anything to add?”
“Nothing, since it would be pointless.”
And that was the final word. Not gay, but flagellant.
It is said over and over that Milan is a little Paris. The magistrates of Milan prove this, at least on one point; they are every bit as repugnant as their Parisian confreres.
And anyway, isn’t the magistracy the same everywhere? And could it be otherwise?
And this is probably even the reason that wherever you go the memory of the fatherland follows you. It comes upon you like nausea when you see the vileness of a judge.
Zo d'Axa Archive
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Birmingham Six</small><br>
Injustice seen to be done</h1>
<h3>(April 1991)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, No.141, April 1991, p.14.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">YOU HAVE to go back to Cromwell to find a precedent for last month’s astonishing House of Commons motion calling for the sacking of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane. The motion, which was signed by several Tories, and former leaders of the Liberal and Labour Parties, caused a predictable uproar, but even the most ardent defenders of Lord Lane were a trifle embarrassed.</p>
<p>They pretended that the judges throughout the Birmingham Six case had been impartial. A glance at Mr Justice Bridge’s summing up in the first trial of the six quickly disposed of that argument. He openly bragged about his bias against the defence, and his onslaught on the unfortunate forensic expert who dared to point out that the Greiss test for explosives was riddled with doubt has become legendary.</p>
<p>Another glance at the summing up of the six’s appeal in January 1988 shows Lane and his two colleagues judging the case by the simple device of believing prosecution witnesses and disbelieving witnesses for the defence. The crude and offensive way in which this was done led to the ferocious counter-attack on the judges by liberal journalists like Robert Kee and Ludovic Kennedy.</p>
<p>The defenders of the judges were therefore driven back to their last redoubt: the ‘independence of the judiciary.’ ‘Upon this rock,’ said the Lord Chancellor, ‘rests the entire rule of law.’ This is so often accepted without argument that it is worth asking: exactly what are the judges independent from? The answer comes back that they are independent from the government.</p>
<p>The most formidable barriers are erected round the judges to protect them not just from the government but from society as a whole. They are paid enormous salaries, spiced with every kind of perk, from free transport to free lodgings when they are ‘out of town.’ They work a 25 hour week (at most). They don’t have to retire until 75 and even then they can come out of retirement to judge important cases in their dotage.</p>
<p>They are recruited exclusively from the Bar. When the Lord Chancellor recently suggested that this monopoly might be broken, he was greeted with a storm of abuse and even a judges’ strike. Lord Lane told the House of Lords that proposals to end the monopoly were the worst threat to British freedom since Hitler.</p>
<p>The world in which the judges live and converse is more exclusive than the most ridiculous gentleman’s club or the most secretive Masonic Lodge.</p>
<p>Their ‘independence’ from society and parliament thus assured, the judges remain deeply dependent and loyal to their class – those that aren’t are swiftly trained to behave as <em>if</em> they are. They are almost all deeply reactionary people for whom the slightest whisper of challenge or dissent – or even of an investigative solicitor – calls up phantoms of Wat Tyler.</p>
<p>The judges’ deep sense of class makes them quite absurdly loyal to the hierarchical system which operates under them – and particularly to the police force. It is not simply that the word of a police officer is always in their eyes preferable to the word of a citizen. It is that, in the interests of the judges’ justice, where the police go wrong it is far better to uphold the behaviour of the police than it is to expose the fact that they have gone wrong.</p>
<p>Lord Lane and senior judges have warned the Tory government that if they give an inch to the protesters after Birmingham and Guildford, they will be ushering in the revolution. The judges will fight to the death to preserve every inch of their ‘independence’ (irresponsibility). But wiser class warriors are urging caution. It is not a good thing for ruling class stability if everyone to the left of Bernard Levin (about 80 percent of the population) think the judges are incompetent and that police evidence is likely to be fabricated.</p>
<p>Nor is it healthy for their class that so many judges were involved in the long string of recent celebrated injustices. The crusted Tory Donaldson (Master of the Rolls) was deeply implicated in the Guildford Four scandal. Lane, O’Connor, Stephen Brown – the three judges who just three years ago said the Birmingham Six were obviously guilty – are all senior men.</p>
<p>New judges like Igor Judge and Stephen Mitchell are also implicated in injustices. Judge prosecuted the four men wrongly convicted of killing the newspaper boy, Carl Bridgewater. Lane refused leave to appeal in that case, and, seven years later, his close friend Lord Justice Russell dismissed the men’s appeal despite a huge mountain of new evidence which plainly exculpated the convicted men.</p>
<p>A Royal Commission is a convenient way to push the boat out into still waters for several months while the argument goes on. In the interim Lane and some of his henchmen will slip quietly from the scene to be flattered and eulogised into retirement.</p>
<p>The Commission, which has some clout, may recommend some changes in the administration of justice to pull down some of the barriers behind which the judges have done such terrible deeds. The Bar’s monopoly may finally go. There will be a few minor reforms, as there have been, for instance, in the field of confessions.</p>
<p>But the aim of the reforms will not be to democratise the judiciary or to make it more responsible to the public. The ‘independence of the judiciary’ and the ‘rule of law’ will be kept firmly in the hands of the ruling class. The basic prejudices in favour of the police and against the people they arrest, especially if those arrested have in any way threatened the property rights of the rich, will be as fiercely protected as ever.</p>
<p>The principle behind the Royal Commission reforms will be that injustice must go on being done, but it should not be <em>seen</em> to be done quite so clearly.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Birmingham Six
Injustice seen to be done
(April 1991)
From Socialist Worker Review, No.141, April 1991, p.14.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
YOU HAVE to go back to Cromwell to find a precedent for last month’s astonishing House of Commons motion calling for the sacking of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane. The motion, which was signed by several Tories, and former leaders of the Liberal and Labour Parties, caused a predictable uproar, but even the most ardent defenders of Lord Lane were a trifle embarrassed.
They pretended that the judges throughout the Birmingham Six case had been impartial. A glance at Mr Justice Bridge’s summing up in the first trial of the six quickly disposed of that argument. He openly bragged about his bias against the defence, and his onslaught on the unfortunate forensic expert who dared to point out that the Greiss test for explosives was riddled with doubt has become legendary.
Another glance at the summing up of the six’s appeal in January 1988 shows Lane and his two colleagues judging the case by the simple device of believing prosecution witnesses and disbelieving witnesses for the defence. The crude and offensive way in which this was done led to the ferocious counter-attack on the judges by liberal journalists like Robert Kee and Ludovic Kennedy.
The defenders of the judges were therefore driven back to their last redoubt: the ‘independence of the judiciary.’ ‘Upon this rock,’ said the Lord Chancellor, ‘rests the entire rule of law.’ This is so often accepted without argument that it is worth asking: exactly what are the judges independent from? The answer comes back that they are independent from the government.
The most formidable barriers are erected round the judges to protect them not just from the government but from society as a whole. They are paid enormous salaries, spiced with every kind of perk, from free transport to free lodgings when they are ‘out of town.’ They work a 25 hour week (at most). They don’t have to retire until 75 and even then they can come out of retirement to judge important cases in their dotage.
They are recruited exclusively from the Bar. When the Lord Chancellor recently suggested that this monopoly might be broken, he was greeted with a storm of abuse and even a judges’ strike. Lord Lane told the House of Lords that proposals to end the monopoly were the worst threat to British freedom since Hitler.
The world in which the judges live and converse is more exclusive than the most ridiculous gentleman’s club or the most secretive Masonic Lodge.
Their ‘independence’ from society and parliament thus assured, the judges remain deeply dependent and loyal to their class – those that aren’t are swiftly trained to behave as if they are. They are almost all deeply reactionary people for whom the slightest whisper of challenge or dissent – or even of an investigative solicitor – calls up phantoms of Wat Tyler.
The judges’ deep sense of class makes them quite absurdly loyal to the hierarchical system which operates under them – and particularly to the police force. It is not simply that the word of a police officer is always in their eyes preferable to the word of a citizen. It is that, in the interests of the judges’ justice, where the police go wrong it is far better to uphold the behaviour of the police than it is to expose the fact that they have gone wrong.
Lord Lane and senior judges have warned the Tory government that if they give an inch to the protesters after Birmingham and Guildford, they will be ushering in the revolution. The judges will fight to the death to preserve every inch of their ‘independence’ (irresponsibility). But wiser class warriors are urging caution. It is not a good thing for ruling class stability if everyone to the left of Bernard Levin (about 80 percent of the population) think the judges are incompetent and that police evidence is likely to be fabricated.
Nor is it healthy for their class that so many judges were involved in the long string of recent celebrated injustices. The crusted Tory Donaldson (Master of the Rolls) was deeply implicated in the Guildford Four scandal. Lane, O’Connor, Stephen Brown – the three judges who just three years ago said the Birmingham Six were obviously guilty – are all senior men.
New judges like Igor Judge and Stephen Mitchell are also implicated in injustices. Judge prosecuted the four men wrongly convicted of killing the newspaper boy, Carl Bridgewater. Lane refused leave to appeal in that case, and, seven years later, his close friend Lord Justice Russell dismissed the men’s appeal despite a huge mountain of new evidence which plainly exculpated the convicted men.
A Royal Commission is a convenient way to push the boat out into still waters for several months while the argument goes on. In the interim Lane and some of his henchmen will slip quietly from the scene to be flattered and eulogised into retirement.
The Commission, which has some clout, may recommend some changes in the administration of justice to pull down some of the barriers behind which the judges have done such terrible deeds. The Bar’s monopoly may finally go. There will be a few minor reforms, as there have been, for instance, in the field of confessions.
But the aim of the reforms will not be to democratise the judiciary or to make it more responsible to the public. The ‘independence of the judiciary’ and the ‘rule of law’ will be kept firmly in the hands of the ruling class. The basic prejudices in favour of the police and against the people they arrest, especially if those arrested have in any way threatened the property rights of the rich, will be as fiercely protected as ever.
The principle behind the Royal Commission reforms will be that injustice must go on being done, but it should not be seen to be done quite so clearly.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Labour Left’s Brightest Star</h1>
<h3>(March 1980)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">First published in <strong>Books and Bookmen</strong>.<br>
Reprinted in <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index1.html#sr80_03" target="mew">1980 : 3</a>, 22 March–18 April 1980, pp. 18&ndash:19.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>As this issue of <strong>Socialist Review</strong> is being printed, the contradicting claims of revolutionary socialism and left reformist socialism are due to be argued out in London at what its organisers have called</em> <strong>The Debate of the Decade</strong><em>. Leading off for the reformists will be Tony Benn and for the revolutionaries, <strong>Paul Foot</strong>, of the SWP. As a prelude to the debate Paul has looked at Benn’s latest book, <strong>Arguments for Socialism</strong> (edited by Chris Mullin. Cape £5.95).</em><br>
</p>
<p class="fst">Rich and powerful people have always cherished their bogeymen. They like to reduce what Marx and Engels called “the spectre of communism” to human shape: to a personality who can be pilloried in their Press and patronised at their table. For the unfortunates who get singled out for this honour, life is hard. The assailants are well-practised in the art of character assassination and blackmail. Every public statement of their prey, however harmless, can rapidly be translated into the language of someone who rapes nuns on Fridays and nationalises a bank every day before breakfast.</p>
<p>Tony Benn has played the role of chief bogeyman for the rich men of Britain for a good time now. He has been treated perhaps more shamefully even then his predecessors in the Parliamentary Labour Left, men like John Wheatley. George Lansbury and Aneurin Bevan. In the past year, the abuse has risen to a crescendo, deafening even his most tenacious attempts to argue back. Yet its effect is not all as intended. For as the society splits wider apart, so the abuse from the halls of the powerful boosts their bogeyman’s radical and socialist credentials.</p>
<p>The more the Press yelp at Tony Benn. the more sympathy he gets from shop stewards and workers. This support can be seen not so much in the votes at Labour Party conferences as in the enthusiastic receptions which Tony Benn gets at shop stewards and combine committee meetings. Arthur Scargill, for instance, is very quickly prepared to forget his war of words with Benn over the productivity dealings in the pits in 1977. and has called on all his considerable support to throw their weight behind Benn as the next leader of the Labour Party.</p>
<p>This support will grow still further as the Tories continue their victory march through working class Britain, slashing and stabbing as though they were an invading army. As people get more angry they will turn to the man the Tories hate the most – Tony Benn. The very fury which is vented on Tony Benn in the Press throws him higher and higher up the political spiral.</p>
<p>It is worth saying at once that Tony Benn’s credentials for Chief Bogeyman of the Tories are a little difficult to understand. For eleven out of the last fifteen years he has been a loyal and for the most part silent member of a Labour government which has systematically torn up the pledges on which it was elected.</p>
<p>In the first Wilson administration from 1964 to 1970. Benn was counted as a force for the Right in the government. When he was promoted to the Cabinet in a senior post in charge of Technology, he was celebrated chiefly for his observations about the advances of science which were based on the 1963 visions of his leader Wilson (“the white heat of the technological revolution”).</p>
<p>In two areas in which Benn later became known as a hysterical Leftie, he behaved in a way which can only have brought a smile of approval to the Tory benches. In 1967 he set up the Swallow Committee to preside over the shipbuilding industry, and personally insisted on carving up the shipyards in the Clyde between the old shipbuilding families. When even extreme Labour right-wingers such as Andrew Cunningham begged him to take full notice of an experiment at Fairfields yard in worker participation. Benn had nothing to do with it. Instead, he capitulated entirely to shipbuilding’s “old gang”.</p>
<p>When, without telling the Cabinet, the Atomic Energy Authority signed a deal for the manufacture of uranium under South African control at Rossing. South West Africa. Benn meekly gave the deal his approval. At that time, no one thought he would do otherwise.</p>
<p>Nor is the record of his time in office from 1974 to 1979 much more impressive. In the summer of 1975, with the Common Market ‘Yes’ vote safely in the bag. Prime Minister Wilson bowed to demands in the city to move Benn from the Industry Ministry and push him off to some more harmless area (in this case the Department of Energy). If Benn ever meant a word about the need to fight in the country for what was Labour Party policy, that was the time for him to resign – as, to his credit, his colleague Eric Heffer did – and try to raise rank and file Labour opposition to the Wilson drift (as Heffer, by the way, did <em>not</em> do). Instead, Benn accepted the move and, as far as the ordinary Labour Party member was concerned, shut up.</p>
<p>Still, this is all in the past, and, as Tony Benn himself is always saying, he has learnt from his mistakes. If so, there could not have been a better time than the present to publish a clear account of his ideas and his programme. Some people are asking the question: ‘What went wrong with Labour?’ Many more are asking, what is the argument for socialist advance and how can we best ensure that things don’t go so wrong <em>next</em> time? These are the questions which tony Benn is better placed to answer to more people than anyone else in the country.</p>
<p>And it is here that this little book is such a terrible disappointment. I did not expect to agree with Tony Benn’s conclusions, but I did expect to get a clear and coherent account of where he stands.</p>
<p>But the book is not clear or coherent in anything. It is not even intended to be. Chris Mullin, a journalist for <strong>Tribune</strong> who edited the book explains in his note at the beginning:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The first five sections of this book, are based on speeches, lectures and articles by Tony Benn taken mainly, but not exclusively, from the last five years.’</p>
<p class="fst">Goodbye, then, to the hope that this might be a new account, forged perhaps in the white heat of experience of the last Labour Government. The vast majority of the book is made up of extracts from Tony Benn while still a Minister. And most of these are awful Olympian pronouncements at Ministerial functions. On page 83 (just to let the reader off with one example), while explaining his belief in the future of nuclear power, Benn the Minister says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘In my view the most powerful argument is the argument about proliferation of nuclear weapons as an accidental by-product of the uncontrolled spread of sensitive nuclear technology intended solely for civil purposes. <em>We</em> are doing everything possible to prevent this by international agreement, supervision and control.’</p>
<p class="fst">Now, who is this “we”? It cannot be anyone now connected with Tony Benn. He is doing nothing whatever to prevent anything in the nuclear field. He is a politician in Opposition. No doubt he means, when he was in office, he did what he could. But that is useless now.</p>
<p>The fact is that for most of the last five years from which these extracts were taken. Tony Benn was a cautious Minister making cautious pronouncements. These pronouncements can help us in no way to any understanding or action for the future. There were once occasions when Tony Benn could make an excursion, for instance, to a conference of the Institute for Workers Control: or to a church at Burford where Cromwell’s soldiers murdered Leveller mutineers. Then he could argue about radical forms of change.</p>
<p>He could not, of course, say that the miners or engineers today should act according to the principles of the Levellers. To do so would be to court disaster, and run the risk of being sacked from the Callaghan Government. He could talk about the wonders of workers’ control, provided only that they were envisaged in the distant and Utopian future.</p>
<p>So the most striking characteristic of this book is the gap between the airy assertions of socialist aims and the dry and half-hearted programmes of a failed Minister. For instance, on page 60, he writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We should be talking about the transfer of power within industry ...’</p>
<p class="fst">In the same mood, on p. 162</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We should be moving from a situation where capital hires labour to a situation where labour hires capital.’</p>
<p class="fst">But when it comes down to the programme which is going to achieve all this transferring of power and hiring of capital we find (on p.72)</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The whole purpose of the planning agreement is to introduce that democratic tripartite element into industrial policy.’</p>
<p class="fst">The troika which is to make up this tripartite element is of course “government, trade union movement and management”. And so we are staring at the familiar pictures of the “two sides of industry” sitting down and making plans under the watchful eye of the benign Labour Minister.</p>
<p>That may or may not have any effect – almost certainly not but it is a very far cry from the visions of “transferring power” with which Mr Benn excites his supporters at the Institute of Workers Control.</p>
<p>Then there is another contradiction of the same type which is even more serious. Of all Tony Benn’s views, none has been more consistently slated than his belief in a widening democracy, and in more initiatives and control from below.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I think we will have to be sure’ he says (p.73) ‘that the impetus for change comes continually from the movement itself.’</p>
<p class="fst">And the book ends with a quotation from a Chinese philosopher who says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘When the best leader’s work is done, the people say: “We did it ourselves”.’</p>
<p class="fst">Other sections of Tony Benn’s book are full of praise for the workers at the Upper Clyde in 1971 and in take-overs and sit-ins since.</p>
<p>All this does represent, it seems, a huge conversion from the Tony Benn perched on his peak at the Technology Ministry planning and ordering the workers into position. And the suspense for the reader of almost unbearable. Will he now tell us what sort of “action from below” is needed, how best to “inspire” the “impetus of change” from the “movement itself”? Will he even tell us, however briefly, what sort of organisation is required to further that impetus and that change?</p>
<p>No, he will not. I have scanned his book with a lot of care for any ideas as to new forms of organisation to fit Tony Benn’s new commitment to workers’ democracy. But I am afraid (apart from cliches such as “progress must be made towards workers’ control” – p. 39) that we are back with some old simplicities. There is nothing for it but the Labour Party. Tony Benn doesn’t mind how many Marxists are in the Labour Party provided only that “they commit themselves to advancing socialism through Parliamentary democracy”.</p>
<p>Here at once is another paradox. In one part of the book. Tony Benn states his faith in the “power of the vote”. The very welfare state itself, he says, came “directly from the power of the ballot box”. And it is that power, he suggests, which is to take us on to the “fully democratic and socialist system” of which he dreams.</p>
<p>And then there are other passages more sceptical. For Tony Benn knows as well as anyone that the power of the ballot box is open to the most terrible subversion by the rich.</p>
<p>As early as page 17 he is writing:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I discovered how the immense power of the bankers and the industrialists in Britain and world-wide could be used to bring direct and indirect pressure again backed by the media, first to halt and then to reverse the policy of a Labour government that both the electors and the House of Commons had accepted ...’</p>
<p class="fst">He knows that from bitter experience. He saw Wilson’s pledge for ‘no incomes policy’ overturned by a run on the pound in the summer of 1975, with Benn’s job going into the bargain. He watched helplessly as the bankers moved again, in 1976, through the IMF, to force Labour to cut the welfare state which (according to Benn) the power of the ballot box had first created. He fought a desperate battle with the nuclear industry and the oil companies, without winning either. All in all, his own experience, even as it is set down in this badly-conceived and woodenly-presented book, shows clear as day that the ballot box and parliamentary democracy are not strong enough to reach even the miserable objectives of the British Labour Party let alone the dreams of Tony Benn.</p>
<p>The problem is extra-Parliamentary – the “power of the bankers”. Benn’s remedies, however, are parliamentary: a planning agreement here and there, a new hunk of something or other taken into public ownership: a tighter exchange control or Treasury regulation.</p>
<p>The gap yawns on almost every page. And properly so. For it is this gap between aspiration and practical achievement which marks the career and politics of Tony Benn. It is nothing especially new. Two weeks before the general election of 1970, for instance, Press and television headlined a fantastic speech by Tony Benn about Enoch Powell.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The flag which fluttered over Dachau,’ he intoned to a handful of surprised constituents ‘is now fluttering over sections of the Tory Party ...’</p>
<p class="fst">This was the first statement about Powell made by Tony Benn, though Powell’s infamous race speech at Birmingham had taken place two years earlier. Moreover. Tony Benn had sat without a second’s objection while his Government banned from British Kenyan Asians who had been promised free entry. Once again, the. language of the extremist had come from the mouth of the moderate.</p>
<p>As I read this book for the second time, in February 1980. I pondered the effect of Benn’s interventions in the past few weeks. There have been scores of speeches, many of them peppered with images as florid as that of the flag which fluttered over Dachau. But in defence of the “impetus from below” which has started to shake “the movement” once again: the steel strike; the sacking of the convenor in Britain’s largest plant; the desperate action of men and women threatened with a future which throws them fifty years into the past, where has Tony Benn been speaking or agitating?</p>
<p>More importantly, what of the future? For all (he comments here. Benn in person, especially on the television is a convincing figure to many workers. He is so obviously more sensible and more humane than the monster he is made out to be that people come easily round to his point of view. It is by no means certain that he will always be doomed to defeat in Labour leadership election.</p>
<p>The actual proposals will not,. I believe, be very much more dramatic than they were in 1974. But the effect of Benn’s use of rhetoric will be to make them <em>seem</em> more radical by far. But if a Labour government ever is returned committed to such policies, it will be able, since the crisis will be deeper, to deliver less.</p>
<p><em>Then</em> the gap between Tony Benn’s language and what he can achieve by his methods will loom not simply as a logical lacuna in a second-rate book, but as a threat to very parliamentary institutions and trade unions which remain Tony Benn’s only instruments of change.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Labour Left’s Brightest Star
(March 1980)
First published in Books and Bookmen.
Reprinted in Socialist Review, 1980 : 3, 22 March–18 April 1980, pp. 18&ndash:19.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
As this issue of Socialist Review is being printed, the contradicting claims of revolutionary socialism and left reformist socialism are due to be argued out in London at what its organisers have called The Debate of the Decade. Leading off for the reformists will be Tony Benn and for the revolutionaries, Paul Foot, of the SWP. As a prelude to the debate Paul has looked at Benn’s latest book, Arguments for Socialism (edited by Chris Mullin. Cape £5.95).
Rich and powerful people have always cherished their bogeymen. They like to reduce what Marx and Engels called “the spectre of communism” to human shape: to a personality who can be pilloried in their Press and patronised at their table. For the unfortunates who get singled out for this honour, life is hard. The assailants are well-practised in the art of character assassination and blackmail. Every public statement of their prey, however harmless, can rapidly be translated into the language of someone who rapes nuns on Fridays and nationalises a bank every day before breakfast.
Tony Benn has played the role of chief bogeyman for the rich men of Britain for a good time now. He has been treated perhaps more shamefully even then his predecessors in the Parliamentary Labour Left, men like John Wheatley. George Lansbury and Aneurin Bevan. In the past year, the abuse has risen to a crescendo, deafening even his most tenacious attempts to argue back. Yet its effect is not all as intended. For as the society splits wider apart, so the abuse from the halls of the powerful boosts their bogeyman’s radical and socialist credentials.
The more the Press yelp at Tony Benn. the more sympathy he gets from shop stewards and workers. This support can be seen not so much in the votes at Labour Party conferences as in the enthusiastic receptions which Tony Benn gets at shop stewards and combine committee meetings. Arthur Scargill, for instance, is very quickly prepared to forget his war of words with Benn over the productivity dealings in the pits in 1977. and has called on all his considerable support to throw their weight behind Benn as the next leader of the Labour Party.
This support will grow still further as the Tories continue their victory march through working class Britain, slashing and stabbing as though they were an invading army. As people get more angry they will turn to the man the Tories hate the most – Tony Benn. The very fury which is vented on Tony Benn in the Press throws him higher and higher up the political spiral.
It is worth saying at once that Tony Benn’s credentials for Chief Bogeyman of the Tories are a little difficult to understand. For eleven out of the last fifteen years he has been a loyal and for the most part silent member of a Labour government which has systematically torn up the pledges on which it was elected.
In the first Wilson administration from 1964 to 1970. Benn was counted as a force for the Right in the government. When he was promoted to the Cabinet in a senior post in charge of Technology, he was celebrated chiefly for his observations about the advances of science which were based on the 1963 visions of his leader Wilson (“the white heat of the technological revolution”).
In two areas in which Benn later became known as a hysterical Leftie, he behaved in a way which can only have brought a smile of approval to the Tory benches. In 1967 he set up the Swallow Committee to preside over the shipbuilding industry, and personally insisted on carving up the shipyards in the Clyde between the old shipbuilding families. When even extreme Labour right-wingers such as Andrew Cunningham begged him to take full notice of an experiment at Fairfields yard in worker participation. Benn had nothing to do with it. Instead, he capitulated entirely to shipbuilding’s “old gang”.
When, without telling the Cabinet, the Atomic Energy Authority signed a deal for the manufacture of uranium under South African control at Rossing. South West Africa. Benn meekly gave the deal his approval. At that time, no one thought he would do otherwise.
Nor is the record of his time in office from 1974 to 1979 much more impressive. In the summer of 1975, with the Common Market ‘Yes’ vote safely in the bag. Prime Minister Wilson bowed to demands in the city to move Benn from the Industry Ministry and push him off to some more harmless area (in this case the Department of Energy). If Benn ever meant a word about the need to fight in the country for what was Labour Party policy, that was the time for him to resign – as, to his credit, his colleague Eric Heffer did – and try to raise rank and file Labour opposition to the Wilson drift (as Heffer, by the way, did not do). Instead, Benn accepted the move and, as far as the ordinary Labour Party member was concerned, shut up.
Still, this is all in the past, and, as Tony Benn himself is always saying, he has learnt from his mistakes. If so, there could not have been a better time than the present to publish a clear account of his ideas and his programme. Some people are asking the question: ‘What went wrong with Labour?’ Many more are asking, what is the argument for socialist advance and how can we best ensure that things don’t go so wrong next time? These are the questions which tony Benn is better placed to answer to more people than anyone else in the country.
And it is here that this little book is such a terrible disappointment. I did not expect to agree with Tony Benn’s conclusions, but I did expect to get a clear and coherent account of where he stands.
But the book is not clear or coherent in anything. It is not even intended to be. Chris Mullin, a journalist for Tribune who edited the book explains in his note at the beginning:
‘The first five sections of this book, are based on speeches, lectures and articles by Tony Benn taken mainly, but not exclusively, from the last five years.’
Goodbye, then, to the hope that this might be a new account, forged perhaps in the white heat of experience of the last Labour Government. The vast majority of the book is made up of extracts from Tony Benn while still a Minister. And most of these are awful Olympian pronouncements at Ministerial functions. On page 83 (just to let the reader off with one example), while explaining his belief in the future of nuclear power, Benn the Minister says:
‘In my view the most powerful argument is the argument about proliferation of nuclear weapons as an accidental by-product of the uncontrolled spread of sensitive nuclear technology intended solely for civil purposes. We are doing everything possible to prevent this by international agreement, supervision and control.’
Now, who is this “we”? It cannot be anyone now connected with Tony Benn. He is doing nothing whatever to prevent anything in the nuclear field. He is a politician in Opposition. No doubt he means, when he was in office, he did what he could. But that is useless now.
The fact is that for most of the last five years from which these extracts were taken. Tony Benn was a cautious Minister making cautious pronouncements. These pronouncements can help us in no way to any understanding or action for the future. There were once occasions when Tony Benn could make an excursion, for instance, to a conference of the Institute for Workers Control: or to a church at Burford where Cromwell’s soldiers murdered Leveller mutineers. Then he could argue about radical forms of change.
He could not, of course, say that the miners or engineers today should act according to the principles of the Levellers. To do so would be to court disaster, and run the risk of being sacked from the Callaghan Government. He could talk about the wonders of workers’ control, provided only that they were envisaged in the distant and Utopian future.
So the most striking characteristic of this book is the gap between the airy assertions of socialist aims and the dry and half-hearted programmes of a failed Minister. For instance, on page 60, he writes:
‘We should be talking about the transfer of power within industry ...’
In the same mood, on p. 162
‘We should be moving from a situation where capital hires labour to a situation where labour hires capital.’
But when it comes down to the programme which is going to achieve all this transferring of power and hiring of capital we find (on p.72)
‘The whole purpose of the planning agreement is to introduce that democratic tripartite element into industrial policy.’
The troika which is to make up this tripartite element is of course “government, trade union movement and management”. And so we are staring at the familiar pictures of the “two sides of industry” sitting down and making plans under the watchful eye of the benign Labour Minister.
That may or may not have any effect – almost certainly not but it is a very far cry from the visions of “transferring power” with which Mr Benn excites his supporters at the Institute of Workers Control.
Then there is another contradiction of the same type which is even more serious. Of all Tony Benn’s views, none has been more consistently slated than his belief in a widening democracy, and in more initiatives and control from below.
‘I think we will have to be sure’ he says (p.73) ‘that the impetus for change comes continually from the movement itself.’
And the book ends with a quotation from a Chinese philosopher who says:
‘When the best leader’s work is done, the people say: “We did it ourselves”.’
Other sections of Tony Benn’s book are full of praise for the workers at the Upper Clyde in 1971 and in take-overs and sit-ins since.
All this does represent, it seems, a huge conversion from the Tony Benn perched on his peak at the Technology Ministry planning and ordering the workers into position. And the suspense for the reader of almost unbearable. Will he now tell us what sort of “action from below” is needed, how best to “inspire” the “impetus of change” from the “movement itself”? Will he even tell us, however briefly, what sort of organisation is required to further that impetus and that change?
No, he will not. I have scanned his book with a lot of care for any ideas as to new forms of organisation to fit Tony Benn’s new commitment to workers’ democracy. But I am afraid (apart from cliches such as “progress must be made towards workers’ control” – p. 39) that we are back with some old simplicities. There is nothing for it but the Labour Party. Tony Benn doesn’t mind how many Marxists are in the Labour Party provided only that “they commit themselves to advancing socialism through Parliamentary democracy”.
Here at once is another paradox. In one part of the book. Tony Benn states his faith in the “power of the vote”. The very welfare state itself, he says, came “directly from the power of the ballot box”. And it is that power, he suggests, which is to take us on to the “fully democratic and socialist system” of which he dreams.
And then there are other passages more sceptical. For Tony Benn knows as well as anyone that the power of the ballot box is open to the most terrible subversion by the rich.
As early as page 17 he is writing:
‘I discovered how the immense power of the bankers and the industrialists in Britain and world-wide could be used to bring direct and indirect pressure again backed by the media, first to halt and then to reverse the policy of a Labour government that both the electors and the House of Commons had accepted ...’
He knows that from bitter experience. He saw Wilson’s pledge for ‘no incomes policy’ overturned by a run on the pound in the summer of 1975, with Benn’s job going into the bargain. He watched helplessly as the bankers moved again, in 1976, through the IMF, to force Labour to cut the welfare state which (according to Benn) the power of the ballot box had first created. He fought a desperate battle with the nuclear industry and the oil companies, without winning either. All in all, his own experience, even as it is set down in this badly-conceived and woodenly-presented book, shows clear as day that the ballot box and parliamentary democracy are not strong enough to reach even the miserable objectives of the British Labour Party let alone the dreams of Tony Benn.
The problem is extra-Parliamentary – the “power of the bankers”. Benn’s remedies, however, are parliamentary: a planning agreement here and there, a new hunk of something or other taken into public ownership: a tighter exchange control or Treasury regulation.
The gap yawns on almost every page. And properly so. For it is this gap between aspiration and practical achievement which marks the career and politics of Tony Benn. It is nothing especially new. Two weeks before the general election of 1970, for instance, Press and television headlined a fantastic speech by Tony Benn about Enoch Powell.
‘The flag which fluttered over Dachau,’ he intoned to a handful of surprised constituents ‘is now fluttering over sections of the Tory Party ...’
This was the first statement about Powell made by Tony Benn, though Powell’s infamous race speech at Birmingham had taken place two years earlier. Moreover. Tony Benn had sat without a second’s objection while his Government banned from British Kenyan Asians who had been promised free entry. Once again, the. language of the extremist had come from the mouth of the moderate.
As I read this book for the second time, in February 1980. I pondered the effect of Benn’s interventions in the past few weeks. There have been scores of speeches, many of them peppered with images as florid as that of the flag which fluttered over Dachau. But in defence of the “impetus from below” which has started to shake “the movement” once again: the steel strike; the sacking of the convenor in Britain’s largest plant; the desperate action of men and women threatened with a future which throws them fifty years into the past, where has Tony Benn been speaking or agitating?
More importantly, what of the future? For all (he comments here. Benn in person, especially on the television is a convincing figure to many workers. He is so obviously more sensible and more humane than the monster he is made out to be that people come easily round to his point of view. It is by no means certain that he will always be doomed to defeat in Labour leadership election.
The actual proposals will not,. I believe, be very much more dramatic than they were in 1974. But the effect of Benn’s use of rhetoric will be to make them seem more radical by far. But if a Labour government ever is returned committed to such policies, it will be able, since the crisis will be deeper, to deliver less.
Then the gap between Tony Benn’s language and what he can achieve by his methods will loom not simply as a logical lacuna in a second-rate book, but as a threat to very parliamentary institutions and trade unions which remain Tony Benn’s only instruments of change.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>At last</h1>
<h4>Crows peck the eagles</h4>
<h3>(27 June 1992)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 27 June 1992.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 39–40.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">For 30 years I have been searching for a performance of William Shakespeare’s <em>Coriolanus</em> which understands what the play is about – and now I have found it.</p>
<p>The Renaissance Company’s production with Kenneth Branagh as the tyrant and Judi Dench as his mother Volumnia has got it right at last.</p>
<p>The simple point which was missed in every single one of the 12 productions I have seen plus one I acted in – as the second senator, who had one and a half lines – is that the play is about the class war.</p>
<p>The scene is set in the Roman Republic, where the patricians and their senate concede to the people a couple of their own kind to act as ‘tribunes’. But no one in the English audience of 1608 could have missed the parallel, as an arrogant and ambitious king, James I, started to challenge the growing influence of the merchants and, beneath them, the angry cry of the common people.</p>
<p>William Shakespeare was not a revolutionary. His instincts and sympathies were with the patricians, and even with the king, though almost all his history plays about English kings show how rotten the kings were. To that extent, Nigel Lawson’s classically imbecilic comment that Shakespeare was a Tory’ had some truth in it.</p>
<p>But Shakespeare was not just a ‘Tory’. His greatness came not just from his command of the English language, unrivalled before or since, but from his ability to listen to how and why the language was used to express people’s fears and hopes, doubts and certainties.</p>
<p>‘The people’ might well be a rabble, fickle in their choice of favourites and easily moulded by a skilful orator. But they had a point. The arrogant kings who ignored them might be high and mighty, even honest and admirable characters. But if they ignored their subjects they were tyrants.</p>
<p>Coriolanus is a patrician who believes so passionately in the right of his class to rule over the masses that he refuses to compromise. He would rather drag his class into open civil war with the ‘rabble’ than address a kind word to them. His pride, his valour in war, his glorious use of language are all so dominant that director after director has fallen into the trap of reducing all the other characters in the play to foils to the Great Man.</p>
<p>Coriolanus becomes just another personal tragedy, a tragedy of a great man done down by the stinking mob. The excitement of the play, the ebb and flow of the class struggle, is entirely missed. In this awful directional censorship the victims have been the tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus.</p>
<p>Now at last the balance is struck right. Kenneth Branagh is a wonderful Coriolanus, but the reason he is the best yet – better by far, for instance, than Laurence Olivier – is that he and the director, Tim Supple, understand and, I suspect, sympathise with what the crowd represent.</p>
<p>The crowd, many of whom have been picked from the Sussex unemployed, are magnificent. As the initiative shifts from the oppressed to the oppressors and back again, the excitement never stops.</p>
<p>The scene in which the tribunes, Jimmy Yuill and Gerard Horan, gently but forcefully persuade the people to resist the dictator, a scene traditionally ignored or gutted by patrician directors, is one of the most exhilarating pieces of theatre I have ever seen.</p>
<p>I hope this production will soon move from the unlikely surroundings of Chichester so that all socialists can go to see it and enjoy it.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
At last
Crows peck the eagles
(27 June 1992)
From Socialist Worker, 27 June 1992.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 39–40.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
For 30 years I have been searching for a performance of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus which understands what the play is about – and now I have found it.
The Renaissance Company’s production with Kenneth Branagh as the tyrant and Judi Dench as his mother Volumnia has got it right at last.
The simple point which was missed in every single one of the 12 productions I have seen plus one I acted in – as the second senator, who had one and a half lines – is that the play is about the class war.
The scene is set in the Roman Republic, where the patricians and their senate concede to the people a couple of their own kind to act as ‘tribunes’. But no one in the English audience of 1608 could have missed the parallel, as an arrogant and ambitious king, James I, started to challenge the growing influence of the merchants and, beneath them, the angry cry of the common people.
William Shakespeare was not a revolutionary. His instincts and sympathies were with the patricians, and even with the king, though almost all his history plays about English kings show how rotten the kings were. To that extent, Nigel Lawson’s classically imbecilic comment that Shakespeare was a Tory’ had some truth in it.
But Shakespeare was not just a ‘Tory’. His greatness came not just from his command of the English language, unrivalled before or since, but from his ability to listen to how and why the language was used to express people’s fears and hopes, doubts and certainties.
‘The people’ might well be a rabble, fickle in their choice of favourites and easily moulded by a skilful orator. But they had a point. The arrogant kings who ignored them might be high and mighty, even honest and admirable characters. But if they ignored their subjects they were tyrants.
Coriolanus is a patrician who believes so passionately in the right of his class to rule over the masses that he refuses to compromise. He would rather drag his class into open civil war with the ‘rabble’ than address a kind word to them. His pride, his valour in war, his glorious use of language are all so dominant that director after director has fallen into the trap of reducing all the other characters in the play to foils to the Great Man.
Coriolanus becomes just another personal tragedy, a tragedy of a great man done down by the stinking mob. The excitement of the play, the ebb and flow of the class struggle, is entirely missed. In this awful directional censorship the victims have been the tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus.
Now at last the balance is struck right. Kenneth Branagh is a wonderful Coriolanus, but the reason he is the best yet – better by far, for instance, than Laurence Olivier – is that he and the director, Tim Supple, understand and, I suspect, sympathise with what the crowd represent.
The crowd, many of whom have been picked from the Sussex unemployed, are magnificent. As the initiative shifts from the oppressed to the oppressors and back again, the excitement never stops.
The scene in which the tribunes, Jimmy Yuill and Gerard Horan, gently but forcefully persuade the people to resist the dictator, a scene traditionally ignored or gutted by patrician directors, is one of the most exhilarating pieces of theatre I have ever seen.
I hope this production will soon move from the unlikely surroundings of Chichester so that all socialists can go to see it and enjoy it.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Battle for the NUM</h1>
<h3>(January 1988)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, No.105, January 1988, pp.9-11.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="c"><strong>Arthur Scargill’s dramatic resignation from, and then candidacy for, the post of President of the NUM is of major importance for miners. <em>Paul Foot</em> went to South Yorkshire in the week before Christmas to talk to rank and file militants in the pits. Here he gives his impression of the situation.</strong></p>
<p class="fst">WHEN THE NUM branch at Bentley pit, South Yorkshire, met to nominate Arthur Scargill in the election for NUM President, there wasn’t a quorum. The nine committee members were there, but there had to be nine more present to put the meeting in order.</p>
<p>They weren’t there – and indeed by the time the Scargill nomination came up, many of the committee members had left. So the nomination for President went through solely because the committee had recommended it, and there was no opposition.</p>
<p>Bentley is by no means a passive pit. But its miners’ passive response to the dramatic resignation and re-nomination of their President is not uncommon. Throughout the area I was struck by the total absence of any campaign for Arthur Scargill.</p>
<p>Many rank and file militants were worried by it.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Here we are in the fifth week after Arthur’s resignation”, said one. “The fifth week – and there’s been not a pamphlet or a leaflet from the area on the Scargill campaign.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“He’s holding one meeting in Doncaster towards the end of his campaign – but none of the waverers will go to that. There <em>are</em> waverers, and they need to be won back to Scargill’s camp at canteen meetings, welfare meetings and pit discussions. Of course Arthur can’t go to every pit, but his leading supporters like Heathfield and Thompson can, and they should.”</p>
<p class="fst">Of course, there are still a few weeks to go, and all supporters of Arthur Scargill in the union had better use them to the maximum. For even the briefest survey of the most political miners in Arthur Scargill’s heartland uncovers a serious threat to him: abstentionism.</p>
<p>Few miners in South Yorkshire believe that John Walsh, Scargill’s opponent, will get a big vote. They know very well where he stands: four square in the old right wing Labour tradition, in an area where right wing Labour still stinks of corruption on the council and collaboration at the pit.</p>
<p>Walsh’s declaration that he would, if elected, treat with the UDM is greeted with almost universal contempt.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is this lurking menace of abstentionism. It came up wherever I went – in branch offices, pubs, canteens, miners’ welfare centres.</p>
<p>Even here, and even though one miner told me he’d heard it only from “yes-men”, the weasel words reported in newspapers and on television came out of the miners’ own mouths. “What has he done for us?” “What did the strike do for us?” “Why can’t he even negotiate a wage rise?”</p>
<p>The words, and the low, grumbling tone with which they are voiced, are the exact opposite of what the same sort of people were saying during the 1984/5 strike.</p>
<p>Then, if anyone criticised Arthur Scargill for not achieving anything, the miners’ reply was that he was leading <em>their</em> fight for jobs: that he was only doing what any self-respecting miners’ leader would do; and that if the strike failed, that was a failure of every striker as much as it was a failure of the leadership.</p>
<p>The miners’ strike, they would argue, was defeated because the ruling class organised better as a class than did the working class – and that could not for a single moment be blamed on Arthur Scargill.</p>
<p>On the contrary, the very forces which closed pits and ransacked the coalfield communities were demanding Arthur Scargill’s head on a charger. He had to be defended, and throughout the strike and for many months afterwards, he <em>was</em> defended unconditionally.</p>
<p>Yet now the conditions, the ifs and buts and maybes, have begun to creep into miners’ judgements. Many militants believe that unless some mighty effort is put in during the last few weeks of the campaign, the Scargill majority will be badly dented – and that this could happen despite the groundswell of Scargill support in Durham, and despite the fact that pretty well all the NUM members in Nottinghamshire will vote for Scargill, while in 1981 many many thousands there (now in the UDM) voted against him.</p>
<p>This shift of opinion flows directly from the defeat of the Great Strike and the relentless attack on the National Union of Mineworkers ever since. Go to any pit and you will hear the same dismal story of management attacks from the very moment of the marches back to work nearly three years ago.</p>
<p>At Armthorpe pit, branch secretary Malc McAdam ticks off the employers’ offensives one by one. <em>Signing money for craftsmen</em> – dropped on day one of the return to work; <em>the eight o’clock installation shift for craftsmen</em> – dropped on day one of the return to work; <em>all water agreements</em> – dropped.</p>
<p>There is also a tougher approach from deputies and especially from under-managers about flexibility of work within the pit; and the constant transfer of miners from pit to pit and the attempt by management to set groups of workers against one another.</p>
<p>Everywhere there is the insidious influence of the “brown envelope” (the secret deals between men and management for special jobs to be done for special money without the union knowing about it). “You see them whispering together with an undermanager in the canteen – and you know they’re at it,” one Bentley miner told me.</p>
<p>The secret agreements threaten the union at its jugular, its knowledge and control over everything its members do at work. Once the “brown envelope” arrangements become the norm, a hefty slice of the union’s bargaining power is gone forever.</p>
<p>Above all else, there is the constant haemorrhage of jobs flowing out of the pit, disrupting and disorienting the union influence inside it. At Armthorpe 1,500 men marched back to work after the strike. Now there are 1,225. “They want us down to 1,100,” says Malc McAdam, “and they want more production from the same three faces they were working with the 1,500.”</p>
<p>These appalling figures are, by national comparison, quite good. Since the strike 66 pits have been closed and 83,000 jobs lost, about 30 percent of the entire workforce.</p>
<p>Even in South Yorkshire young people are no longer recruited into coal mining. In the entire South Yorkshire coalfield in 1986-7 British Coal recruited precisely 33 workers.</p>
<p>Of course, the redundancies are all “voluntary”. But for the union every voluntary redundancy is another blow. “In this atmosphere, when a good union man says he wants to go and pay off his debts, it’s hard to know what to say to him,” says Malc McAdam.</p>
<p>The constant demoralisation caused by all this (and there is much more besides – any hour spent with any group of miners will divulge another series of concessions won from the union by British Coal) has led to a shift in the NUM branches’ attitudes to disputes.</p>
<p>One Armthorpe miner put it this way. “Before the strike, if there was a dispute, the whole pit would meet, discuss it, and more often than not come out on strike together while the problem was sorted out. It’s because we did that, we didn’t have that many disputes.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Now the mood is much more: ‘Get back to work while we work it out.’ This can lead to delays, and to no action. More often, there’s some sort of sectional action which splits the pit. During one of the recent craftsmen’s disputes, when the craftsmen were out, we had to picket the lamp room to get the men coming on shift on strike in support of the craftsmen.”</p>
<p class="fst">The defeats and the demoralisation can be seen at every level. Another Armthorpe miner remembers how things were before the strike whenever a rally or a political demonstration was announced.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“You could always fill a bus from Armthorpe,” he said. “Whatever it was – CND, anti-apartheid – there would always be enough to go in the bus and show the banner. Since the strike they’ve only filled one bus, for the biggest of the demonstrations at Wapping. For the others, we had to share a bus with the other pits in the Doncaster area.”</p>
<p class="fst">But for all the gloom, defeat and demoralisation which anyone can tell you about, the picture is very different from anything which could have been drawn two and a half years after the defeat of 1926.</p>
<p>The miners <em>were</em> defeated in 1984-5 – it is nothing but bluster to suggest otherwise. But they went back to work with their organisation in shape, and with habits and traditions for which they were still prepared to fight.</p>
<table cellspacing="2" align="center" cellpadding="2">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="sm1"><big>TABLE 1:</big></p>
</td>
<td rowspan="14">
<p><big> </big></p>
</td>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="sm1"><big>TABLE 2:</big></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th colspan="2">
<p class="smc"><big>NUMBER OF DISPUTES IN<br>
13 WKS TO 20/8/87</big></p>
</th>
<th colspan="2" rowspan="2">
<p class="smc"><big>PRODUCTION LOST IN 13<br>
WKS UP TO 20/8/87<br>
(000’s of tonnes)</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>MARKHAM MAIN</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>8* </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>BRODSWORTH</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>7* </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>ELLINGTON</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>34.5 </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>BENTLEY</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>7* </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>FRICKLEY</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>22.8*</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>FRICKLEY</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>6* </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>MARKHAM MAIN</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>20.8*</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>ASKERN</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>5* </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>TRELEWIS</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>19.0 </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>WISTOW</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>5**</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>CASTLEHILL</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>15.5 </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>PRINCE OF WALES</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>4**</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>ROSSINGTON</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>14.8*</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>BARNBOROUGH</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>4* </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>ASKERN</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>14.8*</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>ABERNANT</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>4 </big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>PRINCE OF WALES</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>14.5 </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>WHELDALE</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>4**</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>LADYWIND</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>12.7 </big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2">
<p class="date"><small><em>*Denotes South Yorkshire<br>
**Denotes North Yorkshire</em></small></p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="sm1"><big>MALTBY</big></p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"><big>12.1*</big></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="date"><small><em>* Denotes South Yorkshire</em></small></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The concessions mentioned here were not conceded by a disgruntled and browbeaten workforce. The South Yorkshire coalfields since 1985 have been a battleground for almost permanent class war (see above graphs): a war in which the workers have been fighting defensively, it is true, but fighting nevertheless, and occasionally winning.</p>
<p>I spent only an hour or so in the cramped union office at Armthorpe – the hour when most of the miners broke for a meal or changed shifts.</p>
<p>Hardly five minutes went by without someone coming in with yet another problem: here is a finger cut off at the knuckle – caused by a carrying job which should have had more men on it; here is a man protesting about the new arrangements for working before the Christmas break; here is a surface worker incredulous at his take-home pay for three weeks over Christmas – £309.</p>
<p>Though the officials themselves seem to be unaware of it they are standing in the front line of a clash between the classes. The battle is going the bosses’ way but nothing like as fast as they would like.</p>
<p>It is not just that the solidarity and the hatred and contempt for the employers are still there in good measure. Worse than that, from the employers’ point of view, is the willingness to do something about it: the instinctive recognition among these miners that <em>they</em> produce the goods: <em>they</em> dig the coal out of the ground.</p>
<p>Their readiness to back that knowledge through action, through “standing”, as they put it, removes from the employers <em>their</em> sense of confidence and strength. You must be careful who you offer a “brown envelope”, in case the man takes the envelope straight to the union office and calls for a strike in protest. You must be careful, as a deputy or an undermanager, if you do a miner’s job – in case the whole pit promptly stops.</p>
<p>It is this determination to resist in the face of appalling odds which has persuaded the coal bosses and the government that not enough was won in the Great Strike. Industrial correspondents gossip that there must be yet “another confrontation” in the coalfields before the NUM is broken sufficiently to ensure the real prize: privatisation and the “freedom’’ once more to make personal profit out of coal which other men dig out of the ground.</p>
<p>Another open battle looms whose aim will be to knock the National Union of Mineworkers out of existence. All the major issues covered in the Presidential election are formally directed to that.</p>
<p>Arthur Scargill stands against the six-day week, against the new British Coal Code of Practice and for no truck with the UDM. Walsh is silent or compromising on all three issues. No NUM member who treasures his union should be in the slightest doubt which way to vote.</p>
<p>But a policy without the means to put it into practice is often as bad as no policy at all. This is the curse of all elections, parliamentary and trade union, and has led to the doubts and the abstentionism even in Scargill’s home territory.</p>
<p>As my conversations with rank and file militants went on, I was struck by the gap between the day-to-day struggles they were talking about – the water agreements, the secret deals, the deputies doing miners’ jobs, the voluntary redundancies – and the grand policy statements and declarations of trust which emerge from Arthur Scargill’s election campaign.</p>
<p>The pace and the rhetoric seem quite different – out of line. No one among the militants I spoke to disagreed with a word of Arthur Scargill’s campaign. But their own talk seemed to clash curiously with his.</p>
<p>Last summer at Frickley the miners rose against a peculiarly oppressive interpretation of the new <em>Code of Practice</em>. They “stood” in a strike which spread like wildfire round the county.</p>
<p>Pit after pit was shut when miners responded to even the faintest call from the Frickley miners. One miner I spoke to, who was then working at Askern, recalled with amazement and delight how he and a couple of miners from Frickley picketed out the entire pit at Houghton Main – in protest against <em>the Code of Practice</em>.</p>
<p>Most Yorkshire militants knew perfectly well what the <em>Code of Practice</em> meant – the end of their union. In a matter of days, thousands of miners were on strike all over Yorkshire.</p>
<p>The Yorkshire Area stabbed the strike in the back. As soon as the National Executive announced a ballot throughout the coalfield on action over the <em>Code of Practice</em>, the Yorkshire Area ordered the miners to return to work “in the interests of unity”.</p>
<p>Though the striking miners, especially at Frickley, were unhappy with this sabotage, they campaigned for a “Yes” vote in the ballot and for a full overtime ban.</p>
<p>An overtime ban can always depend on a majority if only because the majority of NUM members don’t work overtime. But the <em>fullness</em> of the overtime ban was crucial to their decision to go back to work.</p>
<p>In the event, the NUM executive, steeped in the “new realism” of the modern fashionable left, backed away even from a full overtime ban and imposed a half-hearted, futile restriction on overtime which has hit some miners in the pocket but has not affected coal production or even productivity. The coal bosses chortle in their newspapers, and militant miners are furious.</p>
<p>Resolutions poured into the executive from Yorkshire, Durham and Kent, demanding a proper overtime ban. If a delegate conference had been called then and there a full ban would certainly have been imposed.</p>
<p>But then came the announcement of a presidential election, and the vote on the delegate conference on the ban was postponed until the election was over – until February.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The momentum will have been lost by then,” an angry Armthorpe miner exclaimed. “We will have lost the early anger, and the enthusiasm for the action. I couldn’t guarantee to you now how a delegate conference will vote – it’s all so long in the future.”</p>
<p class="fst">In Trotsky’s <strong>History of the Russian Revolution</strong> he discusses again and again the difference in tempo between the ponderous, predictable progress of social democratic politics – elections every so often; conferences every so often; meetings every so often, and everything hammered in to fit that timetable – and, on the other hand, the unpredictable but much more decisive pace of the struggle between the classes.</p>
<p>The conference/election cycle <em>seems</em> often the more powerful since it <em>seems</em> in a careful and rational way to gather together the entire force of the party or the union for a particular course of action.</p>
<p>In reality, however, the ability of the employers and <em>their</em> class to move at will, in their own class interests, entirely oblivious of any procedure or timetable, enables them to dictate the course of events. It is the ability on our side to do the same which is by far the workers’ most powerful weapon.</p>
<p>Thus the wildfire action after the Frickley strike terrified British Coal and the government. The ghost of the 1981 unofficial strikes, which humiliated the government and postponed their whole strategy for three years, rose up to haunt them.</p>
<p>As soon, as the Frickley strike was lifted (not by British Coal, but by the National Union of Mineworkers) the employers and the government got their breath back and regained the upper hand.</p>
<p>There is a power there which can stop the British Coal offensive and save the union. The embers of defiance still glow in those perennial disputes about water and secret deals and flexibility and transfers. If the defiance is to grow, those embers need to be fanned.</p>
<p>But they cannot be fanned from far away, with a manifesto or a blast of rhetoric on the television. They can be fanned only from below, by rank and file miners themselves who are ready to fight, and who come together to instil in their fellow workers, at branch meetings and in the everyday discussions which still take place more in the pits than in any other workplace, some of their own confidence in their organisation and their power.</p>
<p>Such organisation cannot survive only on discussions about water agreements or craftsmen’s signing-on time. Its life-blood is the political discussion – the talk of nuclear power and nuclear bombs and apartheid and Irangate and privatisation – and the way in which all these issues are directly relevant to the miners’ struggle and the survival of the union.</p>
<p>“This election seems pretty irrelevant to me,” one ultra-militant miner said at the end of the discussion. “Whoever wins, we’ll still have the same fight on our hands.” A chorus of disagreement greeted him. “We’ll still have the same fight all right, but what a blow to morale if Walsh wins!”</p>
<p>Should Arthur Scargill lose, every single miner who believes in his union and retains even the slightest degree of class consciousness will feel worse, much worse. His fight will be more difficult. The new realists, compromisers, splitters and collaborators will have a field day.</p>
<p>But the reverse is not the case. A victory for Scargill will strengthen the morale of the militants, but it will not win the fight. All Arthur Scargill’s best qualities, his class consciousness, his fighting spirit, his contempt for the ruling class and their media, his refusal for a single moment to betray the people who elect him – all these derive from his roots, from his experience in political organisation in the miners’ rank and file.</p>
<p>His worst qualities, his stubbornness, his triumphalism even in defeat, feed off his isolation from the rank and file, his imprisonment in a world of union elections and executive intrigues.</p>
<p>He cannot decide which influence will be decisive in the long run. That will only be determined by the ebb and flow of the struggle.</p>
<p>It is the miners’ ability to maintain and strengthen their own organisation, hopefully with the support of a newly-elected president, which will decide whether or not Thatcher and her friends can put an end to their union and all the hope, the decency and the democracy for which it stands.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Battle for the NUM
(January 1988)
From Socialist Worker Review, No.105, January 1988, pp.9-11.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Arthur Scargill’s dramatic resignation from, and then candidacy for, the post of President of the NUM is of major importance for miners. Paul Foot went to South Yorkshire in the week before Christmas to talk to rank and file militants in the pits. Here he gives his impression of the situation.
WHEN THE NUM branch at Bentley pit, South Yorkshire, met to nominate Arthur Scargill in the election for NUM President, there wasn’t a quorum. The nine committee members were there, but there had to be nine more present to put the meeting in order.
They weren’t there – and indeed by the time the Scargill nomination came up, many of the committee members had left. So the nomination for President went through solely because the committee had recommended it, and there was no opposition.
Bentley is by no means a passive pit. But its miners’ passive response to the dramatic resignation and re-nomination of their President is not uncommon. Throughout the area I was struck by the total absence of any campaign for Arthur Scargill.
Many rank and file militants were worried by it.
“Here we are in the fifth week after Arthur’s resignation”, said one. “The fifth week – and there’s been not a pamphlet or a leaflet from the area on the Scargill campaign.
“He’s holding one meeting in Doncaster towards the end of his campaign – but none of the waverers will go to that. There are waverers, and they need to be won back to Scargill’s camp at canteen meetings, welfare meetings and pit discussions. Of course Arthur can’t go to every pit, but his leading supporters like Heathfield and Thompson can, and they should.”
Of course, there are still a few weeks to go, and all supporters of Arthur Scargill in the union had better use them to the maximum. For even the briefest survey of the most political miners in Arthur Scargill’s heartland uncovers a serious threat to him: abstentionism.
Few miners in South Yorkshire believe that John Walsh, Scargill’s opponent, will get a big vote. They know very well where he stands: four square in the old right wing Labour tradition, in an area where right wing Labour still stinks of corruption on the council and collaboration at the pit.
Walsh’s declaration that he would, if elected, treat with the UDM is greeted with almost universal contempt.
On the other hand, there is this lurking menace of abstentionism. It came up wherever I went – in branch offices, pubs, canteens, miners’ welfare centres.
Even here, and even though one miner told me he’d heard it only from “yes-men”, the weasel words reported in newspapers and on television came out of the miners’ own mouths. “What has he done for us?” “What did the strike do for us?” “Why can’t he even negotiate a wage rise?”
The words, and the low, grumbling tone with which they are voiced, are the exact opposite of what the same sort of people were saying during the 1984/5 strike.
Then, if anyone criticised Arthur Scargill for not achieving anything, the miners’ reply was that he was leading their fight for jobs: that he was only doing what any self-respecting miners’ leader would do; and that if the strike failed, that was a failure of every striker as much as it was a failure of the leadership.
The miners’ strike, they would argue, was defeated because the ruling class organised better as a class than did the working class – and that could not for a single moment be blamed on Arthur Scargill.
On the contrary, the very forces which closed pits and ransacked the coalfield communities were demanding Arthur Scargill’s head on a charger. He had to be defended, and throughout the strike and for many months afterwards, he was defended unconditionally.
Yet now the conditions, the ifs and buts and maybes, have begun to creep into miners’ judgements. Many militants believe that unless some mighty effort is put in during the last few weeks of the campaign, the Scargill majority will be badly dented – and that this could happen despite the groundswell of Scargill support in Durham, and despite the fact that pretty well all the NUM members in Nottinghamshire will vote for Scargill, while in 1981 many many thousands there (now in the UDM) voted against him.
This shift of opinion flows directly from the defeat of the Great Strike and the relentless attack on the National Union of Mineworkers ever since. Go to any pit and you will hear the same dismal story of management attacks from the very moment of the marches back to work nearly three years ago.
At Armthorpe pit, branch secretary Malc McAdam ticks off the employers’ offensives one by one. Signing money for craftsmen – dropped on day one of the return to work; the eight o’clock installation shift for craftsmen – dropped on day one of the return to work; all water agreements – dropped.
There is also a tougher approach from deputies and especially from under-managers about flexibility of work within the pit; and the constant transfer of miners from pit to pit and the attempt by management to set groups of workers against one another.
Everywhere there is the insidious influence of the “brown envelope” (the secret deals between men and management for special jobs to be done for special money without the union knowing about it). “You see them whispering together with an undermanager in the canteen – and you know they’re at it,” one Bentley miner told me.
The secret agreements threaten the union at its jugular, its knowledge and control over everything its members do at work. Once the “brown envelope” arrangements become the norm, a hefty slice of the union’s bargaining power is gone forever.
Above all else, there is the constant haemorrhage of jobs flowing out of the pit, disrupting and disorienting the union influence inside it. At Armthorpe 1,500 men marched back to work after the strike. Now there are 1,225. “They want us down to 1,100,” says Malc McAdam, “and they want more production from the same three faces they were working with the 1,500.”
These appalling figures are, by national comparison, quite good. Since the strike 66 pits have been closed and 83,000 jobs lost, about 30 percent of the entire workforce.
Even in South Yorkshire young people are no longer recruited into coal mining. In the entire South Yorkshire coalfield in 1986-7 British Coal recruited precisely 33 workers.
Of course, the redundancies are all “voluntary”. But for the union every voluntary redundancy is another blow. “In this atmosphere, when a good union man says he wants to go and pay off his debts, it’s hard to know what to say to him,” says Malc McAdam.
The constant demoralisation caused by all this (and there is much more besides – any hour spent with any group of miners will divulge another series of concessions won from the union by British Coal) has led to a shift in the NUM branches’ attitudes to disputes.
One Armthorpe miner put it this way. “Before the strike, if there was a dispute, the whole pit would meet, discuss it, and more often than not come out on strike together while the problem was sorted out. It’s because we did that, we didn’t have that many disputes.
“Now the mood is much more: ‘Get back to work while we work it out.’ This can lead to delays, and to no action. More often, there’s some sort of sectional action which splits the pit. During one of the recent craftsmen’s disputes, when the craftsmen were out, we had to picket the lamp room to get the men coming on shift on strike in support of the craftsmen.”
The defeats and the demoralisation can be seen at every level. Another Armthorpe miner remembers how things were before the strike whenever a rally or a political demonstration was announced.
“You could always fill a bus from Armthorpe,” he said. “Whatever it was – CND, anti-apartheid – there would always be enough to go in the bus and show the banner. Since the strike they’ve only filled one bus, for the biggest of the demonstrations at Wapping. For the others, we had to share a bus with the other pits in the Doncaster area.”
But for all the gloom, defeat and demoralisation which anyone can tell you about, the picture is very different from anything which could have been drawn two and a half years after the defeat of 1926.
The miners were defeated in 1984-5 – it is nothing but bluster to suggest otherwise. But they went back to work with their organisation in shape, and with habits and traditions for which they were still prepared to fight.
TABLE 1:
TABLE 2:
NUMBER OF DISPUTES IN
13 WKS TO 20/8/87
PRODUCTION LOST IN 13
WKS UP TO 20/8/87
(000’s of tonnes)
MARKHAM MAIN
8*
BRODSWORTH
7*
ELLINGTON
34.5
BENTLEY
7*
FRICKLEY
22.8*
FRICKLEY
6*
MARKHAM MAIN
20.8*
ASKERN
5*
TRELEWIS
19.0
WISTOW
5**
CASTLEHILL
15.5
PRINCE OF WALES
4**
ROSSINGTON
14.8*
BARNBOROUGH
4*
ASKERN
14.8*
ABERNANT
4
PRINCE OF WALES
14.5
WHELDALE
4**
LADYWIND
12.7
*Denotes South Yorkshire
**Denotes North Yorkshire
MALTBY
12.1*
* Denotes South Yorkshire
The concessions mentioned here were not conceded by a disgruntled and browbeaten workforce. The South Yorkshire coalfields since 1985 have been a battleground for almost permanent class war (see above graphs): a war in which the workers have been fighting defensively, it is true, but fighting nevertheless, and occasionally winning.
I spent only an hour or so in the cramped union office at Armthorpe – the hour when most of the miners broke for a meal or changed shifts.
Hardly five minutes went by without someone coming in with yet another problem: here is a finger cut off at the knuckle – caused by a carrying job which should have had more men on it; here is a man protesting about the new arrangements for working before the Christmas break; here is a surface worker incredulous at his take-home pay for three weeks over Christmas – £309.
Though the officials themselves seem to be unaware of it they are standing in the front line of a clash between the classes. The battle is going the bosses’ way but nothing like as fast as they would like.
It is not just that the solidarity and the hatred and contempt for the employers are still there in good measure. Worse than that, from the employers’ point of view, is the willingness to do something about it: the instinctive recognition among these miners that they produce the goods: they dig the coal out of the ground.
Their readiness to back that knowledge through action, through “standing”, as they put it, removes from the employers their sense of confidence and strength. You must be careful who you offer a “brown envelope”, in case the man takes the envelope straight to the union office and calls for a strike in protest. You must be careful, as a deputy or an undermanager, if you do a miner’s job – in case the whole pit promptly stops.
It is this determination to resist in the face of appalling odds which has persuaded the coal bosses and the government that not enough was won in the Great Strike. Industrial correspondents gossip that there must be yet “another confrontation” in the coalfields before the NUM is broken sufficiently to ensure the real prize: privatisation and the “freedom’’ once more to make personal profit out of coal which other men dig out of the ground.
Another open battle looms whose aim will be to knock the National Union of Mineworkers out of existence. All the major issues covered in the Presidential election are formally directed to that.
Arthur Scargill stands against the six-day week, against the new British Coal Code of Practice and for no truck with the UDM. Walsh is silent or compromising on all three issues. No NUM member who treasures his union should be in the slightest doubt which way to vote.
But a policy without the means to put it into practice is often as bad as no policy at all. This is the curse of all elections, parliamentary and trade union, and has led to the doubts and the abstentionism even in Scargill’s home territory.
As my conversations with rank and file militants went on, I was struck by the gap between the day-to-day struggles they were talking about – the water agreements, the secret deals, the deputies doing miners’ jobs, the voluntary redundancies – and the grand policy statements and declarations of trust which emerge from Arthur Scargill’s election campaign.
The pace and the rhetoric seem quite different – out of line. No one among the militants I spoke to disagreed with a word of Arthur Scargill’s campaign. But their own talk seemed to clash curiously with his.
Last summer at Frickley the miners rose against a peculiarly oppressive interpretation of the new Code of Practice. They “stood” in a strike which spread like wildfire round the county.
Pit after pit was shut when miners responded to even the faintest call from the Frickley miners. One miner I spoke to, who was then working at Askern, recalled with amazement and delight how he and a couple of miners from Frickley picketed out the entire pit at Houghton Main – in protest against the Code of Practice.
Most Yorkshire militants knew perfectly well what the Code of Practice meant – the end of their union. In a matter of days, thousands of miners were on strike all over Yorkshire.
The Yorkshire Area stabbed the strike in the back. As soon as the National Executive announced a ballot throughout the coalfield on action over the Code of Practice, the Yorkshire Area ordered the miners to return to work “in the interests of unity”.
Though the striking miners, especially at Frickley, were unhappy with this sabotage, they campaigned for a “Yes” vote in the ballot and for a full overtime ban.
An overtime ban can always depend on a majority if only because the majority of NUM members don’t work overtime. But the fullness of the overtime ban was crucial to their decision to go back to work.
In the event, the NUM executive, steeped in the “new realism” of the modern fashionable left, backed away even from a full overtime ban and imposed a half-hearted, futile restriction on overtime which has hit some miners in the pocket but has not affected coal production or even productivity. The coal bosses chortle in their newspapers, and militant miners are furious.
Resolutions poured into the executive from Yorkshire, Durham and Kent, demanding a proper overtime ban. If a delegate conference had been called then and there a full ban would certainly have been imposed.
But then came the announcement of a presidential election, and the vote on the delegate conference on the ban was postponed until the election was over – until February.
“The momentum will have been lost by then,” an angry Armthorpe miner exclaimed. “We will have lost the early anger, and the enthusiasm for the action. I couldn’t guarantee to you now how a delegate conference will vote – it’s all so long in the future.”
In Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution he discusses again and again the difference in tempo between the ponderous, predictable progress of social democratic politics – elections every so often; conferences every so often; meetings every so often, and everything hammered in to fit that timetable – and, on the other hand, the unpredictable but much more decisive pace of the struggle between the classes.
The conference/election cycle seems often the more powerful since it seems in a careful and rational way to gather together the entire force of the party or the union for a particular course of action.
In reality, however, the ability of the employers and their class to move at will, in their own class interests, entirely oblivious of any procedure or timetable, enables them to dictate the course of events. It is the ability on our side to do the same which is by far the workers’ most powerful weapon.
Thus the wildfire action after the Frickley strike terrified British Coal and the government. The ghost of the 1981 unofficial strikes, which humiliated the government and postponed their whole strategy for three years, rose up to haunt them.
As soon, as the Frickley strike was lifted (not by British Coal, but by the National Union of Mineworkers) the employers and the government got their breath back and regained the upper hand.
There is a power there which can stop the British Coal offensive and save the union. The embers of defiance still glow in those perennial disputes about water and secret deals and flexibility and transfers. If the defiance is to grow, those embers need to be fanned.
But they cannot be fanned from far away, with a manifesto or a blast of rhetoric on the television. They can be fanned only from below, by rank and file miners themselves who are ready to fight, and who come together to instil in their fellow workers, at branch meetings and in the everyday discussions which still take place more in the pits than in any other workplace, some of their own confidence in their organisation and their power.
Such organisation cannot survive only on discussions about water agreements or craftsmen’s signing-on time. Its life-blood is the political discussion – the talk of nuclear power and nuclear bombs and apartheid and Irangate and privatisation – and the way in which all these issues are directly relevant to the miners’ struggle and the survival of the union.
“This election seems pretty irrelevant to me,” one ultra-militant miner said at the end of the discussion. “Whoever wins, we’ll still have the same fight on our hands.” A chorus of disagreement greeted him. “We’ll still have the same fight all right, but what a blow to morale if Walsh wins!”
Should Arthur Scargill lose, every single miner who believes in his union and retains even the slightest degree of class consciousness will feel worse, much worse. His fight will be more difficult. The new realists, compromisers, splitters and collaborators will have a field day.
But the reverse is not the case. A victory for Scargill will strengthen the morale of the militants, but it will not win the fight. All Arthur Scargill’s best qualities, his class consciousness, his fighting spirit, his contempt for the ruling class and their media, his refusal for a single moment to betray the people who elect him – all these derive from his roots, from his experience in political organisation in the miners’ rank and file.
His worst qualities, his stubbornness, his triumphalism even in defeat, feed off his isolation from the rank and file, his imprisonment in a world of union elections and executive intrigues.
He cannot decide which influence will be decisive in the long run. That will only be determined by the ebb and flow of the struggle.
It is the miners’ ability to maintain and strengthen their own organisation, hopefully with the support of a newly-elected president, which will decide whether or not Thatcher and her friends can put an end to their union and all the hope, the decency and the democracy for which it stands.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Silencing the Nazi threat</h1>
<h3>(May 1994)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index6.html#sr94_05" target="new">No. 175</a>, May 1994, pp. 9–11.<br>
Copyright © 1994 Socialist Review<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><em>Do fascists have the same right to free speech and organisation that other political parties do? <strong>Paul Foot</strong> explains that allowing them such freedom only results in the destruction of democracy and free speech for everyone else</em><br>
</p>
<p class="fst">WHY DO socialists deny free speech to fascists? After all, we are in favour of democracy. Socialist ideas flourish best where there are trade unions, public meetings, leaflets and newspapers which express different points of view. Imposing socialist ideas without that democratic debate is the opposite of real socialism.</p>
<p>Yet we deny these rights to the Nazis. Is this just the same sort of hypocrisy used by tyrants through the ages who have demanded free speech for themselves but seized the first opportunity to deny it to others? After all, runs our critics’ argument, the fascists are, like you, a minority. They have a ‘point of view’. Why should they be denied the right to put that point of view in the same way that you do?</p>
<p>There are two immediate answers. First, there is the connection between saying and doing. If an organised party goes around preaching race hatred against black people, as the British National Party does, that race hatred is bound to overflow into deeds. Every single survey in and around the Isle of Dogs in east London since the BNP won a council by-election there last year has proved the rise in attacks on black people, and the connection between those attacks and the election. It is as though all those who felt like beating up isolated and defenceless black people felt encouraged, from the election, by a surge of legitimacy. This legitimacy is increased by every article and every broadcast which treats the BNP like just another political party.</p>
<p>A recent programme in the excellent <em>File on Four</em> series is often quoted as an example of how the BNP can be humiliated by an intelligent interview. It is true that the fascist Beackon was made to sound an imbecile as he revealed that he did not know his party’s policy on social services and indeed did not know what social services are. But the producers of <em>File on Four</em> should hesitate before they congratulate themselves too heartily. For ‘balance’ they felt they had to present Beackon as a serious politician. They quoted a BNP supporter as saying that the best thing to do with Asian people is to ‘kick them in the gutter’. No one says that a fascist gang would be directly inspired by <em>File on Four</em> to go and kick Asians in the gutter. But the effect of broadcasting such a comment is not just to expose the nastiness of BNP support; it is also to legitimise it. The more BNP thugs appear on television trumpeting the master race, the more the few freedoms of the black people they persecute are curtailed. The ‘point of view’ of a fascist party is not only measured by their rights or freedoms, but also by the immediate and consequent curtailing of the rights and freedoms of everybody else.</p>
<p>The other answer to the question why deny free speech to the fascists is that the central aim of fascism is to destroy democracy. This is not speculation, as it might have been before Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 or Hitler in Germany 11 years later. Now we know without any shadow of doubt that the aim of fascism is totally to destroy democracy and to remove the rights and freedoms of everyone except themselves.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">ONE OF THE peculiar obsessions of the new breed of apologists for fascism is to insist on a crucial distinction between German and Italian fascism. This argument has built up to a crescendo since the recent elections in Italy. A good example of the new ‘freedom for fascists’ genre is the <strong>Economist</strong>, which is run by know-all yuppies with an admiring eye on the new Thatcherite millionaires. Under the heading <em>Fascist Beasts</em>, an <strong>Economist</strong> editorial (9–15 April) proclaimed that, compared with Hitler, Mussolini was a ‘barnyard rooster’. The editorial concluded:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The true mark of fascism, belief in a peculiar variety of one-party corporate state – not, it should be said, a belief shared by this newspaper – is not Nazism or racism. Let the word “fascist” be reserved for those who profess that belief, and today’s neo-fascists be judged for their own ideas, not Hitler’s.’</p>
<p class="fst">One curious feature of this argument (repeated in many different forms in the Italian liberal press and even by Martin Kettle in the <strong>Guardian</strong>) is that it overlooks a very consistent theme in fascism wherever it came to power: the complete destruction of the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Since the <strong>Economist</strong> will warm to the title, I quote from Carl T. Schmidt’s <strong>The Corporate State in Action</strong>, published in 1939:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Every newspaper must have a “responsible” [that is, a fascistic] editor and only journalists congenial to the government may be employed. A Minister of Propaganda undertakes to colour important despatches and to dole out instructions on the treatment of news items ... Mussolini has said: “Journalism is free just because it serves only one cause and one regime”.’</p>
<p class="fst">This unusual definition of press freedom was seized on by the man promoted by Hitler to take charge of the press in Germany after 1933: Dr Goebbels. His press law, declared in a single day in October 1933, made journalism a ‘public vocation’. It stipulated that all editors must be of Aryan descent, not married to a Jew. Section 14 ordered all editors to keep out of the newspaper anything ‘which in any manner is misleading to the public, mixes selfish aims with community aims, tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich, outwardly or inwardly, the common will of the German people, the defence of Germany, its culture or economy.’</p>
<p>In practice this meant the closing down of all journals which were not Nazi, and the sacking, imprisoning or murder of every journalist who refused to toe the Nazi line. Hitler summed up his own and his Propaganda Ministry’s approach with the chilling reminder:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The state dare not forget that all media have a duty to serve – a duty which flunkies of a so-called press freedom dare not be allowed to confuse.’<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">THE WHOLE POINT of fascism, whether under Hitler, Mussolini or Franco, was to expunge all opposition: to purge from the state every voice of protest or criticism. As Robert Brady shows in his <strong>Spirit and Structure of German Fascism</strong>, published long before the Holocaust, in 1937, the purpose of the National Press Chamber under the Nazis was not just to censor all opposition journalism but to spy on the resistance press as well.</p>
<p>This determination to wipe out all democratic freedoms was widely trumpeted after fascism seized state power. In the run up to the seizure of power, the fascists were more circumspect. To themselves in their private meetings and handpicked rallies, they denounced the ‘communist doctrine of democracy’ and promised the book burning to come. At election times, on the other hand, they were more constitutional. For as long as they thought it necessary, they promised to stand by the constitution and safeguard the freedom of the press and speech. Again and again they declared that they would extend to other parties and newspapers the freedom enjoyed by their own. They were especially eloquent on this subject when Social Democrats and Communists demanded that the fascist literature, which was leading among other things to the systematic violence against Jews, should be suppressed. No, no, the fascists objected. We do not approve racial violence. We respect the rights of others.</p>
<p>Today the Italian and French fascists and, even in their own pathetic way, the British National Party all protest that they don’t really know who Hitler was, and that all they seek is to put their point of view to the electorate as other parties can. Their hypocrisy is sometimes embarrassingly obvious. Fini, the Italian fascist leader, followed up his insistence that there is ‘all the difference in the world’ between what he stands for now and what Mussolini stood for in the 1920s and 1930s with an interview describing the butcher Mussolini as the ‘greatest statesman of the century’. His supporters too know what he stands for. They greeted his election success with cries of ‘Duce, Duce’, the same cry which brought Mussolini to power in 1922 and sustained him there for nearly 20 years.</p>
<p>Here in Britain a reckless television programme shows a ‘respectable’ fascist urging his supporters not to be violent, hardly commenting on the absurdity of the fact that the same ‘non-violent’ propagandist had just come out of prison after a long stretch for beating up a socialist on the tube.</p>
<p>The strategy of the fascists then and now is to use the freedoms won by fighters for democracy to gain respectability and electoral support so as more relentlessly to pursue their single purpose: to smash democracy and freedom to pieces.</p>
<p>These two arguments – the connection between words and deeds and the real purpose of fascism in the first half of this century – can be understood by everyone. Anyone who cares about free speech or democracy, whether a socialist or not, can understand the danger of applying the same democratic rules to an organised party which seeks to abolish all those rules and establish a totalitarian dictatorship.</p>
<p>But the argument does not end there. Members of the National Union of Journalists, for instance, who seek a ‘no platform for fascists’ policy, are often asked: well, if you’re against a party whose words might turn to violence, why do you oppose the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fein (as the NUJ has always done)? Is not Sinn Fein committed to violence indistinguishable in logic from that of the fascists? Here the answer must go deeper. Sinn Fein represents something quite different from the aims of the fascists. Their aim is a democratic republic of Ireland. Gerry Adams, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, supports the use of force as part of a wider struggle for freedom. Fascists use force as part of a wider means of denying elementary democratic rights.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">THE DISTINCTION brings us to the core of the argument: the real reason for fascism and the master it serves. To liberals, fascists appear as a clutch of racist thugs with no real power who can, as a recent <strong>Independent</strong> editorial pretended, easily be seen off by liberal responses of fair play, a fair hearing and (perhaps) a fair crack of the whip. Certainly, the tiny numbers of fascists in Britain at present hardly seem a threat comparable to the major organisations in France or Italy. As long as this is the face of British fascism, runs the argument, as long as the fascists at the height of their popularity can muster only 30 candidates for 3,000 seats, who cares?</p>
<p>The answer is that the history of this century proves only too clearly that fascism can grow very quickly in periods of social and economic upheaval. In 1928 Hitler’s Nazis gained just 2.5 percent of the vote in Germany. By 1930 their vote had risen to 6.4 million, an increase of 800 percent. Today the Thatcher experiment of the 1980s is in ruins. So is the Social Democratic experiment in France, Germany and Italy. Everywhere capitalists are losing confidence in the resilience of their system. Organised labour, weakened in the 1980s, is still on the defensive against the capitalist attacks.</p>
<p>The single common aim of fascism in the 1930s was to break the strength and spirit of organised labour: to pave the way for uninterrupted profiteering by the people who own the means of production. Though its shock troops were the lumpen proletariat and the lower middle class, fascism’s real master was capital. When at least sections of the capitalists lost all hope of proceeding through the democratic system and the trade unions it had conceded under pressure in the past, it looked round for a battering ram to dispose of both. Big financiers and capitalists don’t like the thought of a civil war, such as the one which brought fascism to power in Spain, or the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in circumstances of unimaginable barbarism in the Holocaust. Yet, deep in the pit of economic crisis, they will tolerate, arm and finance anything, however horrible, to defeat their competitors and keep their coffers full of their ill-gotten gains.</p>
<p>This certain knowledge – that fascism is the last resort of big business in crisis – utterly destroys the complacent rhetoric of the <strong>Independent</strong>, the BBC and others about the menace of fascism today. It is not just that they ignore the hideous advances of fascism in France, Italy and Germany in recent years. There is the same sort of peril too in Britain, which has none of the imperial fat which sustained its rulers and their free speech and democracy in the 1930s.</p>
<p>Those rulers are not committed to democracy. Nor are their media. In the 1930s large hunks of the media championed the fascists who were determined to destroy it. In the United States the huge combine of papers run by William Randolph Hearst campaigned enthusiastically for fascism. So did the Rothermere press in Britain. In August 1938, just after Mussolini had promulgated his own special law banning Jews from public office, Ward Price, special correspondent of the <strong>Daily Mail</strong>, wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Mussolini is an Elizabethan. Allowing for the altered conditions, he stands to modern Italy as Raleigh and Drake did in Queen Elizabeth’s day. He incarnates the new spirit which has possessed his nation, and between the Italy of the early 20th century and the England of the early 17th there is much spiritual resemblance – the same internal national pride, the same unbounded optimism, the same fierce sense of opening opportunity, the same quick sensitive temper, the same tendency to recklessness, the same full-blooded heat of a nation that feels its youth and strength.’</p>
<p class="fst">When Mosley’s anti-Semitic thugs organised in 1934, they were cheered on by the same <strong>Daily Mail</strong>, whose headline read: ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’! Today the <strong>Daily Mail</strong> is owned by the same Rothermere family.</p>
<p>Those of us who see the world from the bottom up, and care most about the freedom of the press, understand the danger from fascism far more than the millionaires who own the newspapers. Free speech for fascists is an awesome threat to free speech. That is why we have to treat the blackshirts of today with the same implacable opposition that they met when they tried their intimidatory racist marches in London’s East End in the 1930s.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">BUT THE ARGUMENT cannot end there. In his book <strong>Fascism and Big Business</strong>, the French socialist Daniel Guerin warns against simply being ‘anti’-fascist. On its own, opposition to free speech for fascists will not rid us of fascism. The roots of the argument ‘the blacks are taking our jobs’ are buried deep in mass unemployment; the roots of the argument ‘the blacks are taking our homes’ in the monstrous priorities of a society which builds millions of square feet of empty office space round the corner from mass homelessness, overcrowding and slums.</p>
<p>We are against arguing with organised Nazi parties, whose aim is to take away our right to argue, but we are very much in favour of arguing with those who may prove susceptible to their propaganda. The Nazis turn desperate people’s anger onto other desperate people with different coloured skins. The anger turns into racial violence and then to more despair. Socialists’ aim is to turn that anger against the landlords and tycoons and their dupes in the town halls and parliaments. Black people build homes just as white people do. In a sensible society both white and black would build the houses they need and there would be homes for everyone.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, as in the 1970s, the opponents of the British fascists confronted Mosley’s marches, picketed their meetings, hassled their appearances on the media, and, at the same time, campaigned against landlords, tycoons and media moguls. The combination worked both times, and it can work again.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Silencing the Nazi threat
(May 1994)
From Socialist Review, No. 175, May 1994, pp. 9–11.
Copyright © 1994 Socialist Review
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Do fascists have the same right to free speech and organisation that other political parties do? Paul Foot explains that allowing them such freedom only results in the destruction of democracy and free speech for everyone else
WHY DO socialists deny free speech to fascists? After all, we are in favour of democracy. Socialist ideas flourish best where there are trade unions, public meetings, leaflets and newspapers which express different points of view. Imposing socialist ideas without that democratic debate is the opposite of real socialism.
Yet we deny these rights to the Nazis. Is this just the same sort of hypocrisy used by tyrants through the ages who have demanded free speech for themselves but seized the first opportunity to deny it to others? After all, runs our critics’ argument, the fascists are, like you, a minority. They have a ‘point of view’. Why should they be denied the right to put that point of view in the same way that you do?
There are two immediate answers. First, there is the connection between saying and doing. If an organised party goes around preaching race hatred against black people, as the British National Party does, that race hatred is bound to overflow into deeds. Every single survey in and around the Isle of Dogs in east London since the BNP won a council by-election there last year has proved the rise in attacks on black people, and the connection between those attacks and the election. It is as though all those who felt like beating up isolated and defenceless black people felt encouraged, from the election, by a surge of legitimacy. This legitimacy is increased by every article and every broadcast which treats the BNP like just another political party.
A recent programme in the excellent File on Four series is often quoted as an example of how the BNP can be humiliated by an intelligent interview. It is true that the fascist Beackon was made to sound an imbecile as he revealed that he did not know his party’s policy on social services and indeed did not know what social services are. But the producers of File on Four should hesitate before they congratulate themselves too heartily. For ‘balance’ they felt they had to present Beackon as a serious politician. They quoted a BNP supporter as saying that the best thing to do with Asian people is to ‘kick them in the gutter’. No one says that a fascist gang would be directly inspired by File on Four to go and kick Asians in the gutter. But the effect of broadcasting such a comment is not just to expose the nastiness of BNP support; it is also to legitimise it. The more BNP thugs appear on television trumpeting the master race, the more the few freedoms of the black people they persecute are curtailed. The ‘point of view’ of a fascist party is not only measured by their rights or freedoms, but also by the immediate and consequent curtailing of the rights and freedoms of everybody else.
The other answer to the question why deny free speech to the fascists is that the central aim of fascism is to destroy democracy. This is not speculation, as it might have been before Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 or Hitler in Germany 11 years later. Now we know without any shadow of doubt that the aim of fascism is totally to destroy democracy and to remove the rights and freedoms of everyone except themselves.
ONE OF THE peculiar obsessions of the new breed of apologists for fascism is to insist on a crucial distinction between German and Italian fascism. This argument has built up to a crescendo since the recent elections in Italy. A good example of the new ‘freedom for fascists’ genre is the Economist, which is run by know-all yuppies with an admiring eye on the new Thatcherite millionaires. Under the heading Fascist Beasts, an Economist editorial (9–15 April) proclaimed that, compared with Hitler, Mussolini was a ‘barnyard rooster’. The editorial concluded:
‘The true mark of fascism, belief in a peculiar variety of one-party corporate state – not, it should be said, a belief shared by this newspaper – is not Nazism or racism. Let the word “fascist” be reserved for those who profess that belief, and today’s neo-fascists be judged for their own ideas, not Hitler’s.’
One curious feature of this argument (repeated in many different forms in the Italian liberal press and even by Martin Kettle in the Guardian) is that it overlooks a very consistent theme in fascism wherever it came to power: the complete destruction of the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Since the Economist will warm to the title, I quote from Carl T. Schmidt’s The Corporate State in Action, published in 1939:
‘Every newspaper must have a “responsible” [that is, a fascistic] editor and only journalists congenial to the government may be employed. A Minister of Propaganda undertakes to colour important despatches and to dole out instructions on the treatment of news items ... Mussolini has said: “Journalism is free just because it serves only one cause and one regime”.’
This unusual definition of press freedom was seized on by the man promoted by Hitler to take charge of the press in Germany after 1933: Dr Goebbels. His press law, declared in a single day in October 1933, made journalism a ‘public vocation’. It stipulated that all editors must be of Aryan descent, not married to a Jew. Section 14 ordered all editors to keep out of the newspaper anything ‘which in any manner is misleading to the public, mixes selfish aims with community aims, tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich, outwardly or inwardly, the common will of the German people, the defence of Germany, its culture or economy.’
In practice this meant the closing down of all journals which were not Nazi, and the sacking, imprisoning or murder of every journalist who refused to toe the Nazi line. Hitler summed up his own and his Propaganda Ministry’s approach with the chilling reminder:
‘The state dare not forget that all media have a duty to serve – a duty which flunkies of a so-called press freedom dare not be allowed to confuse.’
THE WHOLE POINT of fascism, whether under Hitler, Mussolini or Franco, was to expunge all opposition: to purge from the state every voice of protest or criticism. As Robert Brady shows in his Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, published long before the Holocaust, in 1937, the purpose of the National Press Chamber under the Nazis was not just to censor all opposition journalism but to spy on the resistance press as well.
This determination to wipe out all democratic freedoms was widely trumpeted after fascism seized state power. In the run up to the seizure of power, the fascists were more circumspect. To themselves in their private meetings and handpicked rallies, they denounced the ‘communist doctrine of democracy’ and promised the book burning to come. At election times, on the other hand, they were more constitutional. For as long as they thought it necessary, they promised to stand by the constitution and safeguard the freedom of the press and speech. Again and again they declared that they would extend to other parties and newspapers the freedom enjoyed by their own. They were especially eloquent on this subject when Social Democrats and Communists demanded that the fascist literature, which was leading among other things to the systematic violence against Jews, should be suppressed. No, no, the fascists objected. We do not approve racial violence. We respect the rights of others.
Today the Italian and French fascists and, even in their own pathetic way, the British National Party all protest that they don’t really know who Hitler was, and that all they seek is to put their point of view to the electorate as other parties can. Their hypocrisy is sometimes embarrassingly obvious. Fini, the Italian fascist leader, followed up his insistence that there is ‘all the difference in the world’ between what he stands for now and what Mussolini stood for in the 1920s and 1930s with an interview describing the butcher Mussolini as the ‘greatest statesman of the century’. His supporters too know what he stands for. They greeted his election success with cries of ‘Duce, Duce’, the same cry which brought Mussolini to power in 1922 and sustained him there for nearly 20 years.
Here in Britain a reckless television programme shows a ‘respectable’ fascist urging his supporters not to be violent, hardly commenting on the absurdity of the fact that the same ‘non-violent’ propagandist had just come out of prison after a long stretch for beating up a socialist on the tube.
The strategy of the fascists then and now is to use the freedoms won by fighters for democracy to gain respectability and electoral support so as more relentlessly to pursue their single purpose: to smash democracy and freedom to pieces.
These two arguments – the connection between words and deeds and the real purpose of fascism in the first half of this century – can be understood by everyone. Anyone who cares about free speech or democracy, whether a socialist or not, can understand the danger of applying the same democratic rules to an organised party which seeks to abolish all those rules and establish a totalitarian dictatorship.
But the argument does not end there. Members of the National Union of Journalists, for instance, who seek a ‘no platform for fascists’ policy, are often asked: well, if you’re against a party whose words might turn to violence, why do you oppose the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fein (as the NUJ has always done)? Is not Sinn Fein committed to violence indistinguishable in logic from that of the fascists? Here the answer must go deeper. Sinn Fein represents something quite different from the aims of the fascists. Their aim is a democratic republic of Ireland. Gerry Adams, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, supports the use of force as part of a wider struggle for freedom. Fascists use force as part of a wider means of denying elementary democratic rights.
THE DISTINCTION brings us to the core of the argument: the real reason for fascism and the master it serves. To liberals, fascists appear as a clutch of racist thugs with no real power who can, as a recent Independent editorial pretended, easily be seen off by liberal responses of fair play, a fair hearing and (perhaps) a fair crack of the whip. Certainly, the tiny numbers of fascists in Britain at present hardly seem a threat comparable to the major organisations in France or Italy. As long as this is the face of British fascism, runs the argument, as long as the fascists at the height of their popularity can muster only 30 candidates for 3,000 seats, who cares?
The answer is that the history of this century proves only too clearly that fascism can grow very quickly in periods of social and economic upheaval. In 1928 Hitler’s Nazis gained just 2.5 percent of the vote in Germany. By 1930 their vote had risen to 6.4 million, an increase of 800 percent. Today the Thatcher experiment of the 1980s is in ruins. So is the Social Democratic experiment in France, Germany and Italy. Everywhere capitalists are losing confidence in the resilience of their system. Organised labour, weakened in the 1980s, is still on the defensive against the capitalist attacks.
The single common aim of fascism in the 1930s was to break the strength and spirit of organised labour: to pave the way for uninterrupted profiteering by the people who own the means of production. Though its shock troops were the lumpen proletariat and the lower middle class, fascism’s real master was capital. When at least sections of the capitalists lost all hope of proceeding through the democratic system and the trade unions it had conceded under pressure in the past, it looked round for a battering ram to dispose of both. Big financiers and capitalists don’t like the thought of a civil war, such as the one which brought fascism to power in Spain, or the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in circumstances of unimaginable barbarism in the Holocaust. Yet, deep in the pit of economic crisis, they will tolerate, arm and finance anything, however horrible, to defeat their competitors and keep their coffers full of their ill-gotten gains.
This certain knowledge – that fascism is the last resort of big business in crisis – utterly destroys the complacent rhetoric of the Independent, the BBC and others about the menace of fascism today. It is not just that they ignore the hideous advances of fascism in France, Italy and Germany in recent years. There is the same sort of peril too in Britain, which has none of the imperial fat which sustained its rulers and their free speech and democracy in the 1930s.
Those rulers are not committed to democracy. Nor are their media. In the 1930s large hunks of the media championed the fascists who were determined to destroy it. In the United States the huge combine of papers run by William Randolph Hearst campaigned enthusiastically for fascism. So did the Rothermere press in Britain. In August 1938, just after Mussolini had promulgated his own special law banning Jews from public office, Ward Price, special correspondent of the Daily Mail, wrote:
‘Mussolini is an Elizabethan. Allowing for the altered conditions, he stands to modern Italy as Raleigh and Drake did in Queen Elizabeth’s day. He incarnates the new spirit which has possessed his nation, and between the Italy of the early 20th century and the England of the early 17th there is much spiritual resemblance – the same internal national pride, the same unbounded optimism, the same fierce sense of opening opportunity, the same quick sensitive temper, the same tendency to recklessness, the same full-blooded heat of a nation that feels its youth and strength.’
When Mosley’s anti-Semitic thugs organised in 1934, they were cheered on by the same Daily Mail, whose headline read: ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’! Today the Daily Mail is owned by the same Rothermere family.
Those of us who see the world from the bottom up, and care most about the freedom of the press, understand the danger from fascism far more than the millionaires who own the newspapers. Free speech for fascists is an awesome threat to free speech. That is why we have to treat the blackshirts of today with the same implacable opposition that they met when they tried their intimidatory racist marches in London’s East End in the 1930s.
BUT THE ARGUMENT cannot end there. In his book Fascism and Big Business, the French socialist Daniel Guerin warns against simply being ‘anti’-fascist. On its own, opposition to free speech for fascists will not rid us of fascism. The roots of the argument ‘the blacks are taking our jobs’ are buried deep in mass unemployment; the roots of the argument ‘the blacks are taking our homes’ in the monstrous priorities of a society which builds millions of square feet of empty office space round the corner from mass homelessness, overcrowding and slums.
We are against arguing with organised Nazi parties, whose aim is to take away our right to argue, but we are very much in favour of arguing with those who may prove susceptible to their propaganda. The Nazis turn desperate people’s anger onto other desperate people with different coloured skins. The anger turns into racial violence and then to more despair. Socialists’ aim is to turn that anger against the landlords and tycoons and their dupes in the town halls and parliaments. Black people build homes just as white people do. In a sensible society both white and black would build the houses they need and there would be homes for everyone.
In the 1930s, as in the 1970s, the opponents of the British fascists confronted Mosley’s marches, picketed their meetings, hassled their appearances on the media, and, at the same time, campaigned against landlords, tycoons and media moguls. The combination worked both times, and it can work again.
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<h2 class="western">Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Remembering the miners’ strike</h1>
<h3>(1985)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>Introduction</em> to <strong>Blood, Sweat and Tears</strong>, photographs of the miners’ strike, London 1985.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990</strong> (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 146<strong>–</strong>150.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">On 1 March 1984 Margaret Thatcher and her ministers embarked on a class battle. It was to be as tough and crude a class battle as had ever been attempted – even by Margaret Thatcher’s beloved Victorians. The Tories were taking on their most formidable and feared enemy: the National Union of Mineworkers.</p>
<p>Coal stocks had been built high. The police force had been reorganized and retrained to break strikes. Oil-fired power stations were taken out of mothballs, and oil ordered far ahead. Secret public opinion polls reassured them that a ballot among all the mineworkers for a national strike would almost certainly be lost (as had ballots three times in the last three years).</p>
<p>Ian MacGregor, a grisly class warrior whose life had been devoted to breaking unions all over the world, had taken up office as Chairman of the National Coal Board. After three years spent halving the workforce of the British Steel Corporation and reducing its unions to quivering servitude, he was ready for his most ambitious mission, to bring the miners to heel. This was to be the final victory over a trade union movement already cowed by the horror of four million unemployed.</p>
<p>The closure of Cortonwood, in Yorkshire, was the gauntlet flung down by the government. It was the first pit with coal in it to be closed since the signing of <em>A Plan for Coal</em> in 1974; the first of twenty pits to be closed in direct contravention of the agreement; 20,000 jobs were on the line, four million tons of coal capacity was to be taken out.</p>
<p>Reaction was swift. Flying pickets from Cortonwood brought the rest of the huge Yorkshire coalfield to a standstill. Kent followed. Before long the traditionally militant coalfields of South Wales and Scotland were silent. But in the big Nottingham coalfield, and in most of the smaller, weaker areas where ballots were held, the vote went against. The strike was deprived from the very first day of the unity and solidarity which won the day in the seventies.</p>
<p>Some 30,000 miners had decided to work. At least 165,000 miners were out on strike, and were clearly determined to stay out for tar longer than the most pessimistic Tory had ever imagined.</p>
<p>In the early days, the pickets set out as confidently as they had in 1972 and 1974. They found a different police force, controlled from one ‘reporting centre’, using powers which even they did not believe they had, to stop pickets’ cars and turn them back, to cordon off whole villages and areas, to arrest at will and finally to break the pickets by weight of numbers and by force. Press and television joined enthusiastically in the fray. Their tactic was based on the old demonology. They turned the miners’ president, Arthur Scargill, into a devil incarnate. Even A.J. Cook, the miners’ leader in the lock-out of 1926, had not had to endure the violence and malevolence of the attacks on Arthur Scargill. The strikers soon discovered that they were much poorer than they had been in 1972 and 1974. The Tories had deducted £15 per week from the already desperately low benefits that their wives and children were entitled to. It seemed as though they must soon break under this pressure. But they didn’t. Indeed, as the miners fell back from the battles on the picket lines of Nottinghamshire and Orgreave to protect their own heartlands, the strike seemed to gain a new spirit, a new strength.<br>
</p>
<p>Walking down a road in Upton, Yorks, in September I stopped to talk to a large miner whose battered car had stopped beside me. I had heard, I said, of the sadness and the wretchedness of the mining areas, so why was he beaming from ear to ear? ‘I’ve enjoyed it, me,’ he declared, and started to explain. Of course he and his family had very little money, of course they were worried by the cold, of course, of course. But life was different. The daily grind had been removed. Decisions, about picketing, about welfare, about the political ebbs and flows of the strike which were on television every day had to be taken not by someone else, some high-up somewhere, but by themselves. He did not put it quite like this, but he was in charge of his own destiny, and he enjoyed it.</p>
<p>There was <em>change</em> all about. People were changing. In the strength of their collective action they felt a new confidence in themselves and the people around them. Ideas and prejudices which had been grafted into them like barnacles were suddenly blasted away. The change in themselves was quickly translated into changes in the way they behaved towards one another.</p>
<p>In tradition and in fact, the miner had been the master in his home. The role of the miner’s wife was to feed her man, bring up her children, and keep her mouth shut. Suddenly, in the most unlikely area, the ideas of women’s liberation became reality. Whole communities were suddenly run by women. The strongest, most energetic and most forceful of the support groups were made up, almost exclusively of women. This led to new relationships in the community and in the home – to new uncertainties, perhaps, but also to new respect. In the j same way, the socialist ideas which inspired people’s brains were suddenly resurrected in physical reality. An injury to one was an injury to all. The strong <em>did</em> help the weak, the able-bodied <em>did</em> help the disabled. The seeds of a new society founded on co-operation, common interest and human effort bent to human need were sown in the struggle against the old one.</p>
<p>These changes burst out of the mining areas. Through the summer and autumn of 1984 they started to infect and inspire hundreds of thousands of people who had called themselves socialists but had begun to give up hope.</p>
<p>Into every crack and crevice of the Labour movement came the black-and-yellow slogan coal not dole, waking and inspiring all but the most somnolent and sectarian fossils.</p>
<p>At the start of the strike, all donations were collected by the union officials and sent off to the areas or to the national solidarity fund. By the late autumn, the vast mass of individual donations went to individual pits, through the ‘twinning’ of union branches, Labour Parties, even street committees with pits and villages. The miners and their families moved out of their areas, while supporters from outside moved in. New friendships sprouted, spawning new solidarity.</p>
<p>In August, September and October, the strike held; utterly and incredibly solid.</p>
<p>For a time, the government wavered, only to realize that another defeat by the miners, when all the odds were for the government, might threaten ‘civilization as we know it’. New pressure was brought on the stumbling MacGregor to stand his ground.</p>
<p>Tim Bell, personal adviser to the Prime Minister and managing director of Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising agency which had spurred the Tories to office in 1979, joined a new advertising agency which was promptly granted the entire anti-strike account of the National Coal Board. David Hart, an imbecile property tycoon and right-wing fanatic, was authorized by MacGregor to start up and fund a ‘Working Miners Committee’ from the dregs of the strike-breakers. In four days of advertising in Tory papers, Hart’s ‘Committee’ raised more than £100,000. Newspapers, television, police, even Special Branch joined the growing campaign to push the miners back to work. As miners started to go back in big numbers, in November, Coal Board executives predicted an end to the strike by Christmas.</p>
<p>The ratchet slipped a notch; then held again. The support groups mobilized a huge effort over Christmas. Every miner’s child enjoyed their Christmas – some say more than ever before. As the New Year started after nine months of strike there were still 130,000 miners out.</p>
<p><em>Still</em> the miners held out. The bitter cold of January did not bring the power cuts. The oil-fired power stations, at full blast, could light, heat and power the homes and industries of Britain as long as the crucial 50,000 tons of coal a week came in from Nottingham. Instead the cold was just another new misery to add to poverty and hunger.</p>
<p>The Coal Board and the government had been certain that the strike would peter out in January. But it went on and on. Each week cost the government another forty or fifty million pounds in unbudgeted spending. When, in the first week of March 1985, the flow back to work had become too strong to resist, and the miners were finally starved back to work, together, without formally conceding surrender, their heads held high, they had been on strike for a full year, the longest mass strike in all British, European or American history.</p>
<p>One of the most remarkable pictures in this book shows the faces of the miners in the cage on the first day back. It shows how quickly the change which had worked such wonders in the strike worked the other way as soon as the strike was over. The men are, once again, caged. Their expressions are depressed and bored. The miners were subject once again to the Coal Board’s commands and its instructions. The cage was bad enough, but worse would probably follow. There was only one thing worse than having a job; not having one.</p>
<p>Outside the pits, the mood shifted in the same sudden way. The end of the strike led to a collapse of aspirations and morale among its supporters. Neil Kinnock, who had been attacked in almost every Labour Party in the country for his weasel words about the strike, suddenly became ‘the only hope’. Labour and Communist Party members returned to their party organizations and their enervating or ideological priorities. People who had supported the strike to the hilt, deluding even some miners’ leaders, started to say that the strike had been a mistake, that it would have been better if it had never happened, that it was all the fault of Scargill and Benn, that it would have been better to have had a ballot and lost than to have gone through a ‘year’s hell’ for nothing.</p>
<p>These arguments were enthusiastically rehearsed by the trade union leaders who had spouted great rhetoric at the TUC but had organized nothing to campaign for the miners in the places it mattered most: the power stations, the haulage depots and the docks; by local miners’ leaders, who showed such lack of confidence in their own rank and file, and hugged the strike close to their short-sighted strategy, never once unleashing the potential for leadership which was there in the newly awakened rank and file; and by the Labour politicians who never missed a chance to fasten on the weakness of the miners’ case, rather than its strength, for rotten long-term electoral advantage. Such people were delighted to greet so many converts from direct action to the pillars in the cloud in the shape of a possible Labour government at least three years away.</p>
<p>As the ranks of the doubters grow, as their arguments become more and more fashionable, the real friends of the miners must fight all the harder for the memory of the strike. <em>We must remember</em> that it was a hundred million times better to have fought, even if the strike’s aims had not been achieved, than not to have fought at all.</p>
<p>For the first time in five years, Thatcher’s government was stopped in its tracks for a full year. It was forced to fall back on the crudest class bludgeons in its ‘objective’ state machinery. <em>We must remember</em> the potential for change which the great strike represented. <em>We must remember</em> that the strike fell short of its aims not because it happened nor because it was led by extremists nor because a ballot wasn’t held but because the other side was better organized and better prepared than ours was; and that therefore next time we must be better prepared.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Remembering the miners’ strike
(1985)
Introduction to Blood, Sweat and Tears, photographs of the miners’ strike, London 1985.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990 (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 146–150.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
On 1 March 1984 Margaret Thatcher and her ministers embarked on a class battle. It was to be as tough and crude a class battle as had ever been attempted – even by Margaret Thatcher’s beloved Victorians. The Tories were taking on their most formidable and feared enemy: the National Union of Mineworkers.
Coal stocks had been built high. The police force had been reorganized and retrained to break strikes. Oil-fired power stations were taken out of mothballs, and oil ordered far ahead. Secret public opinion polls reassured them that a ballot among all the mineworkers for a national strike would almost certainly be lost (as had ballots three times in the last three years).
Ian MacGregor, a grisly class warrior whose life had been devoted to breaking unions all over the world, had taken up office as Chairman of the National Coal Board. After three years spent halving the workforce of the British Steel Corporation and reducing its unions to quivering servitude, he was ready for his most ambitious mission, to bring the miners to heel. This was to be the final victory over a trade union movement already cowed by the horror of four million unemployed.
The closure of Cortonwood, in Yorkshire, was the gauntlet flung down by the government. It was the first pit with coal in it to be closed since the signing of A Plan for Coal in 1974; the first of twenty pits to be closed in direct contravention of the agreement; 20,000 jobs were on the line, four million tons of coal capacity was to be taken out.
Reaction was swift. Flying pickets from Cortonwood brought the rest of the huge Yorkshire coalfield to a standstill. Kent followed. Before long the traditionally militant coalfields of South Wales and Scotland were silent. But in the big Nottingham coalfield, and in most of the smaller, weaker areas where ballots were held, the vote went against. The strike was deprived from the very first day of the unity and solidarity which won the day in the seventies.
Some 30,000 miners had decided to work. At least 165,000 miners were out on strike, and were clearly determined to stay out for tar longer than the most pessimistic Tory had ever imagined.
In the early days, the pickets set out as confidently as they had in 1972 and 1974. They found a different police force, controlled from one ‘reporting centre’, using powers which even they did not believe they had, to stop pickets’ cars and turn them back, to cordon off whole villages and areas, to arrest at will and finally to break the pickets by weight of numbers and by force. Press and television joined enthusiastically in the fray. Their tactic was based on the old demonology. They turned the miners’ president, Arthur Scargill, into a devil incarnate. Even A.J. Cook, the miners’ leader in the lock-out of 1926, had not had to endure the violence and malevolence of the attacks on Arthur Scargill. The strikers soon discovered that they were much poorer than they had been in 1972 and 1974. The Tories had deducted £15 per week from the already desperately low benefits that their wives and children were entitled to. It seemed as though they must soon break under this pressure. But they didn’t. Indeed, as the miners fell back from the battles on the picket lines of Nottinghamshire and Orgreave to protect their own heartlands, the strike seemed to gain a new spirit, a new strength.
Walking down a road in Upton, Yorks, in September I stopped to talk to a large miner whose battered car had stopped beside me. I had heard, I said, of the sadness and the wretchedness of the mining areas, so why was he beaming from ear to ear? ‘I’ve enjoyed it, me,’ he declared, and started to explain. Of course he and his family had very little money, of course they were worried by the cold, of course, of course. But life was different. The daily grind had been removed. Decisions, about picketing, about welfare, about the political ebbs and flows of the strike which were on television every day had to be taken not by someone else, some high-up somewhere, but by themselves. He did not put it quite like this, but he was in charge of his own destiny, and he enjoyed it.
There was change all about. People were changing. In the strength of their collective action they felt a new confidence in themselves and the people around them. Ideas and prejudices which had been grafted into them like barnacles were suddenly blasted away. The change in themselves was quickly translated into changes in the way they behaved towards one another.
In tradition and in fact, the miner had been the master in his home. The role of the miner’s wife was to feed her man, bring up her children, and keep her mouth shut. Suddenly, in the most unlikely area, the ideas of women’s liberation became reality. Whole communities were suddenly run by women. The strongest, most energetic and most forceful of the support groups were made up, almost exclusively of women. This led to new relationships in the community and in the home – to new uncertainties, perhaps, but also to new respect. In the j same way, the socialist ideas which inspired people’s brains were suddenly resurrected in physical reality. An injury to one was an injury to all. The strong did help the weak, the able-bodied did help the disabled. The seeds of a new society founded on co-operation, common interest and human effort bent to human need were sown in the struggle against the old one.
These changes burst out of the mining areas. Through the summer and autumn of 1984 they started to infect and inspire hundreds of thousands of people who had called themselves socialists but had begun to give up hope.
Into every crack and crevice of the Labour movement came the black-and-yellow slogan coal not dole, waking and inspiring all but the most somnolent and sectarian fossils.
At the start of the strike, all donations were collected by the union officials and sent off to the areas or to the national solidarity fund. By the late autumn, the vast mass of individual donations went to individual pits, through the ‘twinning’ of union branches, Labour Parties, even street committees with pits and villages. The miners and their families moved out of their areas, while supporters from outside moved in. New friendships sprouted, spawning new solidarity.
In August, September and October, the strike held; utterly and incredibly solid.
For a time, the government wavered, only to realize that another defeat by the miners, when all the odds were for the government, might threaten ‘civilization as we know it’. New pressure was brought on the stumbling MacGregor to stand his ground.
Tim Bell, personal adviser to the Prime Minister and managing director of Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising agency which had spurred the Tories to office in 1979, joined a new advertising agency which was promptly granted the entire anti-strike account of the National Coal Board. David Hart, an imbecile property tycoon and right-wing fanatic, was authorized by MacGregor to start up and fund a ‘Working Miners Committee’ from the dregs of the strike-breakers. In four days of advertising in Tory papers, Hart’s ‘Committee’ raised more than £100,000. Newspapers, television, police, even Special Branch joined the growing campaign to push the miners back to work. As miners started to go back in big numbers, in November, Coal Board executives predicted an end to the strike by Christmas.
The ratchet slipped a notch; then held again. The support groups mobilized a huge effort over Christmas. Every miner’s child enjoyed their Christmas – some say more than ever before. As the New Year started after nine months of strike there were still 130,000 miners out.
Still the miners held out. The bitter cold of January did not bring the power cuts. The oil-fired power stations, at full blast, could light, heat and power the homes and industries of Britain as long as the crucial 50,000 tons of coal a week came in from Nottingham. Instead the cold was just another new misery to add to poverty and hunger.
The Coal Board and the government had been certain that the strike would peter out in January. But it went on and on. Each week cost the government another forty or fifty million pounds in unbudgeted spending. When, in the first week of March 1985, the flow back to work had become too strong to resist, and the miners were finally starved back to work, together, without formally conceding surrender, their heads held high, they had been on strike for a full year, the longest mass strike in all British, European or American history.
One of the most remarkable pictures in this book shows the faces of the miners in the cage on the first day back. It shows how quickly the change which had worked such wonders in the strike worked the other way as soon as the strike was over. The men are, once again, caged. Their expressions are depressed and bored. The miners were subject once again to the Coal Board’s commands and its instructions. The cage was bad enough, but worse would probably follow. There was only one thing worse than having a job; not having one.
Outside the pits, the mood shifted in the same sudden way. The end of the strike led to a collapse of aspirations and morale among its supporters. Neil Kinnock, who had been attacked in almost every Labour Party in the country for his weasel words about the strike, suddenly became ‘the only hope’. Labour and Communist Party members returned to their party organizations and their enervating or ideological priorities. People who had supported the strike to the hilt, deluding even some miners’ leaders, started to say that the strike had been a mistake, that it would have been better if it had never happened, that it was all the fault of Scargill and Benn, that it would have been better to have had a ballot and lost than to have gone through a ‘year’s hell’ for nothing.
These arguments were enthusiastically rehearsed by the trade union leaders who had spouted great rhetoric at the TUC but had organized nothing to campaign for the miners in the places it mattered most: the power stations, the haulage depots and the docks; by local miners’ leaders, who showed such lack of confidence in their own rank and file, and hugged the strike close to their short-sighted strategy, never once unleashing the potential for leadership which was there in the newly awakened rank and file; and by the Labour politicians who never missed a chance to fasten on the weakness of the miners’ case, rather than its strength, for rotten long-term electoral advantage. Such people were delighted to greet so many converts from direct action to the pillars in the cloud in the shape of a possible Labour government at least three years away.
As the ranks of the doubters grow, as their arguments become more and more fashionable, the real friends of the miners must fight all the harder for the memory of the strike. We must remember that it was a hundred million times better to have fought, even if the strike’s aims had not been achieved, than not to have fought at all.
For the first time in five years, Thatcher’s government was stopped in its tracks for a full year. It was forced to fall back on the crudest class bludgeons in its ‘objective’ state machinery. We must remember the potential for change which the great strike represented. We must remember that the strike fell short of its aims not because it happened nor because it was led by extremists nor because a ballot wasn’t held but because the other side was better organized and better prepared than ours was; and that therefore next time we must be better prepared.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Treated for health or for wealth?</h1>
<h3>(November 1995)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index6.html#sr95_11" target="new">No. 191</a>, November 1995, pp. 16–17.<br>
Copyright © 1995 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">‘The National Health Service is the envy of the world.’ Who said that? Enoch Powell, minister for health in 1962. ‘The National Health Service is safe with us.’ Who said that? Margaret Thatcher, prime minister in 1983. When a drugs company-financed commission produced a recent report calling for more private money in the National Health Service, who leaped into the media to defend the NHS against the report? Stephen Dorrell, secretary of state for health.</p>
<p>The Tories have always been equivocal about the NHS. Even when it was set up, they did not oppose it very forcefully. In office from 1951 to 1964, they left it pretty well intact. In 1960, Enoch Powell raised prescription charges by a shilling – 5p – and was very apologetic. Stephen Dorrell recently expressed the basic argument for the NHS very forcefully. He argued only slightly disingenuously that Britain leads the world in health care.</p>
<p>Naturally, Mr Dorrell does not want to surrender that reputation. His problem comes with the main reason for it – that Britain’s NHS treats people according to their health, not according to their wealth. The success and popularity of the NHS, in other words, is entirely attributable to the fact that it bucks the market. The priorities of the NHS have no bearing on what patients can pay – only to what they need.</p>
<p>This is not merely philanthropic. It doesn’t just mean that sick people get treated more urgently than anywhere else. It is also more efficient. Capitalist ideologues who tell us that buying and selling with money is the best way of matching demand and supply are utterly confounded by the NHS, whose central principle is that nothing is bought or sold, that everyone insures themselves against sickness according to their means (income tax etc) and get treated according to their needs. Largely because of the capitalist world in which it survives, the NHS is very far from perfect, but it works far better than in the US, where almost all health care is bought and sold in the market place.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, while the NHS may indeed be the envy of the world, the market system in the US and other countries is the envy of lots of top people in Britain who work in health. They can’t help admiring the basic efficiency and fairness of the NHS – but most of them can’t help salivating at the huge sums of money which disappear into the pockets of so many physicians, drug peddlers, private health providers, quacks and charlatans that prey on rich people’s legendary hypochondria.</p>
<p>Aneurin Bevan, who was minister of health when the NHS was set up in 1948, recognised this contradiction at once. Indeed, the doctors’ organisations, then linked much more closely to the Tory Party, never stopped telling him about it. He compromised by allowing top consultants to practise privately. From the beginning of the NHS leading surgeons and physicians were able to get the best of both worlds: to have access to outstanding equipment in the NHS and to the money of private patients who consulted with them in Harley Street.</p>
<p>The attack on the NHS today takes two forms. The first is the outright demand for privatisation of the entire health service and a return to market barbarism where people who can’t afford medical fees don’t get treated. This propaganda is peddled by the Thatcherite think tanks, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs, but it cuts little ice. The NHS is so popular and works so well that outright privatisation is not a credible political option. More insidious and effective is the apparently equivocal propaganda which pretends to favour the principles of the NHS and then argues for the gradual erosion of those principles. This has been the line of successive Tory secretaries of state, of whom Kenneth Clarke was the most energetic and the most destructive.</p>
<p>More recently the erosion arguments have seeped into the left, and now reach right into the Labour leadership. The Social Justice Commission, under Sir Gordon Borrie, for instance, which pretended to be independent of the Labour Party but effectively sought to lay down new principles for new Labour, snapped at the heels of the basic principle of the NHS: its universality. The commission arguments were extended by the Healthcare 2000 report.</p>
<p>The two commissions had in common Patricia Hewitt, a former Labour candidate, who was chief aide to Neil Kinnock (1983–1992). Hewitt was deputy chair of the Borrie Commission and deputy chair of Healthcare 2000.</p>
<p>The arguments of both borrow heavily from the new right. Health care must be rationed, and the obvious and sensible way to ration health is to throw more services into the money market and make people pay more for what they want.</p>
<p>All this is stated as though it were perfectly obvious, and that anyone who doesn’t accept it is living in an old world of cloud cuckoo land. The inference is that this dream ‘old world’ was somehow better and richer than the stark, realistic new world, and that in those soft days of yore much more could be afforded. Yet in 1948, when the NHS was set up, and when all medical services, even false teeth and spectacles, were free for everyone who needed them, the national income of Britain was only slightly more than a third of what it is today. There was no golden age. A very much poorer country was able to afford a very much more universal health service.</p>
<p>Of course, there has to be some system of priority. The point is: how is the rationing carried out? The NHS rations on the basis of need. He or she who needs more gets priority over him or her who needs less. The new health reformers, on the other hand, want to ration by pocket. He or she who can pay more gets priority over him or her who can’t pay more. The more these arguments prevail, the more people go to private hospitals and take out private health insurance; the more resources of skill and technology get sucked into the market, the more the foundation of the NHS is eroded. However equivocal they may sound, the new ‘common sense’ demands for ‘a more realistic’ approach to the National Health Service are deeply subversive of it.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Treated for health or for wealth?
(November 1995)
From Socialist Review, No. 191, November 1995, pp. 16–17.
Copyright © 1995 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
‘The National Health Service is the envy of the world.’ Who said that? Enoch Powell, minister for health in 1962. ‘The National Health Service is safe with us.’ Who said that? Margaret Thatcher, prime minister in 1983. When a drugs company-financed commission produced a recent report calling for more private money in the National Health Service, who leaped into the media to defend the NHS against the report? Stephen Dorrell, secretary of state for health.
The Tories have always been equivocal about the NHS. Even when it was set up, they did not oppose it very forcefully. In office from 1951 to 1964, they left it pretty well intact. In 1960, Enoch Powell raised prescription charges by a shilling – 5p – and was very apologetic. Stephen Dorrell recently expressed the basic argument for the NHS very forcefully. He argued only slightly disingenuously that Britain leads the world in health care.
Naturally, Mr Dorrell does not want to surrender that reputation. His problem comes with the main reason for it – that Britain’s NHS treats people according to their health, not according to their wealth. The success and popularity of the NHS, in other words, is entirely attributable to the fact that it bucks the market. The priorities of the NHS have no bearing on what patients can pay – only to what they need.
This is not merely philanthropic. It doesn’t just mean that sick people get treated more urgently than anywhere else. It is also more efficient. Capitalist ideologues who tell us that buying and selling with money is the best way of matching demand and supply are utterly confounded by the NHS, whose central principle is that nothing is bought or sold, that everyone insures themselves against sickness according to their means (income tax etc) and get treated according to their needs. Largely because of the capitalist world in which it survives, the NHS is very far from perfect, but it works far better than in the US, where almost all health care is bought and sold in the market place.
Unfortunately, while the NHS may indeed be the envy of the world, the market system in the US and other countries is the envy of lots of top people in Britain who work in health. They can’t help admiring the basic efficiency and fairness of the NHS – but most of them can’t help salivating at the huge sums of money which disappear into the pockets of so many physicians, drug peddlers, private health providers, quacks and charlatans that prey on rich people’s legendary hypochondria.
Aneurin Bevan, who was minister of health when the NHS was set up in 1948, recognised this contradiction at once. Indeed, the doctors’ organisations, then linked much more closely to the Tory Party, never stopped telling him about it. He compromised by allowing top consultants to practise privately. From the beginning of the NHS leading surgeons and physicians were able to get the best of both worlds: to have access to outstanding equipment in the NHS and to the money of private patients who consulted with them in Harley Street.
The attack on the NHS today takes two forms. The first is the outright demand for privatisation of the entire health service and a return to market barbarism where people who can’t afford medical fees don’t get treated. This propaganda is peddled by the Thatcherite think tanks, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs, but it cuts little ice. The NHS is so popular and works so well that outright privatisation is not a credible political option. More insidious and effective is the apparently equivocal propaganda which pretends to favour the principles of the NHS and then argues for the gradual erosion of those principles. This has been the line of successive Tory secretaries of state, of whom Kenneth Clarke was the most energetic and the most destructive.
More recently the erosion arguments have seeped into the left, and now reach right into the Labour leadership. The Social Justice Commission, under Sir Gordon Borrie, for instance, which pretended to be independent of the Labour Party but effectively sought to lay down new principles for new Labour, snapped at the heels of the basic principle of the NHS: its universality. The commission arguments were extended by the Healthcare 2000 report.
The two commissions had in common Patricia Hewitt, a former Labour candidate, who was chief aide to Neil Kinnock (1983–1992). Hewitt was deputy chair of the Borrie Commission and deputy chair of Healthcare 2000.
The arguments of both borrow heavily from the new right. Health care must be rationed, and the obvious and sensible way to ration health is to throw more services into the money market and make people pay more for what they want.
All this is stated as though it were perfectly obvious, and that anyone who doesn’t accept it is living in an old world of cloud cuckoo land. The inference is that this dream ‘old world’ was somehow better and richer than the stark, realistic new world, and that in those soft days of yore much more could be afforded. Yet in 1948, when the NHS was set up, and when all medical services, even false teeth and spectacles, were free for everyone who needed them, the national income of Britain was only slightly more than a third of what it is today. There was no golden age. A very much poorer country was able to afford a very much more universal health service.
Of course, there has to be some system of priority. The point is: how is the rationing carried out? The NHS rations on the basis of need. He or she who needs more gets priority over him or her who needs less. The new health reformers, on the other hand, want to ration by pocket. He or she who can pay more gets priority over him or her who can’t pay more. The more these arguments prevail, the more people go to private hospitals and take out private health insurance; the more resources of skill and technology get sucked into the market, the more the foundation of the NHS is eroded. However equivocal they may sound, the new ‘common sense’ demands for ‘a more realistic’ approach to the National Health Service are deeply subversive of it.
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<h2>Lionel Starling & Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>How much longer must these people<br>
be hounded and humiliated?</h1>
<h3>(June 1977)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 25 June 1977.<br>
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), <strong>In the Heat of the Struggle</strong>, Bookmarks, London 1993, p.166.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">SIXTEEN MEN are about to come up in court in Bodmin, Cornwall, charged with ‘serious crimes’ which did no harm to anyone.</p>
<p>There are no witnesses – only confessions given to the police that these men had sex with one another. Yes, that’s still a crime. It’s called ‘gross indecency in a public place’.</p>
<p>A ‘public place’ includes a car, a party or even a flat to which anyone apart from the accused has access.</p>
<p>The Cornish case is not an exception. All over the country, police forces, which constantly complain about overwork are straining at the leash to ‘run to ground’ anyone who can be proved to have had sex with someone of his own sex.</p>
<p>All this is happening ten years after the law was changed to allow homosexual relations between adults.</p>
<p>Nettie Pollard, Gay Rights officer of the National Council of Civil Liberties, reckons that these prosecutions have ‘doubled at least since 1967, when the law was changed’.</p>
<p>Why is this vast battery of repression directed against people because of their sexual behaviour? Why, last week, did the House of Lords vote 146-25 not to allow people of 18-21 to have sex with each other if they are of the same sex? The few apparently rational answers to this question do not stand up for a second.</p>
<ul>
<li>That homosexual behaviour is ‘unnatural’. But what is ‘natural’? Surely what comes naturally to people is what they like or prefer doing.<br>
<br>
What’s natural to some may be unnatural to , others. What some like, others dislike. Whoever says that one sort of sexual behaviour is unnatural is saying that the sexual behaviour which he or she likes is the only one that is ‘natural’.</li>
<li>That homosexual behaviour leads to corruption of children, especially at school.<br>
<br>
What statistics there are show that the rate of importuning or assaults of children in the streets and at school are more common among heterosexuals than homosexuals.</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">If banning sexual activity by law stamps out the corruption of children, we should ban all sexual behaviour.</p>
<p>And then, of course, there would be much more corruption of children, much more secret, ashamed and transient sex, because people would be terrified or conscience-stricken by the law from doing what they want among people they like.</p>
<p>There is no rational argument against homosexual behaviour. The society in which we live is founded on the belief that people must behave according to a set of rules imposed from above. These rules lay down what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t.</p>
<p>People’s lives can therefore be drilled to conform to patterns; patterns in factories and offices and schools, and patterns at home.</p>
<p>Any deviance threatens the power of the people in charge of society to lay down its rules. And therefore minorities who behave differently to the laid-down ‘norms’ are persecuted.</p>
<p>When the people in charge of society feel safe, they make concessions to these minorities.</p>
<p>That’s why, in 1967, when there was little unemployment and even less economic crisis, laws for homosexual reform (and for abortion reform) were passed. But when the people in charge feel threatened, they insist much more fiercely on the acceptance of their norms. They repress all those minorities who don’t conform to their norms.</p>
<p>Everyone knows that Hitler’s fascist regime in Germany outlawed and persecuted Jews. Few know that at the same time Hitler outlawed and persecuted gypsies and homosexuals.</p>
<p>We want a socialist society not just to change property forms – but to develop the potential of all the people in that society.</p>
<p>In such a society directing sexual behaviour would be unthinkable. And it’s the job of everyone who wants such a society to contest the prejudice against homosexuals, to argue with the preposterous jokes and insults which permeate so much back chat on these matters.</p>
<p>Above all, it’s our job to support those people who are courageous enough openly to fight their persecution.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Lionel Starling & Paul Foot
How much longer must these people
be hounded and humiliated?
(June 1977)
From Socialist Worker, 25 June 1977.
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), In the Heat of the Struggle, Bookmarks, London 1993, p.166.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
SIXTEEN MEN are about to come up in court in Bodmin, Cornwall, charged with ‘serious crimes’ which did no harm to anyone.
There are no witnesses – only confessions given to the police that these men had sex with one another. Yes, that’s still a crime. It’s called ‘gross indecency in a public place’.
A ‘public place’ includes a car, a party or even a flat to which anyone apart from the accused has access.
The Cornish case is not an exception. All over the country, police forces, which constantly complain about overwork are straining at the leash to ‘run to ground’ anyone who can be proved to have had sex with someone of his own sex.
All this is happening ten years after the law was changed to allow homosexual relations between adults.
Nettie Pollard, Gay Rights officer of the National Council of Civil Liberties, reckons that these prosecutions have ‘doubled at least since 1967, when the law was changed’.
Why is this vast battery of repression directed against people because of their sexual behaviour? Why, last week, did the House of Lords vote 146-25 not to allow people of 18-21 to have sex with each other if they are of the same sex? The few apparently rational answers to this question do not stand up for a second.
That homosexual behaviour is ‘unnatural’. But what is ‘natural’? Surely what comes naturally to people is what they like or prefer doing.
What’s natural to some may be unnatural to , others. What some like, others dislike. Whoever says that one sort of sexual behaviour is unnatural is saying that the sexual behaviour which he or she likes is the only one that is ‘natural’.
That homosexual behaviour leads to corruption of children, especially at school.
What statistics there are show that the rate of importuning or assaults of children in the streets and at school are more common among heterosexuals than homosexuals.
If banning sexual activity by law stamps out the corruption of children, we should ban all sexual behaviour.
And then, of course, there would be much more corruption of children, much more secret, ashamed and transient sex, because people would be terrified or conscience-stricken by the law from doing what they want among people they like.
There is no rational argument against homosexual behaviour. The society in which we live is founded on the belief that people must behave according to a set of rules imposed from above. These rules lay down what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t.
People’s lives can therefore be drilled to conform to patterns; patterns in factories and offices and schools, and patterns at home.
Any deviance threatens the power of the people in charge of society to lay down its rules. And therefore minorities who behave differently to the laid-down ‘norms’ are persecuted.
When the people in charge of society feel safe, they make concessions to these minorities.
That’s why, in 1967, when there was little unemployment and even less economic crisis, laws for homosexual reform (and for abortion reform) were passed. But when the people in charge feel threatened, they insist much more fiercely on the acceptance of their norms. They repress all those minorities who don’t conform to their norms.
Everyone knows that Hitler’s fascist regime in Germany outlawed and persecuted Jews. Few know that at the same time Hitler outlawed and persecuted gypsies and homosexuals.
We want a socialist society not just to change property forms – but to develop the potential of all the people in that society.
In such a society directing sexual behaviour would be unthinkable. And it’s the job of everyone who wants such a society to contest the prejudice against homosexuals, to argue with the preposterous jokes and insults which permeate so much back chat on these matters.
Above all, it’s our job to support those people who are courageous enough openly to fight their persecution.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Waste disposal</h1>
<h3>(February 1996)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Notes Of The Month</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index6.html#sr96_02" target="new">No. 194</a>, February 1996, pp. 4–5.<br>
Copyright © 1996 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Just as a new television series harks back to the great local corruption story of the 1960s and 1970s – the Poulson scandal – a new orgy of local government corruption emerges which reduces Poulson to his proper status as minor hypocrite and crook. Poulson was a Tory who was even-handed in his bribes with Tory and Labour councillors. The new scandal is pure Tory. At its head is Lady Porter, who modelled herself on her heroine Thatcher, and for many years led the Tory council at Westminster, the jewel in the Tory local government crown.</p>
<p>The results of the council elections in 1986 terrified the Tories. Labour came within a few votes of taking control of Westminster. At once Porter and her henchmen, who included the current Tory MP for Milton Keynes, Barry Legg, called a series of secret meetings to hatch a plot which would ensure that Labour would never get so close again. The plan was simple: to use the powers of the council in planning, housing and even in street amenities, to move Labour voters out of marginal wards and Tory ones in.</p>
<p>Many years later this plan was brought to the attention of the District Auditor, a mild, middle of the road accountant from Touche Ross called John Magill. The historical role of the District Auditor in local government was simple: to control the extravagance of Labour council spending on the poor. Before workers voted, when Tories and Liberals controlled councils, there was of course no problem with extravagance. Tory and Liberal councils were keen to safeguard the rich ratepayers they represented, so if they were extravagant with council money, the extravagance was always showered on the rich.</p>
<p>After Labour started winning control of councils and using the rates to help the poor – and especially after 1921 when Labour councillors in Poplar defied the law and went to prison to establish their right to raise money from the rich to spend on Labour voters – the tightest possible control was imposed by central government on such spending. The National (Tory) Government in 1933 passed a local government law which gave the District Auditor, an unelected official, power to supervise and check council spending. Any councillor found by the District Auditor to be overspending was subject to a surcharge, bankruptcy and disqualification.</p>
<p>For half a century the District Auditors waged war on ‘wayward’ (socialist) Labour councils. In 1972, when all 11 Labour councillors at Clay Cross in Derbyshire refused to obey a Tory law to put up council rents, the District Auditor surcharged and disqualified them all. In the 1980s a specially vile campaign was launched against the Labour controlled Derbyshire council which refused to put up charges for school meals and other council services as much as the Tory government (and the Derbyshire Tory MPs, led by Edwina Currie) insisted. Once again the District Auditor lined up with the Tories. The climax to this campaign came when the county council, after the media unions were smashed at Wapping, transferred its teachers’ advertising from <strong>The Times</strong> and <strong>Sunday Times</strong>. The District Auditor, and eventually the Court of Appeal, declared this democratic and eminently just and proper decision to be ‘illegal’ and the District Auditor promised to surcharge the council leader, David Bookbinder.</p>
<p>By one of those curious twists which has characterised the politics of the 1990s, the District Auditor in Westminster, driven by the anti-extravagance logic which defined his job, has turned his full powers on Lady Porter and Westminster Council and has found their gerrymandering to be more grossly corrupt and expensive than all the so called municipal socialism of the century put together.</p>
<p>Screaming like a wounded beast, Porter rushed to Tory ministers to tell them to sack the men in charge of the national audit office and get these impertinent officials off their backs. Ministers, full of rhetoric about the ‘waste’ of Labour authorities, could do nothing. Porter hired a host of Labour and even Communist lawyers to put her case to the District Auditor – to no avail. The final attack on her is even more devastating than its predecessors. Porter has fled to Israel. Bookbinder has been suddenly and unexpectedly absolved from any surcharge; and the Tory rhetoric about wasteful Labour councils in this year’s municipal elections will have a hollow ring.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Waste disposal
(February 1996)
From Notes Of The Month, Socialist Review, No. 194, February 1996, pp. 4–5.
Copyright © 1996 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Just as a new television series harks back to the great local corruption story of the 1960s and 1970s – the Poulson scandal – a new orgy of local government corruption emerges which reduces Poulson to his proper status as minor hypocrite and crook. Poulson was a Tory who was even-handed in his bribes with Tory and Labour councillors. The new scandal is pure Tory. At its head is Lady Porter, who modelled herself on her heroine Thatcher, and for many years led the Tory council at Westminster, the jewel in the Tory local government crown.
The results of the council elections in 1986 terrified the Tories. Labour came within a few votes of taking control of Westminster. At once Porter and her henchmen, who included the current Tory MP for Milton Keynes, Barry Legg, called a series of secret meetings to hatch a plot which would ensure that Labour would never get so close again. The plan was simple: to use the powers of the council in planning, housing and even in street amenities, to move Labour voters out of marginal wards and Tory ones in.
Many years later this plan was brought to the attention of the District Auditor, a mild, middle of the road accountant from Touche Ross called John Magill. The historical role of the District Auditor in local government was simple: to control the extravagance of Labour council spending on the poor. Before workers voted, when Tories and Liberals controlled councils, there was of course no problem with extravagance. Tory and Liberal councils were keen to safeguard the rich ratepayers they represented, so if they were extravagant with council money, the extravagance was always showered on the rich.
After Labour started winning control of councils and using the rates to help the poor – and especially after 1921 when Labour councillors in Poplar defied the law and went to prison to establish their right to raise money from the rich to spend on Labour voters – the tightest possible control was imposed by central government on such spending. The National (Tory) Government in 1933 passed a local government law which gave the District Auditor, an unelected official, power to supervise and check council spending. Any councillor found by the District Auditor to be overspending was subject to a surcharge, bankruptcy and disqualification.
For half a century the District Auditors waged war on ‘wayward’ (socialist) Labour councils. In 1972, when all 11 Labour councillors at Clay Cross in Derbyshire refused to obey a Tory law to put up council rents, the District Auditor surcharged and disqualified them all. In the 1980s a specially vile campaign was launched against the Labour controlled Derbyshire council which refused to put up charges for school meals and other council services as much as the Tory government (and the Derbyshire Tory MPs, led by Edwina Currie) insisted. Once again the District Auditor lined up with the Tories. The climax to this campaign came when the county council, after the media unions were smashed at Wapping, transferred its teachers’ advertising from The Times and Sunday Times. The District Auditor, and eventually the Court of Appeal, declared this democratic and eminently just and proper decision to be ‘illegal’ and the District Auditor promised to surcharge the council leader, David Bookbinder.
By one of those curious twists which has characterised the politics of the 1990s, the District Auditor in Westminster, driven by the anti-extravagance logic which defined his job, has turned his full powers on Lady Porter and Westminster Council and has found their gerrymandering to be more grossly corrupt and expensive than all the so called municipal socialism of the century put together.
Screaming like a wounded beast, Porter rushed to Tory ministers to tell them to sack the men in charge of the national audit office and get these impertinent officials off their backs. Ministers, full of rhetoric about the ‘waste’ of Labour authorities, could do nothing. Porter hired a host of Labour and even Communist lawyers to put her case to the District Auditor – to no avail. The final attack on her is even more devastating than its predecessors. Porter has fled to Israel. Bookbinder has been suddenly and unexpectedly absolved from any surcharge; and the Tory rhetoric about wasteful Labour councils in this year’s municipal elections will have a hollow ring.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Confessions and repressions</h1>
<h3>(May 1987)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index3.html#sr87_05" target="new">No. 98</a>, May 1987, p. 22.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">THE TRIAL of the Broadwater Farm Six for the killing of PC Blakelock seemed to end in a “draw”. Three defendants were unanimously found guilty of murder. Three others walked free from the court. But the draw was, in reality, an outright win for the police. The three juveniles were acquitted on the direction of the judge who said that the confessions which had put them in the dock in the first place were “repressive” for people under age. Since there was no other evidence against them, he ruled, they could not be found guilty.</p>
<p>Exactly the same conditions applied to the three older men in the dock. Statements had been extracted from them in the harshest possible conditions – after many hours of intense interrogation in police cells, where none of the three had any access to lawyers or to friends. These statements were the only evidence that the three had had anything to do with the killing of PC Blakelock. They were not even confessions.</p>
<p>Indeed, Winston Silcott, the man who gut the brunt of the abuse from the press before, during and after the trial, specifically had <em>not</em> confessed, claiming that there could not be any witnesses against him. This claim, the prosecution alleged, was clear proof of his complicity in the murder!</p>
<p>Confessions have been much in the news lately. They were the main evidence against the six men convicted of planting the IRA bombs in Birmingham pubs in 1974; against the four people convicted of the bombing of pubs in Guildford and Woolwich in the same year; and of the four men convicted of the killing of newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in 1978.</p>
<p>The Broadwater Farm case was worse than all of these. At least, in the Birmingham case, an explosives test (recently discredited) had proved positive on two of the six men’s hands. At least, in the Guildford case, one of the defendants had apparently voluntarily, spilled out the names of the other people who later confessed. At least, in the Bridgewater case one confession led to another, and back to the first one again.</p>
<p>The importance of the Blakelock case is that police now know that if the press is on their side and if the crime is dramatic enough, they can get a conviction just by picking on anyone in the street and taking notes of a conversation which can be construed as a confession or a part-confession. It is the random nature of the arrests of all six people who allegedly “confessed” to the Blakelock killing which has the most chilling consequences.</p>
<p>The power and confidence of the police has increased hugely since the case. Until the Blakelock case, a jury would have insisted on some corroboration before sentencing anyone effectively to life in prison. Now that a jury has so obliged the police, the police have responded with a renewed public relations campaign to take away the powers of the jury.</p>
<p>Even government ministers are being forced to admit that the staggering increase in crime is associated with unemployment and poverty. How else can they explain the impotence of their law and order campaigns; their doubling of the funds available to the forces of law and order; the huge increase in police manpower? Poverty, destitution, alienation have beaten all these hollow – and crime of every kind is soaring. When people at every level of society are taught to take care only of themselves, those at the bottom can only put it into practice by stealing or savaging their neighbours. One of the saddest aspects of the crime statistics is that the poor and lower middle class areas are always the ones most affected by burglaries, assaults and rapes.</p>
<p>When five or six million adult people in a population of some 40 million adults are struggling on the very rim of existence, utterly without hope, the people with-property get scared.</p>
<p>The greater their property, the more ill-gotten their gains, the more scared they become. They seek for their protection bodies of armed and powerful men who will keep the mob at bay. The more desperate the mob become, the more repressive is the power ranged against them.</p>
<p>This explains the recent popularity of uncorroborated confessions. It is quite a simple matter to put a stop to all the doubt about these confessions. Technology for tape-recording, and checking tape-recording is almost infallible. But such devices are unpopular with the authorities. They prefer to leave what they call “the criminal classes” at the mercy of human beings, who know that their role is to protect property. Better by far, therefore, to have police taking down confessions in their own notes, with no way of checking their accuracy.</p>
<p>As the old army saying has it: “An acquittal at a court martial is bad for discipline”. The same is increasingly true in what are laughably known as Courts of Justice.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Confessions and repressions
(May 1987)
From Socialist Worker Review, No. 98, May 1987, p. 22.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
THE TRIAL of the Broadwater Farm Six for the killing of PC Blakelock seemed to end in a “draw”. Three defendants were unanimously found guilty of murder. Three others walked free from the court. But the draw was, in reality, an outright win for the police. The three juveniles were acquitted on the direction of the judge who said that the confessions which had put them in the dock in the first place were “repressive” for people under age. Since there was no other evidence against them, he ruled, they could not be found guilty.
Exactly the same conditions applied to the three older men in the dock. Statements had been extracted from them in the harshest possible conditions – after many hours of intense interrogation in police cells, where none of the three had any access to lawyers or to friends. These statements were the only evidence that the three had had anything to do with the killing of PC Blakelock. They were not even confessions.
Indeed, Winston Silcott, the man who gut the brunt of the abuse from the press before, during and after the trial, specifically had not confessed, claiming that there could not be any witnesses against him. This claim, the prosecution alleged, was clear proof of his complicity in the murder!
Confessions have been much in the news lately. They were the main evidence against the six men convicted of planting the IRA bombs in Birmingham pubs in 1974; against the four people convicted of the bombing of pubs in Guildford and Woolwich in the same year; and of the four men convicted of the killing of newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in 1978.
The Broadwater Farm case was worse than all of these. At least, in the Birmingham case, an explosives test (recently discredited) had proved positive on two of the six men’s hands. At least, in the Guildford case, one of the defendants had apparently voluntarily, spilled out the names of the other people who later confessed. At least, in the Bridgewater case one confession led to another, and back to the first one again.
The importance of the Blakelock case is that police now know that if the press is on their side and if the crime is dramatic enough, they can get a conviction just by picking on anyone in the street and taking notes of a conversation which can be construed as a confession or a part-confession. It is the random nature of the arrests of all six people who allegedly “confessed” to the Blakelock killing which has the most chilling consequences.
The power and confidence of the police has increased hugely since the case. Until the Blakelock case, a jury would have insisted on some corroboration before sentencing anyone effectively to life in prison. Now that a jury has so obliged the police, the police have responded with a renewed public relations campaign to take away the powers of the jury.
Even government ministers are being forced to admit that the staggering increase in crime is associated with unemployment and poverty. How else can they explain the impotence of their law and order campaigns; their doubling of the funds available to the forces of law and order; the huge increase in police manpower? Poverty, destitution, alienation have beaten all these hollow – and crime of every kind is soaring. When people at every level of society are taught to take care only of themselves, those at the bottom can only put it into practice by stealing or savaging their neighbours. One of the saddest aspects of the crime statistics is that the poor and lower middle class areas are always the ones most affected by burglaries, assaults and rapes.
When five or six million adult people in a population of some 40 million adults are struggling on the very rim of existence, utterly without hope, the people with-property get scared.
The greater their property, the more ill-gotten their gains, the more scared they become. They seek for their protection bodies of armed and powerful men who will keep the mob at bay. The more desperate the mob become, the more repressive is the power ranged against them.
This explains the recent popularity of uncorroborated confessions. It is quite a simple matter to put a stop to all the doubt about these confessions. Technology for tape-recording, and checking tape-recording is almost infallible. But such devices are unpopular with the authorities. They prefer to leave what they call “the criminal classes” at the mercy of human beings, who know that their role is to protect property. Better by far, therefore, to have police taking down confessions in their own notes, with no way of checking their accuracy.
As the old army saying has it: “An acquittal at a court martial is bad for discipline”. The same is increasingly true in what are laughably known as Courts of Justice.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Mordechai Vanunu</small><br>
Israel’s Whistle Test</h1>
<h3>(April 2004)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.284, April 2004, p.21-23.<br>
Copyright © 2004 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded from the new <a href="http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a><br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em><strong>Paul Foot</strong> hails the ‘whistleblower’ who exposed Israel’s nuclear programme.</em></p>
<p class="fst">I have been a journalist for the last 40 years or so, and most of that time I have been exceedingly fortunate in that I have been able to decide what to investigate and what to write about. All that time I have been struck by the ingenious and comprehensive methods by which capitalist society protects itself from the circulation of information. The essence of that society is exploitation, and the facts and figures of that exploitation are wherever possible kept secret from the exploited. This is not to say that there is nothing to discover. Especially in parliamentary democracies like ours, the published documents and broadcast statements provide a wealth of information about what is really going on, but all this is on the surface and therefore not very illuminating.</p>
<p>There are however two sides to exploitation – and two sides to the information about it. On one side, the exploiters want to keep things quiet. On the other, from time to time the exploited have the guts to broadcast what they know. The most combustible information comes from the inside, from people who know what is really going on but for various reasons usually keep quiet about it. From the journalist’s point of view, the richest information comes from people contemptuously known as ‘whistleblowers’. The sporting metaphor is typical of the way society sees these champions. They look on them as referees who ‘blow the whistle’ on something they identify as wrong. But they are much more crucial than that. In almost every case they are people who have experienced something monstrous in their workplace and who do their best to bring the monstrosity into public view.</p>
<p>The sporting metaphor pretends that because the ‘whistleblower’ is doing the right thing he or she should, and probably will, be protected by society. Hence, for instance, the new act of parliament that protects people from victimisation if they split on their bosses. This act is a great improvement. But it cannot begin to compensate for the fury of employers and important people when their secrets are divulged. The reality of power in our society means that the first duty of the journalist who gets secret information is to protect the source. The sources, and the fact that they are putting themselves at risk, become more important than the information itself.</p>
<p>No source in modern times proved this more dramatically than Mordechai Vanunu. He worked for some years at the Dimona plant in Israel, where nuclear weapons were being manufactured. He was shocked by the fact that no one in Israel or anywhere else seemed to know about it. At a time when weapons of mass destruction were very much in the news, and the conflicts in the Middle East constantly covered in the media, no one knew that the most powerful military force in the area was arming itself with nuclear weapons. He took pictures of the plant, and of the nuclear processes, and left his job. In 1986 he came to London and gave his information and his photographs to the <strong>Sunday Times</strong>.</p>
<p>Since the mid-1960s the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> had established a reputation as a newspaper that printed information wherever it came from and however much damage it did to the government. The <em>Insight</em> team operated independently and published the results of several vital investigations. By 1986, however, this tradition was withering. The paper’s new proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, detested the investigative traditions of the newspaper and appointed a new editor, Andrew Neil, to put a stop to them. Neil duly sacked the editor of <em>Insight</em> and dispensed with the journalism for which it was renowned. At the beginning of 1986 Murdoch had moved his premises to Fortress Wapping and smashed the unions. But even Andrew Neil, the sworn enemy of investigative journalism, could see the significance of the story that Mordechai brought him. No one knew that Israel had nuclear weapons, and the impact of that information on a world where the nuclear powers were striving to maintain their nuclear dominance was incalculable. The information and the photographs were thoroughly checked. The Israeli embassy was bombarded with requests for confirmation, which was refused, and the story was published on the front page.</p>
<p>In all the excitement surrounding the publication of the scoop, the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> managed to lose its precious source. Mordechai was consigned to the loose charge of a couple of journalists who had no instructions as to how they were to keep him safe, and no means to do so. Wandering around disconsolate and lonely, he was approached in Leicester Square by an attractive young woman who befriended him and persuaded him to fly with her to Rome. The woman was an agent of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. In Rome the unsuspecting Mordechai was attacked, knocked unconscious, drugged, bound hand and foot, and taken by boat to Israel, where he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to prison for 18 years. That sentence has now been served in full, much of it in solitary confinement, and Mordechai is due to be released this month. The Israeli government, which never stops boasting about its commitment to the rule of law, is threatening either not to release him or to commit him to house arrest. Meanwhile the whole world outside debates whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while the fact that there are such weapons in the most powerful nation in the region is conveniently forgotten.</p>
<p>For journalists in particular, but for anyone interested in the free flow of information, Mordechai Vanunu is a hero. He risked his free existence in the interests of circulating free and vital information. He never asked for nor received a penny for his story. The British government and the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> are both responsible for his appalling treatment, and both should campaign relentlessly for his release, and for his right to spend the rest of his life in freedom.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">Details of the campaign to free Vanunu can be found at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070208064832/http://www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk/" target="new">www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk</a>.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Mordechai Vanunu
Israel’s Whistle Test
(April 2004)
From Socialist Review, No.284, April 2004, p.21-23.
Copyright © 2004 Socialist Review.
Downloaded from the new Socialist Review Archive
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Paul Foot hails the ‘whistleblower’ who exposed Israel’s nuclear programme.
I have been a journalist for the last 40 years or so, and most of that time I have been exceedingly fortunate in that I have been able to decide what to investigate and what to write about. All that time I have been struck by the ingenious and comprehensive methods by which capitalist society protects itself from the circulation of information. The essence of that society is exploitation, and the facts and figures of that exploitation are wherever possible kept secret from the exploited. This is not to say that there is nothing to discover. Especially in parliamentary democracies like ours, the published documents and broadcast statements provide a wealth of information about what is really going on, but all this is on the surface and therefore not very illuminating.
There are however two sides to exploitation – and two sides to the information about it. On one side, the exploiters want to keep things quiet. On the other, from time to time the exploited have the guts to broadcast what they know. The most combustible information comes from the inside, from people who know what is really going on but for various reasons usually keep quiet about it. From the journalist’s point of view, the richest information comes from people contemptuously known as ‘whistleblowers’. The sporting metaphor is typical of the way society sees these champions. They look on them as referees who ‘blow the whistle’ on something they identify as wrong. But they are much more crucial than that. In almost every case they are people who have experienced something monstrous in their workplace and who do their best to bring the monstrosity into public view.
The sporting metaphor pretends that because the ‘whistleblower’ is doing the right thing he or she should, and probably will, be protected by society. Hence, for instance, the new act of parliament that protects people from victimisation if they split on their bosses. This act is a great improvement. But it cannot begin to compensate for the fury of employers and important people when their secrets are divulged. The reality of power in our society means that the first duty of the journalist who gets secret information is to protect the source. The sources, and the fact that they are putting themselves at risk, become more important than the information itself.
No source in modern times proved this more dramatically than Mordechai Vanunu. He worked for some years at the Dimona plant in Israel, where nuclear weapons were being manufactured. He was shocked by the fact that no one in Israel or anywhere else seemed to know about it. At a time when weapons of mass destruction were very much in the news, and the conflicts in the Middle East constantly covered in the media, no one knew that the most powerful military force in the area was arming itself with nuclear weapons. He took pictures of the plant, and of the nuclear processes, and left his job. In 1986 he came to London and gave his information and his photographs to the Sunday Times.
Since the mid-1960s the Sunday Times had established a reputation as a newspaper that printed information wherever it came from and however much damage it did to the government. The Insight team operated independently and published the results of several vital investigations. By 1986, however, this tradition was withering. The paper’s new proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, detested the investigative traditions of the newspaper and appointed a new editor, Andrew Neil, to put a stop to them. Neil duly sacked the editor of Insight and dispensed with the journalism for which it was renowned. At the beginning of 1986 Murdoch had moved his premises to Fortress Wapping and smashed the unions. But even Andrew Neil, the sworn enemy of investigative journalism, could see the significance of the story that Mordechai brought him. No one knew that Israel had nuclear weapons, and the impact of that information on a world where the nuclear powers were striving to maintain their nuclear dominance was incalculable. The information and the photographs were thoroughly checked. The Israeli embassy was bombarded with requests for confirmation, which was refused, and the story was published on the front page.
In all the excitement surrounding the publication of the scoop, the Sunday Times managed to lose its precious source. Mordechai was consigned to the loose charge of a couple of journalists who had no instructions as to how they were to keep him safe, and no means to do so. Wandering around disconsolate and lonely, he was approached in Leicester Square by an attractive young woman who befriended him and persuaded him to fly with her to Rome. The woman was an agent of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. In Rome the unsuspecting Mordechai was attacked, knocked unconscious, drugged, bound hand and foot, and taken by boat to Israel, where he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to prison for 18 years. That sentence has now been served in full, much of it in solitary confinement, and Mordechai is due to be released this month. The Israeli government, which never stops boasting about its commitment to the rule of law, is threatening either not to release him or to commit him to house arrest. Meanwhile the whole world outside debates whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while the fact that there are such weapons in the most powerful nation in the region is conveniently forgotten.
For journalists in particular, but for anyone interested in the free flow of information, Mordechai Vanunu is a hero. He risked his free existence in the interests of circulating free and vital information. He never asked for nor received a penny for his story. The British government and the Sunday Times are both responsible for his appalling treatment, and both should campaign relentlessly for his release, and for his right to spend the rest of his life in freedom.
Details of the campaign to free Vanunu can be found at www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk.
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Last updated on 28.11.2004
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Strikes from a sunlounger</h1>
<h3>(13 July 1996)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No. 1502, 13 July 1996, p. 11.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>NO POLITICIAN more accurately sums up the prevailing values of 1990s Britain than Lady Olga Maitland, Tory MP for Sutton and Cheam.</strong></p>
<p>Lady Olga used to have a gossip column in the <strong>Sunday Express</strong> in which she gloated over the exciting romances of the very rich. She was regarded by most journalists as a bit of a joke, and no one who worked with her imagined she had any political ambitions.</p>
<p>As soon as she got into parliament, she changed completely. She turned herself almost overnight into a right wing fanatic, prepared to go to any lengths to protect the government. Almost singlehandedly, for instance, she managed to stall a bill for improving facilities for disabled people – by reading out a series of amendments prepared for her by ministers.</p>
<p>Lady Olga has been in action already this week – attacking the strikers on the London Underground for holding the city to ransom by irresponsible behaviour.<br>
</p>
<h4>Preposterous woman</h4>
<p class="fst">Did the strikers not realise, she inquired, that when the tubes were not running there was more traffic on the roads – and this led to more road rage violence?</p>
<p><strong>Were the strikers therefore not party to violence? And wasn’t It all the fault of the Labour Party which refused to condemn strikes?</strong></p>
<p>Where has she been, this preposterous woman, who imagines that Labour doesn’t condemn strikes? The answer is that she has been in Malta. On holiday? No, holidays for MPs come later.</p>
<p>Lady Olga was in Malta on business – on parliamentary business for the Inter-Parliamentary Union which encourages and subsidises constant collaboration between MPs from different parliaments all over the world.</p>
<p>Four MPs (two Labour, two Tory) and a Tory peer had flown to Malta as part of this collaboration. They were advised before they left to bring their swimsuits, since bathing in the pools of luxury hotels was as important a part of their itinerary as eating in one of the island’s top fish restaurants.</p>
<p>All this took four days and only just got Lady Olga back in the House of Commons to denounce the tube strikers whose weekly wage would just about have covered the bill for a single night plus dinner in Lady Olga’s Maltese hotel.<br>
</p>
<h4>Outside interests</h4>
<p class="fst">That kind of parliamentary business takes Lady Olga all over the world – even to places where the parliaments are not elected. She is a frequent visitor, for instance, to Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, none of whose rulers bother themselves with democratic elections.</p>
<p><strong>All this travelling and bathing and eating by MPs on business in foreign countries was meant to have been curbed by the Nolan Commission on Standards in Public Life.</strong></p>
<p>Nolan, however, turns out to be one of the great flops of the Major era. The Nolan Commission is not at all opposed to such foreign trips. It requires only that an MP should declare them, which Olga Maitland does with some pride.</p>
<p>Lady Olga, of course, is a strong supporter of MPs having outside interests and of a big rise in MPs’ salaries.</p>
<p>She takes the view that the only way to ensure we get MPs who understand the intricacies of the arguments about strikes by train drivers, as well as the advantages of sunbathing in Malta, is for MPs to get a rise which in percentage terms is three times higher than the value of the cut in hours sought by the tube drivers.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Strikes from a sunlounger
(13 July 1996)
From Socialist Worker, No. 1502, 13 July 1996, p. 11.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
NO POLITICIAN more accurately sums up the prevailing values of 1990s Britain than Lady Olga Maitland, Tory MP for Sutton and Cheam.
Lady Olga used to have a gossip column in the Sunday Express in which she gloated over the exciting romances of the very rich. She was regarded by most journalists as a bit of a joke, and no one who worked with her imagined she had any political ambitions.
As soon as she got into parliament, she changed completely. She turned herself almost overnight into a right wing fanatic, prepared to go to any lengths to protect the government. Almost singlehandedly, for instance, she managed to stall a bill for improving facilities for disabled people – by reading out a series of amendments prepared for her by ministers.
Lady Olga has been in action already this week – attacking the strikers on the London Underground for holding the city to ransom by irresponsible behaviour.
Preposterous woman
Did the strikers not realise, she inquired, that when the tubes were not running there was more traffic on the roads – and this led to more road rage violence?
Were the strikers therefore not party to violence? And wasn’t It all the fault of the Labour Party which refused to condemn strikes?
Where has she been, this preposterous woman, who imagines that Labour doesn’t condemn strikes? The answer is that she has been in Malta. On holiday? No, holidays for MPs come later.
Lady Olga was in Malta on business – on parliamentary business for the Inter-Parliamentary Union which encourages and subsidises constant collaboration between MPs from different parliaments all over the world.
Four MPs (two Labour, two Tory) and a Tory peer had flown to Malta as part of this collaboration. They were advised before they left to bring their swimsuits, since bathing in the pools of luxury hotels was as important a part of their itinerary as eating in one of the island’s top fish restaurants.
All this took four days and only just got Lady Olga back in the House of Commons to denounce the tube strikers whose weekly wage would just about have covered the bill for a single night plus dinner in Lady Olga’s Maltese hotel.
Outside interests
That kind of parliamentary business takes Lady Olga all over the world – even to places where the parliaments are not elected. She is a frequent visitor, for instance, to Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, none of whose rulers bother themselves with democratic elections.
All this travelling and bathing and eating by MPs on business in foreign countries was meant to have been curbed by the Nolan Commission on Standards in Public Life.
Nolan, however, turns out to be one of the great flops of the Major era. The Nolan Commission is not at all opposed to such foreign trips. It requires only that an MP should declare them, which Olga Maitland does with some pride.
Lady Olga, of course, is a strong supporter of MPs having outside interests and of a big rise in MPs’ salaries.
She takes the view that the only way to ensure we get MPs who understand the intricacies of the arguments about strikes by train drivers, as well as the advantages of sunbathing in Malta, is for MPs to get a rise which in percentage terms is three times higher than the value of the cut in hours sought by the tube drivers.
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Last updated on 8 November 2019
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Arms dealing</small><br>
Will they get off Scott free?</h1>
<h3>(May 1995)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Notes of the Month</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index6.html#sr95_05" target="new">No. 186</a>, May 1995, pp. 4–5.<br>
Transcribed & marked upby <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Two extreme opinions circulate on the left about the inquiry by Lord Justice Scott into the export of defence related equipment to Iraq. The first is that the report has been a shining example of how a liberal parliamentary democracy can check itself when it slides into pusillanimity and sleaze. For such people, the noble Lord Justice has behaved like a knight in shining armour, wielding, to coin a popular phrase, the shining sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play against lying politicians and deceitful civil servants. No doubt, such people hope, the <em>Scott Report</em> will tear aside the veil behind which government pledges and arms embargoes are broken, and lambast the entire corrupt system.</p>
<p>Such people are in for a shock. The first section of the <em>Scott Report</em>, which has been widely leaked, deals with the history of arms export control. The judge, who gleefully sequestrated the funds of the South Wales NUM during the miners’ strike, is no socialist or rebel. His attitude to government control of arms exports is that it has been far too strict.</p>
<p>He is disgusted that the government has used a short draconian measure passed during the wartime emergency of 1939, which effectively gave ministers complete power over all arms exports. This, the Lord Justice thinks, is an appalling interference with the inalienable right of businessmen to export what they want, including the means of slaughter. He believes that, if the government wants to control such commendable free enterprise, it must move cautiously with carefully constructed statutes which allow enormous leeway for free marketeers.</p>
<p>Those who believe that the <em>Scott Report</em> will be an ideologically challenging document which might finally bring down the government are whistling in the wind.</p>
<p>There is, however, the second extreme view, even more absurd. This is that the <em>Scott Report</em> is of no significance to the course of modern capitalism, and can be safely ignored by all socialists.</p>
<p>This view is a profound misunderstanding of the crisis which brought the Scott inquiry into being. As Britain’s economic role has declined, as Britain has sailed down the world league of manufacturers, shipbuilders and vehicle builders, so its exports have increasingly come to rely on the arms industry.</p>
<p>The advantages of arms exports are obvious. They produce a high return, and can be kept utterly secret from the public. They are in constant demand all over the world. Yet their disadvantages lead to equally obvious problems. Arms are needed most where wars are being waged – wars which ‘responsible’ democratic governments such as the British government are usually trying (at any rate in public statements at the United Nations) to stop.</p>
<p>The big conflicts which are the real honeypot for the arms exporting industries are almost always subject to embargoes. The Iran-Iraq war was no exception. To keep up its wholly unjustified reputation as a peacekeeper, the British government had to be seen to be discouraging arms exports to either side.</p>
<p>Hence the notorious ‘guidelines’ to industry, announced in parliament in 1985, which banned the export of any ‘lethal equipment’ to the warring countries. Against the guidelines were ranged all those who wanted to make money by killing Iranians or Iraqis. These exporters had considerable support in the ministry of defence and the department of trade. Alan Clark, a wild Thatcherite eccentric, served in both ministries from 1986 to 1992, and went on record as denouncing the guidelines. If there was a war between two sets of foreigners a long way away, he argued, why not make some decent foreign exchange by selling both sides as many arms as they wanted?</p>
<p>The clash between these two views – the official respectable view represented by the then junior foreign office minister William Waldegrave and the gung-ho view of Clark and co. – constantly tore at the fabric of government. For most of the Iran-Iraq war there was an uneasy truce between the two sides. But when the war ended and the embargo remained, the hawks lost patience and insisted on busting the embargo.</p>
<p>Their greed was accommodated by a typical British compromise. Waldegrave and Clark agreed that the guidelines would be changed to allow a flood of defence related equipment especially to booming Iraq – but no one, not even the prime minister and certainly not the public, would know about it. Thus embargoed exports flooded to Iraq while everyone who asked about it was told that the embargo was still in force.</p>
<p>This compromise would have continued forever had it not been for another contradiction. Britain is a military power and may have to fight wars itself. Its government must therefore be careful not to allow the export of arms which might be used against it. One of the great tragicomic figures of the whole story is one Lt Col Richard Glazebrook whose job it was to keep warning his colleagues in the ministry of defence that they should not so recklessly agree to the selling of military equipment against which, if it were turned on British troops, Britain would have no answer.</p>
<p>Glazebrook was mocked and outvoted, but when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, he had the last laugh. He greatly enjoyed listing the exports which he had warned against but which now were in the hands of an army ranged against British troops.</p>
<p>The Gulf War quickly tore the uneasy compromise apart. The embargo had to be imposed more fiercely than ever. All sorts of curious characters were caught up in the process. Three British directors of Matrix Churchill, a Midlands firm owned by Iraqi government supporters which had been happily exporting machine tools for use in Saddam’s artillery factories, suddenly found themselves prosecuted.</p>
<p>Their defence was that the government and MI6 had supported them throughout. When their defence was proved by documents wrung from a reactant civil service, the case collapsed – and the government nearly collapsed too. Major survived only by setting up the Scott inquiry and giving it more powers to wrest the facts from the government machine than had ever been given to any public inquiry in British history.</p>
<p>As a result, Scott found himself beavering away in the cracks of the system. Since the whole ‘solution’ to the arms for Iran-Iraq problem had been based on lying to parliament and the public, Scott was horrified to discover an enormous network of deceit. There can be no doubt that his report will be a hideous embarrassment to government ministers, law officers and the civil service.</p>
<p>Even if, as seems likely, he lets the merchants of death off lightly, he cannot excuse, for instance, serial deception of parliament and blatant contempt for the most basic rules of fair play to defendants. The shortcomings of the whole saga quickly fade beside the altogether exhilarating prospect of at least some official confirmation of what socialists have always propounded: that lying, cheating and double talk are not just incidental to the system. They are essential to it.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Arms dealing
Will they get off Scott free?
(May 1995)
From Notes of the Month, Socialist Review, No. 186, May 1995, pp. 4–5.
Transcribed & marked upby Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Two extreme opinions circulate on the left about the inquiry by Lord Justice Scott into the export of defence related equipment to Iraq. The first is that the report has been a shining example of how a liberal parliamentary democracy can check itself when it slides into pusillanimity and sleaze. For such people, the noble Lord Justice has behaved like a knight in shining armour, wielding, to coin a popular phrase, the shining sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play against lying politicians and deceitful civil servants. No doubt, such people hope, the Scott Report will tear aside the veil behind which government pledges and arms embargoes are broken, and lambast the entire corrupt system.
Such people are in for a shock. The first section of the Scott Report, which has been widely leaked, deals with the history of arms export control. The judge, who gleefully sequestrated the funds of the South Wales NUM during the miners’ strike, is no socialist or rebel. His attitude to government control of arms exports is that it has been far too strict.
He is disgusted that the government has used a short draconian measure passed during the wartime emergency of 1939, which effectively gave ministers complete power over all arms exports. This, the Lord Justice thinks, is an appalling interference with the inalienable right of businessmen to export what they want, including the means of slaughter. He believes that, if the government wants to control such commendable free enterprise, it must move cautiously with carefully constructed statutes which allow enormous leeway for free marketeers.
Those who believe that the Scott Report will be an ideologically challenging document which might finally bring down the government are whistling in the wind.
There is, however, the second extreme view, even more absurd. This is that the Scott Report is of no significance to the course of modern capitalism, and can be safely ignored by all socialists.
This view is a profound misunderstanding of the crisis which brought the Scott inquiry into being. As Britain’s economic role has declined, as Britain has sailed down the world league of manufacturers, shipbuilders and vehicle builders, so its exports have increasingly come to rely on the arms industry.
The advantages of arms exports are obvious. They produce a high return, and can be kept utterly secret from the public. They are in constant demand all over the world. Yet their disadvantages lead to equally obvious problems. Arms are needed most where wars are being waged – wars which ‘responsible’ democratic governments such as the British government are usually trying (at any rate in public statements at the United Nations) to stop.
The big conflicts which are the real honeypot for the arms exporting industries are almost always subject to embargoes. The Iran-Iraq war was no exception. To keep up its wholly unjustified reputation as a peacekeeper, the British government had to be seen to be discouraging arms exports to either side.
Hence the notorious ‘guidelines’ to industry, announced in parliament in 1985, which banned the export of any ‘lethal equipment’ to the warring countries. Against the guidelines were ranged all those who wanted to make money by killing Iranians or Iraqis. These exporters had considerable support in the ministry of defence and the department of trade. Alan Clark, a wild Thatcherite eccentric, served in both ministries from 1986 to 1992, and went on record as denouncing the guidelines. If there was a war between two sets of foreigners a long way away, he argued, why not make some decent foreign exchange by selling both sides as many arms as they wanted?
The clash between these two views – the official respectable view represented by the then junior foreign office minister William Waldegrave and the gung-ho view of Clark and co. – constantly tore at the fabric of government. For most of the Iran-Iraq war there was an uneasy truce between the two sides. But when the war ended and the embargo remained, the hawks lost patience and insisted on busting the embargo.
Their greed was accommodated by a typical British compromise. Waldegrave and Clark agreed that the guidelines would be changed to allow a flood of defence related equipment especially to booming Iraq – but no one, not even the prime minister and certainly not the public, would know about it. Thus embargoed exports flooded to Iraq while everyone who asked about it was told that the embargo was still in force.
This compromise would have continued forever had it not been for another contradiction. Britain is a military power and may have to fight wars itself. Its government must therefore be careful not to allow the export of arms which might be used against it. One of the great tragicomic figures of the whole story is one Lt Col Richard Glazebrook whose job it was to keep warning his colleagues in the ministry of defence that they should not so recklessly agree to the selling of military equipment against which, if it were turned on British troops, Britain would have no answer.
Glazebrook was mocked and outvoted, but when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, he had the last laugh. He greatly enjoyed listing the exports which he had warned against but which now were in the hands of an army ranged against British troops.
The Gulf War quickly tore the uneasy compromise apart. The embargo had to be imposed more fiercely than ever. All sorts of curious characters were caught up in the process. Three British directors of Matrix Churchill, a Midlands firm owned by Iraqi government supporters which had been happily exporting machine tools for use in Saddam’s artillery factories, suddenly found themselves prosecuted.
Their defence was that the government and MI6 had supported them throughout. When their defence was proved by documents wrung from a reactant civil service, the case collapsed – and the government nearly collapsed too. Major survived only by setting up the Scott inquiry and giving it more powers to wrest the facts from the government machine than had ever been given to any public inquiry in British history.
As a result, Scott found himself beavering away in the cracks of the system. Since the whole ‘solution’ to the arms for Iran-Iraq problem had been based on lying to parliament and the public, Scott was horrified to discover an enormous network of deceit. There can be no doubt that his report will be a hideous embarrassment to government ministers, law officers and the civil service.
Even if, as seems likely, he lets the merchants of death off lightly, he cannot excuse, for instance, serial deception of parliament and blatant contempt for the most basic rules of fair play to defendants. The shortcomings of the whole saga quickly fade beside the altogether exhilarating prospect of at least some official confirmation of what socialists have always propounded: that lying, cheating and double talk are not just incidental to the system. They are essential to it.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Powell’s poison platform</h1>
<h3>(December 1986)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index3.html#sr86_12" target="new">No. 93</a>, December 1986, p. 13.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">WHY SHOULD anyone want to victimise a 74 year old gentleman who wants to speak to small university audiences on constitutional reform? His set speech, by all accounts, is very boring and not even very reactionary.</p>
<p>The gentleman is a former Tory MP (now an Ulster Unionist), but he has a reputation as a bit of a rebel in the Tory ranks. He was one of the first Tories to vote against capital punishment. He has always been sceptical about Britain’s independent nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>In 1974, in the middle of an election campaign, he suddenly resigned his Tory candidature and urged people to vote Labour because he was opposed to the Common Market!</p>
<p>With such a record, as I say, why should anyone want to discriminate against the Rt. Hon. J. Enoch Powell MP?</p>
<p>No one suggests that people should be stopped from speaking just because they are Tories. Surely, socialist students should leave this old gentleman alone.</p>
<p>Such is the argument being voiced by the Federation of Conservative Students, whose leadership has just been disbanded by Norman Tebbit because it is too right wing!</p>
<p>The FCS are hawking old Enoch round the universities, demanding for him free speech, and playing on his “fine record” as a “distinguished parliamentarian”.</p>
<p>In truth, however, there is only one reason why Enoch Powell is popular with the FCS leaders. They like him not for his “maverick” views on capital punishment, Europe or defence. Indeed, they try to stop him mentioning any of these matters.</p>
<p>Quite accurately they have singled out the one issue which has made Enoch Powell famous – the issue which he himself has pushed to the fore unceasingly for the last 18 years – the issue of race.</p>
<p>At the start of his political career, in times when it seemed that the system he loves, capitalism, appeared to be working, Powell never expressed any interest in race or immigration.</p>
<p>During the big boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s when there seemed no end to permanent economic growth, and when black people poured into the country, free of all immigration control, to staff the lower reaches of the burgeoning industries and services, Powell, who represented Wolverhampton, a town of heavy immigration, uttered not a single racialist murmur.</p>
<p>When the Tory government finally imposed some controls on citizens of the Commonwealth, Powell supported them. But as minister of health (1960-1963), he sponsored schemes for recruiting black nurses and ancillary hospital workers in the West Indies, especially in Barbados.</p>
<p>It was the decline of the capitalist boom which sparked off Powell’s innate racialism. In 1968, spurred by the then Labour government’s capitulation to racialist pressure to introduce special and entirely unnecessary immigration controls on East African Asians, Powell went to Birmingham to deliver a speech which reeked of racialist hate against the black minority. He used the foulest racialist language, referring to black children as “grinning picaninnies”.</p>
<p>He gave full vent to all the crudest racialist stereotypes, linking people’s propensity to crime, fecklessness and disorder to the colour of their skins and their countries of origin. He predicted in the most colourful phrases a race war unless the numbers of blacks were cut down.</p>
<p>The response was devastating. Powell touched a deep racialist nerve, not just in his own class but in the working class as well. London dockers went on strike and marched to parliament calling for “Enoch for Prime Minister”. All over the country racialists, who until then had felt something shameful about abusing immigrants, shed their inhibitions.</p>
<p>Although Powell was promptly sacked by Tory leader Heath from the shadow cabinet, his speech led to a great wave of suddenly respectable racialist propaganda. Much of this found its way, through the post, to Powell’s house. He boasted of “sackfuls of mail” which filled his basement. His boast was soon to turn against him. When the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> (then a newspaper of some repute) branded his speeches racialist, Powell sued for libel.</p>
<p>The <strong>Sunday Times</strong> won a court order demanding that all the letters sent to Powell be handed over to them. They argued that these letters might prove the real, racialist nature of the support which Powell had stirred up. Almost at once, before handing over the letters, Powell dropped the action.</p>
<p>Since then, he has never objected to the word racialist. Indeed, he has seemed to revel in his racialist reputation. Again and again over the last 18 years, every time the relationship between the black and white communities was rocked by some crisis, Powell has intervened to stoke up the flames.</p>
<p>None of his monstrous predictions in 1968 have come true. Yet he has persisted with the same racist demagogy, hurling insult after insult at black people.</p>
<p>His demands have been unclear, but consistent. First, he demanded more effective immigration control. When he got some more controls (as in the infamous British Nationality Act of 1971) he demanded more. He would not rest, he said, until all black people (including families of people already here) were banned from entry.</p>
<p>Gradually, this was conceded. In the 1970s, black immigration into this country was virtually stopped. When there was no more juice in that campaign, Powell turned his attention to the people already here, arguing with greater and greater force that they must be got out of the country if the apocalypse was to be avoided.</p>
<p>This logic drove him on, inevitably, to a call for compulsory repatriation. In a speech and a series of articles in 1985, he outlined his plan for a “repatriation programme” which <em>must</em> cut down the black population by a huge percentage.</p>
<p>Since Powell’s own figures show that the black population is growing by about a hundred thousand a year (at the least) this means that every ten years, under his programme, a million black people must be “got back” to the so-called “countries of origin” (though of course many were born here, and know no other country).</p>
<p>There is no other way in which this could be carried out except by the cattle truck. Mass expulsions of people because of their race harks directly back to Fascist Germany, Fascist Austria, Fascist Poland, Fascist France, shortly before and during the last world war. “Expel them to save us from the holocaust of racial violence!” was the cry. The result was a racial holocaust on an unimaginable scale – the greatest atrocity in world history.</p>
<p>This is the reality behind the apparently friendly face which is being introduced on the campuses by your friendly new storm-troopers from the FCS. It is because of his record on the race issue that the National Union of Students have included Enoch Powell on their list of speakers who should not be invited on any campus anywhere.</p>
<p>This list is small. Apart from openly fascist organisations, for instance (who would be the first to put a stop to any free speech at all), it includes only Powell and a couple of spokesmen for the racist dictatorship in South Africa.</p>
<p>The argument is simple. Most speech leads to action. Speech which does not lead to action is usually futile and irrelevant. Racialist speech leads to racialist action. Permitting racialist speech, therefore, is permitting racialist action – encouraging the hounding and victimisation of people because of the colour of their skin and the country of their birth, neither of which is a matter of choice for anyone.</p>
<p>Thus there are occasions where tolerance of free speech can be tolerance of the very opposite.</p>
<p>This is certainly the case with the Rt. Hon. Member for South Down – and the Federation of Conservative Students know that very well indeed.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Powell’s poison platform
(December 1986)
From Socialist Worker Review, No. 93, December 1986, p. 13.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
WHY SHOULD anyone want to victimise a 74 year old gentleman who wants to speak to small university audiences on constitutional reform? His set speech, by all accounts, is very boring and not even very reactionary.
The gentleman is a former Tory MP (now an Ulster Unionist), but he has a reputation as a bit of a rebel in the Tory ranks. He was one of the first Tories to vote against capital punishment. He has always been sceptical about Britain’s independent nuclear weapons.
In 1974, in the middle of an election campaign, he suddenly resigned his Tory candidature and urged people to vote Labour because he was opposed to the Common Market!
With such a record, as I say, why should anyone want to discriminate against the Rt. Hon. J. Enoch Powell MP?
No one suggests that people should be stopped from speaking just because they are Tories. Surely, socialist students should leave this old gentleman alone.
Such is the argument being voiced by the Federation of Conservative Students, whose leadership has just been disbanded by Norman Tebbit because it is too right wing!
The FCS are hawking old Enoch round the universities, demanding for him free speech, and playing on his “fine record” as a “distinguished parliamentarian”.
In truth, however, there is only one reason why Enoch Powell is popular with the FCS leaders. They like him not for his “maverick” views on capital punishment, Europe or defence. Indeed, they try to stop him mentioning any of these matters.
Quite accurately they have singled out the one issue which has made Enoch Powell famous – the issue which he himself has pushed to the fore unceasingly for the last 18 years – the issue of race.
At the start of his political career, in times when it seemed that the system he loves, capitalism, appeared to be working, Powell never expressed any interest in race or immigration.
During the big boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s when there seemed no end to permanent economic growth, and when black people poured into the country, free of all immigration control, to staff the lower reaches of the burgeoning industries and services, Powell, who represented Wolverhampton, a town of heavy immigration, uttered not a single racialist murmur.
When the Tory government finally imposed some controls on citizens of the Commonwealth, Powell supported them. But as minister of health (1960-1963), he sponsored schemes for recruiting black nurses and ancillary hospital workers in the West Indies, especially in Barbados.
It was the decline of the capitalist boom which sparked off Powell’s innate racialism. In 1968, spurred by the then Labour government’s capitulation to racialist pressure to introduce special and entirely unnecessary immigration controls on East African Asians, Powell went to Birmingham to deliver a speech which reeked of racialist hate against the black minority. He used the foulest racialist language, referring to black children as “grinning picaninnies”.
He gave full vent to all the crudest racialist stereotypes, linking people’s propensity to crime, fecklessness and disorder to the colour of their skins and their countries of origin. He predicted in the most colourful phrases a race war unless the numbers of blacks were cut down.
The response was devastating. Powell touched a deep racialist nerve, not just in his own class but in the working class as well. London dockers went on strike and marched to parliament calling for “Enoch for Prime Minister”. All over the country racialists, who until then had felt something shameful about abusing immigrants, shed their inhibitions.
Although Powell was promptly sacked by Tory leader Heath from the shadow cabinet, his speech led to a great wave of suddenly respectable racialist propaganda. Much of this found its way, through the post, to Powell’s house. He boasted of “sackfuls of mail” which filled his basement. His boast was soon to turn against him. When the Sunday Times (then a newspaper of some repute) branded his speeches racialist, Powell sued for libel.
The Sunday Times won a court order demanding that all the letters sent to Powell be handed over to them. They argued that these letters might prove the real, racialist nature of the support which Powell had stirred up. Almost at once, before handing over the letters, Powell dropped the action.
Since then, he has never objected to the word racialist. Indeed, he has seemed to revel in his racialist reputation. Again and again over the last 18 years, every time the relationship between the black and white communities was rocked by some crisis, Powell has intervened to stoke up the flames.
None of his monstrous predictions in 1968 have come true. Yet he has persisted with the same racist demagogy, hurling insult after insult at black people.
His demands have been unclear, but consistent. First, he demanded more effective immigration control. When he got some more controls (as in the infamous British Nationality Act of 1971) he demanded more. He would not rest, he said, until all black people (including families of people already here) were banned from entry.
Gradually, this was conceded. In the 1970s, black immigration into this country was virtually stopped. When there was no more juice in that campaign, Powell turned his attention to the people already here, arguing with greater and greater force that they must be got out of the country if the apocalypse was to be avoided.
This logic drove him on, inevitably, to a call for compulsory repatriation. In a speech and a series of articles in 1985, he outlined his plan for a “repatriation programme” which must cut down the black population by a huge percentage.
Since Powell’s own figures show that the black population is growing by about a hundred thousand a year (at the least) this means that every ten years, under his programme, a million black people must be “got back” to the so-called “countries of origin” (though of course many were born here, and know no other country).
There is no other way in which this could be carried out except by the cattle truck. Mass expulsions of people because of their race harks directly back to Fascist Germany, Fascist Austria, Fascist Poland, Fascist France, shortly before and during the last world war. “Expel them to save us from the holocaust of racial violence!” was the cry. The result was a racial holocaust on an unimaginable scale – the greatest atrocity in world history.
This is the reality behind the apparently friendly face which is being introduced on the campuses by your friendly new storm-troopers from the FCS. It is because of his record on the race issue that the National Union of Students have included Enoch Powell on their list of speakers who should not be invited on any campus anywhere.
This list is small. Apart from openly fascist organisations, for instance (who would be the first to put a stop to any free speech at all), it includes only Powell and a couple of spokesmen for the racist dictatorship in South Africa.
The argument is simple. Most speech leads to action. Speech which does not lead to action is usually futile and irrelevant. Racialist speech leads to racialist action. Permitting racialist speech, therefore, is permitting racialist action – encouraging the hounding and victimisation of people because of the colour of their skin and the country of their birth, neither of which is a matter of choice for anyone.
Thus there are occasions where tolerance of free speech can be tolerance of the very opposite.
This is certainly the case with the Rt. Hon. Member for South Down – and the Federation of Conservative Students know that very well indeed.
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">P. Foot</a></p>
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Shirley, Shirley, quite contrary,<br>
how will your garden grow?</h1>
<h3>(May 1981)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index1.html#sr81_05" target="new">1981 : 5</a>, May–June 1981, pp. 18–20.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="c"><strong>The ‘old politics’ are dead, according to Shirley Williams. Meanwhile the new Social Democratic Party have attracted 40,000 members in less than six weeks. Paul Foot explores their politics and their appeal.</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<table class="r" align="right" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<img src="swilliams.jpg" border="0" width="263" height="400" align="bottom" alt="Shirley Williams">
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">No matter how often we blink our eyes in disbelief, the ridiculous reality is still there. A gang of four former Labour cabinet ministers, each one of them with deeply reactionary records both in government and outside, have broken from the Labour Party to present themselves as ‘a new force’ in British politics.</p>
<p>Without spelling out a single policy, they have attracted 40,000 dues-paying members, a seventh of the total Labour Party membership. The public opinion polls put this party without a policy <em>ahead of all others</em> and come to the preposterous conclusion that if there were a general election tomorrow the new ‘social democratic party’ would be able to form a government!</p>
<p>The mass appeal of this new party is not, I think, a mirage. It is here with us to stay for some time yet. This has nothing to do with the SDP’s policies, for it has none. As Dr David Owen blurted out to a questioner on the day of the SDP’s birth: ‘Look, love, if you want a manifesto, go and join one of the other parties’.</p>
<p>No. The appeal is based, first, and most solidly, on freshness. The ‘old politics’, Shirley Williams ceaselessly tells us in her book, <strong>Politics is for People</strong>, are dead. By ‘old politics’ she means in particular the politics of Labour.</p>
<p>In this, she is on strong ground. Three bouts of post-war Labour governments, two of them with huge majorities, (and two of them with Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins as senior ministers) are remembered without a trace of nostalgia. Who wants to go back to Wilson or Callaghan? They were backward, stale administrations whose few achievements in the field of social reform in the first blush of office were largely rubbed out by the slide into conformity.</p>
<p>Yet there is another side to the new party’s appeal which appears to contradict this freshness. It is that the new partly appears ‘safe’. It will not do any thing drastic or revolutionary. It will not upset the balance of the ‘market’ or ‘the mixed economy’, about both of which Shirley Williams writes almost lyrically.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The market’ she tells us (p46) ‘matches demand and supply better than the planners do. It responds more easily to changing fashions and needs. It is rather good at getting rid of unsuccessful enterprises.’</p>
<p class="fst">There will be no nationalising or intervening from her, we can be sure!</p>
<p>The limits for all Shirley Williams’ ‘new, radical policies’ are set by the forecasts of economists and the ebb and flow of booms and the slumps. In Chapter 4, <em>How the World Has Changed</em>, she abandons any responsibility for changing the rules which have brought about the recession. The ‘low or negative growth rate’ is there. It is inevitable. Anything that Shirley Williams can do must he within those boundaries.</p>
<p>She toys for a moment with the possibility that the priorities of modern capitalism could be altered by tough economic controls. ‘The only initiative that could radically alter the world’s economic prospects’ she tells us (p. 65). ‘would be the recycling of the oil exporters’ surpluses as well as some of the currency reserves of the industrial countries, in effect the Brandt Commission’s proposals in their most radical form’.</p>
<p>Yes, in its most radical moments, the Brandt Commission, which included such well-known revolutionary figures as Edward Heath, former Tory prime minister, and Willy Brandt, former German chancellor, argued that the only way to deal with the huge surpluses (OK word for profits) of the oil companies and the sheikdoms had amassed from the rise in oil prices was to ‘recycle’ (OK word for ‘direct’ or ‘force’) them to where they are really needed, to the starving millions for example.</p>
<p>What does Mrs Williams think of this policy?</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Simply to state such proposals’ she goes on, ‘is to emphasise how improbable their adoption is, despite growing public understanding and support’.</p>
<p class="fst">It would be <em>nice</em>, wouldn’t it, if we could get control of the economic resources and plan them so that the needy benefit and the rich were squeezed a little?</p>
<p>But that is ‘improbable’ because it means mucking about with the market, and the profits which are its mainspring. So we have to accept a shrinking capitalism, the end of economic growth, huge oil profits, starving millions – we have to accept all these things and find political solutions in spite of them. From Chapter 4 onwards, these matters are referred to constantly as ‘<em>external circumstances</em> outlined in Chapter 4’ (p. 171) or ‘<em>the changes</em> described in Chapter 4’. (p. 178)</p>
<p>What follows in terms of practical ‘radical’ politics, not surprisingly, is thin, if not pathetic. The only coherent philosophy is: ‘small is beautiful’.</p>
<p>Shirley Williams argues that industry and trade unions have become obsessed by size, and that smaller units and smaller businesses might prove more successful. She has discovered that there have been more jobs created in America in small business than in large business, and concludes that it’s the job of a new radical government to give more help and encouragement to small businesses. The type of help and encouragement she advocates is rather similar to the proposals in Sir Geoffrey Howe’s last (‘radical’? ‘reforming’? ‘new’?) budget, which scooped Mrs Williams’ book by a few weeks.</p>
<p>Sometimes. the proposals she advocates for smaller units are plain reactionary. For instance, she advocates greater use of labour rather than machines, <em>in itself</em>, quite regardless of the type of work which is to be done.</p>
<p>She completely forsakes the traditional socialist attitude that, for the vast majority of work, which is dreary, soul-destroying work, machines which do the job are in themselves a blessing and are only a curse when they are used for profit to create unemployment and poverty. Control of the machines by people, instead of the other way round as demanded by capitalism, could result in a better life for everyone. Instead, Shirley Williams seriously proposes scrapping machines in favour of masses of people. And because she has also found out that smaller businesses use more labour per machine than do large businesses (usually because small businesses are less efficient, by the way, not more so) she concludes (again) that small are better than big.</p>
<p>This is the <em>main philosophical conclusion</em> of her book. And of course it is quite fatuous. It is not the size of the enterprise which determines whether or not it is efficient or even quite pleasant to work for. It is its ownership, its dynamic, its organisation, its purpose. About all these things Shirley Williams has nothing to say, save to echo the conventional Liberal Party call for ‘more participation’ and ‘more democracy’.</p>
<p>She lumps industry and finance, where no one in control is ever elected, together with the trade unions, whose control is based on election and choice, however slack and infrequent the elections are. She is for workers and management sharing in the control of their firms, and she seems to favour the basic proposals of the <strong>Bullock Report</strong> for power-sharing. Yet to the question: how to get even that degree of power-sharing in the teeth of the most hysterical and bitter opposition from the unelected and irresponsible employers? – she has no reply whatever. ‘Governments, corporate powers of industry and trade unions,’ she argues simply, ‘<em>should devolve some of their power downwards</em>.’ (my italics).</p>
<p>No doubt they <em>should</em>. But <em>what if they don’t?</em> No reply. Once again, any question which might lead to confrontation is quickly side-stepped.</p>
<p>The obsession with ‘safety’ dogs all Shirley Williams’ book, which is, by the way, a series of essays. Most of the essays were written at different times either for American university students or for the shadowy Policy Studies Institute which stepped in fast to sponsor Shirley Williams when she lost her seat in the 1979 general election.</p>
<p>Her specific proposals are intended to span the gap between what Dr Owen has called the ‘caring tradition’ of the Labour Party, and the ‘market tradition’ of the Conservative Party. The ‘caring’ side includes a commitment to a wealth tax (which is more than Shirley Williams and the last Labour government could manage in five years) some very useful ideas about employing masses of people to improve older housing; and even a clear statement against all fee-paying education (which prospered so hugely during the last Labour government and Shirley Williams’ three years as education minister).</p>
<p>To balance the ‘caring’, there is the usual call to sacrifice. She warns:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The industrial countries have been <em>wildly profligate</em> in the booming post-war decades. Their governments and their peoples have enjoyed <em>a material spree</em> never paralleled before. Now, as the late Anthony Crosland said to Britain’s local authorities in 1977 [well, actually, he was dead in 1977, but Shirley Williams is as untidy with her facts as she is with her philosophy], the party is over.’</p>
<p class="fst">There we have it. Shirley Williams and her new party represent radicalism and newness on the one hand, safety and caution on the other; the ‘caring’ of the Labour Party and the spirit of sacrifice usually associated with the Tories.</p>
<p>The appeal is to all decent people who are fed up with the stick-in-the-mud approach of former Labour governments, who dislike the Thatcher Government’s meanness and class loyalty, but who are also nervous of anything drastic or immediate by way of reform. This, in the period of industrial quiescence in which we now live, is a very powerful appeal indeed.</p>
<p>It is easy enough to scoff at the Gang of Four themselves, their own political heritage, their middle class origins, their careerism and their cant. But the appeal remains, and will not be shifted by ridicule.</p>
<p>What can shift it is the argument which mounts up relentlessly against the likelihood of the SDP delivering even the most minor reforms. It is not just that their radicalism conflicts with their safeness; nor that their caring conflicts with their dedication to market forces. It is that such is the nature of the society we live in that when the two sets of opposites conflict, the former always loses; the latter always win.</p>
<p>Shirley Williams knows all about the inherent inequalities in our society. She cites the figures, and she wants them changed. There is at least one reference in her book to the need for equality.</p>
<p>But the figures of inequality describe more than something which is just ‘wrong’. They describe a power structure, in which a class of people control society’s wealth and therefore control society’s political power.</p>
<p>We <em>know</em> this happens. We have all those Labour governments and all the efforts of Shirley Williams and her colleagues to prove it. They became ministers of the Crown. They cared about private education, but they did not move to end it. They cared about unemployment, but they presided over the doubling of it.</p>
<p>Roy Jenkins cared about racialism, but he was in government when it increased beyond anything he could ever have expected. William Rogers was not in favour of juggernaut lorries, but while Minister of Transport he fought desperately to remove the few controls on them. The power of the people with properly lays down the law about what happens to all of us. And parliamentary democracy is too slender a connection with the masses seriously to disturb that power.</p>
<p>When caring people get to government in the way Shirley Williams intends to do, they find their caring conflicts with the economic reality and their caring is always shelved. A government headed by the Gang of Four would no doubt include most of the ideas in this book in its manifesto. But because there is not the slightest sign of how they are to be carried out, not the slightest moment of doubt about the capacity of parliamentary government to turn back the tide of corporate power, we will not even get Mrs Williams’ wealth tax, her abolition of fee-paying schools, her full employment or her increased social services. We will not get her house improvements or her small power stations. But we <em>will</em> get her bombs, her incomes policy, her stronger Common Market, her increasingly hysterical calls for sacrifice. In other words, all her freshness, and radicalism will take us straight back to the fudged stale capitalism of the last Callaghan government: exactly in the opposite direction, that is, to the one where Shirley Williams is now pointing.</p>
<p>There <em>is</em> an alternative; there <em>is</em> a new way of looking at politics. Shirley Williams knows it, and quite deliberately and shamefully refuses even to argue with it. After disposing quite easily with Russia and Russian-style Communists, she devotes a single sentence to ‘revolutionary romantics and Trotskyites’ who are</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Wedded to an idea of politics which has never been attained anywhere but which in theory might one day be achieved if only revolution could in some way be harnessed to the perfectibility of human beings’.</p>
<p class="fst">Human nature will not have revolution! It will only put up with the continued stumbling of ‘caring’ politicians who serve the interests of property! ‘Human nature’ offers us the only hope for political advance, a mixture of half-hearted contradictions of the type voiced by Shirley Williams. Human nature demands sacrifice instead of growth; poverty instead of plenty. Human nature presents a social democratic party, peddling the failed dogmas of the Callaghan government as a ‘new radical alternative’.</p>
<p>Shirley Williams makes much of a quotation from Immanuel Kant: ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made’.</p>
<p>She should make that the central slogan of her dynamic and radical appeal at the next general election.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Shirley, Shirley, quite contrary,
how will your garden grow?
(May 1981)
From Socialist Review, 1981 : 5, May–June 1981, pp. 18–20.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The ‘old politics’ are dead, according to Shirley Williams. Meanwhile the new Social Democratic Party have attracted 40,000 members in less than six weeks. Paul Foot explores their politics and their appeal.
No matter how often we blink our eyes in disbelief, the ridiculous reality is still there. A gang of four former Labour cabinet ministers, each one of them with deeply reactionary records both in government and outside, have broken from the Labour Party to present themselves as ‘a new force’ in British politics.
Without spelling out a single policy, they have attracted 40,000 dues-paying members, a seventh of the total Labour Party membership. The public opinion polls put this party without a policy ahead of all others and come to the preposterous conclusion that if there were a general election tomorrow the new ‘social democratic party’ would be able to form a government!
The mass appeal of this new party is not, I think, a mirage. It is here with us to stay for some time yet. This has nothing to do with the SDP’s policies, for it has none. As Dr David Owen blurted out to a questioner on the day of the SDP’s birth: ‘Look, love, if you want a manifesto, go and join one of the other parties’.
No. The appeal is based, first, and most solidly, on freshness. The ‘old politics’, Shirley Williams ceaselessly tells us in her book, Politics is for People, are dead. By ‘old politics’ she means in particular the politics of Labour.
In this, she is on strong ground. Three bouts of post-war Labour governments, two of them with huge majorities, (and two of them with Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins as senior ministers) are remembered without a trace of nostalgia. Who wants to go back to Wilson or Callaghan? They were backward, stale administrations whose few achievements in the field of social reform in the first blush of office were largely rubbed out by the slide into conformity.
Yet there is another side to the new party’s appeal which appears to contradict this freshness. It is that the new partly appears ‘safe’. It will not do any thing drastic or revolutionary. It will not upset the balance of the ‘market’ or ‘the mixed economy’, about both of which Shirley Williams writes almost lyrically.
‘The market’ she tells us (p46) ‘matches demand and supply better than the planners do. It responds more easily to changing fashions and needs. It is rather good at getting rid of unsuccessful enterprises.’
There will be no nationalising or intervening from her, we can be sure!
The limits for all Shirley Williams’ ‘new, radical policies’ are set by the forecasts of economists and the ebb and flow of booms and the slumps. In Chapter 4, How the World Has Changed, she abandons any responsibility for changing the rules which have brought about the recession. The ‘low or negative growth rate’ is there. It is inevitable. Anything that Shirley Williams can do must he within those boundaries.
She toys for a moment with the possibility that the priorities of modern capitalism could be altered by tough economic controls. ‘The only initiative that could radically alter the world’s economic prospects’ she tells us (p. 65). ‘would be the recycling of the oil exporters’ surpluses as well as some of the currency reserves of the industrial countries, in effect the Brandt Commission’s proposals in their most radical form’.
Yes, in its most radical moments, the Brandt Commission, which included such well-known revolutionary figures as Edward Heath, former Tory prime minister, and Willy Brandt, former German chancellor, argued that the only way to deal with the huge surpluses (OK word for profits) of the oil companies and the sheikdoms had amassed from the rise in oil prices was to ‘recycle’ (OK word for ‘direct’ or ‘force’) them to where they are really needed, to the starving millions for example.
What does Mrs Williams think of this policy?
‘Simply to state such proposals’ she goes on, ‘is to emphasise how improbable their adoption is, despite growing public understanding and support’.
It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if we could get control of the economic resources and plan them so that the needy benefit and the rich were squeezed a little?
But that is ‘improbable’ because it means mucking about with the market, and the profits which are its mainspring. So we have to accept a shrinking capitalism, the end of economic growth, huge oil profits, starving millions – we have to accept all these things and find political solutions in spite of them. From Chapter 4 onwards, these matters are referred to constantly as ‘external circumstances outlined in Chapter 4’ (p. 171) or ‘the changes described in Chapter 4’. (p. 178)
What follows in terms of practical ‘radical’ politics, not surprisingly, is thin, if not pathetic. The only coherent philosophy is: ‘small is beautiful’.
Shirley Williams argues that industry and trade unions have become obsessed by size, and that smaller units and smaller businesses might prove more successful. She has discovered that there have been more jobs created in America in small business than in large business, and concludes that it’s the job of a new radical government to give more help and encouragement to small businesses. The type of help and encouragement she advocates is rather similar to the proposals in Sir Geoffrey Howe’s last (‘radical’? ‘reforming’? ‘new’?) budget, which scooped Mrs Williams’ book by a few weeks.
Sometimes. the proposals she advocates for smaller units are plain reactionary. For instance, she advocates greater use of labour rather than machines, in itself, quite regardless of the type of work which is to be done.
She completely forsakes the traditional socialist attitude that, for the vast majority of work, which is dreary, soul-destroying work, machines which do the job are in themselves a blessing and are only a curse when they are used for profit to create unemployment and poverty. Control of the machines by people, instead of the other way round as demanded by capitalism, could result in a better life for everyone. Instead, Shirley Williams seriously proposes scrapping machines in favour of masses of people. And because she has also found out that smaller businesses use more labour per machine than do large businesses (usually because small businesses are less efficient, by the way, not more so) she concludes (again) that small are better than big.
This is the main philosophical conclusion of her book. And of course it is quite fatuous. It is not the size of the enterprise which determines whether or not it is efficient or even quite pleasant to work for. It is its ownership, its dynamic, its organisation, its purpose. About all these things Shirley Williams has nothing to say, save to echo the conventional Liberal Party call for ‘more participation’ and ‘more democracy’.
She lumps industry and finance, where no one in control is ever elected, together with the trade unions, whose control is based on election and choice, however slack and infrequent the elections are. She is for workers and management sharing in the control of their firms, and she seems to favour the basic proposals of the Bullock Report for power-sharing. Yet to the question: how to get even that degree of power-sharing in the teeth of the most hysterical and bitter opposition from the unelected and irresponsible employers? – she has no reply whatever. ‘Governments, corporate powers of industry and trade unions,’ she argues simply, ‘should devolve some of their power downwards.’ (my italics).
No doubt they should. But what if they don’t? No reply. Once again, any question which might lead to confrontation is quickly side-stepped.
The obsession with ‘safety’ dogs all Shirley Williams’ book, which is, by the way, a series of essays. Most of the essays were written at different times either for American university students or for the shadowy Policy Studies Institute which stepped in fast to sponsor Shirley Williams when she lost her seat in the 1979 general election.
Her specific proposals are intended to span the gap between what Dr Owen has called the ‘caring tradition’ of the Labour Party, and the ‘market tradition’ of the Conservative Party. The ‘caring’ side includes a commitment to a wealth tax (which is more than Shirley Williams and the last Labour government could manage in five years) some very useful ideas about employing masses of people to improve older housing; and even a clear statement against all fee-paying education (which prospered so hugely during the last Labour government and Shirley Williams’ three years as education minister).
To balance the ‘caring’, there is the usual call to sacrifice. She warns:
‘The industrial countries have been wildly profligate in the booming post-war decades. Their governments and their peoples have enjoyed a material spree never paralleled before. Now, as the late Anthony Crosland said to Britain’s local authorities in 1977 [well, actually, he was dead in 1977, but Shirley Williams is as untidy with her facts as she is with her philosophy], the party is over.’
There we have it. Shirley Williams and her new party represent radicalism and newness on the one hand, safety and caution on the other; the ‘caring’ of the Labour Party and the spirit of sacrifice usually associated with the Tories.
The appeal is to all decent people who are fed up with the stick-in-the-mud approach of former Labour governments, who dislike the Thatcher Government’s meanness and class loyalty, but who are also nervous of anything drastic or immediate by way of reform. This, in the period of industrial quiescence in which we now live, is a very powerful appeal indeed.
It is easy enough to scoff at the Gang of Four themselves, their own political heritage, their middle class origins, their careerism and their cant. But the appeal remains, and will not be shifted by ridicule.
What can shift it is the argument which mounts up relentlessly against the likelihood of the SDP delivering even the most minor reforms. It is not just that their radicalism conflicts with their safeness; nor that their caring conflicts with their dedication to market forces. It is that such is the nature of the society we live in that when the two sets of opposites conflict, the former always loses; the latter always win.
Shirley Williams knows all about the inherent inequalities in our society. She cites the figures, and she wants them changed. There is at least one reference in her book to the need for equality.
But the figures of inequality describe more than something which is just ‘wrong’. They describe a power structure, in which a class of people control society’s wealth and therefore control society’s political power.
We know this happens. We have all those Labour governments and all the efforts of Shirley Williams and her colleagues to prove it. They became ministers of the Crown. They cared about private education, but they did not move to end it. They cared about unemployment, but they presided over the doubling of it.
Roy Jenkins cared about racialism, but he was in government when it increased beyond anything he could ever have expected. William Rogers was not in favour of juggernaut lorries, but while Minister of Transport he fought desperately to remove the few controls on them. The power of the people with properly lays down the law about what happens to all of us. And parliamentary democracy is too slender a connection with the masses seriously to disturb that power.
When caring people get to government in the way Shirley Williams intends to do, they find their caring conflicts with the economic reality and their caring is always shelved. A government headed by the Gang of Four would no doubt include most of the ideas in this book in its manifesto. But because there is not the slightest sign of how they are to be carried out, not the slightest moment of doubt about the capacity of parliamentary government to turn back the tide of corporate power, we will not even get Mrs Williams’ wealth tax, her abolition of fee-paying schools, her full employment or her increased social services. We will not get her house improvements or her small power stations. But we will get her bombs, her incomes policy, her stronger Common Market, her increasingly hysterical calls for sacrifice. In other words, all her freshness, and radicalism will take us straight back to the fudged stale capitalism of the last Callaghan government: exactly in the opposite direction, that is, to the one where Shirley Williams is now pointing.
There is an alternative; there is a new way of looking at politics. Shirley Williams knows it, and quite deliberately and shamefully refuses even to argue with it. After disposing quite easily with Russia and Russian-style Communists, she devotes a single sentence to ‘revolutionary romantics and Trotskyites’ who are
‘Wedded to an idea of politics which has never been attained anywhere but which in theory might one day be achieved if only revolution could in some way be harnessed to the perfectibility of human beings’.
Human nature will not have revolution! It will only put up with the continued stumbling of ‘caring’ politicians who serve the interests of property! ‘Human nature’ offers us the only hope for political advance, a mixture of half-hearted contradictions of the type voiced by Shirley Williams. Human nature demands sacrifice instead of growth; poverty instead of plenty. Human nature presents a social democratic party, peddling the failed dogmas of the Callaghan government as a ‘new radical alternative’.
Shirley Williams makes much of a quotation from Immanuel Kant: ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made’.
She should make that the central slogan of her dynamic and radical appeal at the next general election.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Without a paddle</h1>
<h3>(March 1987)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index3.html#sr87_03" target="new">No. 96</a>, March 1987, pp. 15–17.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><em>What will the next Labour government (if elected) be like? What ideas will guide it and will they have any effect on its practice?</em> Roy Hattersley<em>’s new book entitled <strong>Choose Freedom</strong> is an attempt to explain his view of socialism and the future under Labour. Here</em> Paul Foot <em>reviews the book.</em></p>
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<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst">THE <strong>Sunday Times</strong> organised a Round The World Yacht Race in 1969. An unlikely entrant was one Donald Crowhurst, who left late and ill-equipped.</p>
<p>Before he crossed the Atlantic, he realised that he was not going to make it round the world. He had neither the equipment nor the navigational skill. He was reluctant to return to jeering reporters, disappointed family and friends – so he hit on a compromise. <em>He said he was going round the world when he wasn’t.</em></p>
<p>He did in speech what he could not do in fact. For several weeks his brilliant reports of record-breaking sailing through the South Pacific hoodwinked the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> and everyone else. But as he realised he could never maintain the hoax once he got home, Crowhurst started to go mad. Eventually he walked off the end of his boat and drowned.</p>
<p>There is something of the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst in this latest and much reviewed book <a href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> by the deputy leader of the Labour Party. Not long ago Labour leaders did not even bother to set out their basic socialist philosophy. The very idea was rather vulgar, and likely to put off voters. There was no question of beckoning people to socialism, or even to a new social order. All that was necessary was to show people that Labour had plans for a better, more prosperous Britain than had the Tories. Labour would usher in “a new Britain” or “get Britain back to work”. Ideological niceties were luxuries for cloisters or for sectarians.</p>
<p>Then along came the SDP and Alliance to swipe 26 percent of the vote. The Alliance was very pragmatic – full of phrases about a prosperous new Britain and getting Britain back to work. It had hosts of top administrators and economists making detailed plans for every area of social policy.</p>
<p>Roy Hattersley and many others like him found it was necessary to remind people of “the ideological foundation” on which Labour stood. Labour, he insists, is not a pragmatic party which just weaves a lot of policies together at election times. It is founded on ideas, and above all on one very simple idea: equality.</p>
<p>To explain what he means Roy Hattersley goes back to the hero of his youth. He quotes again and again from the books of Professor R.H. Tawney. And well he might, for Tawney was a wonderful writer, who explained simple socialist ideas perhaps better than anyone else who ever wrote in the English language. Tawney’s great classic, <strong>Equality</strong> (1931), demolished the protests of capitalist supporters that private enterprise was a guarantor of freedom. “Freedom for the pike is death to the minnows,” he said.</p>
<p>Equality of reward was the only real guarantee of freedom, since it ensured that all could equally develop their own characteristics and abilities. Those who wanted the grotesque inequalities of capitalism to continue really wanted the freedom to continue to exploit others, and therefore to limit the freedom of the vast majority.</p>
<p>Roy Hattersley, who writes pretty well himself, rehearses these arguments (usually by quoting Tawney). He draws the line down from Tawney through the other theorists loosely described as right-wing Labour who have followed him.</p>
<p>He singles out Hugh Gaitskell and Evan Durbin, friends and contemporaries who went into parliament in 1945; and Anthony Crosland, who wrote <strong>The Future of Socialism</strong> in the year (1956) that Gaitskell became leader of the Labour Party. All three, like Tawney, were intellectuals of outstanding ability. All urged the creation of a new social order founded on equality. None of them belonged to the left in the Labour Party, and for most of their lives engaged in furious argument with the left. They were ideological in that they believed in equality, but they never allowed their ideology to outrun what to them was practical. What was practical was tied to one firm mooring point: the election to parliament of a majority Labour government.</p>
<p>Because their ideas were always firmly fixed on this reality, they were easier to read and more credible than their contemporaries on the left of the Labour Party, who drifted in the wide seas of rhetoric and Christian socialism where there was no mooring point.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">COMMON to all Roy Hattersley’s heroes was the notion of government control of the economy. They were impatient with shibboleths about nationalisation of all industry since it seemed to them irrelevant to the central issue: control.</p>
<p>Thus Tawney, writing in 1931, took as his central theme the conversion of a political democracy in which the elected parliament of that democracy had control over the economy.</p>
<p>Gaitskell, writing before the 1945 election, put this bluntly:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In a democratic country, the public must be the master of industry.”</p>
<p class="fst">Durbin, who is normally thought of as very right wing indeed, went even further:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“To the centralised control of a democratic community our livelihood and security must be submitted.”</p>
<p class="fst">Crosland, writing in 1956, based his whole book on the necessity of elected Labour being in control of the economy.</p>
<p>All this, for all those 25 years, was persuasive. The ideas struck a chord among millions of people for one basic reason. It seemed quite possible that a future Labour government would be able to seize economic control from the capitalists and create a more equal society. It seemed possible if only because it had not been tried. A road to socialism had been opened up by the franchise: the parliamentary road. Before a majority Labour government was elected (first in 1945) there was no proof of what it could or could not do.</p>
<p>Thus Tawney, Gaitskell and Durbin, who wrote mainly before 1945, and, to a lesser extent (because he wrote after 1945) Crosland all seemed credible figures with something important to say. The credibility of their ideas depended on the possibility that they might be carried out.</p>
<p>In the 30 years since Crosland’s book there have been two long periods of Labour government, which spanned most of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966 a Labour government was elected with the highest percentage of the poll ever won by the Labour Party, and with a majority of nearly 100 seats over all other parties in the House of Commons in peacetime, full-employment conditions. Again in 1974 Labour came back to office with a majority, again in peacetime, and again when. there were comparatively (with today) few people out of work.</p>
<p>There is no need for me to recite what happened to these governments. Roy Hattersley does it well enough.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“On the elimination of poverty and the promotion of equality the evidence is categorical ... we have not become a more equal society. In the ten years since 1976 the number of families below the DHSS poverty line has steadily increased.”</p>
<p class="fst">Quite true. And in the first three years of that ugly process Roy Hattersley was in the cabinet. This applies to all forms of equality, not just economic equality, as Hattersley again concedes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The PSI study of 1984 showed that racial discrimination in employment was just as great as it had been before the Racial Discrimination Act was passed ten years earlier.”</p>
<p class="fst">The same goes for the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act and all the efforts of Labour governments to pass equality through parliament.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">ROY HATTERSLEY is surprised by this.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If, as socialists believe, equality and liberty are indivisible, it first seems extraordinary that the extension of democracy has not produced a simultaneous increase in both conditions.”</p>
<p class="fst">Extraordinary indeed. But <em>why?</em> The question must be answered. Hattersley has a shot at it from time to time in his book. For instance:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Society remains unequal and unfree largely because the privileged have held on to their privileges by exploiting their entrenched position.”</p>
<p class="fst">But that is just a tautology. The rich remain rich because they have hung onto their riches. Later on he tries again:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The status of the City within our society demonstrates the ability of the rich and powerful to subvert even governments.”</p>
<p class="fst">Here he gives a modest example, citing the commitment given by Tate and Lyle to the Labour government in 1976 that if it was allowed to take over Manbre and Garton (another sugar firm) it would not make any workers redundant. When the sackings followed hard on the commitment, complains Hattersley, who was in charge of these matters in the cabinet of the time, “the government did not possess the power to insist that the promise must be kept.”</p>
<p>These are not, as they appear in this book, minor matters to be shrugged off in a sentence or two and left unexplained and undigested. For if it is true that the “rich and powerful” can “subvert” a Labour government and reverse that government’s intentions to make a more equal society, if it is true that such a government “does not possess the power” to bring the monopolists to heel, then the central mooring point on which the whole theory is based is kicked away.</p>
<p>Everything Tawney, Crosland or Gaitskell wrote was credible only in so far as it could be put into effect by a Labour government. If a Labour government can’t put any of it into effect, the whole argument, <em>including even the argument for equality</em>, loses its force.</p>
<p>In order to maintain the argument, therefore, the upholders of equality have to discover why the Labour governments have failed in the past, and seek a remedy for the future. If Hattersley is to convince people of the case for equality, he must also convince people that measures for a more equal society can be carried out by the next Labour government.</p>
<p>His own line of argument demands that he analyse in depth why Labour (at least in 1974-9 and also, arguably, in 1964-70) ended up with a less equal, more unemployed and divided society than when it started. It demands that he explain how the “subversion” of past governments by the rich is going to be stopped next time; how a Labour government in the tradition which he claims to represent – Tawney, Gaitskell, Crosland, no more than that – will <em>take control of the</em> economy and rule supreme over the dark forces which subverted Labour governments in the past.</p>
<p>That he will not and cannot do. If he was logical he would conclude from the past failures of Labour governments that the measures required next time must be stronger, more ruthless, more draconian. But he cannot proceed with that logic for two reasons.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">FIRST there is his immediate problem: to win the next general election. In an atmosphere created by the capitalist counterattack which he so effectively derides, in the stench of defeat and retreat, when labour at every level is paralysed by its enemies’ successes and by its own lack of confidence, Labour voters look less and less for drastic or draconian solutions. The rage is all for “safe” Labour, for “MPs in suits” who are deferential to their leader, their country and their Queen. So to win the next election the solutions must be soft, easy and nice to everyone.</p>
<p>The second reason is more fundamental. It is that Hattersley himself is infected, as all his colleagues are, by the long years of defeat in government and humiliation in opposition. <em>He does not really believe that any of the old remedies can work again, because he knows they did not work last time.</em></p>
<p>An incident at the last Labour conference perfectly illustrates this mood. The old left wing warhorse Ian Mikardo made a speech in which he argued that as soon as Labour is elected it must impose rigid exchange controls, as it did in the past. He argued that if the Labour government lost control of the money in the country, it would lose control altogether.</p>
<p>Roy Hattersley replied for the executive. He pooh-poohed the idea of exchange controls. “We all know they wouldn’t work, Mik,” he said. “After all, they didn’t last time.” His solution, therefore, was to <em>abandon all controls</em> and leave the money to the monetarists.</p>
<p>In his political solutions he takes a huge step <em>back</em> from the very limited aspirations of the tradition from which he comes. He is far more reactionary even than Gaitskell and Crosland, let alone Tawney. In a key sentence, which is really the conclusion of the entire book, Hattersley writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In a more realistic age we have to limit our aspirations to curbing the City’s power and to directing its enthusiasms in a socially desirable direction.”</p>
<p class="fst">This is the sentence which must be pitted against all the high-flown Tawneyite stuff about equality and a new social order at the beginning of the book. “In a more realistic age” – he means by that an age of consistent victories of British capital over British labour. “We have to limit our aspirations to curbing the City’s power” – how much lower can aspirations fall? And finally, magnificently, he pledges himself “to directing the City’s enthusiasms in a socially desirable direction”.</p>
<p>What is the City’s main, indeed its only, enthusiasm? It is, as Roy Hattersley knows perfectly well, to make money for a handful of people. And how does it do that? By gambling in other people’s robbed labour. The very notion “socially desirable” is hostile to everything for which the City of London stands. Yet Roy Hattersley limits his aspirations for the next five years to “directing its enthusiasms” in the direction to which all its enthusiasms are, by its very nature, utterly opposed.</p>
<p>This policy is flanked by little else: a murmur about slightly higher taxes for the rich; <em>another</em> National Investment Bank with far less powers even than the ones which were so humiliated in the past; a slightly tougher mergers and monopolies policy which would put the state of the law on such matters rather to the right of where Roy Hattersley, Consumer Affairs Minister, left it in the late 1970s.</p>
<p>He has cast away the very central plank of the political platform which he says he represents. When Tawney, Gaitskell, Durbin and Crosland wrote about equality, their words had some meaning because they all believed they would, as Labour ministers, get control of the economy. Their arguments, <em>therefore</em>, had some strength and resonance. Roy Hattersley does not believe he can get control of the economy. He still believes in the egalitarian ideas of his youth. He wants a more equal society.</p>
<p>Like Donald Crowhurst he knows he <em>must</em> get round the world. But also, like Crowhurst, he knows he <em>cannot</em>. He has not got the equipment. He is at the mercy of the wind and the tides. So, like Crowhurst, he solves his problem by <em>saying he will do it when he knows he cannot</em>. Crowhurst managed to delude a lot of experts for quite a long time. Perhaps that was because no one had ever tried the trick before.</p>
<p>Hattersley is entirely unconvincing. His long passages about equality, coupled with a rhetorical appeal at the end of the book to “recapture the spirit of 1945” are just so much Utopian waffle. He is exposed even before he embarks on what he knows is an impossible journey.</p>
<p>At least Crowhurst had the decency to commit suicide rather than be publicly rumbled. I doubt whether Roy Hattersley will go that far.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> Roy Hattersley, <strong>Choose Freedom</strong>, Michael Joseph £12.95</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Without a paddle
(March 1987)
From Socialist Worker Review, No. 96, March 1987, pp. 15–17.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
What will the next Labour government (if elected) be like? What ideas will guide it and will they have any effect on its practice? Roy Hattersley’s new book entitled Choose Freedom is an attempt to explain his view of socialism and the future under Labour. Here Paul Foot reviews the book.
*
THE Sunday Times organised a Round The World Yacht Race in 1969. An unlikely entrant was one Donald Crowhurst, who left late and ill-equipped.
Before he crossed the Atlantic, he realised that he was not going to make it round the world. He had neither the equipment nor the navigational skill. He was reluctant to return to jeering reporters, disappointed family and friends – so he hit on a compromise. He said he was going round the world when he wasn’t.
He did in speech what he could not do in fact. For several weeks his brilliant reports of record-breaking sailing through the South Pacific hoodwinked the Sunday Times and everyone else. But as he realised he could never maintain the hoax once he got home, Crowhurst started to go mad. Eventually he walked off the end of his boat and drowned.
There is something of the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst in this latest and much reviewed book [1] by the deputy leader of the Labour Party. Not long ago Labour leaders did not even bother to set out their basic socialist philosophy. The very idea was rather vulgar, and likely to put off voters. There was no question of beckoning people to socialism, or even to a new social order. All that was necessary was to show people that Labour had plans for a better, more prosperous Britain than had the Tories. Labour would usher in “a new Britain” or “get Britain back to work”. Ideological niceties were luxuries for cloisters or for sectarians.
Then along came the SDP and Alliance to swipe 26 percent of the vote. The Alliance was very pragmatic – full of phrases about a prosperous new Britain and getting Britain back to work. It had hosts of top administrators and economists making detailed plans for every area of social policy.
Roy Hattersley and many others like him found it was necessary to remind people of “the ideological foundation” on which Labour stood. Labour, he insists, is not a pragmatic party which just weaves a lot of policies together at election times. It is founded on ideas, and above all on one very simple idea: equality.
To explain what he means Roy Hattersley goes back to the hero of his youth. He quotes again and again from the books of Professor R.H. Tawney. And well he might, for Tawney was a wonderful writer, who explained simple socialist ideas perhaps better than anyone else who ever wrote in the English language. Tawney’s great classic, Equality (1931), demolished the protests of capitalist supporters that private enterprise was a guarantor of freedom. “Freedom for the pike is death to the minnows,” he said.
Equality of reward was the only real guarantee of freedom, since it ensured that all could equally develop their own characteristics and abilities. Those who wanted the grotesque inequalities of capitalism to continue really wanted the freedom to continue to exploit others, and therefore to limit the freedom of the vast majority.
Roy Hattersley, who writes pretty well himself, rehearses these arguments (usually by quoting Tawney). He draws the line down from Tawney through the other theorists loosely described as right-wing Labour who have followed him.
He singles out Hugh Gaitskell and Evan Durbin, friends and contemporaries who went into parliament in 1945; and Anthony Crosland, who wrote The Future of Socialism in the year (1956) that Gaitskell became leader of the Labour Party. All three, like Tawney, were intellectuals of outstanding ability. All urged the creation of a new social order founded on equality. None of them belonged to the left in the Labour Party, and for most of their lives engaged in furious argument with the left. They were ideological in that they believed in equality, but they never allowed their ideology to outrun what to them was practical. What was practical was tied to one firm mooring point: the election to parliament of a majority Labour government.
Because their ideas were always firmly fixed on this reality, they were easier to read and more credible than their contemporaries on the left of the Labour Party, who drifted in the wide seas of rhetoric and Christian socialism where there was no mooring point.
COMMON to all Roy Hattersley’s heroes was the notion of government control of the economy. They were impatient with shibboleths about nationalisation of all industry since it seemed to them irrelevant to the central issue: control.
Thus Tawney, writing in 1931, took as his central theme the conversion of a political democracy in which the elected parliament of that democracy had control over the economy.
Gaitskell, writing before the 1945 election, put this bluntly:
“In a democratic country, the public must be the master of industry.”
Durbin, who is normally thought of as very right wing indeed, went even further:
“To the centralised control of a democratic community our livelihood and security must be submitted.”
Crosland, writing in 1956, based his whole book on the necessity of elected Labour being in control of the economy.
All this, for all those 25 years, was persuasive. The ideas struck a chord among millions of people for one basic reason. It seemed quite possible that a future Labour government would be able to seize economic control from the capitalists and create a more equal society. It seemed possible if only because it had not been tried. A road to socialism had been opened up by the franchise: the parliamentary road. Before a majority Labour government was elected (first in 1945) there was no proof of what it could or could not do.
Thus Tawney, Gaitskell and Durbin, who wrote mainly before 1945, and, to a lesser extent (because he wrote after 1945) Crosland all seemed credible figures with something important to say. The credibility of their ideas depended on the possibility that they might be carried out.
In the 30 years since Crosland’s book there have been two long periods of Labour government, which spanned most of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966 a Labour government was elected with the highest percentage of the poll ever won by the Labour Party, and with a majority of nearly 100 seats over all other parties in the House of Commons in peacetime, full-employment conditions. Again in 1974 Labour came back to office with a majority, again in peacetime, and again when. there were comparatively (with today) few people out of work.
There is no need for me to recite what happened to these governments. Roy Hattersley does it well enough.
“On the elimination of poverty and the promotion of equality the evidence is categorical ... we have not become a more equal society. In the ten years since 1976 the number of families below the DHSS poverty line has steadily increased.”
Quite true. And in the first three years of that ugly process Roy Hattersley was in the cabinet. This applies to all forms of equality, not just economic equality, as Hattersley again concedes:
“The PSI study of 1984 showed that racial discrimination in employment was just as great as it had been before the Racial Discrimination Act was passed ten years earlier.”
The same goes for the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act and all the efforts of Labour governments to pass equality through parliament.
ROY HATTERSLEY is surprised by this.
“If, as socialists believe, equality and liberty are indivisible, it first seems extraordinary that the extension of democracy has not produced a simultaneous increase in both conditions.”
Extraordinary indeed. But why? The question must be answered. Hattersley has a shot at it from time to time in his book. For instance:
“Society remains unequal and unfree largely because the privileged have held on to their privileges by exploiting their entrenched position.”
But that is just a tautology. The rich remain rich because they have hung onto their riches. Later on he tries again:
“The status of the City within our society demonstrates the ability of the rich and powerful to subvert even governments.”
Here he gives a modest example, citing the commitment given by Tate and Lyle to the Labour government in 1976 that if it was allowed to take over Manbre and Garton (another sugar firm) it would not make any workers redundant. When the sackings followed hard on the commitment, complains Hattersley, who was in charge of these matters in the cabinet of the time, “the government did not possess the power to insist that the promise must be kept.”
These are not, as they appear in this book, minor matters to be shrugged off in a sentence or two and left unexplained and undigested. For if it is true that the “rich and powerful” can “subvert” a Labour government and reverse that government’s intentions to make a more equal society, if it is true that such a government “does not possess the power” to bring the monopolists to heel, then the central mooring point on which the whole theory is based is kicked away.
Everything Tawney, Crosland or Gaitskell wrote was credible only in so far as it could be put into effect by a Labour government. If a Labour government can’t put any of it into effect, the whole argument, including even the argument for equality, loses its force.
In order to maintain the argument, therefore, the upholders of equality have to discover why the Labour governments have failed in the past, and seek a remedy for the future. If Hattersley is to convince people of the case for equality, he must also convince people that measures for a more equal society can be carried out by the next Labour government.
His own line of argument demands that he analyse in depth why Labour (at least in 1974-9 and also, arguably, in 1964-70) ended up with a less equal, more unemployed and divided society than when it started. It demands that he explain how the “subversion” of past governments by the rich is going to be stopped next time; how a Labour government in the tradition which he claims to represent – Tawney, Gaitskell, Crosland, no more than that – will take control of the economy and rule supreme over the dark forces which subverted Labour governments in the past.
That he will not and cannot do. If he was logical he would conclude from the past failures of Labour governments that the measures required next time must be stronger, more ruthless, more draconian. But he cannot proceed with that logic for two reasons.
FIRST there is his immediate problem: to win the next general election. In an atmosphere created by the capitalist counterattack which he so effectively derides, in the stench of defeat and retreat, when labour at every level is paralysed by its enemies’ successes and by its own lack of confidence, Labour voters look less and less for drastic or draconian solutions. The rage is all for “safe” Labour, for “MPs in suits” who are deferential to their leader, their country and their Queen. So to win the next election the solutions must be soft, easy and nice to everyone.
The second reason is more fundamental. It is that Hattersley himself is infected, as all his colleagues are, by the long years of defeat in government and humiliation in opposition. He does not really believe that any of the old remedies can work again, because he knows they did not work last time.
An incident at the last Labour conference perfectly illustrates this mood. The old left wing warhorse Ian Mikardo made a speech in which he argued that as soon as Labour is elected it must impose rigid exchange controls, as it did in the past. He argued that if the Labour government lost control of the money in the country, it would lose control altogether.
Roy Hattersley replied for the executive. He pooh-poohed the idea of exchange controls. “We all know they wouldn’t work, Mik,” he said. “After all, they didn’t last time.” His solution, therefore, was to abandon all controls and leave the money to the monetarists.
In his political solutions he takes a huge step back from the very limited aspirations of the tradition from which he comes. He is far more reactionary even than Gaitskell and Crosland, let alone Tawney. In a key sentence, which is really the conclusion of the entire book, Hattersley writes:
“In a more realistic age we have to limit our aspirations to curbing the City’s power and to directing its enthusiasms in a socially desirable direction.”
This is the sentence which must be pitted against all the high-flown Tawneyite stuff about equality and a new social order at the beginning of the book. “In a more realistic age” – he means by that an age of consistent victories of British capital over British labour. “We have to limit our aspirations to curbing the City’s power” – how much lower can aspirations fall? And finally, magnificently, he pledges himself “to directing the City’s enthusiasms in a socially desirable direction”.
What is the City’s main, indeed its only, enthusiasm? It is, as Roy Hattersley knows perfectly well, to make money for a handful of people. And how does it do that? By gambling in other people’s robbed labour. The very notion “socially desirable” is hostile to everything for which the City of London stands. Yet Roy Hattersley limits his aspirations for the next five years to “directing its enthusiasms” in the direction to which all its enthusiasms are, by its very nature, utterly opposed.
This policy is flanked by little else: a murmur about slightly higher taxes for the rich; another National Investment Bank with far less powers even than the ones which were so humiliated in the past; a slightly tougher mergers and monopolies policy which would put the state of the law on such matters rather to the right of where Roy Hattersley, Consumer Affairs Minister, left it in the late 1970s.
He has cast away the very central plank of the political platform which he says he represents. When Tawney, Gaitskell, Durbin and Crosland wrote about equality, their words had some meaning because they all believed they would, as Labour ministers, get control of the economy. Their arguments, therefore, had some strength and resonance. Roy Hattersley does not believe he can get control of the economy. He still believes in the egalitarian ideas of his youth. He wants a more equal society.
Like Donald Crowhurst he knows he must get round the world. But also, like Crowhurst, he knows he cannot. He has not got the equipment. He is at the mercy of the wind and the tides. So, like Crowhurst, he solves his problem by saying he will do it when he knows he cannot. Crowhurst managed to delude a lot of experts for quite a long time. Perhaps that was because no one had ever tried the trick before.
Hattersley is entirely unconvincing. His long passages about equality, coupled with a rhetorical appeal at the end of the book to “recapture the spirit of 1945” are just so much Utopian waffle. He is exposed even before he embarks on what he knows is an impossible journey.
At least Crowhurst had the decency to commit suicide rather than be publicly rumbled. I doubt whether Roy Hattersley will go that far.
Note
1. Roy Hattersley, Choose Freedom, Michael Joseph £12.95
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Christmas Crackers</h1>
<h3>(December 1993)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.170, December 1993, p.20.<br>
Copyright © 1993 Socialist Review<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Easily my number one favourite book this year was Christopher Hill’s <strong>Milton and the English Revolution</strong> which I found in Chicago the previous summer. The beauty of the book is not just that it illuminates Milton’s great poems with his enthusiasm for the revolution, but that it brings to life the poet’s political commitment before he even became a poet. His <strong>Defence of the People of England</strong> is as powerful a defence of what went on in the 1640s as anything ever said or written. ‘You offer an additional reason for your opposition,’ he scoffed at an opponent, ‘things would seem turned upside down. This would be a welcome change, for it would be the end of mankind if the worst situations were unalterable.’<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">Number two was Tom Bower’s <strong>Tiny Rowland</strong>, a meticulous detailed, tremendously readable account of quite incredible skulduggery in high places and the third, if I’m honest, was Alan Clark’s <strong>Diaries</strong>, if only because these Tories so rarely tell the truth about what they feel for each other. Clark’s best story tells how he and Jonathan Aitken reacted when Michael Mates (a fellow back bencher) supported Heseltine against Thatcher. They leaked Mates’s defence business interests to Labour MP Tam Dalyell. Mates was exposed and humbled and the two naughty boys sniggered all the way home to Mother. These are the people who boast all the time of their loyalty.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Christmas Crackers
(December 1993)
From Socialist Review, No.170, December 1993, p.20.
Copyright © 1993 Socialist Review
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Easily my number one favourite book this year was Christopher Hill’s Milton and the English Revolution which I found in Chicago the previous summer. The beauty of the book is not just that it illuminates Milton’s great poems with his enthusiasm for the revolution, but that it brings to life the poet’s political commitment before he even became a poet. His Defence of the People of England is as powerful a defence of what went on in the 1640s as anything ever said or written. ‘You offer an additional reason for your opposition,’ he scoffed at an opponent, ‘things would seem turned upside down. This would be a welcome change, for it would be the end of mankind if the worst situations were unalterable.’
Number two was Tom Bower’s Tiny Rowland, a meticulous detailed, tremendously readable account of quite incredible skulduggery in high places and the third, if I’m honest, was Alan Clark’s Diaries, if only because these Tories so rarely tell the truth about what they feel for each other. Clark’s best story tells how he and Jonathan Aitken reacted when Michael Mates (a fellow back bencher) supported Heseltine against Thatcher. They leaked Mates’s defence business interests to Labour MP Tam Dalyell. Mates was exposed and humbled and the two naughty boys sniggered all the way home to Mother. These are the people who boast all the time of their loyalty.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Why the world is eating less</h1>
<h3>(21 July 1990)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 21 July 1990.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 274–276.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">In the <strong>Independent</strong> newspaper I read the following headline: <em>World Appetite For Grain Still Fading</em>. I expected the article under it to be about diet; about the shifting food fads of the kind of people who read the <strong>Independent</strong>.</p>
<p>Perhaps some homeopathic doctor has been working on the consciences of the rich and persuading them to eat less grain so that there can be more for the poor.</p>
<p>Indeed, I recall as a child in a rich home being persuaded by a stern nurse to eat everything on my plate. ‘Think of the starving millions,’ she would say, as though they benefited from my full stomach, or were insulted in some way by my leaving bits of gristle on the side of the plate.</p>
<p>But no, this is not an article about diet. This is written by Lisa Vaughan, the <strong>Independent</strong>’s financial correspondent. Her main point is that ‘growth in world grain consumption may continue to slow this decade’.</p>
<p>She produces figures from the International Wheat Council to show that the amount of bread consumed by the world’s population has hardly grown at all during the Glorious Eighties. Indeed, wheat consumption since 1982 has gone up by only 2.4 percent a year, while world population in the same period has gone up by just under 2 percent.<br>
</p>
<h4>Bread</h4>
<p class="fst">Consumption of coarse grain (maize, barley, rye, oats, etc.) has risen even slower than population – 1.3 percent to 1.9 percent.</p>
<p>Now let’s go back to that headline, <em>World Appetite For Grain Still Fading</em>. Can it be that all over the world people are sick and tired of eating bread and are turning to a more tasty substitute?</p>
<p>In the tortured language of the financial correspondent, Lisa Vaughan gives us the answer: ‘Instead of being driven by demographics, grain use is now primarily determined by financial restraints facing governments.’</p>
<p>She quotes directly from the report of the International Wheat Council:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Financial and economic factors are likely to remain the chief influence on grain usage for many years to come. Because of debt repayment or foreign exchange obstacles, many countries have been obliged to restrain grain imports even when prices are low.</p>
<p class="fst">In plain English, what does this mean? It means that people are eating less because they are poor. It is not, as the <strong>Independent</strong> so coyly puts it, people’s appetite which is fading – on the contrary their appetite is growing.</p>
<p>More and more people, especially children under the age of five, are dying of starvation. Their appetite is growing as rapidly as the capacity of the rich farmers of the world to produce the food they need to keep them alive. It is not their appetite but their ability to pay for the grain which is fading.<br>
</p>
<h4>Flood</h4>
<p class="fst">Their governments, even when food prices are low, are so stuffed up with debt imposed on them by multinational companies and bankers that they cannot buy the food to feed their people. And if they have the good fortune to produce any home-grown food, for the same reason, they must sell that to the rich!</p>
<p>Over the last few weeks there has been a flood of reports and statistics about the widening gap between rich and poor. Like Lisa Vaughan, the authors all seem surprised; as though they have come across something which is clearly wrong and must instantly be put right. They dare not draw the conclusion which stares them in the face, namely that the cause of all this totally unnecessary distress and absurdity is their beloved market system.</p>
<p>If ‘money talks’, as all these commentators insist it must, then the logic of a society cut into classes will drive all production towards the rich and away from the ever multiplying poor.</p>
<p>It used to be fashionable to describe the result of all this as Doomsday. But when we discover the results already – when we discover, for instance, that 72 percent of the babies born in Peru last year are stunted or deformed because of the malnutrition of their parents – we realise that, for four fifths of the world’s population, Doomsday came long ago.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Why the world is eating less
(21 July 1990)
From Socialist Worker, 21 July 1990.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 274–276.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
In the Independent newspaper I read the following headline: World Appetite For Grain Still Fading. I expected the article under it to be about diet; about the shifting food fads of the kind of people who read the Independent.
Perhaps some homeopathic doctor has been working on the consciences of the rich and persuading them to eat less grain so that there can be more for the poor.
Indeed, I recall as a child in a rich home being persuaded by a stern nurse to eat everything on my plate. ‘Think of the starving millions,’ she would say, as though they benefited from my full stomach, or were insulted in some way by my leaving bits of gristle on the side of the plate.
But no, this is not an article about diet. This is written by Lisa Vaughan, the Independent’s financial correspondent. Her main point is that ‘growth in world grain consumption may continue to slow this decade’.
She produces figures from the International Wheat Council to show that the amount of bread consumed by the world’s population has hardly grown at all during the Glorious Eighties. Indeed, wheat consumption since 1982 has gone up by only 2.4 percent a year, while world population in the same period has gone up by just under 2 percent.
Bread
Consumption of coarse grain (maize, barley, rye, oats, etc.) has risen even slower than population – 1.3 percent to 1.9 percent.
Now let’s go back to that headline, World Appetite For Grain Still Fading. Can it be that all over the world people are sick and tired of eating bread and are turning to a more tasty substitute?
In the tortured language of the financial correspondent, Lisa Vaughan gives us the answer: ‘Instead of being driven by demographics, grain use is now primarily determined by financial restraints facing governments.’
She quotes directly from the report of the International Wheat Council:
Financial and economic factors are likely to remain the chief influence on grain usage for many years to come. Because of debt repayment or foreign exchange obstacles, many countries have been obliged to restrain grain imports even when prices are low.
In plain English, what does this mean? It means that people are eating less because they are poor. It is not, as the Independent so coyly puts it, people’s appetite which is fading – on the contrary their appetite is growing.
More and more people, especially children under the age of five, are dying of starvation. Their appetite is growing as rapidly as the capacity of the rich farmers of the world to produce the food they need to keep them alive. It is not their appetite but their ability to pay for the grain which is fading.
Flood
Their governments, even when food prices are low, are so stuffed up with debt imposed on them by multinational companies and bankers that they cannot buy the food to feed their people. And if they have the good fortune to produce any home-grown food, for the same reason, they must sell that to the rich!
Over the last few weeks there has been a flood of reports and statistics about the widening gap between rich and poor. Like Lisa Vaughan, the authors all seem surprised; as though they have come across something which is clearly wrong and must instantly be put right. They dare not draw the conclusion which stares them in the face, namely that the cause of all this totally unnecessary distress and absurdity is their beloved market system.
If ‘money talks’, as all these commentators insist it must, then the logic of a society cut into classes will drive all production towards the rich and away from the ever multiplying poor.
It used to be fashionable to describe the result of all this as Doomsday. But when we discover the results already – when we discover, for instance, that 72 percent of the babies born in Peru last year are stunted or deformed because of the malnutrition of their parents – we realise that, for four fifths of the world’s population, Doomsday came long ago.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Clay Cross double-crossed</h1>
<h3>(April 1974)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 13 April 1974.<br>
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), <strong>In the Heat of the Struggle</strong>, Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.120-1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">ELEVEN WORKERS at Clay Cross, Derbyshire, who risked their freedom and their livelihood in the fight against Heath’s Tory government, have been snubbed by the Labour government’s first month of office.</p>
<p>They are the councillors who refused to implement the Tory Housing Finance Act. They saved the council tenants of their town thousands of pounds in unpaid rents. As a result, they were fined more than £7,000 by the Tories’ Housing Commissioner.</p>
<p>The Labour Party Conference rallied to their support. Last October it passed the following amendment:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Conference further agrees that upon the election of a Labour government, all penalties, financial and otherwise, should be removed retrospectively from councillors who have courageously refused to implement the Housing Finance Act, 1972.’</p>
<p class="fst">The amendment was accepted by the national executive of the party, in the shape of Edward Short, deputy leader.</p>
<p>Now Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons that the fine must be paid! He says there will be no retrospective legislation to remove the penalties from the councillors.</p>
<p>The Tories, who have been harassing the government on the Clay Cross issue for the past three weeks, are triumphant. They have won a notable victory over their hated enemies in Clay Cross.</p>
<p>Why is it that Wilson, Short and the seven other members of Labour’s national executive who are in the government have so blatantly ignored their party’s democratic decisions?</p>
<p>One answer can be found in a recent book, <strong>Socialism Now</strong>, by Anthony Crosland, now Environment Minister, who first insisted that the Clay Cross surcharge would not be paid out of public funds.</p>
<p>Crosland wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Even the rule of law is challenged by some Labour councillors and trade unionists, though historically, and let no socialist ever forget this, the law has been the means by which the weak obtained redress against the strong.’</p>
<p class="fst">The law, Crosland argues, is neutral. Labour governments achieve reforms through neutral laws. So they must respect the law above all else.</p>
<p>But the law is not neutral. The history of the working class movement over the last 150 years shows the opposite. From the hanging of the Luddites to the persecution of the Chartists to the imprisonment and execution of militants and trade unionists all the way down to the Shrewsbury pickets trial in 1973, the story is one of the law being used to protect the people who own property from the people who produce it.</p>
<p>The class which controls property controls the law. 86 percent of the judges, who are not elected, were educated at public school.</p>
<p>The entire legal profession is drawn almost exclusively from one class. That class uses its laws for its own purposes. If necessary, as with the recent House of Lords decision on the Immigration Act, it will make law retrospective. In that case, it referred the law back to ‘catch’ illegal immigrants who came in legally before the Act was passed.</p>
<p>The Tories make laws, reverse laws, ignore laws, make laws retrospective to protect their property and increase it at the expense of the workers.</p>
<p>Labour, on the other hand, respects the law above all other considerations. Its own supporters, its fighters and its martyrs must suffer in the interests of a ‘neutral’ law which imposed the suffering in the first place.</p>
<p>Labour behaves in this ridiculous way because its leaders hate the idea of class struggle.</p>
<p>Crosland likes to imagine that capitalist society can be checked and changed by well educated Labour ministers giving orders to well-educated civil servants and laying down laws to be carried out by well educated judges.</p>
<p>So he and those who think like him have to order their supporters to obey those judges and those civil servants. Any revolt against the law or the civil servants has to be suppressed.</p>
<p>As each revolt is suppressed, so the class power of the institutions grow greater until it snuffs out the Labour politicians themselves.</p>
<p>In the interests of gradual, legal, constitutional reform, Crosland and his henchmen are digging graves for reform and for themselves.</p>
<p>The stand of the 11 councillors at Clay Cross represented the last embers of organised resistance to capitalism within the British Labour Party. The embers have now been doused – by the Labour leaders. We must build a new fire with entirely different fuel.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Clay Cross double-crossed
(April 1974)
From Socialist Worker, 13 April 1974.
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), In the Heat of the Struggle, Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.120-1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
ELEVEN WORKERS at Clay Cross, Derbyshire, who risked their freedom and their livelihood in the fight against Heath’s Tory government, have been snubbed by the Labour government’s first month of office.
They are the councillors who refused to implement the Tory Housing Finance Act. They saved the council tenants of their town thousands of pounds in unpaid rents. As a result, they were fined more than £7,000 by the Tories’ Housing Commissioner.
The Labour Party Conference rallied to their support. Last October it passed the following amendment:
‘Conference further agrees that upon the election of a Labour government, all penalties, financial and otherwise, should be removed retrospectively from councillors who have courageously refused to implement the Housing Finance Act, 1972.’
The amendment was accepted by the national executive of the party, in the shape of Edward Short, deputy leader.
Now Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons that the fine must be paid! He says there will be no retrospective legislation to remove the penalties from the councillors.
The Tories, who have been harassing the government on the Clay Cross issue for the past three weeks, are triumphant. They have won a notable victory over their hated enemies in Clay Cross.
Why is it that Wilson, Short and the seven other members of Labour’s national executive who are in the government have so blatantly ignored their party’s democratic decisions?
One answer can be found in a recent book, Socialism Now, by Anthony Crosland, now Environment Minister, who first insisted that the Clay Cross surcharge would not be paid out of public funds.
Crosland wrote:
‘Even the rule of law is challenged by some Labour councillors and trade unionists, though historically, and let no socialist ever forget this, the law has been the means by which the weak obtained redress against the strong.’
The law, Crosland argues, is neutral. Labour governments achieve reforms through neutral laws. So they must respect the law above all else.
But the law is not neutral. The history of the working class movement over the last 150 years shows the opposite. From the hanging of the Luddites to the persecution of the Chartists to the imprisonment and execution of militants and trade unionists all the way down to the Shrewsbury pickets trial in 1973, the story is one of the law being used to protect the people who own property from the people who produce it.
The class which controls property controls the law. 86 percent of the judges, who are not elected, were educated at public school.
The entire legal profession is drawn almost exclusively from one class. That class uses its laws for its own purposes. If necessary, as with the recent House of Lords decision on the Immigration Act, it will make law retrospective. In that case, it referred the law back to ‘catch’ illegal immigrants who came in legally before the Act was passed.
The Tories make laws, reverse laws, ignore laws, make laws retrospective to protect their property and increase it at the expense of the workers.
Labour, on the other hand, respects the law above all other considerations. Its own supporters, its fighters and its martyrs must suffer in the interests of a ‘neutral’ law which imposed the suffering in the first place.
Labour behaves in this ridiculous way because its leaders hate the idea of class struggle.
Crosland likes to imagine that capitalist society can be checked and changed by well educated Labour ministers giving orders to well-educated civil servants and laying down laws to be carried out by well educated judges.
So he and those who think like him have to order their supporters to obey those judges and those civil servants. Any revolt against the law or the civil servants has to be suppressed.
As each revolt is suppressed, so the class power of the institutions grow greater until it snuffs out the Labour politicians themselves.
In the interests of gradual, legal, constitutional reform, Crosland and his henchmen are digging graves for reform and for themselves.
The stand of the 11 councillors at Clay Cross represented the last embers of organised resistance to capitalism within the British Labour Party. The embers have now been doused – by the Labour leaders. We must build a new fire with entirely different fuel.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Birth of our power</h1>
<h3>(November 1992)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.158, November 1992, pp.6-8.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>The pit closures demonstrate the madness of a market driven by profit, while millions go cold and hungry. <strong>Paul Foot</strong> argues that the only solution to the chaos lies in a different sort of society</em></p>
<p class="fst">All through the summer, so he tells us, The Rt Hon Michael Heseltine PC MP ‘agonised’ about a problem. He could identify the problem in three monosyllables; too much coal. There was too much coal at the pitheads and too much coal at the power stations. It was beginning to encroach like a vile black plague into the delightful countryside of the type where Mrs Heseltine is inclined to hunt. Obviously this was wasteful and something should be done about it.</p>
<p>After a final few days climactic agonising Mr Heseltine came to his lonely decision. Coal mining should cease, preferably altogether. That, he calculated, was the only realistic way to stop the surplus coal menace.</p>
<p>Heseltine’s ancestors were South Wales coal merchants, so he knows a bit about the industry. But his thinking on the subject is dominated not so much by his experience as by his belief in the ‘market’. The ‘market’, he believes, is the best way to match what people make to what they need. If nobody needs coal, he calculates, they will not buy it. And if they don’t buy it what on earth is the point of producing it?</p>
<p>Let us test that argument against the facts about power supply. With one exception (Drax) every one of the coal fired power stations in Britain is producing less electricity than a year ago. Even Drax is producing at only 75 percent capacity. Every electricity company is distributing less electricity than a year ago.</p>
<p>Are people turning to an alternative? No, they are not. Less gas is being distributed too. Are people saturated with heat and light? Are old people, for instance, sweating so much in their homes at the start of winter that they are turning off the heat? Are factories and offices going at such full blast that they are switching off the lights and the machinery? Exactly the opposite. At a time when there is a glut of power capacity, the need for heat and light has never been greater. Miners and power workers are sacked while the old and poor freeze in their homes and yearn for jobs which would drive the factories and light the offices.</p>
<p>There is a very simple solution to the problem which tortures Mr Heseltine so. Coal could be given away to the pensioners. Power prices could be brought down especially for the unemployed. Hey presto! Cold people would be warm again and the black threat to Mrs Heseltine’s hunting grounds would be removed in a trice!</p>
<p>But no. The market insists that before anyone can get hold of any of these surplus services they must pay the market price. That puts flight at once to the notion that the market matches production with need. For in a society like ours where there are a few rich people, many poor people and some others in the middle, the ‘symmetry’ of the market is twisted and corrupted into the opposite of symmetry. Things are made which are not needed; things that are needed are not made; and even when things are produced which are needed, like coal and power, they go to waste because by the laws of the market there are not enough people with enough money to whom those goods can be sold.</p>
<p>Thus the market system which pretends to balance what is produced with what is needed becomes just a mechanism to further extend the imbalances and inequalities which led to its corruption in the first place.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">NOTHING demonstrates the crude class nature of the market more sharply than the recent developments in the power industry. For 40 years after the war Tories everywhere were infuriated whenever they turned on a light. The light came on, it worked, it served its purpose, and the electricity industry everywhere made a handsome surplus. What enraged the Tories was that no one in their class made a direct profit from it. The profit went back into the industry, which was publicly owned. The same applied to electricity’s main competitor, gas, and to water. The ultimate achievement of the Thatcher experiment in pure free enterprise – the crock of gold at the end of rainbow for innumerable Thatcherite yuppies – was the privatisation of all three utilities.</p>
<p>Aeons of parliamentary time were taken up with complicated bills to restore these industries to private enterprise. Millionaire accountants like Cecil Parkinson and John Wakeham, both since ennobled, wallowed in the rhetoric of ‘setting the utilities free’. Nearly half a billion pounds was doled out to stockbrokers, merchant bankers, city solicitors, estate agents and public relations mandarins to ‘advise’ the ministers and the new private companies.</p>
<p>What was the result? The old public gas monopoly was turned into a new private gas monopoly. Electricity generation was carefully parcelled out to two huge monopolies, Power-Gen and National Power. The 12 public electricity distribution companies were transformed into 12 private electricity distribution companies, run by exactly the same people and in exactly the same way as before. The regional public water companies with monopoly franchises to supply water in their areas have been changed completely into private regional water companies with monopoly franchises to supply water in their areas. Prices of all these commodities have risen almost exactly at the same pace as in the past.</p>
<p>The only difference is that the new monopolies are not answerable to any elected authority and provide the most lavish largesse for their top executives and shareholders. John Baker, a bureaucrat who ran the CEGB at £76,000 a year is now an ‘entrepreneur’ who runs National Power for £347,911 a year, plus share options. In the first full year of trading the electricity companies paid out more than £300 million in dividends to private individuals, funds, trusts and banks. Almost at once the market went into another spasm of greed. The new companies, using special powers given to them by Parkinson and Wake-ham (powers which had been specifically denied to the old nationalised companies) started to fund new gas fired power stations. The chief effect of this ‘dash for gas’ was to increase the overcapacity of power supply by a fantastic 25 percent.</p>
<p>Was the purpose to make electricity cheaper? All the evidence suggests that the new gas fired electricity will be more expensive than the coal fired kind in the short term and much more expensive in the long term. How, in this disciplined and consumer conscious market, can billions of pounds be spent on increasing power, when there is apparently too much of it already, and into the bargain make it more expensive?</p>
<p>First, because the investors in private electricity want to collect a dividend from their share in the new gas stations, there is no dividend from nationalised coal. Secondly, the gas fired stations provide the new power vampires with a source of power supply where the unions are not half as strong as in the pits. So the market works against its own logic, increasing overcapacity and raising prices, solely in order to shift the balance of the fight against the workers.</p>
<p>This is also the only explanation for the greatest absurdity of all in the privatised power market; the subsidy for the nuclear industry. If the coal industry had the £1.3 billion subsidy dished out by the government for its unprofitable and dangerous nuclear power stations, coal could be given away free, delivered free and in abundance to every power station and every home, and still make a profit.</p>
<p>Why does a free market government dish out such huge handouts to an industry which produces higher prices and which will, as the US developers of nuclear power have discovered, never make a profit for everyone? The answer is that it provides a source of power where the unions are weak and the workers regimented by secrecy laws and an internal police force. All the realities of the ‘market’ contradict the claims made for it. All expose its only purpose; to enrich the rich and to ensure where possible that that enrichment is not spoiled by organised trade unions.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">IN THE LAST FEW months the last of the claims for the free market has also been exposed. In 1989 Nicholas Ridley, the Tory who dreamed up Thatcher’s highly successful plans to break the unions in steel and coal, boasted that during his time in office throughout the 1980s the free market had worked. The average family in Britain had increased its standard of living. This was due, he said, to free enterprise as promoted by the Tories.</p>
<p>Now Ridley says exactly the opposite. ‘Poor people are losing their jobs,’ he moans on television. The great free marketeer casts around desperately for an alternative economic strategy – low interest rates, perhaps even a little government investment. Ridley’s lament is taken up with much more enthusiasm by the forgotten Keynesians of the 1980s.</p>
<p>Keynes had a brilliant solution to the free market. He identified the market’s problem as the gap between what people get in wages and the prices they pay. Why not, urged Keynes, employ a lot of people making things they couldn’t buy – like schools and hospitals and weapons? Why not, he asked satirically, pay people to dig holes and fill them in again? The wages they were paid would fill the crucial gap! Capitalism’s problems could be solved by a lot of well meaning and intelligent economists (like John Maynard Keynes) in high office!</p>
<p>These views electrified the Labour Party. The three Labour governments after the war based their policies on Keynesian ideas. Each of them ran up against the same problem; rich people were not prepared to pay the taxes for the necessary public works. A mighty class revolt stopped the policy in its tracks. Each successive Labour government achieved less than its predecessor and Keynesianism was discredited.</p>
<p>In the Thatcher years the Keynesians were out of fashion. Now they are staggering into the light again; William Kegan of the <strong>Observer</strong>, Wynne Godley, the Cambridge economist, even Governor Bill Clinton. Spend on public services, they all say. Build up the infrastructure. In the wake of the terrible disaster that was Thatcherite free enterprise some of them get a hearing. In general they are met with the same despair which greets the free marketeers, the same political hunger for an alternative which has not so obviously failed.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">LISTENING on the evening of Black Wednesday to Labour Party leaders stammering their replies to That Awful Question – what would you do instead? – I couldn’t help remembering the famous Sidney Webb phrase which still, as far as I know, appears on Labour Party cards. ‘The common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.’ The problem with the free market and the Keynesian solution to it is that all economic activity is owned and controlled by a small class whose only purpose is to enrich itself at the expense of everyone else. There is absolutely no ‘solution’ as long as that control continues.</p>
<p>There can be no social solution to the anti-social problems of an anti-social system unless die economy is owned and controlled by society. How can an economy be planned? How can a government even decide on priorities of production unless it owns and controls that production?</p>
<p>These were the ideas which convinced so many people in the first half of this century about the case for socialism. In the second half of the century that case has taken some hard knocks. The Labour governments in which so many socialist hopes were invested strengthened capitalism. In Russia a society calling itself socialist was increasingly exposed as a monstrous tyranny, where the workers were exploited every bit as cruelly as anywhere else.</p>
<p>Socialism got a bad name. Labourites and Stalinists defined their socialism only in terms of state control and a planned economy. They cut from socialism its essence, its control from below and its accountability to working class democracy. The liberating and revolutionary element of socialism is its ability to unleash and mobilise all the human energies which a class society cramps and corrupts. Without that element ‘socialism’ was no better than what George Orwell called ‘a mean state capitalism with the grab motive left intact.’</p>
<p>The only socialists who survived the collapse of Stalinism and the cretinism of Labour were those of us who opposed and exposed both and linked our socialism inextricably to the struggle for it. For us socialism was not some paradise or Utopia, distant and unimaginable. The seeds of the new society were being sown all the time before our eyes, in the struggle against the old one.</p>
<p>When that struggle is weak and low, so is the appeal of socialism. But when, as so miraculously in the last few weeks, the apathy and despondency of the people at the rough end of society are suddenly dispelled, when masses of workers start talking of their anger, their hopes and dreams, then That Awful Question comes again; what would you do instead? Our answer is the same as ever; the same workers’ power which can win a strike or stop a law can seize control of the means of production, distribution and exchange and, by planning them, run society to the advantage of the many, not the few.</p>
<p>What seemed idealistic and preposterous only a few weeks ago suddenly doesn’t seem so unlikely.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Birth of our power
(November 1992)
From Socialist Review, No.158, November 1992, pp.6-8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The pit closures demonstrate the madness of a market driven by profit, while millions go cold and hungry. Paul Foot argues that the only solution to the chaos lies in a different sort of society
All through the summer, so he tells us, The Rt Hon Michael Heseltine PC MP ‘agonised’ about a problem. He could identify the problem in three monosyllables; too much coal. There was too much coal at the pitheads and too much coal at the power stations. It was beginning to encroach like a vile black plague into the delightful countryside of the type where Mrs Heseltine is inclined to hunt. Obviously this was wasteful and something should be done about it.
After a final few days climactic agonising Mr Heseltine came to his lonely decision. Coal mining should cease, preferably altogether. That, he calculated, was the only realistic way to stop the surplus coal menace.
Heseltine’s ancestors were South Wales coal merchants, so he knows a bit about the industry. But his thinking on the subject is dominated not so much by his experience as by his belief in the ‘market’. The ‘market’, he believes, is the best way to match what people make to what they need. If nobody needs coal, he calculates, they will not buy it. And if they don’t buy it what on earth is the point of producing it?
Let us test that argument against the facts about power supply. With one exception (Drax) every one of the coal fired power stations in Britain is producing less electricity than a year ago. Even Drax is producing at only 75 percent capacity. Every electricity company is distributing less electricity than a year ago.
Are people turning to an alternative? No, they are not. Less gas is being distributed too. Are people saturated with heat and light? Are old people, for instance, sweating so much in their homes at the start of winter that they are turning off the heat? Are factories and offices going at such full blast that they are switching off the lights and the machinery? Exactly the opposite. At a time when there is a glut of power capacity, the need for heat and light has never been greater. Miners and power workers are sacked while the old and poor freeze in their homes and yearn for jobs which would drive the factories and light the offices.
There is a very simple solution to the problem which tortures Mr Heseltine so. Coal could be given away to the pensioners. Power prices could be brought down especially for the unemployed. Hey presto! Cold people would be warm again and the black threat to Mrs Heseltine’s hunting grounds would be removed in a trice!
But no. The market insists that before anyone can get hold of any of these surplus services they must pay the market price. That puts flight at once to the notion that the market matches production with need. For in a society like ours where there are a few rich people, many poor people and some others in the middle, the ‘symmetry’ of the market is twisted and corrupted into the opposite of symmetry. Things are made which are not needed; things that are needed are not made; and even when things are produced which are needed, like coal and power, they go to waste because by the laws of the market there are not enough people with enough money to whom those goods can be sold.
Thus the market system which pretends to balance what is produced with what is needed becomes just a mechanism to further extend the imbalances and inequalities which led to its corruption in the first place.
NOTHING demonstrates the crude class nature of the market more sharply than the recent developments in the power industry. For 40 years after the war Tories everywhere were infuriated whenever they turned on a light. The light came on, it worked, it served its purpose, and the electricity industry everywhere made a handsome surplus. What enraged the Tories was that no one in their class made a direct profit from it. The profit went back into the industry, which was publicly owned. The same applied to electricity’s main competitor, gas, and to water. The ultimate achievement of the Thatcher experiment in pure free enterprise – the crock of gold at the end of rainbow for innumerable Thatcherite yuppies – was the privatisation of all three utilities.
Aeons of parliamentary time were taken up with complicated bills to restore these industries to private enterprise. Millionaire accountants like Cecil Parkinson and John Wakeham, both since ennobled, wallowed in the rhetoric of ‘setting the utilities free’. Nearly half a billion pounds was doled out to stockbrokers, merchant bankers, city solicitors, estate agents and public relations mandarins to ‘advise’ the ministers and the new private companies.
What was the result? The old public gas monopoly was turned into a new private gas monopoly. Electricity generation was carefully parcelled out to two huge monopolies, Power-Gen and National Power. The 12 public electricity distribution companies were transformed into 12 private electricity distribution companies, run by exactly the same people and in exactly the same way as before. The regional public water companies with monopoly franchises to supply water in their areas have been changed completely into private regional water companies with monopoly franchises to supply water in their areas. Prices of all these commodities have risen almost exactly at the same pace as in the past.
The only difference is that the new monopolies are not answerable to any elected authority and provide the most lavish largesse for their top executives and shareholders. John Baker, a bureaucrat who ran the CEGB at £76,000 a year is now an ‘entrepreneur’ who runs National Power for £347,911 a year, plus share options. In the first full year of trading the electricity companies paid out more than £300 million in dividends to private individuals, funds, trusts and banks. Almost at once the market went into another spasm of greed. The new companies, using special powers given to them by Parkinson and Wake-ham (powers which had been specifically denied to the old nationalised companies) started to fund new gas fired power stations. The chief effect of this ‘dash for gas’ was to increase the overcapacity of power supply by a fantastic 25 percent.
Was the purpose to make electricity cheaper? All the evidence suggests that the new gas fired electricity will be more expensive than the coal fired kind in the short term and much more expensive in the long term. How, in this disciplined and consumer conscious market, can billions of pounds be spent on increasing power, when there is apparently too much of it already, and into the bargain make it more expensive?
First, because the investors in private electricity want to collect a dividend from their share in the new gas stations, there is no dividend from nationalised coal. Secondly, the gas fired stations provide the new power vampires with a source of power supply where the unions are not half as strong as in the pits. So the market works against its own logic, increasing overcapacity and raising prices, solely in order to shift the balance of the fight against the workers.
This is also the only explanation for the greatest absurdity of all in the privatised power market; the subsidy for the nuclear industry. If the coal industry had the £1.3 billion subsidy dished out by the government for its unprofitable and dangerous nuclear power stations, coal could be given away free, delivered free and in abundance to every power station and every home, and still make a profit.
Why does a free market government dish out such huge handouts to an industry which produces higher prices and which will, as the US developers of nuclear power have discovered, never make a profit for everyone? The answer is that it provides a source of power where the unions are weak and the workers regimented by secrecy laws and an internal police force. All the realities of the ‘market’ contradict the claims made for it. All expose its only purpose; to enrich the rich and to ensure where possible that that enrichment is not spoiled by organised trade unions.
IN THE LAST FEW months the last of the claims for the free market has also been exposed. In 1989 Nicholas Ridley, the Tory who dreamed up Thatcher’s highly successful plans to break the unions in steel and coal, boasted that during his time in office throughout the 1980s the free market had worked. The average family in Britain had increased its standard of living. This was due, he said, to free enterprise as promoted by the Tories.
Now Ridley says exactly the opposite. ‘Poor people are losing their jobs,’ he moans on television. The great free marketeer casts around desperately for an alternative economic strategy – low interest rates, perhaps even a little government investment. Ridley’s lament is taken up with much more enthusiasm by the forgotten Keynesians of the 1980s.
Keynes had a brilliant solution to the free market. He identified the market’s problem as the gap between what people get in wages and the prices they pay. Why not, urged Keynes, employ a lot of people making things they couldn’t buy – like schools and hospitals and weapons? Why not, he asked satirically, pay people to dig holes and fill them in again? The wages they were paid would fill the crucial gap! Capitalism’s problems could be solved by a lot of well meaning and intelligent economists (like John Maynard Keynes) in high office!
These views electrified the Labour Party. The three Labour governments after the war based their policies on Keynesian ideas. Each of them ran up against the same problem; rich people were not prepared to pay the taxes for the necessary public works. A mighty class revolt stopped the policy in its tracks. Each successive Labour government achieved less than its predecessor and Keynesianism was discredited.
In the Thatcher years the Keynesians were out of fashion. Now they are staggering into the light again; William Kegan of the Observer, Wynne Godley, the Cambridge economist, even Governor Bill Clinton. Spend on public services, they all say. Build up the infrastructure. In the wake of the terrible disaster that was Thatcherite free enterprise some of them get a hearing. In general they are met with the same despair which greets the free marketeers, the same political hunger for an alternative which has not so obviously failed.
LISTENING on the evening of Black Wednesday to Labour Party leaders stammering their replies to That Awful Question – what would you do instead? – I couldn’t help remembering the famous Sidney Webb phrase which still, as far as I know, appears on Labour Party cards. ‘The common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.’ The problem with the free market and the Keynesian solution to it is that all economic activity is owned and controlled by a small class whose only purpose is to enrich itself at the expense of everyone else. There is absolutely no ‘solution’ as long as that control continues.
There can be no social solution to the anti-social problems of an anti-social system unless die economy is owned and controlled by society. How can an economy be planned? How can a government even decide on priorities of production unless it owns and controls that production?
These were the ideas which convinced so many people in the first half of this century about the case for socialism. In the second half of the century that case has taken some hard knocks. The Labour governments in which so many socialist hopes were invested strengthened capitalism. In Russia a society calling itself socialist was increasingly exposed as a monstrous tyranny, where the workers were exploited every bit as cruelly as anywhere else.
Socialism got a bad name. Labourites and Stalinists defined their socialism only in terms of state control and a planned economy. They cut from socialism its essence, its control from below and its accountability to working class democracy. The liberating and revolutionary element of socialism is its ability to unleash and mobilise all the human energies which a class society cramps and corrupts. Without that element ‘socialism’ was no better than what George Orwell called ‘a mean state capitalism with the grab motive left intact.’
The only socialists who survived the collapse of Stalinism and the cretinism of Labour were those of us who opposed and exposed both and linked our socialism inextricably to the struggle for it. For us socialism was not some paradise or Utopia, distant and unimaginable. The seeds of the new society were being sown all the time before our eyes, in the struggle against the old one.
When that struggle is weak and low, so is the appeal of socialism. But when, as so miraculously in the last few weeks, the apathy and despondency of the people at the rough end of society are suddenly dispelled, when masses of workers start talking of their anger, their hopes and dreams, then That Awful Question comes again; what would you do instead? Our answer is the same as ever; the same workers’ power which can win a strike or stop a law can seize control of the means of production, distribution and exchange and, by planning them, run society to the advantage of the many, not the few.
What seemed idealistic and preposterous only a few weeks ago suddenly doesn’t seem so unlikely.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>For law, read class</h1>
<h3>(April 1978)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/socrev/index1.html#sr78_04" target="new">No. 1</a>, April 1978, pp. 23–24.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>The Politics of the Judiciary<br>
</strong>J.A.G. Griffith<br>
<em>Fontana £1.25</em></p>
<p class="fst">‘DENNING HITS AT STRIKERS LEGAL BACKING’ shouts the main headline on page 2 of my <strong>Daily Telegraph</strong> this morning (March 3). Lord Denning (who told a reporter the other day that he normally buys the <strong>Sunday Telegraph</strong> rather than the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> ‘because it is cheaper’) is Master of the Rolls, the second most important judge in the country. He is long past the age when most working people retire, but he still gets £22,000 from the taxpayer. He is widely regarded in the legal profession as a ‘bit of a boy’ for some of his ‘unconventional judgements’. But when it comes to the important things in life, Lord Denning is not at all unconventional.</p>
<p>He hates strikes, he regards the legal immunity for strikers which has existed on and off since 1906 as a scandal. He would love to be able to put strikers where he believes they ought to be – in prison. And he is not afraid to say so – on this occasion on his inauguration as President of the Holdsworth Club, which is the law society of Birmingham University. As is usual on such occasions Lord Denning made it clear that his views as President of the Holdsworth Society would never, in any circumstances, influence him as a judge from faithfully administering the law which with he so passionately disagreed.</p>
<p>Lord Denning has been President of a lot of other things in his time. In 1972, he was chairman of the Marriage Guidance Council. He chose his chairman’s address that year to make a scurrilous attack on Bernadette Devlin, then MP for Mid-Ulster. The noble Lord has nothing against Bernadette’s politics, of course, (judges don’t have political views). What annoyed him about Miss Devlin was that she was about to give birth to a child which had been conceived out of wedlock! The ‘fabric of society’ was being ‘ripped apart’, Lord Denning mused, when elected representatives started getting themselves in the family way, and then openly admitting it right out loud, like an usher farting in court!</p>
<p>The judges are not automatons or neuters as they sometimes like to pretend. They are men; men with ideas and prejudices just like anyone else. What sort of men are they? Lord Justice Lawton, who started his career at the bar by joining the politically neutral British Union of Fascists, said in the Riddell lecture in 1975: ‘Judges are drawn from all ranks of society’.</p>
<p>By this the Lord Justice meant, of course, that you will find judges who went to many different schools: not just Eton, that is, but Harrow, Winchester and even Repton. Not all went to Oxford or Cambridge either. A few even went to Leeds University, or Birmingham or Manchester. There’s a sprinkling of the <em>nouveaux riches</em> on the bench along with the aristocrats. And that, as far as Lord Justice Lawton is concerned, makes up ‘all ranks of society’. ‘Society’ as far as he is concerned, can’t possibly be said to include the offal and dregs some of whom appear before him from time to time in the courts.</p>
<p>All judges, even the ten per cent who didn’t go to public school, are lawyers. That means that they have all passed through the peculiarly constipated education which law affords. They have all been barristers, that is they have ‘done their time’ in chambers, which is still impossible for anyone without substantial private means. They have all ‘eaten their dinners’ and solemnly performed (until it seems almost natural) in the bizarre ceremonial of the Inns of Court. Their class origins and ideas have been nurtured in the sealed hothouse of the British legal system. They are stronger-rooted and more ostentatious than in any other section of the British oligarchy.</p>
<p>If there is anyone left who still believes that the judges are ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’, John Griffith’s book will open their eyes. He has collected together a body of case law which proves beyond any shadow of doubt the heavy bias of the judiciary in every part of the law. When the government passes laws which threaten property-owners, the judges go to every length to fight for ‘the right of the individual’. When the government pass laws to keep out immigrants, the illegal immigrant has to prove he is not guilty before he can be released. When squatters claim that their eviction means homelessness and despair for their children, the judges (Lord Denning in particular) declare that that has ‘nothing to do with law’. Yet when prostitutes or editors of radical papers come before the courts on a non-existent charge (’conspiracy to public morals’), the judges make up the charge, and find the defendants guilty on it, in order, as one Law Lord put it, ‘to uphold the moral welfare of the state’. In perhaps the most impressive section of book, John Griffith compares the treatment of expelled students and expelled union members. In both cases, he points out, people have, been expelled or dismissed in a way which could threaten their livelihood.</p>
<p>Yet the existing laws, and the judges’ conception of ‘natural justice’ is stained out of all recognition in order both to uphold the dismissal of students and to annul the dismissal of trade unionists by their union. ‘Why’ asks John Griffith ‘is the expulsion of the union member almost always set aside, and that of the student almost always upheld? The answer lies in the general attitude of the judiciary ...’ Yes, the ‘general attitude’, which supports the discipline of the headmaster or the board of governors, who curb the spirit of protest or rebellion or rule-breaking, but detests the discipline of the trade union, which threatens the property of employers and shareholders.</p>
<p>The bias of the judiciary is not changing for the better. John Griffith has not selected a lot of cases from the ‘bad old days’ when judges were monsters, and everyone knew it. Almost all his cases, including some very recent ones indeed, come from the ‘bad new days’ when the judges are monsters, but very few people realise it.</p>
<p>The trend, he points out almost incidentally, is for judges to allow more power to the police, a wider use of conspiracy laws, a sharper interference with any progressive legislation by a Labour government, and a more overtly racialist oppression with black defendants or deportees.</p>
<p>His little book all points in an obvious direction until its conclusion, which doesn’t point anywhere at all. He makes a desperate effort to free himself from the stigma of Marxism by asserting that the Marxist view of the law ‘takes us only some way along the road’.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The function’ he explains ‘performed, by the judiciary in our society is not a peculiarly capitalist function. Some of its manifestations – such as its tenderness towards private property and its dislike of trade unions – may be traced to such a source. But its strong adherence to the maintenance of law and order, its distaste for minority opinions, demonstrations and protests, its indifference to the promotion of better race relations, its support of governmental secrecy and its concern for the preservation of the moral and social behaviour to which ills accustomed, these attitudes seem to derive from a different ideology.’</p>
<p class="fst">This is the familiar, unedifying spectacle of the powerful left-wing academic, at the end of a painstaking work, seeking to wriggle off the Marxist hook by inventing a narrow view of Marxism, and dissociating himself from it. <em>All</em> ruling classes have survived by <em>disguising their robbery with a way of thinking</em> which extends far outside the field or the factory. Discipline in the streets and in the home, conformity of ideas, racialism, government secrecy and the ‘preservation of a moral and social order to which it is accustomed’. All these are not incidental but fundamental to the maintenance of capitalist robbery (as they were to the maintenance of any other system of robbery). That is all very clearly explained by Marx and Engels, and John Griffith’s characterisation of Marxism does no one any credit. He will (and has been) denounced as a Marxist anyway by the supporters of the judiciary. And rightly so. For his facts and research lead inexorably in that direction.</p>
<p>His second major argument that the judiciary is not pursuing a capitalist role is that the judiciary in Russia and Eastern Europe are equally repressive and reactionary! There is another conclusion to that, which is that the systems of society in Britain and Western Europe have more in common with those in Eastern Europe in Russia than they have in conflict.</p>
<p>The wriggling and squirming at the end of the book however has a more serious consequence. ‘Our freedoms’ writes John Griffith ‘depend on the willingness of the press, politicians and others to publicise the breach of those freedoms</p>
<p>‘The Press, politicians and others’. These are the people to whom John Griffith would have us turn for the protection of our freedoms. Yet the Press, by and large, is wound into the same web as are the judges. So are most politicians. If our freedoms depended only on these, there would be less of them even then there are.</p>
<p>The people who established the freedom of the press were the people who sold the <strong>Poor Man’s Guardian</strong> on the streets in the 1830s and established by sheer organisation and weight of numbers the right of papers to be published without the penal ‘stamp’. The people who broke the Combination laws were the weavers and stockingers who went on strike in spite of them. The people who established the right of procession were the hundreds of thousands of working people who marched with the Chartists. The people who wiped the Industrial Relations Act off the Statute book were the dockers and the printworkers who went on indefinite strike and forced the Industrial Relations Court to tree the five dockers arrested for contempt of the legislation. Yet this episode, because it ridiculed the ‘rule of law’, is described by John Griffith as a ‘calamity’. It wasn’t a calamity. It was a victory. The rule of law is the rule of the capitalist class, and the more it is ridiculed, the better.</p>
<p>I mustn’t give the wrong impression, John Griffith’s book is first class. It is an unanswerable <em>exposé</em> of judicial hypocrisy and prejudice and it has made him a lot of powerful enemies. All socialists should read it. The waverings and wrigglings at the end are easy to spot, and easier to straighten.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
For law, read class
(April 1978)
From Socialist Review, No. 1, April 1978, pp. 23–24.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Politics of the Judiciary
J.A.G. Griffith
Fontana £1.25
‘DENNING HITS AT STRIKERS LEGAL BACKING’ shouts the main headline on page 2 of my Daily Telegraph this morning (March 3). Lord Denning (who told a reporter the other day that he normally buys the Sunday Telegraph rather than the Sunday Times ‘because it is cheaper’) is Master of the Rolls, the second most important judge in the country. He is long past the age when most working people retire, but he still gets £22,000 from the taxpayer. He is widely regarded in the legal profession as a ‘bit of a boy’ for some of his ‘unconventional judgements’. But when it comes to the important things in life, Lord Denning is not at all unconventional.
He hates strikes, he regards the legal immunity for strikers which has existed on and off since 1906 as a scandal. He would love to be able to put strikers where he believes they ought to be – in prison. And he is not afraid to say so – on this occasion on his inauguration as President of the Holdsworth Club, which is the law society of Birmingham University. As is usual on such occasions Lord Denning made it clear that his views as President of the Holdsworth Society would never, in any circumstances, influence him as a judge from faithfully administering the law which with he so passionately disagreed.
Lord Denning has been President of a lot of other things in his time. In 1972, he was chairman of the Marriage Guidance Council. He chose his chairman’s address that year to make a scurrilous attack on Bernadette Devlin, then MP for Mid-Ulster. The noble Lord has nothing against Bernadette’s politics, of course, (judges don’t have political views). What annoyed him about Miss Devlin was that she was about to give birth to a child which had been conceived out of wedlock! The ‘fabric of society’ was being ‘ripped apart’, Lord Denning mused, when elected representatives started getting themselves in the family way, and then openly admitting it right out loud, like an usher farting in court!
The judges are not automatons or neuters as they sometimes like to pretend. They are men; men with ideas and prejudices just like anyone else. What sort of men are they? Lord Justice Lawton, who started his career at the bar by joining the politically neutral British Union of Fascists, said in the Riddell lecture in 1975: ‘Judges are drawn from all ranks of society’.
By this the Lord Justice meant, of course, that you will find judges who went to many different schools: not just Eton, that is, but Harrow, Winchester and even Repton. Not all went to Oxford or Cambridge either. A few even went to Leeds University, or Birmingham or Manchester. There’s a sprinkling of the nouveaux riches on the bench along with the aristocrats. And that, as far as Lord Justice Lawton is concerned, makes up ‘all ranks of society’. ‘Society’ as far as he is concerned, can’t possibly be said to include the offal and dregs some of whom appear before him from time to time in the courts.
All judges, even the ten per cent who didn’t go to public school, are lawyers. That means that they have all passed through the peculiarly constipated education which law affords. They have all been barristers, that is they have ‘done their time’ in chambers, which is still impossible for anyone without substantial private means. They have all ‘eaten their dinners’ and solemnly performed (until it seems almost natural) in the bizarre ceremonial of the Inns of Court. Their class origins and ideas have been nurtured in the sealed hothouse of the British legal system. They are stronger-rooted and more ostentatious than in any other section of the British oligarchy.
If there is anyone left who still believes that the judges are ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’, John Griffith’s book will open their eyes. He has collected together a body of case law which proves beyond any shadow of doubt the heavy bias of the judiciary in every part of the law. When the government passes laws which threaten property-owners, the judges go to every length to fight for ‘the right of the individual’. When the government pass laws to keep out immigrants, the illegal immigrant has to prove he is not guilty before he can be released. When squatters claim that their eviction means homelessness and despair for their children, the judges (Lord Denning in particular) declare that that has ‘nothing to do with law’. Yet when prostitutes or editors of radical papers come before the courts on a non-existent charge (’conspiracy to public morals’), the judges make up the charge, and find the defendants guilty on it, in order, as one Law Lord put it, ‘to uphold the moral welfare of the state’. In perhaps the most impressive section of book, John Griffith compares the treatment of expelled students and expelled union members. In both cases, he points out, people have, been expelled or dismissed in a way which could threaten their livelihood.
Yet the existing laws, and the judges’ conception of ‘natural justice’ is stained out of all recognition in order both to uphold the dismissal of students and to annul the dismissal of trade unionists by their union. ‘Why’ asks John Griffith ‘is the expulsion of the union member almost always set aside, and that of the student almost always upheld? The answer lies in the general attitude of the judiciary ...’ Yes, the ‘general attitude’, which supports the discipline of the headmaster or the board of governors, who curb the spirit of protest or rebellion or rule-breaking, but detests the discipline of the trade union, which threatens the property of employers and shareholders.
The bias of the judiciary is not changing for the better. John Griffith has not selected a lot of cases from the ‘bad old days’ when judges were monsters, and everyone knew it. Almost all his cases, including some very recent ones indeed, come from the ‘bad new days’ when the judges are monsters, but very few people realise it.
The trend, he points out almost incidentally, is for judges to allow more power to the police, a wider use of conspiracy laws, a sharper interference with any progressive legislation by a Labour government, and a more overtly racialist oppression with black defendants or deportees.
His little book all points in an obvious direction until its conclusion, which doesn’t point anywhere at all. He makes a desperate effort to free himself from the stigma of Marxism by asserting that the Marxist view of the law ‘takes us only some way along the road’.
‘The function’ he explains ‘performed, by the judiciary in our society is not a peculiarly capitalist function. Some of its manifestations – such as its tenderness towards private property and its dislike of trade unions – may be traced to such a source. But its strong adherence to the maintenance of law and order, its distaste for minority opinions, demonstrations and protests, its indifference to the promotion of better race relations, its support of governmental secrecy and its concern for the preservation of the moral and social behaviour to which ills accustomed, these attitudes seem to derive from a different ideology.’
This is the familiar, unedifying spectacle of the powerful left-wing academic, at the end of a painstaking work, seeking to wriggle off the Marxist hook by inventing a narrow view of Marxism, and dissociating himself from it. All ruling classes have survived by disguising their robbery with a way of thinking which extends far outside the field or the factory. Discipline in the streets and in the home, conformity of ideas, racialism, government secrecy and the ‘preservation of a moral and social order to which it is accustomed’. All these are not incidental but fundamental to the maintenance of capitalist robbery (as they were to the maintenance of any other system of robbery). That is all very clearly explained by Marx and Engels, and John Griffith’s characterisation of Marxism does no one any credit. He will (and has been) denounced as a Marxist anyway by the supporters of the judiciary. And rightly so. For his facts and research lead inexorably in that direction.
His second major argument that the judiciary is not pursuing a capitalist role is that the judiciary in Russia and Eastern Europe are equally repressive and reactionary! There is another conclusion to that, which is that the systems of society in Britain and Western Europe have more in common with those in Eastern Europe in Russia than they have in conflict.
The wriggling and squirming at the end of the book however has a more serious consequence. ‘Our freedoms’ writes John Griffith ‘depend on the willingness of the press, politicians and others to publicise the breach of those freedoms
‘The Press, politicians and others’. These are the people to whom John Griffith would have us turn for the protection of our freedoms. Yet the Press, by and large, is wound into the same web as are the judges. So are most politicians. If our freedoms depended only on these, there would be less of them even then there are.
The people who established the freedom of the press were the people who sold the Poor Man’s Guardian on the streets in the 1830s and established by sheer organisation and weight of numbers the right of papers to be published without the penal ‘stamp’. The people who broke the Combination laws were the weavers and stockingers who went on strike in spite of them. The people who established the right of procession were the hundreds of thousands of working people who marched with the Chartists. The people who wiped the Industrial Relations Act off the Statute book were the dockers and the printworkers who went on indefinite strike and forced the Industrial Relations Court to tree the five dockers arrested for contempt of the legislation. Yet this episode, because it ridiculed the ‘rule of law’, is described by John Griffith as a ‘calamity’. It wasn’t a calamity. It was a victory. The rule of law is the rule of the capitalist class, and the more it is ridiculed, the better.
I mustn’t give the wrong impression, John Griffith’s book is first class. It is an unanswerable exposé of judicial hypocrisy and prejudice and it has made him a lot of powerful enemies. All socialists should read it. The waverings and wrigglings at the end are easy to spot, and easier to straighten.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>TUC’s own official part of plots<br>
against left leaders</h1>
<h3>(19 January 2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1783, 19 January 2002.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/" target="new"><em>Socialist Worker</em> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>SOCIALIST WORKER</strong> has seen vital documents about the involvement of the Trades Union Congress in the current elections to high office of the RMT rail union. They make it clear that at least one official at the TUC has been plotting with a right wing official of the RMT to improve the vote of right wing candidates and smear rivals from the left. The main documents are:</p>
<ul>
<li>A memo from Mike Power, campaigns officer at the TUC, to Mick Cash, the RMT officer at Watford. Cash is organising the campaign of Phil Bialyk, the centre-right candidate for general secretary of the RMT. The memo says, “Herewith my initial thoughts on why the <strong>Western Mail</strong> should interview Phil. As you will see there are many points to add and I’m far from an expert on the industry. But I think it is a useful outline from our conversation.” There follows a long screed on the experience and suitability for high office of Phil Bialyk.<br>
<br>
The <strong>Western Mail</strong>, which has a long ultra-reactionary tradition, is the only local daily paper that circulates in Bialyk’s area, South Wales.<br>
</li>
<li>A summary of “notes from discussion on writing Phil’s election address, Monday 12 November”. This includes the passage: “We are talking about a massive potential threat from a fanatic who already holds a key post as AGS. He is therefore on the inside and the attack on him has to be more oblique.”<br>
<br>
This is followed by a series of demands, such as “we have to prevent a take-over of the union by extreme left-wing fundamentalists”. The phrase “left-wing fundamentalists” is repeated four more times in the document. The AGS referred to is RMT assistant general secretary Bob Crow, the left candidate for general secretary.<br>
</li>
<li>A document headed <em>Briefing, November 2001 leadership elections in the RMT</em>.<br>
<br>
This is a classical witch-hunting document directed at Bob Crow and other left candidates. It lists in dreary detail Bob’s political associations, including his former membership of the Communist Party and the Socialist Labour Party.<br>
<br>
It even cites his appearance at <em>Marxism</em>, an annual event organised by the Socialist Workers Party and repeatedly addressed by many socialists outside the SWP. The final paragraph reads,</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p class="quoteb">“The main source of industrial unrest in Britain over recent years has been on the railways and in the post office.</p>
<p class="quote">“Already the left have made gains in the main post office union. In addition, an unreconstructed Communist – Mark Serwotka – has become general secretary elect of the main civil service union, the PCS ... the direction of unions in these industries could spell trouble for the government.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="fst">These documents are similar to efforts in the past, including the work of organised right wing factions in the unions, with their supporters in big business and in mainstream newspapers like the <strong>Daily Mirror</strong>. Their purpose is not to enquire why the left is so strong in the unions or to argue the political case against them.</p>
<p>It is simply to brand them as “extremists” and call for a vote against them. Some of the material in these documents was published last week in the <em><strong>Guardian</strong> Diary</em> and London’s <strong>Evening Standard</strong>. The articles drew an immediate denial from TUC general secretary John Monks. He said the TUC was not in any way responsible for any of this material, and said it does not get involved in the elections of individual unions.</p>
<p>Like Bob Crow, Mike Power is a former member of the Communist Party. Last Friday I put a call in to him at TUC headquarters, explained that I was ringing on behalf of <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> and asked for an explanation of the documents.</p>
<p>He rang back immediately and explained that Mick Cash of the RMT was “an old mate of mine”. Cash, he said, had approached him for help and advice about the RMT elections, and he had readily offered both. He denied that he had written any of the main documents, but agreed that he had advised on tone and content. His story was that he, a junior TUC official, had been acting entirely on his own.</p>
<p>He said he was “under the cosh” and facing disciplinary proceedings for his involvement with Cash, and was very sorry for the embarrassment he had caused John Monks. This meek explanation clashes sharply with the professionalism and firmness of the documents. If indeed Mike Power was acting entirely on own initiative, he was behaving in a truly reckless manner.</p>
<p>A more probable explanation is that he was acting on a “need to know” basis. It is likely that he had a nod and a wink to go ahead on the understanding that, if any of his activities were exposed, the mandarins of the TUC would dive for cover and offer him up for sacrifice.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
TUC’s own official part of plots
against left leaders
(19 January 2002)
From Socialist Worker, No.1783, 19 January 2002.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
SOCIALIST WORKER has seen vital documents about the involvement of the Trades Union Congress in the current elections to high office of the RMT rail union. They make it clear that at least one official at the TUC has been plotting with a right wing official of the RMT to improve the vote of right wing candidates and smear rivals from the left. The main documents are:
A memo from Mike Power, campaigns officer at the TUC, to Mick Cash, the RMT officer at Watford. Cash is organising the campaign of Phil Bialyk, the centre-right candidate for general secretary of the RMT. The memo says, “Herewith my initial thoughts on why the Western Mail should interview Phil. As you will see there are many points to add and I’m far from an expert on the industry. But I think it is a useful outline from our conversation.” There follows a long screed on the experience and suitability for high office of Phil Bialyk.
The Western Mail, which has a long ultra-reactionary tradition, is the only local daily paper that circulates in Bialyk’s area, South Wales.
A summary of “notes from discussion on writing Phil’s election address, Monday 12 November”. This includes the passage: “We are talking about a massive potential threat from a fanatic who already holds a key post as AGS. He is therefore on the inside and the attack on him has to be more oblique.”
This is followed by a series of demands, such as “we have to prevent a take-over of the union by extreme left-wing fundamentalists”. The phrase “left-wing fundamentalists” is repeated four more times in the document. The AGS referred to is RMT assistant general secretary Bob Crow, the left candidate for general secretary.
A document headed Briefing, November 2001 leadership elections in the RMT.
This is a classical witch-hunting document directed at Bob Crow and other left candidates. It lists in dreary detail Bob’s political associations, including his former membership of the Communist Party and the Socialist Labour Party.
It even cites his appearance at Marxism, an annual event organised by the Socialist Workers Party and repeatedly addressed by many socialists outside the SWP. The final paragraph reads,
“The main source of industrial unrest in Britain over recent years has been on the railways and in the post office.
“Already the left have made gains in the main post office union. In addition, an unreconstructed Communist – Mark Serwotka – has become general secretary elect of the main civil service union, the PCS ... the direction of unions in these industries could spell trouble for the government.”
These documents are similar to efforts in the past, including the work of organised right wing factions in the unions, with their supporters in big business and in mainstream newspapers like the Daily Mirror. Their purpose is not to enquire why the left is so strong in the unions or to argue the political case against them.
It is simply to brand them as “extremists” and call for a vote against them. Some of the material in these documents was published last week in the Guardian Diary and London’s Evening Standard. The articles drew an immediate denial from TUC general secretary John Monks. He said the TUC was not in any way responsible for any of this material, and said it does not get involved in the elections of individual unions.
Like Bob Crow, Mike Power is a former member of the Communist Party. Last Friday I put a call in to him at TUC headquarters, explained that I was ringing on behalf of Socialist Worker and asked for an explanation of the documents.
He rang back immediately and explained that Mick Cash of the RMT was “an old mate of mine”. Cash, he said, had approached him for help and advice about the RMT elections, and he had readily offered both. He denied that he had written any of the main documents, but agreed that he had advised on tone and content. His story was that he, a junior TUC official, had been acting entirely on his own.
He said he was “under the cosh” and facing disciplinary proceedings for his involvement with Cash, and was very sorry for the embarrassment he had caused John Monks. This meek explanation clashes sharply with the professionalism and firmness of the documents. If indeed Mike Power was acting entirely on own initiative, he was behaving in a truly reckless manner.
A more probable explanation is that he was acting on a “need to know” basis. It is likely that he had a nod and a wink to go ahead on the understanding that, if any of his activities were exposed, the mandarins of the TUC would dive for cover and offer him up for sacrifice.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>No time to make up</h1>
<h3>(December 1998)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.225, December 1998, p.9.<br>
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>The call to forget the past may seem attractive, argues <strong>Paul Foot</strong>, but it means accepting that tyrants escape their crimes.</em></p>
<p class="fst">From two parts of the world whose people have suffered horribly under recent tyrannies comes a plea for reconciliation, for ‘letting bygones be bygones’. In Chile, some workers protest about the arrest in London of the former dictator Pinochet. ‘We were just getting used to freedom and democracy after the long night of tyranny,’ runs their argument. ‘We don’t want to go back to confrontation in the streets. Pinochet is an old, sick man now. He can’t do any harm. Why can’t you let him go, and leave us in our new found social peace?’</p>
<p>Similarly, there are black people in South Africa who plead to be allowed to forget the nightmare of apartheid and to bask in the new atmosphere of racial tolerance. This was the spirit behind Archbishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose basic theme is that although the apartheid regime constantly resorted to the most ruthless racist oppression of the majority, it has been deposed; and now is the time to forgive, forget and build a new society founded on multiracialism and democracy.</p>
<p>This approach appeals to many working class people, who have little or no property, are accustomed to combination and cooperation, and detest harassment. It seems both humane and sensible not to copy the oppressors by hounding and prosecuting them. The argument, however, is founded on a flaw. Essential to it is the notion that oppression is an ugly accident of history, a vile carbuncle on the smooth skin of democratic progress. The norm, runs the argument, is liberal democracy and human progress. Fascism or apartheid occur only occasionally, almost by mistake. It follows that to pick away at the ruins of such an unlikely sore is obsessive and sectarian behaviour which can only revive the sore and make it worse.</p>
<p>The history of these tyrannies, however, tells us something very different. There is a pattern to them which reflects the central characteristic of the world we live in: that it is run by a small class for profit; and the source of that profit is the workers who produce the wealth. The class on top much prefers to make its profits without any nastiness from the masses it exploits. The rulers prefer to operate where the people choose their governments, and where everyone in society is subject to the rule of law. If people vote for their government, and are protected by the rule of law, they are much less likely to complain about their exploitation. Hence the ‘norm’ which seems to emerge from the history of the western democracies – a norm of elected governments and a set of laws which at any rate pretend to apply equally to everyone.</p>
<p>The problem with this exploitative system, however, is that it does not proceed smoothly. It is subject to crises and slumps, which invariably lead to protests, riots and strikes from the workers. Much of this can be absorbed and tolerated, but every now and then, with surprising frequency, the class which runs the system decides it can no longer tolerate the freedoms it previously sponsored. The crisis grows too intense, the workers grow too strong, sometimes even the entire system is threatened with revolution. In such circumstances, the ruling class reaches for rulers ruthless enough to crush the democracy, and in doing so shatter to smithereens the very rule of law of which they boasted. Such rulers include Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany – and Pinochet in Chile.</p>
<p>We now know that Pinochet’s 1973 coup, which overthrew an elected government, rounded up 70,000 of its supporters, burnt their books, raped the women, tortured and murdered at least 10,000 people, was planned in the dear old democratic US by an intelligence agency which was set up ostensibly to protect democracy. The reason for the coup was that investors in Chile had become sick and tired of laws which tried, usually unsuccessfully, to keep prices down. Low prices meant low profits, and low profits for any length of time were intolerable. In South Africa there never was a democracy. The only people who ever voted there were white. Black people had no vote and no civil rights, and could therefore be exploited in an atmosphere of the most revolting oppression.</p>
<p>Such a pattern to the oppression exposes the absurdity of the ‘forgive and forget’ brigade. For if the savages who are called up to preside over the destruction of democracy, the mockery of the rule of law, and racist terror can get away with it, if they are never made to answer for their barbarism, let alone be punished for it, then the consequence is absolutely plain. They will do so again, and again and again, confident in the knowledge that if and when their tyrannies run out of steam or are overthrown, their successors will cover them in the milk of kindness, make them senators, put them up in the London Clinic and even allow them to delete their names from the catalogue of their atrocities.</p>
<p>The mildest conciliators get trapped in their own argument. In Shelley’s <em>Revolt of Islam</em> the revolutionary forces finally corner the hated tyrant Othman. ‘Blood for blood!’ shout the angry crowd as they prepare to do him in. Laon, the beautiful young revolutionary leader (as Shelley imagined himself), eloquently persuades them, in the interests of human decency and fair play, to let the tyrant go. Off he goes, rallies new forces and returns to wipe out the revolution and burn Laon at the stake.</p>
<p>Even more dramatically, the best scene in Bertolt Brecht’s play about the Paris Commune is an argument about whether the revolutionary Communards should march on Versailles and smash the remnants of the reactionary government there. No, no, say the idealist Communards. Why should we spill blood as the tyrants do? Yes, yes, says Brecht’s hero, for we are faced with a simple alternative – the bloody hand now or the severed hand later. In the counter-revolution led from Versailles 20,000 Communards were murdered.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
No time to make up
(December 1998)
From Socialist Review, No.225, December 1998, p.9.
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The call to forget the past may seem attractive, argues Paul Foot, but it means accepting that tyrants escape their crimes.
From two parts of the world whose people have suffered horribly under recent tyrannies comes a plea for reconciliation, for ‘letting bygones be bygones’. In Chile, some workers protest about the arrest in London of the former dictator Pinochet. ‘We were just getting used to freedom and democracy after the long night of tyranny,’ runs their argument. ‘We don’t want to go back to confrontation in the streets. Pinochet is an old, sick man now. He can’t do any harm. Why can’t you let him go, and leave us in our new found social peace?’
Similarly, there are black people in South Africa who plead to be allowed to forget the nightmare of apartheid and to bask in the new atmosphere of racial tolerance. This was the spirit behind Archbishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose basic theme is that although the apartheid regime constantly resorted to the most ruthless racist oppression of the majority, it has been deposed; and now is the time to forgive, forget and build a new society founded on multiracialism and democracy.
This approach appeals to many working class people, who have little or no property, are accustomed to combination and cooperation, and detest harassment. It seems both humane and sensible not to copy the oppressors by hounding and prosecuting them. The argument, however, is founded on a flaw. Essential to it is the notion that oppression is an ugly accident of history, a vile carbuncle on the smooth skin of democratic progress. The norm, runs the argument, is liberal democracy and human progress. Fascism or apartheid occur only occasionally, almost by mistake. It follows that to pick away at the ruins of such an unlikely sore is obsessive and sectarian behaviour which can only revive the sore and make it worse.
The history of these tyrannies, however, tells us something very different. There is a pattern to them which reflects the central characteristic of the world we live in: that it is run by a small class for profit; and the source of that profit is the workers who produce the wealth. The class on top much prefers to make its profits without any nastiness from the masses it exploits. The rulers prefer to operate where the people choose their governments, and where everyone in society is subject to the rule of law. If people vote for their government, and are protected by the rule of law, they are much less likely to complain about their exploitation. Hence the ‘norm’ which seems to emerge from the history of the western democracies – a norm of elected governments and a set of laws which at any rate pretend to apply equally to everyone.
The problem with this exploitative system, however, is that it does not proceed smoothly. It is subject to crises and slumps, which invariably lead to protests, riots and strikes from the workers. Much of this can be absorbed and tolerated, but every now and then, with surprising frequency, the class which runs the system decides it can no longer tolerate the freedoms it previously sponsored. The crisis grows too intense, the workers grow too strong, sometimes even the entire system is threatened with revolution. In such circumstances, the ruling class reaches for rulers ruthless enough to crush the democracy, and in doing so shatter to smithereens the very rule of law of which they boasted. Such rulers include Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany – and Pinochet in Chile.
We now know that Pinochet’s 1973 coup, which overthrew an elected government, rounded up 70,000 of its supporters, burnt their books, raped the women, tortured and murdered at least 10,000 people, was planned in the dear old democratic US by an intelligence agency which was set up ostensibly to protect democracy. The reason for the coup was that investors in Chile had become sick and tired of laws which tried, usually unsuccessfully, to keep prices down. Low prices meant low profits, and low profits for any length of time were intolerable. In South Africa there never was a democracy. The only people who ever voted there were white. Black people had no vote and no civil rights, and could therefore be exploited in an atmosphere of the most revolting oppression.
Such a pattern to the oppression exposes the absurdity of the ‘forgive and forget’ brigade. For if the savages who are called up to preside over the destruction of democracy, the mockery of the rule of law, and racist terror can get away with it, if they are never made to answer for their barbarism, let alone be punished for it, then the consequence is absolutely plain. They will do so again, and again and again, confident in the knowledge that if and when their tyrannies run out of steam or are overthrown, their successors will cover them in the milk of kindness, make them senators, put them up in the London Clinic and even allow them to delete their names from the catalogue of their atrocities.
The mildest conciliators get trapped in their own argument. In Shelley’s Revolt of Islam the revolutionary forces finally corner the hated tyrant Othman. ‘Blood for blood!’ shout the angry crowd as they prepare to do him in. Laon, the beautiful young revolutionary leader (as Shelley imagined himself), eloquently persuades them, in the interests of human decency and fair play, to let the tyrant go. Off he goes, rallies new forces and returns to wipe out the revolution and burn Laon at the stake.
Even more dramatically, the best scene in Bertolt Brecht’s play about the Paris Commune is an argument about whether the revolutionary Communards should march on Versailles and smash the remnants of the reactionary government there. No, no, say the idealist Communards. Why should we spill blood as the tyrants do? Yes, yes, says Brecht’s hero, for we are faced with a simple alternative – the bloody hand now or the severed hand later. In the counter-revolution led from Versailles 20,000 Communards were murdered.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h4>Libel Fund</h4>
<h1>‘Please contribute to<br>
Bookmarks appeal’</h1>
<h3>(23 October 2003)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1874, 25 October 2003.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/" target="new"><em>Socialist Worker</em> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">I AM asking all socialists and freethinkers to contribute to a libel appeal on behalf of the socialist bookshop Bookmarks. Bookmarks was sued by Quintin Hoare and Branca Magas, well known figures on the British left. They complained about an article written in 1993 and published in 1999 in the book <strong>The Balkans, Nationalism and Imperialism</strong>.</p>
<p>Through the well known libel lawyers Carter-Ruck and Partners, Hoare and Magas complained about a passage in the book. No attempt was made by the defendants to justify what they had published. They pointed out that in the year before the writ was issued, the book sold less than 50 copies.</p>
<p>They made a statement in open court apologising, and agreeing to pay the plaintiffs £1,500 damages each. It is a long tradition in our movement that political differences should not be subjected to libel actions, if only because such actions are likely to cost more in lawyers’ fees than any damage caused.</p>
<p>In this case, the £3,000 paid in damages will certainly be dwarfed when Carter-Ruck ask for their costs – likely to be in the region of £10,000. Bookmarks of course have no access to that kind of money, so we are trying to raise as much as we can from well-wishers.</p>
<p>Most <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> readers have gained a lot from Bookmarks, and I appeal to them to contribute to this appeal. Cheques should be made out to Bookmarks Libel Fund.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Libel Fund
‘Please contribute to
Bookmarks appeal’
(23 October 2003)
From Socialist Worker, No.1874, 25 October 2003.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
I AM asking all socialists and freethinkers to contribute to a libel appeal on behalf of the socialist bookshop Bookmarks. Bookmarks was sued by Quintin Hoare and Branca Magas, well known figures on the British left. They complained about an article written in 1993 and published in 1999 in the book The Balkans, Nationalism and Imperialism.
Through the well known libel lawyers Carter-Ruck and Partners, Hoare and Magas complained about a passage in the book. No attempt was made by the defendants to justify what they had published. They pointed out that in the year before the writ was issued, the book sold less than 50 copies.
They made a statement in open court apologising, and agreeing to pay the plaintiffs £1,500 damages each. It is a long tradition in our movement that political differences should not be subjected to libel actions, if only because such actions are likely to cost more in lawyers’ fees than any damage caused.
In this case, the £3,000 paid in damages will certainly be dwarfed when Carter-Ruck ask for their costs – likely to be in the region of £10,000. Bookmarks of course have no access to that kind of money, so we are trying to raise as much as we can from well-wishers.
Most Socialist Worker readers have gained a lot from Bookmarks, and I appeal to them to contribute to this appeal. Cheques should be made out to Bookmarks Libel Fund.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>United in battle for the class</h1>
<h3>(26 May 1984)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 26 May 1984.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">One of the most exhilarating and exciting things about the miners’ strike (and there are plenty of those, as well as the holes in it) is the mobilisation of women.</p>
<p>By all accounts, the march and rally of 10,000 women from mining communities all over Britain last Saturday was a most fantastic event.</p>
<p>The women from the miners’ communities have not been confined to passive support, or to servicing the strike – they have been out on the picket lines.</p>
<p>There was, as far as I can remember, none of this in 1972 or 1974. Then the movement for women’s liberation, which flowered in the 1970s, was in its infancy. As that movement grew, so two arguments sprung up on either side of it to blunt its influence and its growth.</p>
<p>The first was that women’s place was in the home, looking after their men.</p>
<p>This argument was not confined to the <strong>Daily Mail</strong> – it penetrated deep into the working class where solid, socialist men argued that the relationship between men and women in modern society was about right, that there was no oppression in it, and that any concern with women’s liberation was ‘bourgeois deviationism’.<br>
</p>
<h4>Poisoned</h4>
<p class="fst">This attitude was quite strong in the National Union of Mineworkers. Arthur Scargill publicly defended the publishing of ‘pin-up’ women in his union journal, and in the process managed to get through a fair amount of sexist drivel.</p>
<p>Arguments like the ones he used in that debate served to separate the struggle for the emancipation of women from the struggle for the emancipation of labour. Indeed they poisoned the labour movement at its very roots, by pretending that anyone can free themselves while they are condoning discrimination against others.</p>
<p>The other argument seemed to be the opposite, but was in fact the reverse side of the same coin. This was that the central problem in society was the liberation of women, that all woes of modern life stemmed from the oppression of women by men, and that therefore the fundamental battle, far more important than any other, was for women to break the masculine chains which bound them.</p>
<p>Obviously, they could only achieve this without men. Obviously, therefore, this cut out any class struggle, since there were even more men at work than there were women. So this argument too served to separate the struggle for women’s liberation from the struggle for workers’ liberation, to set one set of freedom-fighters in bitter battle against the other, and to weaken both.</p>
<p>There was, throughout that time, a third argument. This was that the treatment of women in capitalist society was one of the most powerful indictments of it; that women were, plainly, worse off than men in society, and that this discrimination, whether in the workplace or the home, greatly assisted the class in power.<br>
</p>
<h4>Rougher</h4>
<p class="fst">Discrimination and sexism was widespread, even in the working class movement, and had unconditionally to be resisted.</p>
<p>But the power to change society could not escape its fundamental economics, its class divisions. The power to change was rooted in the ability of workers to take their own decisions about the work they did, and the wealth they produced, and to act together.</p>
<p>It followed from this that the most effective way to change not just wages and conditions, but also discrimination against women, was working class action.</p>
<p>Much of this is being worked out before our eyes. The ‘keep women in the home’ brigade have been out in force, especially among the scabs. They have had a rougher time than ever before.</p>
<p>The ‘ultras’ who believed only in women’s action, and who denounced the miners’ strike as ‘macho’, have been routed. The combination of the power of working class action and the organisation of women who are part of that struggle, has been electric.</p>
<p>It has changed sexism and prejudice everywhere. I haven’t read everything Arthur Scargill said at the women’s rally in Barnsley, but I’m damned sure he didn’t speak up for pin-ups in his union magazine.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
United in battle for the class
(26 May 1984)
From Socialist Worker, 26 May 1984.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
One of the most exhilarating and exciting things about the miners’ strike (and there are plenty of those, as well as the holes in it) is the mobilisation of women.
By all accounts, the march and rally of 10,000 women from mining communities all over Britain last Saturday was a most fantastic event.
The women from the miners’ communities have not been confined to passive support, or to servicing the strike – they have been out on the picket lines.
There was, as far as I can remember, none of this in 1972 or 1974. Then the movement for women’s liberation, which flowered in the 1970s, was in its infancy. As that movement grew, so two arguments sprung up on either side of it to blunt its influence and its growth.
The first was that women’s place was in the home, looking after their men.
This argument was not confined to the Daily Mail – it penetrated deep into the working class where solid, socialist men argued that the relationship between men and women in modern society was about right, that there was no oppression in it, and that any concern with women’s liberation was ‘bourgeois deviationism’.
Poisoned
This attitude was quite strong in the National Union of Mineworkers. Arthur Scargill publicly defended the publishing of ‘pin-up’ women in his union journal, and in the process managed to get through a fair amount of sexist drivel.
Arguments like the ones he used in that debate served to separate the struggle for the emancipation of women from the struggle for the emancipation of labour. Indeed they poisoned the labour movement at its very roots, by pretending that anyone can free themselves while they are condoning discrimination against others.
The other argument seemed to be the opposite, but was in fact the reverse side of the same coin. This was that the central problem in society was the liberation of women, that all woes of modern life stemmed from the oppression of women by men, and that therefore the fundamental battle, far more important than any other, was for women to break the masculine chains which bound them.
Obviously, they could only achieve this without men. Obviously, therefore, this cut out any class struggle, since there were even more men at work than there were women. So this argument too served to separate the struggle for women’s liberation from the struggle for workers’ liberation, to set one set of freedom-fighters in bitter battle against the other, and to weaken both.
There was, throughout that time, a third argument. This was that the treatment of women in capitalist society was one of the most powerful indictments of it; that women were, plainly, worse off than men in society, and that this discrimination, whether in the workplace or the home, greatly assisted the class in power.
Rougher
Discrimination and sexism was widespread, even in the working class movement, and had unconditionally to be resisted.
But the power to change society could not escape its fundamental economics, its class divisions. The power to change was rooted in the ability of workers to take their own decisions about the work they did, and the wealth they produced, and to act together.
It followed from this that the most effective way to change not just wages and conditions, but also discrimination against women, was working class action.
Much of this is being worked out before our eyes. The ‘keep women in the home’ brigade have been out in force, especially among the scabs. They have had a rougher time than ever before.
The ‘ultras’ who believed only in women’s action, and who denounced the miners’ strike as ‘macho’, have been routed. The combination of the power of working class action and the organisation of women who are part of that struggle, has been electric.
It has changed sexism and prejudice everywhere. I haven’t read everything Arthur Scargill said at the women’s rally in Barnsley, but I’m damned sure he didn’t speak up for pin-ups in his union magazine.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Offensive to the bullies</h1>
<h3>(5 April 1977)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1539, 5 April 1977, p.11.<br>
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot. Published on MIA with the permission of the <a href="https://secure.marxists.org/copyright-permissions/paul-foot.txt" class="absref" target="new">Estate</a>. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>“BLAIR GOES on offensive over trade unions”. The headline in the <em>Times</em> on Monday shouted out from the newsagent’s and I seized the papers eagerly.</strong></p>
<p>“Blair goes on offensive” seemed amazing enough, but on the trade union issue – well, at last, thank heavens, what a relief.</p>
<p>Two days previously the Tories had let loose a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over Labour’s promise to bring in a law to enforce trade union representation in any workplace where the majority of workers vote for it. This was a clear unequivocal pledge made by Blair himself at the 1995 Labour Party conference and repeated, a little shamefacedly, at the start of this election campaign.</p>
<p>The pledge in no way makes up for the eight anti-union laws passed by the Tories since 1979. In no way does it provide the unions with legal backing for the sort of strength they have used in the past. But neither is it meaningless.</p>
<p>The menace of derecognition which has swept through so much of industry leaves workers utterly defenceless.</p>
<p>Where there is no union the Thatcherite chargehand who believes that by some divine right he is empowered to lord it over the workers reigns supreme.</p>
<p>A trade union with proper negotiating rights enables the workers to collect together in places and at meetings from which the boss is excluded, and makes it far easier for them to discuss and take action to preserve not only their pay and conditions but their basic dignities as human beings.<br>
</p>
<h4>Come squawking</h4>
<p class="fst">Blair’s 1995 pledge promised the force of law to such union organisation at the point of production. Passed into law, the proposal would enormously increase the confidence of workers and cut down the arrogance of the employers.</p>
<p>When Thatcher shrieked that the “bully boys” would now be let off the leash, she was talking about shop stewards and convenors. But to every worker in the country the expression “bully boys” means only one thing: the new management autocrats.</p>
<p>Why had Blair stuck to his pledge? Why had he not abandoned it with all the other pledges? No doubt because this one was the absolute minimum condition for the continued support of the trade unions. If Blair had dropped this small promise, he would have lost the union support he so badly needs.</p>
<p>So now, as the right wing press sniffed an “issue” with which they could attack the Labour Party, as Thatcher had come squawking with anti-union hysteria into the election campaign, now precisely was the time for an “offensive” from the Labour leader in which he would stand up for the right to organise.</p>
<p><strong>Then I read Blair’s <em>Times</em> article. As the sentences unfolded, the headline seemed to stand on its head. Blair’s “offensive” was not against the Tory union bashers – it was against the unions.</strong></p>
<p>Blair pledges himself not to roll back Thatcher’s anti-union laws but to continue to uphold them. His government, he promised, would be the “most restrictive government against the unions in Europe”.</p>
<p>Not a clause of Thatcher’s anti-union laws would be repealed. The “scenes” at Grunwick, Wapping and the miners’ strike – scenes in which workers fought against overwhelming odds for their unions and their jobs – would, he promised, “never be seen again in this country”.</p>
<p>He did not (quite) renege on his promise, though he sought to water it down to zero. This is by far the most serious matter of the election campaign, and the whole trade union movement should unite to ensure that Blair sticks to what he said and introduces legal backing for workplace unionisation.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Offensive to the bullies
(5 April 1977)
From Socialist Worker, No.1539, 5 April 1977, p.11.
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot. Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“BLAIR GOES on offensive over trade unions”. The headline in the Times on Monday shouted out from the newsagent’s and I seized the papers eagerly.
“Blair goes on offensive” seemed amazing enough, but on the trade union issue – well, at last, thank heavens, what a relief.
Two days previously the Tories had let loose a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over Labour’s promise to bring in a law to enforce trade union representation in any workplace where the majority of workers vote for it. This was a clear unequivocal pledge made by Blair himself at the 1995 Labour Party conference and repeated, a little shamefacedly, at the start of this election campaign.
The pledge in no way makes up for the eight anti-union laws passed by the Tories since 1979. In no way does it provide the unions with legal backing for the sort of strength they have used in the past. But neither is it meaningless.
The menace of derecognition which has swept through so much of industry leaves workers utterly defenceless.
Where there is no union the Thatcherite chargehand who believes that by some divine right he is empowered to lord it over the workers reigns supreme.
A trade union with proper negotiating rights enables the workers to collect together in places and at meetings from which the boss is excluded, and makes it far easier for them to discuss and take action to preserve not only their pay and conditions but their basic dignities as human beings.
Come squawking
Blair’s 1995 pledge promised the force of law to such union organisation at the point of production. Passed into law, the proposal would enormously increase the confidence of workers and cut down the arrogance of the employers.
When Thatcher shrieked that the “bully boys” would now be let off the leash, she was talking about shop stewards and convenors. But to every worker in the country the expression “bully boys” means only one thing: the new management autocrats.
Why had Blair stuck to his pledge? Why had he not abandoned it with all the other pledges? No doubt because this one was the absolute minimum condition for the continued support of the trade unions. If Blair had dropped this small promise, he would have lost the union support he so badly needs.
So now, as the right wing press sniffed an “issue” with which they could attack the Labour Party, as Thatcher had come squawking with anti-union hysteria into the election campaign, now precisely was the time for an “offensive” from the Labour leader in which he would stand up for the right to organise.
Then I read Blair’s Times article. As the sentences unfolded, the headline seemed to stand on its head. Blair’s “offensive” was not against the Tory union bashers – it was against the unions.
Blair pledges himself not to roll back Thatcher’s anti-union laws but to continue to uphold them. His government, he promised, would be the “most restrictive government against the unions in Europe”.
Not a clause of Thatcher’s anti-union laws would be repealed. The “scenes” at Grunwick, Wapping and the miners’ strike – scenes in which workers fought against overwhelming odds for their unions and their jobs – would, he promised, “never be seen again in this country”.
He did not (quite) renege on his promise, though he sought to water it down to zero. This is by far the most serious matter of the election campaign, and the whole trade union movement should unite to ensure that Blair sticks to what he said and introduces legal backing for workplace unionisation.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Vision of a new world</h1>
<h3>(May 1993)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>Review Article</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.164, May 1993, p.20.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>Frederick Engels’ revolutionary pamphlet <strong>Socialism: Utopian and Scientific</strong> has recently been reprinted. It can inspire a new generation of socialists, says <strong>Paul Foot</strong></em></p>
<p class="fst"><strong>Socialism; Utopian and Scientific</strong>, price £2.95, is available from Bookmarks.</p>
<p class="fst">When I first read this little book 32 years ago, the strongest force on the Marxist left was the Communist Party. I expect I read it very much as the Communists presented it. Its main message, I gathered, was that the French writers St Simon and Fourier and the British philanthropist Robert Owen were a lot of footling dreamers who just didn’t understand the basic point about socialism – that it was a science.</p>
<p>Utopians were illusionists who dreamed of a better world. Marxists understood politics like chemists or biologists understood science. And the most wonderful thing about understanding the science of socialism was that it was bound to come.</p>
<p>It was a bit of a shock to read the book again all those years later and find out that it says just about the opposite of what I remembered. All three ‘Utopians’, especially Fourier, are so brilliantly and enthusiastically presented that I longed to read more of them. None of the three turned out to be the vacuous dreamers I’d imagined. Engels, one of the least sectarian writers in all history, praises them to the skies for their powerful and forceful indictments of the divided societies of their time, and, in Owen’s case at any rate, for the communist alternative he proposed.</p>
<p>If ‘Utopian’ just means dreamer or visionary, then no one was more Utopian than Frederick Engels. What about this for instance?</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now conies under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation.’</p>
<p class="fst">That’s a vision of a new world, a better world, a world worth fighting for, a world to win. Engels’ socialist conviction didn’t just emerge, like a scientific discovery emerges, from observation and experiment. It arose from a deep sense of outrage at the miseries and exploitations of a society ‘where workers are in want of subsistence because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence.’</p>
<p>But does ‘Utopia’ just mean a better society? No, it means what it says: ‘ou’ (Greek for not) ‘topia’ (Greek for place) – no place. The point about Utopia is that it doesn’t exist. It is a world of fantasy. Engels’ complaint about the Utopian socialists was that they were driven by ‘an “idea” existing somehow in eternity before the world was’. They compared their eternal idea of how society might be to what it is. Engels, by contrast, showed how society could be changed by understanding what it is.</p>
<p>For the Utopians, then, ‘socialism conquers the world by virtue of its own power.’ This could happen at any time in history. The history of the Utopians circled around their idea. They had no conception of any historical development.</p>
<p>All this changed with the ‘discovery’ of Karl Marx that the motive force of history was the clash between the class which had the property and those who hadn’t.</p>
<p>Capitalism, the most modern class society, had for the first time developed productive forces so hugely that everyone in the world could share out what was produced. There was now no longer any need of class society. There could be a better society. That socialist society is not Utopian precisely because it is possible – it can be brought about.</p>
<p>How did Marx discover this? Was it just because he was one of the most brilliant intellectuals who ever lived? Not at all. If he had lived at the time of St Simon or Fourier he could have been ten times the genius he was but he would not and could not have put forward his theory of class struggle. What enabled him to do so was the movement of the class struggle itself, from the first general strike, in Lyons in 1831, to the great uprisings of the British Chartists in 1839. These outbreaks of mass working class resistance ushered Marx’s theories onto the intellectual stage – not the other way round.</p>
<p>What is the main point about socialism, therefore?</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Its task is no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism have of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.’</p>
<p class="fst">The road to a new society passes straight through the old one. The seeds of the new society are sown in the struggle against the old one. This is essentially what ‘scientific’ socialism means. Engels talks later about the ‘inevitable downfall’ of capitalism. I find that a most unscientific conclusion. If socialism is scientifically inevitable, why fight for it?</p>
<p>Engels’ main argument was with the idealists, the socialists who thought their ideas were more important than the real conditions and struggles of the less educated mob. His book concentrates so hard on showing that we cannot get to socialism through having an eternal idea that he devotes only a line or two of generalities on how we do get there.</p>
<p>There are plenty of other books (most of them by Lenin) on that point. <strong>Socialism: Utopian and Scientific</strong> is a lively and quite beautifully written summary of Marx’s main economic ideas and where they come from. It is far more passionate than the most fanatical Utopian and far easier to understand than the simplest scientist. It’s also, perhaps most importantly, a powerful antidote to despair. If this best-selling expression of revolutionary confidence could be written in 1877, right in the middle of a downturn which lasted 40 years, who are we to complain of a miserable little blip which hasn’t lasted half as long?</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Vision of a new world
(May 1993)
Review Article, Socialist Review, No.164, May 1993, p.20.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Frederick Engels’ revolutionary pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific has recently been reprinted. It can inspire a new generation of socialists, says Paul Foot
Socialism; Utopian and Scientific, price £2.95, is available from Bookmarks.
When I first read this little book 32 years ago, the strongest force on the Marxist left was the Communist Party. I expect I read it very much as the Communists presented it. Its main message, I gathered, was that the French writers St Simon and Fourier and the British philanthropist Robert Owen were a lot of footling dreamers who just didn’t understand the basic point about socialism – that it was a science.
Utopians were illusionists who dreamed of a better world. Marxists understood politics like chemists or biologists understood science. And the most wonderful thing about understanding the science of socialism was that it was bound to come.
It was a bit of a shock to read the book again all those years later and find out that it says just about the opposite of what I remembered. All three ‘Utopians’, especially Fourier, are so brilliantly and enthusiastically presented that I longed to read more of them. None of the three turned out to be the vacuous dreamers I’d imagined. Engels, one of the least sectarian writers in all history, praises them to the skies for their powerful and forceful indictments of the divided societies of their time, and, in Owen’s case at any rate, for the communist alternative he proposed.
If ‘Utopian’ just means dreamer or visionary, then no one was more Utopian than Frederick Engels. What about this for instance?
‘The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now conies under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation.’
That’s a vision of a new world, a better world, a world worth fighting for, a world to win. Engels’ socialist conviction didn’t just emerge, like a scientific discovery emerges, from observation and experiment. It arose from a deep sense of outrage at the miseries and exploitations of a society ‘where workers are in want of subsistence because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence.’
But does ‘Utopia’ just mean a better society? No, it means what it says: ‘ou’ (Greek for not) ‘topia’ (Greek for place) – no place. The point about Utopia is that it doesn’t exist. It is a world of fantasy. Engels’ complaint about the Utopian socialists was that they were driven by ‘an “idea” existing somehow in eternity before the world was’. They compared their eternal idea of how society might be to what it is. Engels, by contrast, showed how society could be changed by understanding what it is.
For the Utopians, then, ‘socialism conquers the world by virtue of its own power.’ This could happen at any time in history. The history of the Utopians circled around their idea. They had no conception of any historical development.
All this changed with the ‘discovery’ of Karl Marx that the motive force of history was the clash between the class which had the property and those who hadn’t.
Capitalism, the most modern class society, had for the first time developed productive forces so hugely that everyone in the world could share out what was produced. There was now no longer any need of class society. There could be a better society. That socialist society is not Utopian precisely because it is possible – it can be brought about.
How did Marx discover this? Was it just because he was one of the most brilliant intellectuals who ever lived? Not at all. If he had lived at the time of St Simon or Fourier he could have been ten times the genius he was but he would not and could not have put forward his theory of class struggle. What enabled him to do so was the movement of the class struggle itself, from the first general strike, in Lyons in 1831, to the great uprisings of the British Chartists in 1839. These outbreaks of mass working class resistance ushered Marx’s theories onto the intellectual stage – not the other way round.
What is the main point about socialism, therefore?
‘Its task is no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism have of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.’
The road to a new society passes straight through the old one. The seeds of the new society are sown in the struggle against the old one. This is essentially what ‘scientific’ socialism means. Engels talks later about the ‘inevitable downfall’ of capitalism. I find that a most unscientific conclusion. If socialism is scientifically inevitable, why fight for it?
Engels’ main argument was with the idealists, the socialists who thought their ideas were more important than the real conditions and struggles of the less educated mob. His book concentrates so hard on showing that we cannot get to socialism through having an eternal idea that he devotes only a line or two of generalities on how we do get there.
There are plenty of other books (most of them by Lenin) on that point. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a lively and quite beautifully written summary of Marx’s main economic ideas and where they come from. It is far more passionate than the most fanatical Utopian and far easier to understand than the simplest scientist. It’s also, perhaps most importantly, a powerful antidote to despair. If this best-selling expression of revolutionary confidence could be written in 1877, right in the middle of a downturn which lasted 40 years, who are we to complain of a miserable little blip which hasn’t lasted half as long?
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Reaching across the centuries</h1>
<h3>(7 January 1989)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 7 January 1989.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 19–21.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The best thing about Christmas was Janet Suzman’s <em>Othello</em> on Channel 4. I have been a Shakespeare freak from a very young age, largely because I never did a Shakespeare play for any examination, and so could read the stuff (and speak it) for pleasure.</p>
<p>For years and years I puzzled over Othello. I couldn’t understand why Iago was so keen to do him down. I read the conventional criticism, including a man called Bradley, who wailed on about a ‘tragic flaw’ in Othello’s character, which was mirrored by a ‘tragic flaw’ in Iago’s character. The whole play, said Bradley, was about jealousy. Othello was jealous of Desdemona, and Iago of Othello. Not very convincing. I always thought the play more haunting and overpowering than any other.</p>
<p>One cold night about twelve years ago I spoke to a socialist meeting in Nottingham and stayed with a comrade who was interested in drama. The next day, as I was about to leave, he pressed into my hands a Pelican book called <strong>Shakespeare in a Changing World</strong>. I flicked through it as the train pulled out. It was written by people who were once Marxists or who might (at that time) admit to be Marxists, but on the whole were trying to avoid letting their readers know they were Marxists.</p>
<p>I was about to put it down when I came across a chapter entitled <em>Othello and the Dignity of Man</em> by G.M. Matthews.<br>
</p>
<h4>Passion</h4>
<p class="fst">I got to know Geoffrey Matthews later. He was, for all too short a time, a friend and a teacher. I shared his passion for the revolutionary poet Shelley. Geoffrey read Shelley not as a dead poet but a living revolutionary, and so he understood him. He also read and enjoyed Shakespeare, not just as the greatest poet and dramatist of them all, but also as a creature of revolutionary times who took a deep interest in the world about him.</p>
<p>Suddenly, I read two sentences which laid Othello bare.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Iago hates Othello because he is a Moor. This irrational but powerful motive, underlying the obsessive intensity of his feeling and the improvised reasons with which he justifies it, continually presses up towards the surface of his language.</p>
<p class="fst">Yes, but what of the ‘tragic flaw’ in Othello? Geoffrey explains:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The theory is a nuisance because the potentialities of men are infinite and any number of potential ‘flaws’ can be found or invented to account for his downfall. Yet in all Shakespeare’s tragedies, except perhaps <em>Macbeth</em>, the determining ‘flaw’ is in society rather than in the hero’s supposed distance from perfection.<br>
</p>
<h4>Adultery</h4>
<p class="fst">Tragedy does not occur in Hamlet because the hero has a bad habit of not killing at once, but because the power of the Danish Court is founded on violence and adultery ...</p>
<p class="quoteb">The ‘tragic flaw’ theory means that it is a punishable offence to be any particular kind of a man. Moreover it shifts the emphasis from men in conflict to the private mind.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Othello</em> all becomes very, very clear in this magnificent essay—but where to see it on stage? Othello is usually played by some fruity-voiced RADA graduate, rather apologetically blacked up. Extracts about racism, ‘human nature’ and prejudice are quietly shoved into the background.</p>
<p>I don’t know if Janet Suzman ever read Geoffrey Matthews, but the two seemed to come together most miraculously in her production – which was devised especially for the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and greeted with sustained delight there by packed audiences of every colour, night after night.</p>
<p>Othello here is ‘rude of speech’ (though his language is magnificent). He is a South African black warrior marrying the daughter of a prominent white businessman. And Iago, though he recognises the Moor for a decent, generous, brave, open-hearted and friendly man, hates him with a consuming, irrational and all-devouring passion because he is a Moor.</p>
<p>The play throws its passions and its problems through 400 years, and means something at last. It is also triumphant. Geoffrey Matthews wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">All that Iago’s poison has achieved is an object that ‘poisons sight’: a bed on which a black man and a white woman, though they are dead, are embracing. Human dignity, the play says, is indivisible.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Reaching across the centuries
(7 January 1989)
From Socialist Worker, 7 January 1989.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 19–21.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The best thing about Christmas was Janet Suzman’s Othello on Channel 4. I have been a Shakespeare freak from a very young age, largely because I never did a Shakespeare play for any examination, and so could read the stuff (and speak it) for pleasure.
For years and years I puzzled over Othello. I couldn’t understand why Iago was so keen to do him down. I read the conventional criticism, including a man called Bradley, who wailed on about a ‘tragic flaw’ in Othello’s character, which was mirrored by a ‘tragic flaw’ in Iago’s character. The whole play, said Bradley, was about jealousy. Othello was jealous of Desdemona, and Iago of Othello. Not very convincing. I always thought the play more haunting and overpowering than any other.
One cold night about twelve years ago I spoke to a socialist meeting in Nottingham and stayed with a comrade who was interested in drama. The next day, as I was about to leave, he pressed into my hands a Pelican book called Shakespeare in a Changing World. I flicked through it as the train pulled out. It was written by people who were once Marxists or who might (at that time) admit to be Marxists, but on the whole were trying to avoid letting their readers know they were Marxists.
I was about to put it down when I came across a chapter entitled Othello and the Dignity of Man by G.M. Matthews.
Passion
I got to know Geoffrey Matthews later. He was, for all too short a time, a friend and a teacher. I shared his passion for the revolutionary poet Shelley. Geoffrey read Shelley not as a dead poet but a living revolutionary, and so he understood him. He also read and enjoyed Shakespeare, not just as the greatest poet and dramatist of them all, but also as a creature of revolutionary times who took a deep interest in the world about him.
Suddenly, I read two sentences which laid Othello bare.
Iago hates Othello because he is a Moor. This irrational but powerful motive, underlying the obsessive intensity of his feeling and the improvised reasons with which he justifies it, continually presses up towards the surface of his language.
Yes, but what of the ‘tragic flaw’ in Othello? Geoffrey explains:
The theory is a nuisance because the potentialities of men are infinite and any number of potential ‘flaws’ can be found or invented to account for his downfall. Yet in all Shakespeare’s tragedies, except perhaps Macbeth, the determining ‘flaw’ is in society rather than in the hero’s supposed distance from perfection.
Adultery
Tragedy does not occur in Hamlet because the hero has a bad habit of not killing at once, but because the power of the Danish Court is founded on violence and adultery ...
The ‘tragic flaw’ theory means that it is a punishable offence to be any particular kind of a man. Moreover it shifts the emphasis from men in conflict to the private mind.
Othello all becomes very, very clear in this magnificent essay—but where to see it on stage? Othello is usually played by some fruity-voiced RADA graduate, rather apologetically blacked up. Extracts about racism, ‘human nature’ and prejudice are quietly shoved into the background.
I don’t know if Janet Suzman ever read Geoffrey Matthews, but the two seemed to come together most miraculously in her production – which was devised especially for the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and greeted with sustained delight there by packed audiences of every colour, night after night.
Othello here is ‘rude of speech’ (though his language is magnificent). He is a South African black warrior marrying the daughter of a prominent white businessman. And Iago, though he recognises the Moor for a decent, generous, brave, open-hearted and friendly man, hates him with a consuming, irrational and all-devouring passion because he is a Moor.
The play throws its passions and its problems through 400 years, and means something at last. It is also triumphant. Geoffrey Matthews wrote:
All that Iago’s poison has achieved is an object that ‘poisons sight’: a bed on which a black man and a white woman, though they are dead, are embracing. Human dignity, the play says, is indivisible.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Press</small><br>
Private parts</h1>
<h3>(October 1992)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.157, October 1992, p.14.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>David Mellor’s resignation marks the latest in a line of scandals that have spurred the government to take measures to curb the press. Everyone hates the tabloids, says <strong>Paul Foot</strong>, but a law to stop them won’t work</em></p>
<p class="fst">Horrified by disclosures in the newspapers about David Mellor and an actress, not to mention pictures of a near-naked Duchess of York, the government has resolved to ‘do something’ about the excesses of the press. The job itself has been farmed out to the Ministry of Heritage where the Secretary of State (and the man who masterminded John Major’s campaign for the Tory leadership) was the aforesaid David Mellor.</p>
<p>This has caused some embarrassment so the new ‘Privacy Bill’ (or whatever else it is called) has been passed over to Mellor’s junior, an apparently ‘safe’ gentleman from the shires called Robert Key. As Key drafts his bill, he gets plenty of helpful advice from the Labour Party, whose front-bencher on these matters, Clive Soley, is writing his own bill to protect the general public from the ravages of the gutter press. Soley makes it clear that his aim is not the same as that of the government. Their bill will protect only the rich and famous; his bill will concentrate on protecting ordinary folk who are treated by the media like dirt.</p>
<p>All these efforts are widely supported almost everywhere. Everyone hates the tabloid newspapers, especially the 12 million people who buy them every day. The capitalist press is rotten and corrupt. It breeds a specially nasty type of human rotweiler whose peculiar quality is to be as offensive as possible to anyone at all who might in some way assist towards ‘a good story’.</p>
<p>It is this offensive behaviour – bursting into peoples’ houses to seize photographs of dead relatives; making up quotations; tapping phones, half-kidnapping children and generally trampling over people, that earns for editors and journalists such universal contempt. It seems obvious that the media do have too much power and that the more preposterous manifestations of that power need to be cut down by law.</p>
<p>But what law? As soon as detailed proposals start to be spelt out, the doubts arise. Consider a law to protect privacy. Would it ban any photograph which had not been taken by permission? How would that apply to some of the great pictures – action pictures such as the man defying the tank in Tiananmen Square, or (from the sublime to the ridiculous) pictures of Fergie prancing with her financial adviser in a rich man’s garden? If no photographs are to be published unless they are taken with permission, the whole world would be a duller place. Certainly, the high and mighty (especially royalty) would much easier be able to maintain the consistency of their family values. If such a law is accompanied by a rider insisting that any without permission pictures be ‘in the public interest’, the question arises at once ‘what is in the public interest?’</p>
<p>In a class society, privacy is likely to be defined as important peoples’ privacy; public interest as rich peoples’ interest. Even if the law states specifically that that must not be so, the law will be enforced, as it always is, on class lines. Such a law, then, leaves most of us worse informed and certainly less amused even than we are now.</p>
<p>What about the other demand of the press reformers – a right of reply? Isn’t it obviously fair that anyone attacked in the press should have a right to put their own point of view in return? A law like that sounds simple. In fact it would be extraordinarily complex. How much has to be written about a person before he or she has a right to reply? Who decides in each instance whether the right stands or not? How should the reply be framed; how long should it be, what prominence should it have and is there a right of reply to the reply?</p>
<p>Once again, the only certainty about the world we live in is that the answers will favour the people who least need a right of reply. The right of reply, whatever the wording of the law, would be used in practise further to shield the big businessmen, civil servants, bankers, bishops, lawyers, peers and spies whose activities are already kept almost secret from the world they rob. The rare instances where the media probe into the dirty work of the rich would be cut down still further by ruthless and prodigious use of the ‘right to reply’.</p>
<p>Too often, well meaning busybody politicians (Charter 88 is a glorious example) seek to solve the problems of society by promulgating a law to curb the transgressors. The evidence, however, is overwhelming that the law itself is every bit as corrupted by class as are the media it would be seeking to correct. This is not to say that no reforming laws should be supported. A law designed wholly against the ruling class (like a bill to curb working hours, or a health and safety law) may indeed in practise be reduced to a shadow of what it was in theory, but it is still worth supporting, since it can do no harm and may do some good.</p>
<p>But a law to curb the press will not work just one way, just against the moguls and the proprietors. It will work far more savagely against openly challenging and revolutionary papers like this one, and will even further restrict the few independent journalists who attempt to rip the veil away from the secret state and its paymasters.</p>
<p>Can anything, therefore, be done about the vile standards and offensive behaviour of the media? Of course. These matters should be the permanent concern of the workers who work in the media and of those who read and watch the media. They should be discussed and acted on where discussion and action can have some effect.</p>
<p>The trade unions in the media have always given far too low a priority to the content of what they produce. The ridiculously named Ethics Committee of the National Union of Journalists makes itself a permanent laughing stock by sitting in moral judgement over individual journalists, and castigating them for their transgressions. The unions in the media should combine to set up their own standards committee. They should appoint to it people whose judgements would have a wide measure of respect. Where they find against the media they should direct their fire on the people responsible – the proprietors – and punish them where they hurt most, in the pocket.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Press
Private parts
(October 1992)
From Socialist Review, No.157, October 1992, p.14.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
David Mellor’s resignation marks the latest in a line of scandals that have spurred the government to take measures to curb the press. Everyone hates the tabloids, says Paul Foot, but a law to stop them won’t work
Horrified by disclosures in the newspapers about David Mellor and an actress, not to mention pictures of a near-naked Duchess of York, the government has resolved to ‘do something’ about the excesses of the press. The job itself has been farmed out to the Ministry of Heritage where the Secretary of State (and the man who masterminded John Major’s campaign for the Tory leadership) was the aforesaid David Mellor.
This has caused some embarrassment so the new ‘Privacy Bill’ (or whatever else it is called) has been passed over to Mellor’s junior, an apparently ‘safe’ gentleman from the shires called Robert Key. As Key drafts his bill, he gets plenty of helpful advice from the Labour Party, whose front-bencher on these matters, Clive Soley, is writing his own bill to protect the general public from the ravages of the gutter press. Soley makes it clear that his aim is not the same as that of the government. Their bill will protect only the rich and famous; his bill will concentrate on protecting ordinary folk who are treated by the media like dirt.
All these efforts are widely supported almost everywhere. Everyone hates the tabloid newspapers, especially the 12 million people who buy them every day. The capitalist press is rotten and corrupt. It breeds a specially nasty type of human rotweiler whose peculiar quality is to be as offensive as possible to anyone at all who might in some way assist towards ‘a good story’.
It is this offensive behaviour – bursting into peoples’ houses to seize photographs of dead relatives; making up quotations; tapping phones, half-kidnapping children and generally trampling over people, that earns for editors and journalists such universal contempt. It seems obvious that the media do have too much power and that the more preposterous manifestations of that power need to be cut down by law.
But what law? As soon as detailed proposals start to be spelt out, the doubts arise. Consider a law to protect privacy. Would it ban any photograph which had not been taken by permission? How would that apply to some of the great pictures – action pictures such as the man defying the tank in Tiananmen Square, or (from the sublime to the ridiculous) pictures of Fergie prancing with her financial adviser in a rich man’s garden? If no photographs are to be published unless they are taken with permission, the whole world would be a duller place. Certainly, the high and mighty (especially royalty) would much easier be able to maintain the consistency of their family values. If such a law is accompanied by a rider insisting that any without permission pictures be ‘in the public interest’, the question arises at once ‘what is in the public interest?’
In a class society, privacy is likely to be defined as important peoples’ privacy; public interest as rich peoples’ interest. Even if the law states specifically that that must not be so, the law will be enforced, as it always is, on class lines. Such a law, then, leaves most of us worse informed and certainly less amused even than we are now.
What about the other demand of the press reformers – a right of reply? Isn’t it obviously fair that anyone attacked in the press should have a right to put their own point of view in return? A law like that sounds simple. In fact it would be extraordinarily complex. How much has to be written about a person before he or she has a right to reply? Who decides in each instance whether the right stands or not? How should the reply be framed; how long should it be, what prominence should it have and is there a right of reply to the reply?
Once again, the only certainty about the world we live in is that the answers will favour the people who least need a right of reply. The right of reply, whatever the wording of the law, would be used in practise further to shield the big businessmen, civil servants, bankers, bishops, lawyers, peers and spies whose activities are already kept almost secret from the world they rob. The rare instances where the media probe into the dirty work of the rich would be cut down still further by ruthless and prodigious use of the ‘right to reply’.
Too often, well meaning busybody politicians (Charter 88 is a glorious example) seek to solve the problems of society by promulgating a law to curb the transgressors. The evidence, however, is overwhelming that the law itself is every bit as corrupted by class as are the media it would be seeking to correct. This is not to say that no reforming laws should be supported. A law designed wholly against the ruling class (like a bill to curb working hours, or a health and safety law) may indeed in practise be reduced to a shadow of what it was in theory, but it is still worth supporting, since it can do no harm and may do some good.
But a law to curb the press will not work just one way, just against the moguls and the proprietors. It will work far more savagely against openly challenging and revolutionary papers like this one, and will even further restrict the few independent journalists who attempt to rip the veil away from the secret state and its paymasters.
Can anything, therefore, be done about the vile standards and offensive behaviour of the media? Of course. These matters should be the permanent concern of the workers who work in the media and of those who read and watch the media. They should be discussed and acted on where discussion and action can have some effect.
The trade unions in the media have always given far too low a priority to the content of what they produce. The ridiculously named Ethics Committee of the National Union of Journalists makes itself a permanent laughing stock by sitting in moral judgement over individual journalists, and castigating them for their transgressions. The unions in the media should combine to set up their own standards committee. They should appoint to it people whose judgements would have a wide measure of respect. Where they find against the media they should direct their fire on the people responsible – the proprietors – and punish them where they hurt most, in the pocket.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Stop press</h1>
<h3>(February 1993)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.161, February 1993, pp.20-21.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Nothing can be more discordant than the noise of editors and proprietors of British newspapers howling in unison about their dedication to the freedom of the press. A group of people more dedicated than any other in the country to the distortion and corruption of the truth cover themselves with glory for their truth telling. Loaded down with bias and deceit they proclaim the values of fairness and veracity. Ignoring a million lies, they unearth a rare expose and pretend that it is the norm. From Kelvin MacKenzie of the <strong>Sun</strong> to Andreas Whittam-Smith of the <strong>Independent</strong>, the editors and their masters stuff their newspapers with frenzied diatribes in support of their right to do just as they please.</p>
<p>A perfect example of this hypocrisy was the <strong>Daily Mirror</strong> leading article of 11 January. It started:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The freedom of the press is no more no less – and must never be more or less than the inalienable right of every citizen to speak his mind in public without fear of penalty, prosecution or persecution.’</p>
<p class="fst">Five days later Tim Minogue, a subeditor on the <strong>Sunday Mirror</strong>, who had written a marvellous defence in a letter to the <strong>UK Press Gazette</strong> of those like him who had been summarily sacked without a word of explanation a few weeks earlier, was told he must swear in writing that he will never again denounce his employers in public – or be sacked. Thus did the <strong>Mirror</strong> management practise the ‘freedom from persecution’ which it preached.</p>
<p>The full horror of the mass hypocrisy of the capitalist press in recent weeks has converted many socialists to the notion of some form of state control of the press. By far the least offensive of the various proposals for such control has come from Labour MP Clive Soley, whose Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill has got wide support in parliament.</p>
<p>Soley, of course, is not after protecting rich people’s privacy or the royals’ nakedness as other people are. What sickens him, he says, is the inaccuracy of reports which so often damage the humble and meek. He proposes a Press Authority which can force the bumptious editors to correct mistakes with the same sort of prominence with which the mistakes were made.</p>
<p>It seems fair and reasonable. But like so many things which seem fair and reasonable in our society, the proposal does not take account of the fact that the state itself, which enforces every law and would certainly enforce this one, is unfair and unreasonable. A fair and reasonable law will be enforced unfairly and unreasonably. One result would certainly be a restriction on the few miserable advantages which a press unfettered by the state can bring to the dispossessed and to labour.</p>
<p>Competition between newspapers and the desire to bring readers new and fresh material occasionally allows a bold spirit or an inquiring mind to break free from the mould. A whole host of exposes even in the last 10 wretched years, even in some of the most Tory newspapers, are evidence that the rich do not always get everything their own way. For all their reaction and corruption, the newspapers do publish a good deal of information which is hostile and embarrassing to ruling class interests.</p>
<p>It is this material which is constantly threatened by the oppressive measures with which the ruling class protects its privacy and its purse. The law of libel, more vicious in Britain than in any other industrial democracy, and the associated laws of confidence and even copyright, are a constant menace to anyone who threatens the rich (the poor are not protected, since actions under these heads are not eligible for legal aid).</p>
<p>Yes, say Clive Soley and his supporters, we agree – but what has this to do with our idea for a law to force the press to correct their mistakes? The answer is that such a law will simply take its stand alongside the others – and become a threat not to lying editors but to the already shrinking area of challenging and revealing journalism.</p>
<p>For what is a ‘mistake’ and what is the meaning of the word ‘inaccurate’? Is it a mistake or inaccurate to repeat the drivelling of generals during a Gulf War? Certainly not. Is it a mistake to devote a front page to a picture of an innocent black defendant in a murder trial? Not at all. The defendant no doubt is black – the trial is taking place. Is it a mistake to hound a gay vicar or a left wing child abuse counsellor or an Irish republican? Not at all.</p>
<p>But if a mistake of the slightest degree is made in an article attacking, say, the Kuwaiti royal family or the medicine industry or (worst of all) their lawyers, an enormous pack of lawyers and PR men will descend on Clive Soley’s statutory authority and demand that the mistake be put right.</p>
<p>It was instructive that when Clive Soley introduced his bill to a press conference he brought with him a very rich woman called Mona Shabajee. She assured the press that if Clive’s bill had been law, she could not have been hounded as she was. But wait. How was she hounded? She paid for a freebie holiday for a secretary of state, David Mellor. If Mrs Shabajee had not been ‘hounded’, perhaps the freebie holiday would not have been exposed, and David Mellor would still be lecturing us on sexual morality and high principles in office. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Mrs Shabajee was hounded. But certainly she is right. She, and probably the whole Mellor scandal, would have been well protected by Clive Soley’s bill.</p>
<p>Mistakes and inaccuracies are defined by our class society like everything else. A mistake which helps the people who own property is not really a mistake. An inaccurate defence of the fine qualities of British millionaires would not really be considered inaccurate. The right to reply would hardly be relevant. But if there is one mistake in an otherwise accurate expose of those millionaires, then whoever is responsible would, thanks to Clive Soley, have to apologise in the most abject terms.</p>
<p>The liberal objection comes at once: surely some control of press inaccuracies is better than none. No it is not, because that control will direct itself not to the great mass of press distortion and corruption but to the very few areas where printed journalism tried to run against the stream. Rotten as the press is, it is better without a law which would still further boost the people responsible for its rottenness.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Stop press
(February 1993)
From Socialist Review, No.161, February 1993, pp.20-21.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Nothing can be more discordant than the noise of editors and proprietors of British newspapers howling in unison about their dedication to the freedom of the press. A group of people more dedicated than any other in the country to the distortion and corruption of the truth cover themselves with glory for their truth telling. Loaded down with bias and deceit they proclaim the values of fairness and veracity. Ignoring a million lies, they unearth a rare expose and pretend that it is the norm. From Kelvin MacKenzie of the Sun to Andreas Whittam-Smith of the Independent, the editors and their masters stuff their newspapers with frenzied diatribes in support of their right to do just as they please.
A perfect example of this hypocrisy was the Daily Mirror leading article of 11 January. It started:
‘The freedom of the press is no more no less – and must never be more or less than the inalienable right of every citizen to speak his mind in public without fear of penalty, prosecution or persecution.’
Five days later Tim Minogue, a subeditor on the Sunday Mirror, who had written a marvellous defence in a letter to the UK Press Gazette of those like him who had been summarily sacked without a word of explanation a few weeks earlier, was told he must swear in writing that he will never again denounce his employers in public – or be sacked. Thus did the Mirror management practise the ‘freedom from persecution’ which it preached.
The full horror of the mass hypocrisy of the capitalist press in recent weeks has converted many socialists to the notion of some form of state control of the press. By far the least offensive of the various proposals for such control has come from Labour MP Clive Soley, whose Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill has got wide support in parliament.
Soley, of course, is not after protecting rich people’s privacy or the royals’ nakedness as other people are. What sickens him, he says, is the inaccuracy of reports which so often damage the humble and meek. He proposes a Press Authority which can force the bumptious editors to correct mistakes with the same sort of prominence with which the mistakes were made.
It seems fair and reasonable. But like so many things which seem fair and reasonable in our society, the proposal does not take account of the fact that the state itself, which enforces every law and would certainly enforce this one, is unfair and unreasonable. A fair and reasonable law will be enforced unfairly and unreasonably. One result would certainly be a restriction on the few miserable advantages which a press unfettered by the state can bring to the dispossessed and to labour.
Competition between newspapers and the desire to bring readers new and fresh material occasionally allows a bold spirit or an inquiring mind to break free from the mould. A whole host of exposes even in the last 10 wretched years, even in some of the most Tory newspapers, are evidence that the rich do not always get everything their own way. For all their reaction and corruption, the newspapers do publish a good deal of information which is hostile and embarrassing to ruling class interests.
It is this material which is constantly threatened by the oppressive measures with which the ruling class protects its privacy and its purse. The law of libel, more vicious in Britain than in any other industrial democracy, and the associated laws of confidence and even copyright, are a constant menace to anyone who threatens the rich (the poor are not protected, since actions under these heads are not eligible for legal aid).
Yes, say Clive Soley and his supporters, we agree – but what has this to do with our idea for a law to force the press to correct their mistakes? The answer is that such a law will simply take its stand alongside the others – and become a threat not to lying editors but to the already shrinking area of challenging and revealing journalism.
For what is a ‘mistake’ and what is the meaning of the word ‘inaccurate’? Is it a mistake or inaccurate to repeat the drivelling of generals during a Gulf War? Certainly not. Is it a mistake to devote a front page to a picture of an innocent black defendant in a murder trial? Not at all. The defendant no doubt is black – the trial is taking place. Is it a mistake to hound a gay vicar or a left wing child abuse counsellor or an Irish republican? Not at all.
But if a mistake of the slightest degree is made in an article attacking, say, the Kuwaiti royal family or the medicine industry or (worst of all) their lawyers, an enormous pack of lawyers and PR men will descend on Clive Soley’s statutory authority and demand that the mistake be put right.
It was instructive that when Clive Soley introduced his bill to a press conference he brought with him a very rich woman called Mona Shabajee. She assured the press that if Clive’s bill had been law, she could not have been hounded as she was. But wait. How was she hounded? She paid for a freebie holiday for a secretary of state, David Mellor. If Mrs Shabajee had not been ‘hounded’, perhaps the freebie holiday would not have been exposed, and David Mellor would still be lecturing us on sexual morality and high principles in office. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Mrs Shabajee was hounded. But certainly she is right. She, and probably the whole Mellor scandal, would have been well protected by Clive Soley’s bill.
Mistakes and inaccuracies are defined by our class society like everything else. A mistake which helps the people who own property is not really a mistake. An inaccurate defence of the fine qualities of British millionaires would not really be considered inaccurate. The right to reply would hardly be relevant. But if there is one mistake in an otherwise accurate expose of those millionaires, then whoever is responsible would, thanks to Clive Soley, have to apologise in the most abject terms.
The liberal objection comes at once: surely some control of press inaccuracies is better than none. No it is not, because that control will direct itself not to the great mass of press distortion and corruption but to the very few areas where printed journalism tried to run against the stream. Rotten as the press is, it is better without a law which would still further boost the people responsible for its rottenness.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Business as usual<br>
on the Barbican</h1>
<h4>Workers <i>versus</i> management</h4>
<h3>(July 1968)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/sw-gb/1968/index.html#n0085" target="new">No. 85</a>, July 1968, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">ON THE MASS DEMONSTRATION last November called to declare solidarity with the pickets at Mytons site on the Barbican in the City of London after a strike of more than a year, Lou Lewis, the federation steward on the site, declared: “This strike will not soon be forgotten in the building industry, and it will, I hope, give confidence to building workers everywhere.”</p>
<p>Lewis’s hopes have been fulfilled more than he could have imagined. For now, only eight months later, the workers on the Mytons site have come out on strike again.</p>
<p>The employers and the union officials hoped to use the defeat of the workers last year as a permanent weapon against their future labour force. They have been confounded not merely by their own arrogance but also by the continuing refusal of the workers to be used as profit-fodder.</p>
<p>Last November, after the pickets were withdrawn, the employers blacklisted all the militants formerly employed there. Some of the workers who had worked on the site before the dispute were encouraged back by letters which vilified Lou Lewis and his colleagues.</p>
<p>The 15 scabs, who had been brought up from Mytons site at Brighton under heavy Securicor guard and had passed the pickets in police vans, formed the nucleus of the new labour force which was built up to its full complement of 200 men last Christmas. These workers were not allowed to elect their own shop stewards. Instead, the Brighton scabs (or “royalists” as they are known on the site) were appointed to all the shop stewards positions.<br>
</p>
<h4>Allowance</h4>
<p class="fst">From the onset the employers made their position plain. The scabs were “ loyal ” workers, and would be paid accordingly. They were given a £5 a week travel allowance to bring them up from Brighton, and a further scabs. Peter Treacy, the federation steward, for instance, reckons that he will lose a few quid by the new scheme. “But at least we’d be solid when we advance again,” he told me.</p>
<p>The demand was rejected outright by the management who realised that the new scheme would vitiate their “ divide and rule” tactics. Accordingly, on Monday June 16, all the 90 carpenters except the six Brighton scabs walked out on strike. They were still out, angry and militant, when I spoke to them on June 20.</p>
<p>On that day, each striker received a familiar letter from the management, informing them that their action was “contrary to the site procedure agreement and to the Working Rule [line of text missing] them up from Brighton, and a further unearned “bonus” of 25 hours paid work to compensate for the “long journey.” In addition the Brighton scabs were given the jobs with the best bonus rates, and lowest targets.</p>
<p>The bonus rate in the early months was fixed at a standard 4s. per hour for craftsmen, 3s. for labourers. In February, the unions and employers, acting outside the Working Rule Agreement and without even consulting the workers, agreed a bonus scheme which operated on a gang basis. Different gangs got different bonuses and different targets.</p>
<p>No sooner had the agreement been reached than the employers made it clear how they were going to operate it. The gang containing the Brighton scabs got all the good jobs and the low targets. The other gangs were given targets which made it almost impossible for any of them to make more than the “ fall-back ” rate of 4s. Bill Jones, the Brighton “Federation steward” appointed by the management, admitted to a meeting of the workers that if he lived in the area he couldn’t afford to work at the new rates.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the workers soon slung out the Brighton scabs and elected their own stewards.</p>
<p>The management replied by threatening to withdraw the “fall-back” bonus, thus rendering most of the workers worse off after the agreement than before. The new, elected stewards threatened the management with a riot if the fall-back rate was withdrawn, and the fall-back rate stayed.<br>
</p>
<h4>Failure</h4>
<p class="fst">The gross favouritism shown to the Brighton scabs, and the continued failure of the management to lower targets or pay more bonus irritated the workers more and more. They pointed out that many of the carpenters’ gangs were working at targets of 15ft. super, while the Brighton scabs were working at 8 ft. super. In Turriffs and many other building sites, the standard target is 8 ft. super, and the stewards argued, quite rightly, that the management were using the Brighton scabs shamelessly to exploit the majority of the workers.</p>
<p>Throughout April and May the stewards were constantly arguing with, the management over bonus pay. After several weeks, the various demands in different parts of the site hardened into one : that the bonus rate should be the same for all gangs.</p>
<p>This demand did not mean that the management would pay out more money. In fact, on present bonus levels, less money would probably be paid out than under the present scheme. But the “all-in” bonus rate would iron out the arguments between gangs, and enable all the carpenters to argue for rises in a united front, without any chance of being diverted into arguments against the Brighton [<i>line of text missing</i>] agreement, and to the Working Rule Agreement ... Therefore any of these men who fail to resume normal working will be liable to disciplinary action.”</p>
<p>It seems that very little has changed on the Barbican pickets from last year. There was the same arrogant management, the same militant workforce, utterly undivided by racial differences (more than half the strikers are West Indian or Indian). Even if. as seems likely, they return to work following the Local Disputes Commission, I do not imagine that the management will be able to push these workers around for much longer.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Hallo to <i>The Hustler</i></h4>
<p class="fst">WHAT WITH ALL THE FUSS about <b>Black Dwarf</b>, very few people seem to have noticed <b>The Hustler</b>, produced in Notting Hill, which is very much better and more valuable. It’s the first paper produced in the main by coloured people which is militant, un-self-conscious and informative. It costs 1s. a copy and is available from 194 Westbourne Park Road, London, W.11.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of the page</a></p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Business as usual
on the Barbican
Workers versus management
(July 1968)
From Socialist Worker, No. 85, July 1968, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
ON THE MASS DEMONSTRATION last November called to declare solidarity with the pickets at Mytons site on the Barbican in the City of London after a strike of more than a year, Lou Lewis, the federation steward on the site, declared: “This strike will not soon be forgotten in the building industry, and it will, I hope, give confidence to building workers everywhere.”
Lewis’s hopes have been fulfilled more than he could have imagined. For now, only eight months later, the workers on the Mytons site have come out on strike again.
The employers and the union officials hoped to use the defeat of the workers last year as a permanent weapon against their future labour force. They have been confounded not merely by their own arrogance but also by the continuing refusal of the workers to be used as profit-fodder.
Last November, after the pickets were withdrawn, the employers blacklisted all the militants formerly employed there. Some of the workers who had worked on the site before the dispute were encouraged back by letters which vilified Lou Lewis and his colleagues.
The 15 scabs, who had been brought up from Mytons site at Brighton under heavy Securicor guard and had passed the pickets in police vans, formed the nucleus of the new labour force which was built up to its full complement of 200 men last Christmas. These workers were not allowed to elect their own shop stewards. Instead, the Brighton scabs (or “royalists” as they are known on the site) were appointed to all the shop stewards positions.
Allowance
From the onset the employers made their position plain. The scabs were “ loyal ” workers, and would be paid accordingly. They were given a £5 a week travel allowance to bring them up from Brighton, and a further scabs. Peter Treacy, the federation steward, for instance, reckons that he will lose a few quid by the new scheme. “But at least we’d be solid when we advance again,” he told me.
The demand was rejected outright by the management who realised that the new scheme would vitiate their “ divide and rule” tactics. Accordingly, on Monday June 16, all the 90 carpenters except the six Brighton scabs walked out on strike. They were still out, angry and militant, when I spoke to them on June 20.
On that day, each striker received a familiar letter from the management, informing them that their action was “contrary to the site procedure agreement and to the Working Rule [line of text missing] them up from Brighton, and a further unearned “bonus” of 25 hours paid work to compensate for the “long journey.” In addition the Brighton scabs were given the jobs with the best bonus rates, and lowest targets.
The bonus rate in the early months was fixed at a standard 4s. per hour for craftsmen, 3s. for labourers. In February, the unions and employers, acting outside the Working Rule Agreement and without even consulting the workers, agreed a bonus scheme which operated on a gang basis. Different gangs got different bonuses and different targets.
No sooner had the agreement been reached than the employers made it clear how they were going to operate it. The gang containing the Brighton scabs got all the good jobs and the low targets. The other gangs were given targets which made it almost impossible for any of them to make more than the “ fall-back ” rate of 4s. Bill Jones, the Brighton “Federation steward” appointed by the management, admitted to a meeting of the workers that if he lived in the area he couldn’t afford to work at the new rates.
Not surprisingly, the workers soon slung out the Brighton scabs and elected their own stewards.
The management replied by threatening to withdraw the “fall-back” bonus, thus rendering most of the workers worse off after the agreement than before. The new, elected stewards threatened the management with a riot if the fall-back rate was withdrawn, and the fall-back rate stayed.
Failure
The gross favouritism shown to the Brighton scabs, and the continued failure of the management to lower targets or pay more bonus irritated the workers more and more. They pointed out that many of the carpenters’ gangs were working at targets of 15ft. super, while the Brighton scabs were working at 8 ft. super. In Turriffs and many other building sites, the standard target is 8 ft. super, and the stewards argued, quite rightly, that the management were using the Brighton scabs shamelessly to exploit the majority of the workers.
Throughout April and May the stewards were constantly arguing with, the management over bonus pay. After several weeks, the various demands in different parts of the site hardened into one : that the bonus rate should be the same for all gangs.
This demand did not mean that the management would pay out more money. In fact, on present bonus levels, less money would probably be paid out than under the present scheme. But the “all-in” bonus rate would iron out the arguments between gangs, and enable all the carpenters to argue for rises in a united front, without any chance of being diverted into arguments against the Brighton [line of text missing] agreement, and to the Working Rule Agreement ... Therefore any of these men who fail to resume normal working will be liable to disciplinary action.”
It seems that very little has changed on the Barbican pickets from last year. There was the same arrogant management, the same militant workforce, utterly undivided by racial differences (more than half the strikers are West Indian or Indian). Even if. as seems likely, they return to work following the Local Disputes Commission, I do not imagine that the management will be able to push these workers around for much longer.
*
Hallo to The Hustler
WHAT WITH ALL THE FUSS about Black Dwarf, very few people seem to have noticed The Hustler, produced in Notting Hill, which is very much better and more valuable. It’s the first paper produced in the main by coloured people which is militant, un-self-conscious and informative. It costs 1s. a copy and is available from 194 Westbourne Park Road, London, W.11.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Stocking Thriller</h1>
<h3>(December 2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Stocking Thrillers</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.269, December 2002, p.25.<br>
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded from the new <a href="http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a><br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The novel I enjoyed most in 2002 was <strong>The Rotters’ Club</strong> by Jonathan Coe. I read his hilarious assault on the Thatcher years – <strong>What a Carve-Up!</strong> – some time ago, and laughed a lot without really believing the author knew or cared much about the reasons for the Thatcher victories. <strong>The Rotters’ Club</strong> is based on Coe’s native city, Birmingham, in the mid-1970s, and the main characters are connected at different levels to the huge British Leyland factories at the centre of teh industrial disputes of the time. Very slowly and subtly the novel unveils the collapse of the workers’ militancy and confidence, ending in the sacking of ‘Red Robbo’, the Communist shop steward convenor at the Longbridge complex. Apparently incidental, though in essence quite central, is an account of the pickets at Grunwick’s, so brutally beaten back by the police. This was a time when I was working full time for <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, and when I stood for parliament for a Birmingham constituency. I never imagined that the loves and hates of ordinary working people during that time would make such rich material for a powerful novel but, in spite of going a bit over the top at the end, Jonathan Coe has certainly produced one. the good news is that there is at least one sequel to come.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Stocking Thriller
(December 2002)
From Stocking Thrillers, Socialist Review, No.269, December 2002, p.25.
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.
Downloaded from the new Socialist Review Archive
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The novel I enjoyed most in 2002 was The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe. I read his hilarious assault on the Thatcher years – What a Carve-Up! – some time ago, and laughed a lot without really believing the author knew or cared much about the reasons for the Thatcher victories. The Rotters’ Club is based on Coe’s native city, Birmingham, in the mid-1970s, and the main characters are connected at different levels to the huge British Leyland factories at the centre of teh industrial disputes of the time. Very slowly and subtly the novel unveils the collapse of the workers’ militancy and confidence, ending in the sacking of ‘Red Robbo’, the Communist shop steward convenor at the Longbridge complex. Apparently incidental, though in essence quite central, is an account of the pickets at Grunwick’s, so brutally beaten back by the police. This was a time when I was working full time for Socialist Worker, and when I stood for parliament for a Birmingham constituency. I never imagined that the loves and hates of ordinary working people during that time would make such rich material for a powerful novel but, in spite of going a bit over the top at the end, Jonathan Coe has certainly produced one. the good news is that there is at least one sequel to come.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Moonshot moonshine</h1>
<h3>(7 October 1995)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No. 1463, 7 October 1963, p. 11.<br>
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>I WENT to see <em>Apollo 13</em>. The confession over, I now pretend that I did so not for the real reason – a fascination with thrillers – but to draw serious political conclusions.</strong></p>
<p>Chief among these is the extraordinary fact that the top American movie blockbuster of the moment, complete with the necessary Tom Hanks, is about an unmitigated disaster – a mission to the moon which never made it.</p>
<p>There have been some excellent American disaster movies. <em>The Towering Inferno</em>, complete with the necessary Paul Newman, was about a new tower block in Los Angeles, taller than anything else, which caught fire while a cross section of the city’s great and good were junketing on the top floor.</p>
<p>There was an identifiable baddie, a rogue building contractor who had cut corners with the wiring.</p>
<p>Then there was <em>The China Syndrome</em>, another very exciting film – complete with the necessary Jane Fonda – about the near meltdown of a nuclear power station.</p>
<p>There were baddies here too. Contractors had cut corners on the pipework in the station, and the pipes had started to crack and collapse.<br>
</p>
<h4>Identifiable baddies</h4>
<p class="fst">Neither film is a call to overthrow the capitalist system, of course, but both gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure ana a tot to think about.</p>
<p><strong>The mission of Apollo 13 to the Moon in the spring of 1970 was rushed forward to take some of the intense political pressure off the Nixon administration, in desperate trouble with its war in Vietnam and Cambodia.</strong></p>
<p>A futile gesture was urgently required to remind Americans of the greatness of their country. The landing of Neil Armstrong on the Moon the previous year had been greeted with wonder across the world.</p>
<p>Apollo 13 was a desperate attempt to repeat the glory. No one showed much interest in the mission, however, until it went wrong.</p>
<p>The idea that three brave white Americans might die in space gripped the public imagination. In the true story there were, moreover, plenty of identifiable baddies.</p>
<p>First there were the political baddies (Nixon and Co) who ordered the mission to go ahead before everything was ready.</p>
<p>Then there were the usual bungling contractors. Someone had cut corners with the wiring to the oxygen tanks – a bungle which very nearly blew the entire spaceship to pieces.</p>
<p>If the excitement of the battle between life and death had been blended, as it was in the other two films, with the revelation of greed and political opportunism, this film could have been another great.</p>
<p>Instead, quite incredibly, all the questions which immediately come to mind as the film unfolds are carefully ignored. The only mention of the crook Nixon is a flattering one. The only mention of the political background is the need to “beat the Russians”.</p>
<p>As a result the film is a tremendous flop, a pathetic cliche about decent white American males being brave and brilliant and tense, while their adoring and anxious women and children weep for them at home.</p>
<p>It is as though new right wing America, rather like new right wing Labour, has so lost confidence in the system it represents that any possible blemish in it has to be eradicated before it is exposed.</p>
<p>The proverbial rotten apple can no longer be plucked out, in case it exposes the whole rotten barrel. Even in disaster movies everything about white America has to be seen to be perfect.</p>
<p class="fst">That is still happening today.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Moonshot moonshine
(7 October 1995)
From Socialist Worker, No. 1463, 7 October 1963, p. 11.
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
I WENT to see Apollo 13. The confession over, I now pretend that I did so not for the real reason – a fascination with thrillers – but to draw serious political conclusions.
Chief among these is the extraordinary fact that the top American movie blockbuster of the moment, complete with the necessary Tom Hanks, is about an unmitigated disaster – a mission to the moon which never made it.
There have been some excellent American disaster movies. The Towering Inferno, complete with the necessary Paul Newman, was about a new tower block in Los Angeles, taller than anything else, which caught fire while a cross section of the city’s great and good were junketing on the top floor.
There was an identifiable baddie, a rogue building contractor who had cut corners with the wiring.
Then there was The China Syndrome, another very exciting film – complete with the necessary Jane Fonda – about the near meltdown of a nuclear power station.
There were baddies here too. Contractors had cut corners on the pipework in the station, and the pipes had started to crack and collapse.
Identifiable baddies
Neither film is a call to overthrow the capitalist system, of course, but both gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure ana a tot to think about.
The mission of Apollo 13 to the Moon in the spring of 1970 was rushed forward to take some of the intense political pressure off the Nixon administration, in desperate trouble with its war in Vietnam and Cambodia.
A futile gesture was urgently required to remind Americans of the greatness of their country. The landing of Neil Armstrong on the Moon the previous year had been greeted with wonder across the world.
Apollo 13 was a desperate attempt to repeat the glory. No one showed much interest in the mission, however, until it went wrong.
The idea that three brave white Americans might die in space gripped the public imagination. In the true story there were, moreover, plenty of identifiable baddies.
First there were the political baddies (Nixon and Co) who ordered the mission to go ahead before everything was ready.
Then there were the usual bungling contractors. Someone had cut corners with the wiring to the oxygen tanks – a bungle which very nearly blew the entire spaceship to pieces.
If the excitement of the battle between life and death had been blended, as it was in the other two films, with the revelation of greed and political opportunism, this film could have been another great.
Instead, quite incredibly, all the questions which immediately come to mind as the film unfolds are carefully ignored. The only mention of the crook Nixon is a flattering one. The only mention of the political background is the need to “beat the Russians”.
As a result the film is a tremendous flop, a pathetic cliche about decent white American males being brave and brilliant and tense, while their adoring and anxious women and children weep for them at home.
It is as though new right wing America, rather like new right wing Labour, has so lost confidence in the system it represents that any possible blemish in it has to be eradicated before it is exposed.
The proverbial rotten apple can no longer be plucked out, in case it exposes the whole rotten barrel. Even in disaster movies everything about white America has to be seen to be perfect.
That is still happening today.
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Last updated on 2 November 2019
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Jonathan Aitken</small><br>
Weaving a tangled web</h1>
<h3>(July/August 1997)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Notes of the Month</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.210, July/August 1997, p.6.<br>
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review. Published on MIA with the permission of the <a href="https://secure.marxists.org/copyright-permissions/paul-foot.txt" class="absref" target="new">Estate of Paul Foot</a>. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">As the celebrations die down for the wonderful victory scored by the <strong>Guardian</strong> and <em>World in Action</em> over Jonathan Aitken, the question still lingers: why? Why did such a high flying politician, a man named even as a future prime minister, gamble his entire future on a ridiculous lie? So what if he did go to the Ritz in Paris to meet rich Arabs? So what if one of the Arabs did pay his bill for one night? So what if he forgot to tell the cabinet secretary about his visit as he was, by ministerial rules, obliged to do? Wasn’t the incident itself really rather trivial? Could not Aitken, with even half the charm and poise for which he is accustomed, have owned up, apologised, explained that he was always going off to rich hotels with rich friends, some of them Arabs, and that on this occasion, damn it, he just forgot to obey the rules?</p>
<p>If he had adopted that approach, how long would the storm have lasted? A day, perhaps two. Anyone who objected would soon find themselves being attacked as a muckraker by the Daily Mail. Aitken would have recovered quickly. So why on earth would he go to such fantastic lengths to weave such an intricate story, and then persuade not just his wife but also his 17 year old daughter to come to court and perjure themselves too?</p>
<p>The answer is that the men Aitken met in that Paris hotel were no ordinary Arab friends together for a jovial weekend. They were some of the most powerful men on earth, whose power derives directly from the wealth they have swiped from the cheap oil of Saudi Arabia. The dictators in Riyadh are constantly building up their already enormous armed forces in such a way that they themselves personally benefit. They pay themselves ‘commissions’ over and on top of the cost of the military equipment they purchase.</p>
<p>Thus the cost of producing and supplying an average Tornado jet fighter is £20 million and the average price paid to Britain by the Saudi government for a Tornado is £35 million. The difference goes directly into the voluminous bank accounts of the Saudi royals not only in Switzerland but in tax havens all over the world.</p>
<p>The chief sellers of arms to the Saudis, the British and French governments, know perfectly well that the whole trade in arms between the two countries is founded on corruption. They are most anxious to keep the details quiet. This explains the curious case of Mr Robert Sheldon, a right wing Labour politician who has represented Ashton-Under-Lyne in parliament for as long as anyone can remember and has for years been chairman of the top ‘watchdog’ House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.</p>
<p>Sheldon has a reputation for publishing the awkward reports of his committee, and his persistent if mild reformism has won him many admirers. But in the early spring of 1992 he came across something he couldn’t publish. The National Audit Office had produced for the committee a report on arms sales to the Saudi government, and had even dared, mildly enough of course, to open the taboo question of the size of commissions. At once Sheldon agreed that these matters were too sensitive for public consumption and the report was consigned to the rubbish heap of government secrecy. The Saudi government had made it clear that they did not want precise figures and transactions exposed to the British public. So the NAO report was suddenly and inexplicably censored, confiscated and removed where no one could possibly see it.</p>
<p>At almost exactly the same time, Jonathan Aitken, for years a paid ‘adviser’ to the arms industry, became Minister for Defence Procurement. At long last, he told his Saudi friends, you have a friend in the place you want him most. At once earnest negotiations started to supply the Saudi government with a heavy consignment of 48 Tornados.</p>
<p>The most earnest part of the negotiations was about commissions. This was the debate which took Jonathan Aitken to the Ritz in Paris in 1988 to meet no less than the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. If there is anything which must be kept quiet more than any other it is the paying of commissions on the Al Yamamah arms deal between the British and Saudi governments. For a moment the entire deal was in peril. Aitken felt it was time for him to intervene. He went to Paris to meet his friends to talk about another round of unforgivable commissions.</p>
<p>The secrecy of those talks was crucial. Literally nothing mattered more. If word got out about the extent of the commissions or even that a minister was discussing the extent of the commissions in open conversation the result would have been catastrophic. The arms trade cannot be expected to flourish except in circumstances of the utmost secrecy. Aitken had been found out, but it was his bounden duty not to talk to anyone about his hidden fortune. Lie followed lie, hypocrisy followed hypocrisy; and so they always will do as long as the world is competing to buy the best value in the instruments of mass destruction.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Jonathan Aitken
Weaving a tangled web
(July/August 1997)
From Notes of the Month, Socialist Review, No.210, July/August 1997, p.6.
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review. Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
As the celebrations die down for the wonderful victory scored by the Guardian and World in Action over Jonathan Aitken, the question still lingers: why? Why did such a high flying politician, a man named even as a future prime minister, gamble his entire future on a ridiculous lie? So what if he did go to the Ritz in Paris to meet rich Arabs? So what if one of the Arabs did pay his bill for one night? So what if he forgot to tell the cabinet secretary about his visit as he was, by ministerial rules, obliged to do? Wasn’t the incident itself really rather trivial? Could not Aitken, with even half the charm and poise for which he is accustomed, have owned up, apologised, explained that he was always going off to rich hotels with rich friends, some of them Arabs, and that on this occasion, damn it, he just forgot to obey the rules?
If he had adopted that approach, how long would the storm have lasted? A day, perhaps two. Anyone who objected would soon find themselves being attacked as a muckraker by the Daily Mail. Aitken would have recovered quickly. So why on earth would he go to such fantastic lengths to weave such an intricate story, and then persuade not just his wife but also his 17 year old daughter to come to court and perjure themselves too?
The answer is that the men Aitken met in that Paris hotel were no ordinary Arab friends together for a jovial weekend. They were some of the most powerful men on earth, whose power derives directly from the wealth they have swiped from the cheap oil of Saudi Arabia. The dictators in Riyadh are constantly building up their already enormous armed forces in such a way that they themselves personally benefit. They pay themselves ‘commissions’ over and on top of the cost of the military equipment they purchase.
Thus the cost of producing and supplying an average Tornado jet fighter is £20 million and the average price paid to Britain by the Saudi government for a Tornado is £35 million. The difference goes directly into the voluminous bank accounts of the Saudi royals not only in Switzerland but in tax havens all over the world.
The chief sellers of arms to the Saudis, the British and French governments, know perfectly well that the whole trade in arms between the two countries is founded on corruption. They are most anxious to keep the details quiet. This explains the curious case of Mr Robert Sheldon, a right wing Labour politician who has represented Ashton-Under-Lyne in parliament for as long as anyone can remember and has for years been chairman of the top ‘watchdog’ House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
Sheldon has a reputation for publishing the awkward reports of his committee, and his persistent if mild reformism has won him many admirers. But in the early spring of 1992 he came across something he couldn’t publish. The National Audit Office had produced for the committee a report on arms sales to the Saudi government, and had even dared, mildly enough of course, to open the taboo question of the size of commissions. At once Sheldon agreed that these matters were too sensitive for public consumption and the report was consigned to the rubbish heap of government secrecy. The Saudi government had made it clear that they did not want precise figures and transactions exposed to the British public. So the NAO report was suddenly and inexplicably censored, confiscated and removed where no one could possibly see it.
At almost exactly the same time, Jonathan Aitken, for years a paid ‘adviser’ to the arms industry, became Minister for Defence Procurement. At long last, he told his Saudi friends, you have a friend in the place you want him most. At once earnest negotiations started to supply the Saudi government with a heavy consignment of 48 Tornados.
The most earnest part of the negotiations was about commissions. This was the debate which took Jonathan Aitken to the Ritz in Paris in 1988 to meet no less than the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. If there is anything which must be kept quiet more than any other it is the paying of commissions on the Al Yamamah arms deal between the British and Saudi governments. For a moment the entire deal was in peril. Aitken felt it was time for him to intervene. He went to Paris to meet his friends to talk about another round of unforgivable commissions.
The secrecy of those talks was crucial. Literally nothing mattered more. If word got out about the extent of the commissions or even that a minister was discussing the extent of the commissions in open conversation the result would have been catastrophic. The arms trade cannot be expected to flourish except in circumstances of the utmost secrecy. Aitken had been found out, but it was his bounden duty not to talk to anyone about his hidden fortune. Lie followed lie, hypocrisy followed hypocrisy; and so they always will do as long as the world is competing to buy the best value in the instruments of mass destruction.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>It’s been a long time coming</h1>
<h3>(May 1997)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Election special</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.208, May 1997, p.5.<br>
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The sheer extent of the Labour landslide shocked everyone in authority, not least the new prime minister. Addressing the cheering crowds which collected outside the Festival Hall in the early morning of his victory, Tony Blair reacted to the astonishing and unprecedented size of his majority with a word which comes easily to him, ‘responsibility’.</p>
<p>He had hoped to win a working majority. He had ‘targeted’ key seats like Gloucester to ensure that majority. He had expected a strong Tory opposition and had anticipated working on key matters with the Liberal Democrats. All this had suddenly and dramatically changed. Seats which no one had ever imagined as Labour had swung to the left in swings far greater even than in the ‘targeted’ areas. Scarborough, Lowestoft, Wimbledon, Harrow, Hastings, Edgbaston nowhere was safe from the relentless nationwide swing to Labour. The Tories were a ridiculous and squabbling rump and the Liberals a profound irrelevance.</p>
<p>At once, almost in self protection, the victorious Labour leader sought to explain their triumph. It was, first, a victory for ‘New Labour’, with the emphasis on ‘New’. It was the ‘unshackling’ of the Labour Party from the bonds of Clause Four and the trade unions which had rescued it from the political wilderness. The magical leadership of Tony Blair and the spin skills of his ubiquitous lieutenant Peter Mandelson had created the earthquake in popular opinion which set off the landslide.</p>
<p>The analysis led inevitably to the warning about ‘responsibility’. Since the huge majority was the exclusive work of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, nothing should be said or done to threaten their hegemony.</p>
<p>This ‘follow the leader’ analysis, the suggestion that the masses who supported Labour in such extraordinary numbers voted for the man rather than the politics of the party, is not just insulting. It is also, by any available measure, entirely wrong. Blair’s high ratings in the polls are no higher than those of his predecessor, John Smith. Indeed, there is no convincing evidence to suggest that Blair has ever been more personally popular than Smith.</p>
<p>The huge shift in popular opinion against the Tories does not date from Blair’s election as leader in the summer of 1994. The decisive shift came much earlier. It began with the crises of the pit closures and ERM and continued with the breaking of the Tory tax pledges and the imposition of VAT on fuel. The wipe out of the Tories in the county council elections and in London came before the emasculation of Clause Four or the attack on the unions inside the Labour Party.</p>
<p>Every single pointer in the polls suggests that the majority of British electors quickly woke up to the awful mistake they made in 1992 and resolved, whatever the changes in personnel in whatever party, that they would rid themselves of the Tory menace at the earliest possible opportunity. All this happened when Blair was a relatively unknown front bench spokesperson on home affairs, and when Mandelson had been cast into outer darkness.</p>
<p>For reasons which are easy to understand, John Smith detested Mandelson. He saw Mandelson’s obsession with media manipulation as corrosive of any social democratic politics, even the right wing social democratic politics which Smith represented. Indeed, Smith held Mandelson partly responsible for the loss of the 1992 election, during which Smith tried to promote the arguments for more egalitarian tax policies and was stopped in his tracks by Kinnock and Mandelson.</p>
<p>Nor can it be argued for a single moment that the tone and style of Labour’s election campaign contributed seriously to the result. The real swings to Labour took place in areas untouched by the campaign. Moreover, these swings were positive moves to Labour – not just protest votes. The point about the ‘tactical voting’ which has so absorbed the pundits was not just that voters ganged up against the government. If the fashionable view that the vote was a triumph for right wing Labour were true, then the swing to the Liberals would have been just as great, if not greater. In fact the swing to the Liberals was much less pronounced than the swing to Labour.</p>
<p>It is as though the shocked pundits are seeking any explanation for the landslide save the most obvious, repeated over and over again in <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> and <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, that there has been a marked and substantial shift to the left in popular political attitudes. The shift has moved most Labour voters, indeed most people, to the left of Blair and Mandelson.</p>
<p>All the indicators show that the majority think that the Tory union laws should be repealed, that the utilities and especially the railways should be taken back into public ownership, that there should be more socialist planning.</p>
<p>The shift has been accompanied by a popular determination and confidence which pushed the Labour vote to landslide proportions almost in defiance of the Labour leader’s caution and moderation.</p>
<p>Blair says interminably that he will act for ‘all the people, not just the privileged few’. But the hallmark of the society bequeathed by Thatcher and Major is the exploitation by the privileged few of the rest of the people. To act for both sides is impossible. To try to do so will result inevitably in acting only at the behest of the rich.</p>
<p>If Blair and Co. carry on where the Tories left off they will be ignoring the message from the majority of the electorate, and kicking their own supporters in the teeth.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
It’s been a long time coming
(May 1997)
From Election special, Socialist Review, No.208, May 1997, p.5.
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The sheer extent of the Labour landslide shocked everyone in authority, not least the new prime minister. Addressing the cheering crowds which collected outside the Festival Hall in the early morning of his victory, Tony Blair reacted to the astonishing and unprecedented size of his majority with a word which comes easily to him, ‘responsibility’.
He had hoped to win a working majority. He had ‘targeted’ key seats like Gloucester to ensure that majority. He had expected a strong Tory opposition and had anticipated working on key matters with the Liberal Democrats. All this had suddenly and dramatically changed. Seats which no one had ever imagined as Labour had swung to the left in swings far greater even than in the ‘targeted’ areas. Scarborough, Lowestoft, Wimbledon, Harrow, Hastings, Edgbaston nowhere was safe from the relentless nationwide swing to Labour. The Tories were a ridiculous and squabbling rump and the Liberals a profound irrelevance.
At once, almost in self protection, the victorious Labour leader sought to explain their triumph. It was, first, a victory for ‘New Labour’, with the emphasis on ‘New’. It was the ‘unshackling’ of the Labour Party from the bonds of Clause Four and the trade unions which had rescued it from the political wilderness. The magical leadership of Tony Blair and the spin skills of his ubiquitous lieutenant Peter Mandelson had created the earthquake in popular opinion which set off the landslide.
The analysis led inevitably to the warning about ‘responsibility’. Since the huge majority was the exclusive work of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, nothing should be said or done to threaten their hegemony.
This ‘follow the leader’ analysis, the suggestion that the masses who supported Labour in such extraordinary numbers voted for the man rather than the politics of the party, is not just insulting. It is also, by any available measure, entirely wrong. Blair’s high ratings in the polls are no higher than those of his predecessor, John Smith. Indeed, there is no convincing evidence to suggest that Blair has ever been more personally popular than Smith.
The huge shift in popular opinion against the Tories does not date from Blair’s election as leader in the summer of 1994. The decisive shift came much earlier. It began with the crises of the pit closures and ERM and continued with the breaking of the Tory tax pledges and the imposition of VAT on fuel. The wipe out of the Tories in the county council elections and in London came before the emasculation of Clause Four or the attack on the unions inside the Labour Party.
Every single pointer in the polls suggests that the majority of British electors quickly woke up to the awful mistake they made in 1992 and resolved, whatever the changes in personnel in whatever party, that they would rid themselves of the Tory menace at the earliest possible opportunity. All this happened when Blair was a relatively unknown front bench spokesperson on home affairs, and when Mandelson had been cast into outer darkness.
For reasons which are easy to understand, John Smith detested Mandelson. He saw Mandelson’s obsession with media manipulation as corrosive of any social democratic politics, even the right wing social democratic politics which Smith represented. Indeed, Smith held Mandelson partly responsible for the loss of the 1992 election, during which Smith tried to promote the arguments for more egalitarian tax policies and was stopped in his tracks by Kinnock and Mandelson.
Nor can it be argued for a single moment that the tone and style of Labour’s election campaign contributed seriously to the result. The real swings to Labour took place in areas untouched by the campaign. Moreover, these swings were positive moves to Labour – not just protest votes. The point about the ‘tactical voting’ which has so absorbed the pundits was not just that voters ganged up against the government. If the fashionable view that the vote was a triumph for right wing Labour were true, then the swing to the Liberals would have been just as great, if not greater. In fact the swing to the Liberals was much less pronounced than the swing to Labour.
It is as though the shocked pundits are seeking any explanation for the landslide save the most obvious, repeated over and over again in Socialist Worker and Socialist Review, that there has been a marked and substantial shift to the left in popular political attitudes. The shift has moved most Labour voters, indeed most people, to the left of Blair and Mandelson.
All the indicators show that the majority think that the Tory union laws should be repealed, that the utilities and especially the railways should be taken back into public ownership, that there should be more socialist planning.
The shift has been accompanied by a popular determination and confidence which pushed the Labour vote to landslide proportions almost in defiance of the Labour leader’s caution and moderation.
Blair says interminably that he will act for ‘all the people, not just the privileged few’. But the hallmark of the society bequeathed by Thatcher and Major is the exploitation by the privileged few of the rest of the people. To act for both sides is impossible. To try to do so will result inevitably in acting only at the behest of the rich.
If Blair and Co. carry on where the Tories left off they will be ignoring the message from the majority of the electorate, and kicking their own supporters in the teeth.
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<h2>Margaret Renn & Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Poor on pioneers</h1>
<h3>(February 1988)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Letters</em>, <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, No.106, February 1988, p.35.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">WE WERE disappointed with Julie Waterson’s article (Jan. <strong>SWR</strong>) about the history of the fight for abortion rights. Julie describes the “socialist tradition” on this issue as “studded with flaws, inconsistencies and one which often drew reactionary conclusions”.</p>
<p>No one could argue with that, but Julie concentrates so single-mindedly on those flaws and inconsistencies that she overlooks the fighting spirit and the revolutionary significance of the pioneers she describes.</p>
<p>Writing about the Men and Women’s Club in the 1880s, for instance, Julie tells us:</p>
<blockquote>“It had 20 members but many associate members and held open meetings. All were ‘free thinkers’ – middle class and Oxbridge educated. Included among them were Olive Schreiner and Annie Besant.”</blockquote>
<p class="fst">What an introduction to these two women! Olive Schreiner came from a poor missionary family in South Africa. She only just went to school, certainly not to university. She was active in the anti-imperialist movement in South Africa, though she was constantly unpopular with Afrikaner leaders because she refused to compromise with racialism. Her books were an inspiration to many thousands of women, including working class women.</p>
<p>Annie Besant never went to Oxbridge either (no women could take degrees at any university until the 1880s). Not only did she go to prison for publishing material about birth control, as Julie reports, she also had her child taken away, because a judge thought her views made her unfit for motherhood. She is often remembered as an organiser and inspirer of the match girls’ strike at Bryant and May in East London in 1889.</p>
<p>Of course no modern revolutionary socialist with the benefit of hindsight can agree with everything these two women wrote or said. But it is odd for any socialist to dismiss them with a peremptory sneer.</p>
<p>Again, Julie writes about Stella Browne:</p>
<blockquote>“She was a eugenicist ... she professed that individuals’ characteristics were genetically determined, while Marxism argues that society and its individuals are materially determined”.</blockquote>
<p class="fst">Stella Browne <em>was</em> affected by eugenicist ideas – though she consistently denounced any “racial or class bias” which might arise from them. But surely the main point about Stella is that she campaigned over a very long reactionary period for birth control and abortion as a means towards women’s liberation.</p>
<p>Julie quotes, apparently sympathetically, some men in Glasgow who were “ready to fight the ancient battle of Marx against Malthus”.</p>
<p>Malthus argued that the human condition depended on the numbers of people in the world and that the population should therefore be kept down. Marx denounced this quite rightly, as “a libel on the human race”.</p>
<p>Many Marxists, however, took refuge in this controversy to oppose (or at least to patronise) the movement for birth control and abortion. In fact, the revolutionary argument for both has nothing at all to do with Malthus – it is founded on the case for sexual emancipation.</p>
<p>Julie’s method has been to describe the pioneers for abortion and birth control and then to knock them out one by one as anti-Marxist or “middle class”. This seems to us a negative approach.</p>
<table width="100%">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><strong><em>Margaret Renn<br>
Paul Foot</em></strong><br>
London EC1</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Margaret Renn & Paul Foot
Poor on pioneers
(February 1988)
From Letters, Socialist Worker Review, No.106, February 1988, p.35.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
WE WERE disappointed with Julie Waterson’s article (Jan. SWR) about the history of the fight for abortion rights. Julie describes the “socialist tradition” on this issue as “studded with flaws, inconsistencies and one which often drew reactionary conclusions”.
No one could argue with that, but Julie concentrates so single-mindedly on those flaws and inconsistencies that she overlooks the fighting spirit and the revolutionary significance of the pioneers she describes.
Writing about the Men and Women’s Club in the 1880s, for instance, Julie tells us:
“It had 20 members but many associate members and held open meetings. All were ‘free thinkers’ – middle class and Oxbridge educated. Included among them were Olive Schreiner and Annie Besant.”
What an introduction to these two women! Olive Schreiner came from a poor missionary family in South Africa. She only just went to school, certainly not to university. She was active in the anti-imperialist movement in South Africa, though she was constantly unpopular with Afrikaner leaders because she refused to compromise with racialism. Her books were an inspiration to many thousands of women, including working class women.
Annie Besant never went to Oxbridge either (no women could take degrees at any university until the 1880s). Not only did she go to prison for publishing material about birth control, as Julie reports, she also had her child taken away, because a judge thought her views made her unfit for motherhood. She is often remembered as an organiser and inspirer of the match girls’ strike at Bryant and May in East London in 1889.
Of course no modern revolutionary socialist with the benefit of hindsight can agree with everything these two women wrote or said. But it is odd for any socialist to dismiss them with a peremptory sneer.
Again, Julie writes about Stella Browne:
“She was a eugenicist ... she professed that individuals’ characteristics were genetically determined, while Marxism argues that society and its individuals are materially determined”.
Stella Browne was affected by eugenicist ideas – though she consistently denounced any “racial or class bias” which might arise from them. But surely the main point about Stella is that she campaigned over a very long reactionary period for birth control and abortion as a means towards women’s liberation.
Julie quotes, apparently sympathetically, some men in Glasgow who were “ready to fight the ancient battle of Marx against Malthus”.
Malthus argued that the human condition depended on the numbers of people in the world and that the population should therefore be kept down. Marx denounced this quite rightly, as “a libel on the human race”.
Many Marxists, however, took refuge in this controversy to oppose (or at least to patronise) the movement for birth control and abortion. In fact, the revolutionary argument for both has nothing at all to do with Malthus – it is founded on the case for sexual emancipation.
Julie’s method has been to describe the pioneers for abortion and birth control and then to knock them out one by one as anti-Marxist or “middle class”. This seems to us a negative approach.
Margaret Renn
Paul Foot
London EC1
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h4>W. Indies:</h4>
<h1>20 years of pirates, profits and blood</h1>
<h3>(19 April 1969)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/sw-gb/1969/index.html#n0118" target="new">No. 118</a>, 19 April, pp. 2–3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">IN JANUARY 1935 there were what the Governor of the Leeward Islands, Sir R. St. Johnston, called in his report ‘some troubles’ on the island of St.Kitts. Leaders of the newly-formed Sugar Workers’ League, protesting at the rate of pay (one shilling a day), marched around the plantations calling a strike.</p>
<p>The Governor found this especially annoying, because he was having a garden party at the time. He summoned up a frigate and a few platoons of infantry were sent out on the streets.</p>
<p>Three strike leaders were shot and 50 strikers injured.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I also intimated,’ wrote the Governor, ‘without unnecessarily alarming people, that the garden party had better be concluded while there was still daylight for people to get to their homes.’<br>
</p>
<h4>Slavery</h4>
<p class="fst">Gunboats and infantry platoons have been the stock in trade of the sugar planters in the smaller West Indian islands ever since the first robbers and pirates (most of whose descendants are now sitting in the House of Lords) went to the West Indies.</p>
<p>They drove out the indigenous Caribs, introduced African slaves, turned the slaves into wage slaves when slavery became unprofitable, and devoted themselves for nearly 200 years to reaping sugar and profit from the blood of the labourers.</p>
<p>The plantocracy of the smaller ‘sugar islands’ – notably Barbados, Antigua and St. Kitts – are one of the most ruthlessly reactionary ruling classes in world history. As sugar has declined in value, as industrial countries have relied increasingly upon beet, and as prices have fallen, so the planters have clung even more tenaciously to their privileges.</p>
<p>The full force of their venom was turned on the rising trade unions and their leaders. They forced the British Governors to pass laws dividing the constituencies into seats which they could rig, and, when the rigging failed, passed a ‘law’ banning trade union leaders from sitting in the island parliaments.</p>
<p>The law was championed by Moody Stuart, managing director of the Antigua Syndicate Estates, which owned most of the island, and who at the same time was a leading member of both Legislative and Executive Councils.</p>
<p>Trade union leaders were bullied, threatened, even murdered. But nothing could stop the unions, and, gradually they formed themselves into political parties.</p>
<p>Manley in Jamaica, Adams in Barbados, Bird in Antigua, Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Joshua in St. Vincent, Gary in Grenada – all these men who later became prime ministers started as union leaders in the fight against the planters.</p>
<p>This is the background to the situation in Anguilla. For 120 years Anguilla has been ruled as part of a federation - first of the Leeward Islands and then of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the West Indies were the planters more resistant to change than in St. Kitts. Consequently perhaps, nowhere were the sugar workers more courageous in their support for their trade union and labour leaders.</p>
<p>It was the planters who first sowed the seeds of hatred and jealousy between one island and the other – dividing themselves into small island castes, angry and suspicious at any sign of co-operation with anyone else. The hatred between the planters on St. Kitts for their brothers and cousins in Nevis was outstanding.</p>
<p>The leader of the St. Kitts Sugar Workers’ Union, Robert Bradshaw, became prime minister of St. Kitts in 1966, winning all seven of the seats in the island.</p>
<p>The planters, who had tolerated him under British rule, decided to fight him when Britain pulled out. To procure a base, they financed and organised an ‘independence movement’ in Anguilla, and organised a military coup in St. Kitts on June 10, 1967.<br>
</p>
<h4>Entice</h4>
<p class="fst">The coup failed. But the planters have continued by every means they know to attempt to unseat Bradshaw.</p>
<p>All this merely demonstrated the planters’ stupidity, for Bradshaw and his party in power were not committed to an overthrow of the class system, not of the plantocracy. They sought means to pacify the planters, and to entice British and American industry to assist tourist development in Frigate Bay and in Nevis.</p>
<p>Despite the victories of the Sugar Workers’ union in the late 1940s, Bradshaw quickly discovered that in his isolated island there was little room even for ordinary trade union reforms. He passed a Minimum Wage Act and an Industrial Injuries Act but in terms of any real encroachment on the plantocracy or the new, ‘dynamic’ tourist-orientated upper class, he made no gains.</p>
<p>He could rely upon almost endless electoral support – but the enthusiasm of that support could only be maintained as long as the planters continued playing cops and robbers from Anguilla.</p>
<p>Despite heavy subsidies from the St. Kitts government (amounting to twice the island’s revenue) in 1966, the self-styled Anguillan ‘leaders’ declared UDI in May 1967.</p>
<p>Bradshaw insisted on some form of federal structure and a series of conferences were held, mainly in Barbados. As the conferences continued it became clear that the men in charge in Anguilla did not want to agree to anything.</p>
<p>They wanted an island without government or elections or taxes, a gambler’s and hotelier’s paradise. They wanted another Nassau (Sir Stafford Sands, former Prime Minister of the Bahamas was paid several million dollars in ‘consultancy fees’ by Meyer Lansky of the Florida Mafia).</p>
<p>The British government was perplexed. What to do next? As always, they got their answer from America.</p>
<p>The policy of the Central Intelligence Agency is not, as sometimes imagined, to support arch reactionaries in every cause. It is concerned primarily to ensure a ‘peaceful environment’ for profit-making.</p>
<p>For the CIA, better a helpless majority government than a racialist and reactionary minority one.</p>
<p>The CIA gave their orders – smash the Anguillan ‘revolt’. Take sides with Bradshaw against the planters. Seek to settle a dangerously explosive situation with gunboats and diplomats.</p>
<p>But the Anguilla operation was ham-fisted. And in spite of appeals by the Antiguan Labour prime minister, Bird, to ‘keep calm’, 8,000 Antiguans marched through the streets to protest at the interference of British troops.<br>
</p>
<h4>Recipe</h4>
<p class="fst">The arrival of British troops in Anguilla replaced one set of gangsters with another. Anguillan nationalism is an abstraction, invented by New York and Florida businessmen, but equally the ‘peaceful environment’ sought by the intervention of the British troops, is a recipe for another 100 years of exploitation.</p>
<p>The demand for the removal of British troops must be unequivocal and unconditional – not because ‘Anguilla wants independence’ as sugar-owning Tory MPs would have it, but in the hope that the West Indian working people – one of the most potentially revolutionary forces in the third world – will themselves shake off the shackles of plantocracies and CIA-inspired ‘peaceful environments’ and run all their islands in their own interests.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
W. Indies:
20 years of pirates, profits and blood
(19 April 1969)
From Socialist Worker, No. 118, 19 April, pp. 2–3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
IN JANUARY 1935 there were what the Governor of the Leeward Islands, Sir R. St. Johnston, called in his report ‘some troubles’ on the island of St.Kitts. Leaders of the newly-formed Sugar Workers’ League, protesting at the rate of pay (one shilling a day), marched around the plantations calling a strike.
The Governor found this especially annoying, because he was having a garden party at the time. He summoned up a frigate and a few platoons of infantry were sent out on the streets.
Three strike leaders were shot and 50 strikers injured.
‘I also intimated,’ wrote the Governor, ‘without unnecessarily alarming people, that the garden party had better be concluded while there was still daylight for people to get to their homes.’
Slavery
Gunboats and infantry platoons have been the stock in trade of the sugar planters in the smaller West Indian islands ever since the first robbers and pirates (most of whose descendants are now sitting in the House of Lords) went to the West Indies.
They drove out the indigenous Caribs, introduced African slaves, turned the slaves into wage slaves when slavery became unprofitable, and devoted themselves for nearly 200 years to reaping sugar and profit from the blood of the labourers.
The plantocracy of the smaller ‘sugar islands’ – notably Barbados, Antigua and St. Kitts – are one of the most ruthlessly reactionary ruling classes in world history. As sugar has declined in value, as industrial countries have relied increasingly upon beet, and as prices have fallen, so the planters have clung even more tenaciously to their privileges.
The full force of their venom was turned on the rising trade unions and their leaders. They forced the British Governors to pass laws dividing the constituencies into seats which they could rig, and, when the rigging failed, passed a ‘law’ banning trade union leaders from sitting in the island parliaments.
The law was championed by Moody Stuart, managing director of the Antigua Syndicate Estates, which owned most of the island, and who at the same time was a leading member of both Legislative and Executive Councils.
Trade union leaders were bullied, threatened, even murdered. But nothing could stop the unions, and, gradually they formed themselves into political parties.
Manley in Jamaica, Adams in Barbados, Bird in Antigua, Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Joshua in St. Vincent, Gary in Grenada – all these men who later became prime ministers started as union leaders in the fight against the planters.
This is the background to the situation in Anguilla. For 120 years Anguilla has been ruled as part of a federation - first of the Leeward Islands and then of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla.
Nowhere in the West Indies were the planters more resistant to change than in St. Kitts. Consequently perhaps, nowhere were the sugar workers more courageous in their support for their trade union and labour leaders.
It was the planters who first sowed the seeds of hatred and jealousy between one island and the other – dividing themselves into small island castes, angry and suspicious at any sign of co-operation with anyone else. The hatred between the planters on St. Kitts for their brothers and cousins in Nevis was outstanding.
The leader of the St. Kitts Sugar Workers’ Union, Robert Bradshaw, became prime minister of St. Kitts in 1966, winning all seven of the seats in the island.
The planters, who had tolerated him under British rule, decided to fight him when Britain pulled out. To procure a base, they financed and organised an ‘independence movement’ in Anguilla, and organised a military coup in St. Kitts on June 10, 1967.
Entice
The coup failed. But the planters have continued by every means they know to attempt to unseat Bradshaw.
All this merely demonstrated the planters’ stupidity, for Bradshaw and his party in power were not committed to an overthrow of the class system, not of the plantocracy. They sought means to pacify the planters, and to entice British and American industry to assist tourist development in Frigate Bay and in Nevis.
Despite the victories of the Sugar Workers’ union in the late 1940s, Bradshaw quickly discovered that in his isolated island there was little room even for ordinary trade union reforms. He passed a Minimum Wage Act and an Industrial Injuries Act but in terms of any real encroachment on the plantocracy or the new, ‘dynamic’ tourist-orientated upper class, he made no gains.
He could rely upon almost endless electoral support – but the enthusiasm of that support could only be maintained as long as the planters continued playing cops and robbers from Anguilla.
Despite heavy subsidies from the St. Kitts government (amounting to twice the island’s revenue) in 1966, the self-styled Anguillan ‘leaders’ declared UDI in May 1967.
Bradshaw insisted on some form of federal structure and a series of conferences were held, mainly in Barbados. As the conferences continued it became clear that the men in charge in Anguilla did not want to agree to anything.
They wanted an island without government or elections or taxes, a gambler’s and hotelier’s paradise. They wanted another Nassau (Sir Stafford Sands, former Prime Minister of the Bahamas was paid several million dollars in ‘consultancy fees’ by Meyer Lansky of the Florida Mafia).
The British government was perplexed. What to do next? As always, they got their answer from America.
The policy of the Central Intelligence Agency is not, as sometimes imagined, to support arch reactionaries in every cause. It is concerned primarily to ensure a ‘peaceful environment’ for profit-making.
For the CIA, better a helpless majority government than a racialist and reactionary minority one.
The CIA gave their orders – smash the Anguillan ‘revolt’. Take sides with Bradshaw against the planters. Seek to settle a dangerously explosive situation with gunboats and diplomats.
But the Anguilla operation was ham-fisted. And in spite of appeals by the Antiguan Labour prime minister, Bird, to ‘keep calm’, 8,000 Antiguans marched through the streets to protest at the interference of British troops.
Recipe
The arrival of British troops in Anguilla replaced one set of gangsters with another. Anguillan nationalism is an abstraction, invented by New York and Florida businessmen, but equally the ‘peaceful environment’ sought by the intervention of the British troops, is a recipe for another 100 years of exploitation.
The demand for the removal of British troops must be unequivocal and unconditional – not because ‘Anguilla wants independence’ as sugar-owning Tory MPs would have it, but in the hope that the West Indian working people – one of the most potentially revolutionary forces in the third world – will themselves shake off the shackles of plantocracies and CIA-inspired ‘peaceful environments’ and run all their islands in their own interests.
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<h4><em>International Socialism</em>, Spring 1991</h4>
<p> </p>
<h2>Alex Callinicos, Paul Foot, Mike Gonzalez,<br>
Chris Harman, John Molyneux</h2>
<h1>An open letter to <em>New Left Review</em></h1>
<p> </p>
<p class="from">From <em>International Socialism</em> <a href="../../index.html#isj2-050" target="new">2 : 50</a>, Spring 1991, pp. 101–103.<br>
Transcribed by Camilla Royle.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for <em>ETOL</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst">We write as socialists who have read <strong>NLR</strong> regularly for the last 20 years or more. We have reacted to individual articles sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with strong criticism. We may have disagreed with the stance of some articles – especially those which presented the regimes of Russia and China as somehow left wing-but we always felt that the magazine was produced by people who could be relied to be in the trenches alongside us in the battle against Western imperialism. They had, after all, taken an unequivocal stand against the wars waged by France in Algeria, the US in Vietnam, the British in Aden and Oman.</p>
<p>For this reason we have been horrified by your most recent issue (184). As it came out the American government of George Bush was preparing a massive military onslaught in the Gulf – an onslaught which the great mass of the left on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Third World see as a defence of oil interests and an attempt to reassert the US’s global hegemony in a way not possible since the Vietnam defeat.</p>
<p>Yet the major article on the Gulf in <strong>New Left Review</strong> is by Fred Halliday, a supporter of American military action in the Gulf. Readers in Britain will know that in the autumn of 1990 he repeatedly appeared on radio and television to urge the sending of British and American forces to the Gulf. He told <strong>Marxism Today</strong> (October 1990): ‘I would not think that at a future juncture, if sanctions fail, that military action to oust Iraq from Kuwait would be unjustified.’</p>
<p>The appearance of an article by such an apologist for the American and British action might be tolerable if it were countered by a powerful polemic opposing imperialism. Unfortonate1y, it was not. Instead, there was a rather mild editorial statement which contained not one word of criticism of Halliday and itself went halfway with the American-British position.</p>
<p>It began by telling us, correctly, that ‘It is the West’s thirst for cheap oil ... which renders it suddenly sensitive to the viciously repressive regime that yesterday it was arming against Iran.’ But it then went on to argue:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The initial UN resolutions against Iraq offered an appropriate and justified response to the occupation of Kuwait-though they would have been better if they had included a clear commitment to democracy in Kuwait. There should also have been UN sanctions against Israel as strong as this, instead of the lavish US aid that has been forthcoming.</p>
<p class="fst">This is either naivety or a conscious desire to cover up the acquiescence of some of those around <strong>NLR</strong> in the plans of US imperialism. Everyone knows the original UN resolutions were drawn up mainly by the US, which used arm twisting and bribery (such as promising to help finance perestroika and to restore to China aid cut off after the Tiananmen Square butchery) to push it through the Security Council. Everyone should also know – if only because Fred Halliday often made the point on British radio – that sanctions could only work if enforced by a military blockade.</p>
<p>The sanctions resolution was, in fact, used by America and Britain to build up the bandwagon for war. And the same security council states which voted for one went along with the other. The task of socialists was to speak out against the whole manoeuvre. Unfortunately, your editorial statement did not.</p>
<p><strong>NLR</strong> justified its stance by referring to the fate of Kuwait. But Kuwait only came into existence as a state because of Western oil interests. Only 4 percent of the population ever had a vote, for a parliament which the ruling Sabah family arbitrarily dissolved, and the majority of its population were denied any citizenship rights at all. No wonder Halliday himself, in his better days, subtitled the Kuwaiti section of his book <strong>Arabia without Sultans</strong> <em>The New Slavery</em>, telling that ‘its internal reliance on a class of imported helots is mirrored by its international role as a steward of capital’.</p>
<p>Now he claims socialists should support military action by the Western powers to restore such a state because the enemy is Iraqi ‘fascism’. But the US sustains dictatorships every bit as bad as the Iraqi one elsewhere in the world – just think of Zaire, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Somalia, or, in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Its coalition allies include the Turkish hangmen and the Syrian symmetrical twin of Iraq.</p>
<p>Anyone should be able to see that an American victory would give the Bush team – veterans all of the Contra terror campaign against Nicaragua and the invasions of Grenada and Panama – the confidence to impose such dictatorships elsewhere in the world.</p>
<p>Of course, there should be no question of socialists giving any political support to Saddam Hussein. His Ba’ath party willingly collaborated with the CIA in the 1963 coup against Qassim, tried to ingratiate itself with the US through its attack on Iran in 1980 and, using Western supplied poison gas, collaborated with NATO member Turkey in a murderous campaign against the Kurds.</p>
<p>Socialists should see that a successful struggle against imperialism will require the revolutionary overthrow of such a regime.</p>
<p>But that is not the same as supporting Bush’s coalition, as Halliday does, or even as saying, as your editorial statement does, ‘the left should not support the military ambitions of any of the predators now confronting one another in the desert’. This equates the little bully, Saddam Hussein, with the much greater bully, US imperialism, as if a victory for one would be as bad for the peoples of the world as a victory for the other.</p>
<p>There is more than a whiff of August 1914 in Fred Halliday’s sudden conversion to the belief that an American led coalition should enjoy support from the left. And there is more than a hint of compromise with such views in <strong>NLR</strong>’s own present position. All those who have campaigned against Western imperialism in the past should insist the main enemy is in Washington, and act accordingly.</p>
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International Socialism, Spring 1991
Alex Callinicos, Paul Foot, Mike Gonzalez,
Chris Harman, John Molyneux
An open letter to New Left Review
From International Socialism 2 : 50, Spring 1991, pp. 101–103.
Transcribed by Camilla Royle.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We write as socialists who have read NLR regularly for the last 20 years or more. We have reacted to individual articles sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with strong criticism. We may have disagreed with the stance of some articles – especially those which presented the regimes of Russia and China as somehow left wing-but we always felt that the magazine was produced by people who could be relied to be in the trenches alongside us in the battle against Western imperialism. They had, after all, taken an unequivocal stand against the wars waged by France in Algeria, the US in Vietnam, the British in Aden and Oman.
For this reason we have been horrified by your most recent issue (184). As it came out the American government of George Bush was preparing a massive military onslaught in the Gulf – an onslaught which the great mass of the left on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Third World see as a defence of oil interests and an attempt to reassert the US’s global hegemony in a way not possible since the Vietnam defeat.
Yet the major article on the Gulf in New Left Review is by Fred Halliday, a supporter of American military action in the Gulf. Readers in Britain will know that in the autumn of 1990 he repeatedly appeared on radio and television to urge the sending of British and American forces to the Gulf. He told Marxism Today (October 1990): ‘I would not think that at a future juncture, if sanctions fail, that military action to oust Iraq from Kuwait would be unjustified.’
The appearance of an article by such an apologist for the American and British action might be tolerable if it were countered by a powerful polemic opposing imperialism. Unfortonate1y, it was not. Instead, there was a rather mild editorial statement which contained not one word of criticism of Halliday and itself went halfway with the American-British position.
It began by telling us, correctly, that ‘It is the West’s thirst for cheap oil ... which renders it suddenly sensitive to the viciously repressive regime that yesterday it was arming against Iran.’ But it then went on to argue:
The initial UN resolutions against Iraq offered an appropriate and justified response to the occupation of Kuwait-though they would have been better if they had included a clear commitment to democracy in Kuwait. There should also have been UN sanctions against Israel as strong as this, instead of the lavish US aid that has been forthcoming.
This is either naivety or a conscious desire to cover up the acquiescence of some of those around NLR in the plans of US imperialism. Everyone knows the original UN resolutions were drawn up mainly by the US, which used arm twisting and bribery (such as promising to help finance perestroika and to restore to China aid cut off after the Tiananmen Square butchery) to push it through the Security Council. Everyone should also know – if only because Fred Halliday often made the point on British radio – that sanctions could only work if enforced by a military blockade.
The sanctions resolution was, in fact, used by America and Britain to build up the bandwagon for war. And the same security council states which voted for one went along with the other. The task of socialists was to speak out against the whole manoeuvre. Unfortunately, your editorial statement did not.
NLR justified its stance by referring to the fate of Kuwait. But Kuwait only came into existence as a state because of Western oil interests. Only 4 percent of the population ever had a vote, for a parliament which the ruling Sabah family arbitrarily dissolved, and the majority of its population were denied any citizenship rights at all. No wonder Halliday himself, in his better days, subtitled the Kuwaiti section of his book Arabia without Sultans The New Slavery, telling that ‘its internal reliance on a class of imported helots is mirrored by its international role as a steward of capital’.
Now he claims socialists should support military action by the Western powers to restore such a state because the enemy is Iraqi ‘fascism’. But the US sustains dictatorships every bit as bad as the Iraqi one elsewhere in the world – just think of Zaire, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Somalia, or, in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Its coalition allies include the Turkish hangmen and the Syrian symmetrical twin of Iraq.
Anyone should be able to see that an American victory would give the Bush team – veterans all of the Contra terror campaign against Nicaragua and the invasions of Grenada and Panama – the confidence to impose such dictatorships elsewhere in the world.
Of course, there should be no question of socialists giving any political support to Saddam Hussein. His Ba’ath party willingly collaborated with the CIA in the 1963 coup against Qassim, tried to ingratiate itself with the US through its attack on Iran in 1980 and, using Western supplied poison gas, collaborated with NATO member Turkey in a murderous campaign against the Kurds.
Socialists should see that a successful struggle against imperialism will require the revolutionary overthrow of such a regime.
But that is not the same as supporting Bush’s coalition, as Halliday does, or even as saying, as your editorial statement does, ‘the left should not support the military ambitions of any of the predators now confronting one another in the desert’. This equates the little bully, Saddam Hussein, with the much greater bully, US imperialism, as if a victory for one would be as bad for the peoples of the world as a victory for the other.
There is more than a whiff of August 1914 in Fred Halliday’s sudden conversion to the belief that an American led coalition should enjoy support from the left. And there is more than a hint of compromise with such views in NLR’s own present position. All those who have campaigned against Western imperialism in the past should insist the main enemy is in Washington, and act accordingly.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Corruption</small><br>
Who Said Crime Doesn’t Pay?</h1>
<h3>(June 2003)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>News Review</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.275, June 2003, p.5-6.<br>
Copyright © 2003 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded from the new <a href="http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a><br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The last time there was a crisis in the international stockmarket they made a film about it. It was called <em>Wall Street</em>. Michael Douglas played Gekko, the intended villain of the piece, a greedy gambler who had made a fortune on the stockmarket chiefly by buying and bribing inside information, and then betting on it, knowing it to be true. The film was such a realistic indictment of the market and its values that it quickly became a cult movie for thousands of yuppies swarming like bees round the honey of the stock exchange. When Gekko is finally captured by the regulators of the Securities Exchange Commission, most of his admirers felt sorry for him. The film was a close portrayal of the rise and fall of the stock market gangsters and insider dealers of the time. Those critics who saw it as a fair rendering of what really went on in Wall Street were told that the scandal it revealed was exceptional, the old story of the rotten apple in the otherwise unblemished barrel of Wall Street and the City of London.</p>
<p>It took a decade for the market to start falling again, and for the same sort of scum to rise to the surface of the barrel. In 2001 came the Enron scandal, in which a massively hyped international trading company duped the wealthy world by the time-honoured process of fiddling its accounts. Huge profits recorded in the accounts simply did not exist. The company went bust and the accountants who fiddled the accounts and shredded the evidence – New Labour’s close friends Arthur Andersen – were disgraced, bankrupted and quickly absorbed by other big accountants such as KPMG, which has a similarly questionable record. Apologists for capitalism argued that Enron was a ‘one-off’ – an unfortunate slip of the regulators that was unlikely to happen again.</p>
<p>Now, less than two years after Enron, comes a scandal every bit as shocking. For years the US regulators have been investigating the role of the country’s top investment banks, the very core of the capitalist system. Of special concern was the method used by the banks to prise investment out of the US bourgeoisie. Their technique was to hire ‘analysts’ who circulated ‘research studies’ on the value of various stocks, recommending whether or not they were worth buying. The regulators soon discovered that the ‘analysts’ were not at all interested in the value of the stocks they were ‘researching’. All they were interested in was getting more money for the banks who hired them. So thousands of gullible investors were conned out of many billions of pounds by bogus research that the analysts knew to be bogus, solely in order to drum up more business for the banks who paid them. In one of the hundreds of incriminating e-mails unearthed by the regulators, an analyst from the big US bank Lehman summed up the whole scam: ‘Yes. The little guy who is not smart about the nuances, may get misled. Such is the nature of my business.’ Like Gekko, like the millionaires who played the market in derivatives, hedge funds, split capital investment trusts, it was the ‘nature of his business’ to lie and cheat in the interests of his paymasters.</p>
<p>The names of the liars and cheats in this area are the household names of modern finance capital: Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Salomon, Piper Jaffray, UBS Warburg (a special favourite of the New Labour government in Britain), Lehman, Bear Stearns, etc, etc. The total fines against these banks comes just short of a billion pounds, but the banks coughed up in huge relief. They will not be prosecuted and even when disgruntled investors sue for compensation, the banks can unleash their unimaginably expensive lawyers to defend every suit. Gekko went to prison, but none of these professional liars and cheats need lose a night’s sleep.</p>
<p>Socialists who study this story (and that in itself is difficult – the newspapers and commentators of the ruling class are reluctant to expose the fraud of those who feed them) are inclined to pass by on the other side, their noses in the air. The whole sty stinks, they argue, so why worry about the smell of any particular pig? Who cares about the swindling of the petit bourgeoisie by the big bourgeois? That approach is easy to understand, but it misses the point. The point attacks the root of the argument that capitalism is the best available system to sort out the problems of supply and demand, to ensure that the right things are made to fit people’s needs and aspirations, and that the proceeds are fairly distributed. The fantastic scandal of the investment banks (like all the other similar scandals of modern capitalism) proves exactly the opposite. It proves that the people who run the system couldn’t care less about the real value of anything, but will take any course, twist any figures, tell any lies and engage in any amount of cheating so long as their already comfortable nests are further feathered. Gekko rides again, and this time he rides free.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Corruption
Who Said Crime Doesn’t Pay?
(June 2003)
From News Review, Socialist Review, No.275, June 2003, p.5-6.
Copyright © 2003 Socialist Review.
Downloaded from the new Socialist Review Archive
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The last time there was a crisis in the international stockmarket they made a film about it. It was called Wall Street. Michael Douglas played Gekko, the intended villain of the piece, a greedy gambler who had made a fortune on the stockmarket chiefly by buying and bribing inside information, and then betting on it, knowing it to be true. The film was such a realistic indictment of the market and its values that it quickly became a cult movie for thousands of yuppies swarming like bees round the honey of the stock exchange. When Gekko is finally captured by the regulators of the Securities Exchange Commission, most of his admirers felt sorry for him. The film was a close portrayal of the rise and fall of the stock market gangsters and insider dealers of the time. Those critics who saw it as a fair rendering of what really went on in Wall Street were told that the scandal it revealed was exceptional, the old story of the rotten apple in the otherwise unblemished barrel of Wall Street and the City of London.
It took a decade for the market to start falling again, and for the same sort of scum to rise to the surface of the barrel. In 2001 came the Enron scandal, in which a massively hyped international trading company duped the wealthy world by the time-honoured process of fiddling its accounts. Huge profits recorded in the accounts simply did not exist. The company went bust and the accountants who fiddled the accounts and shredded the evidence – New Labour’s close friends Arthur Andersen – were disgraced, bankrupted and quickly absorbed by other big accountants such as KPMG, which has a similarly questionable record. Apologists for capitalism argued that Enron was a ‘one-off’ – an unfortunate slip of the regulators that was unlikely to happen again.
Now, less than two years after Enron, comes a scandal every bit as shocking. For years the US regulators have been investigating the role of the country’s top investment banks, the very core of the capitalist system. Of special concern was the method used by the banks to prise investment out of the US bourgeoisie. Their technique was to hire ‘analysts’ who circulated ‘research studies’ on the value of various stocks, recommending whether or not they were worth buying. The regulators soon discovered that the ‘analysts’ were not at all interested in the value of the stocks they were ‘researching’. All they were interested in was getting more money for the banks who hired them. So thousands of gullible investors were conned out of many billions of pounds by bogus research that the analysts knew to be bogus, solely in order to drum up more business for the banks who paid them. In one of the hundreds of incriminating e-mails unearthed by the regulators, an analyst from the big US bank Lehman summed up the whole scam: ‘Yes. The little guy who is not smart about the nuances, may get misled. Such is the nature of my business.’ Like Gekko, like the millionaires who played the market in derivatives, hedge funds, split capital investment trusts, it was the ‘nature of his business’ to lie and cheat in the interests of his paymasters.
The names of the liars and cheats in this area are the household names of modern finance capital: Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Salomon, Piper Jaffray, UBS Warburg (a special favourite of the New Labour government in Britain), Lehman, Bear Stearns, etc, etc. The total fines against these banks comes just short of a billion pounds, but the banks coughed up in huge relief. They will not be prosecuted and even when disgruntled investors sue for compensation, the banks can unleash their unimaginably expensive lawyers to defend every suit. Gekko went to prison, but none of these professional liars and cheats need lose a night’s sleep.
Socialists who study this story (and that in itself is difficult – the newspapers and commentators of the ruling class are reluctant to expose the fraud of those who feed them) are inclined to pass by on the other side, their noses in the air. The whole sty stinks, they argue, so why worry about the smell of any particular pig? Who cares about the swindling of the petit bourgeoisie by the big bourgeois? That approach is easy to understand, but it misses the point. The point attacks the root of the argument that capitalism is the best available system to sort out the problems of supply and demand, to ensure that the right things are made to fit people’s needs and aspirations, and that the proceeds are fairly distributed. The fantastic scandal of the investment banks (like all the other similar scandals of modern capitalism) proves exactly the opposite. It proves that the people who run the system couldn’t care less about the real value of anything, but will take any course, twist any figures, tell any lies and engage in any amount of cheating so long as their already comfortable nests are further feathered. Gekko rides again, and this time he rides free.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Labour</small><br>
Millionaires’ welfare</h1>
<h3>(January 1998)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Notes of the Month</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.215, January 1998, p.5.<br>
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The vocabulary of New Labour, which before and during the election seemed so benign, is being translated into real language faster than anyone could have dreaded. ‘Compassion with a hard edge’ was the phrase of the hour. Compassion was taken to mean a feeling of concern from government for the growing ranks of the desperately poor, especially the low paid, the single parents, the disabled. The hard edge would presumably be reserved for those who had helped themselves to the bounty of the Thatcher/Major years, the share option guzzlers, the pension swindlers, the growing army of arrogant billionaires.</p>
<p>It took only a few months for the real picture to emerge. There was compassion all right, but it was reserved exclusively for the rich. The manifesto promise not to raise a penny extra in tax on the rich was scrupulously observed. But the new ministers were not satisfied with mere compassion for the rich. They were appalled at how few of them were rich enough to make the big decisions of the hour.</p>
<p>There was only one millionaire among them – a fourth rate MP for Coventry whom no former Labour prime minister had even considered for office. There was nothing in the political career of Geoffrey Robinson which was even remotely impressive. But he was enormously rich. He had been left a fortune by a Belgian tax exile whose name inevitably was Madame Bourgeois. The very thought of a real millionaire with a real fortune evading tax in the Channel Islands was enough to shoot Robinson into the government as minister in charge of tax evasion.</p>
<p>One millionaire, however, was not enough. Into the highways and byways of the City of London went the new Labour leaders searching for Tories and union busters to take part in the new government: Lord Simon from Shell, Peter Davies from the Pru, Martin Taylor from Barclays Bank, even the crusted Thatcherite Alan Sugar of Amstrad and Tottenham Hotspur – all these and many more like them were ushered into Whitehall to help the new government with its social and economic policies.</p>
<p>The policies flowed quite naturally. The few election promises which were unpalatable to the rich were quickly jettisoned. To the manifesto pledge, ‘We shall ban tobacco advertising’, was added a proviso: ‘except for millionaires who donate to the Labour Party’. From Blair’s election promise, ‘We have no plans to introduce tuition fees’, the word ‘no’ was deleted. The real social problem quickly emerged. Too much was being spent by the ‘feckless poor’, and, it was claimed, people sat at home looking after children or pretended that their disablement prevented them from working. These people could be driven off the dole registers by denying them the pittance they got in extra benefit. The ‘Welfare to Work’ programme was launched with a sharp attack on the poorest people of all, the people who because of their poverty were the least organised and the least able to defend themselves.</p>
<p>Many, if not most, Labour voters were astonished at the speed with which the Labour Party cast off its old commitments to the dispossessed. This sense of shock was palely reflected in the House of Commons where 47 of Labour’s 411 MPs voted against proposed cuts in benefits for lone mothers. The 47 came mainly from the old left. Not a single one of ‘Blair’s babes’, the new women Labour MPs who preened themselves for the media on 2 May, managed to vote against the cuts or even to abstain.</p>
<p>But the vote against the government is the first real sign of dissent from New Labour capitalism, the first indication that even in parliament there are people who recognise the true course of their government: a course plotted for them by their hated predecessors, the Lilleys, the Redwoods and the Howards. The only recognisable difference between this government and the Tories is in its support. New Labour came to office on the votes of people, many of them poor, who wanted a change in political direction and had grown to detest the Tory priorities which now commend themselves to Labour ministers. A revolt is smouldering. It should be fanned into flames.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Labour
Millionaires’ welfare
(January 1998)
From Notes of the Month, Socialist Review, No.215, January 1998, p.5.
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The vocabulary of New Labour, which before and during the election seemed so benign, is being translated into real language faster than anyone could have dreaded. ‘Compassion with a hard edge’ was the phrase of the hour. Compassion was taken to mean a feeling of concern from government for the growing ranks of the desperately poor, especially the low paid, the single parents, the disabled. The hard edge would presumably be reserved for those who had helped themselves to the bounty of the Thatcher/Major years, the share option guzzlers, the pension swindlers, the growing army of arrogant billionaires.
It took only a few months for the real picture to emerge. There was compassion all right, but it was reserved exclusively for the rich. The manifesto promise not to raise a penny extra in tax on the rich was scrupulously observed. But the new ministers were not satisfied with mere compassion for the rich. They were appalled at how few of them were rich enough to make the big decisions of the hour.
There was only one millionaire among them – a fourth rate MP for Coventry whom no former Labour prime minister had even considered for office. There was nothing in the political career of Geoffrey Robinson which was even remotely impressive. But he was enormously rich. He had been left a fortune by a Belgian tax exile whose name inevitably was Madame Bourgeois. The very thought of a real millionaire with a real fortune evading tax in the Channel Islands was enough to shoot Robinson into the government as minister in charge of tax evasion.
One millionaire, however, was not enough. Into the highways and byways of the City of London went the new Labour leaders searching for Tories and union busters to take part in the new government: Lord Simon from Shell, Peter Davies from the Pru, Martin Taylor from Barclays Bank, even the crusted Thatcherite Alan Sugar of Amstrad and Tottenham Hotspur – all these and many more like them were ushered into Whitehall to help the new government with its social and economic policies.
The policies flowed quite naturally. The few election promises which were unpalatable to the rich were quickly jettisoned. To the manifesto pledge, ‘We shall ban tobacco advertising’, was added a proviso: ‘except for millionaires who donate to the Labour Party’. From Blair’s election promise, ‘We have no plans to introduce tuition fees’, the word ‘no’ was deleted. The real social problem quickly emerged. Too much was being spent by the ‘feckless poor’, and, it was claimed, people sat at home looking after children or pretended that their disablement prevented them from working. These people could be driven off the dole registers by denying them the pittance they got in extra benefit. The ‘Welfare to Work’ programme was launched with a sharp attack on the poorest people of all, the people who because of their poverty were the least organised and the least able to defend themselves.
Many, if not most, Labour voters were astonished at the speed with which the Labour Party cast off its old commitments to the dispossessed. This sense of shock was palely reflected in the House of Commons where 47 of Labour’s 411 MPs voted against proposed cuts in benefits for lone mothers. The 47 came mainly from the old left. Not a single one of ‘Blair’s babes’, the new women Labour MPs who preened themselves for the media on 2 May, managed to vote against the cuts or even to abstain.
But the vote against the government is the first real sign of dissent from New Labour capitalism, the first indication that even in parliament there are people who recognise the true course of their government: a course plotted for them by their hated predecessors, the Lilleys, the Redwoods and the Howards. The only recognisable difference between this government and the Tories is in its support. New Labour came to office on the votes of people, many of them poor, who wanted a change in political direction and had grown to detest the Tory priorities which now commend themselves to Labour ministers. A revolt is smouldering. It should be fanned into flames.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h4>Obituary</h4>
<h1>Ross Pritchard – dedicated socialist</h1>
<h3>(20 January 2001)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1731, 20 January 2001.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/" target="new"><em>Socialist Worker</em> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Socialist Worker</strong> and all its readers owe a tremendous debt to Ross Pritchard, who died of cancer last week at the age of 62. Ross joined the socialist movement in Glasgow at almost exactly the same time as I did. Ross had just come out of the armed forces (he was one of the last to be caught in the conscription net, as I was), and was trying to find a decent job in Glasgow. He came to the socialist movement as though he had been waiting for it all his life.</p>
<p>Ross and Anna, whom he married not much later and with whom he spent the rest of his life, were permanent fixtures at all the Young Socialists meetings, including the periodic excursions to CND demos and other protests. He rapidly became a part of the growing band of young worker-intellectuals who led the Young Socialists at that time. Like many others he was drawn to London by the prospect of decently paid employment.</p>
<p>He got a job in the print trade and, at a time when our organisation hardly existed, kept up his association with the International Socialists. In 1968 we yearned for a weekly paper, which was to become <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>. Roger Protz was to be the editor and Jim Nichol the business editor, but what we really needed was an expert in the print who would dedicate his life to the project.</p>
<p>Ross agreed to fill this post at once, though the move meant a huge increase in work and a drop in salary of at least 50 percent. Somehow this tiny crew managed to get the paper out. Ross was utterly irreplaceable.</p>
<p>He was the opposite of the token manual worker, and from the outset he was an essential part of the political process. He took a keen and critical interest in what the paper was saying, and how the organisation was growing. Ross became more and more central to the entire project, a learner turned teacher.</p>
<p>None of those who worked on the paper at that time will forget his dedication and encouragement. When Ross finally left the printshop in the mid-1970s, he became a militant in the merged NGA print union, and very soon was elected to the executive. He stayed a rank and file militant all the way through to the awful defeat of the print unions by Murdoch at Wapping.</p>
<p>Like many other militants after Wapping, he drifted away from active involvement in the socialist movement, but remained on the union executive. Without the sacrifice, determination and spirit of Ross Pritchard, the weekly <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> could not have come out when it did, and the enthusiasm around the paper could not have been sustained at such a high level. He has no finer epitaph.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Obituary
Ross Pritchard – dedicated socialist
(20 January 2001)
From Socialist Worker, No.1731, 20 January 2001.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Socialist Worker and all its readers owe a tremendous debt to Ross Pritchard, who died of cancer last week at the age of 62. Ross joined the socialist movement in Glasgow at almost exactly the same time as I did. Ross had just come out of the armed forces (he was one of the last to be caught in the conscription net, as I was), and was trying to find a decent job in Glasgow. He came to the socialist movement as though he had been waiting for it all his life.
Ross and Anna, whom he married not much later and with whom he spent the rest of his life, were permanent fixtures at all the Young Socialists meetings, including the periodic excursions to CND demos and other protests. He rapidly became a part of the growing band of young worker-intellectuals who led the Young Socialists at that time. Like many others he was drawn to London by the prospect of decently paid employment.
He got a job in the print trade and, at a time when our organisation hardly existed, kept up his association with the International Socialists. In 1968 we yearned for a weekly paper, which was to become Socialist Worker. Roger Protz was to be the editor and Jim Nichol the business editor, but what we really needed was an expert in the print who would dedicate his life to the project.
Ross agreed to fill this post at once, though the move meant a huge increase in work and a drop in salary of at least 50 percent. Somehow this tiny crew managed to get the paper out. Ross was utterly irreplaceable.
He was the opposite of the token manual worker, and from the outset he was an essential part of the political process. He took a keen and critical interest in what the paper was saying, and how the organisation was growing. Ross became more and more central to the entire project, a learner turned teacher.
None of those who worked on the paper at that time will forget his dedication and encouragement. When Ross finally left the printshop in the mid-1970s, he became a militant in the merged NGA print union, and very soon was elected to the executive. He stayed a rank and file militant all the way through to the awful defeat of the print unions by Murdoch at Wapping.
Like many other militants after Wapping, he drifted away from active involvement in the socialist movement, but remained on the union executive. Without the sacrifice, determination and spirit of Ross Pritchard, the weekly Socialist Worker could not have come out when it did, and the enthusiasm around the paper could not have been sustained at such a high level. He has no finer epitaph.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Rotherham lads are here!</h1>
<h3>(February 1980)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 2 February 1980.<br>
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), <strong>In the Heat of the Struggle</strong>, Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.186-7.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="c"><strong>Paul Foot reports from the strike committee in Rotherham</strong></p>
<p class="fst">‘BEFORE THE strike, when you came in here, you felt you were coming to see God. Now the place belongs to all of us.’</p>
<p>Bob Bartholomew, crane driver at the Templeborough steel plant, Rotherham, was talking at the Rotherham headquarters of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, the steelworkers’ union.</p>
<p>You could hardly hear him above the hubbub of voices. Voices organising; voices arguing; voices telling the story of yesterday’s picket.</p>
<p>The prim building with its thick carpets was built for tidy and genteel officials with tidy and genteel routines. It has suddenly become the central powerhouse of the steel strike. As with the miners’ strike exactly eight years ago, the motivating power behind the action has shifted to South Yorkshire.</p>
<p>John Ratcliffe, a branch secretary and strike committee member, spelt out the details. There are 50 ‘cells’ each of 50 steelworkers, each of them based on a steel plant or a stockholder in the Rotherham area.</p>
<p>These cells mount pickets 24 hours a day. They also provide volunteers for the flying pickets. John says that the strike organisers have the names of 7,000 workers, all of whom can be mobilised at very short notice indeed.</p>
<p>The very energy of the strike activity from the Rotherham centre has brought workers into the action.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We forgot about the women workers,’ says John. ‘We hadn’t allocated them for any action. But yesterday they were in here demanding to know why they weren’t in the cells, and flooding out onto the pickets with the others.’</p>
<p class="fst">As the plants and stockholders shut down in Rotherham and the surrounding towns, so the pickets began to move further afield. News came in of possible steel movements into the ports.</p>
<p>Pickets visited Hull where the dockers, without even asking their union leaders, have stopped moving anything which could even remotely be used by the steel industry. The same has happened at Grimsby, Immingham and Boston.</p>
<p>Last week the steelworkers started to move off for long stays in places they had hardly ever heard of: the smaller ports of East Anglia and Kent.</p>
<p>John said that by last weekend there were South Yorkshire steel pickets guarding every port in Kent.</p>
<p>The money and accommodation for that huge operation had been supplied without a moment’s hesitation by the Kent miners. The miners have contacted dockers and other transport workers. The information is accurate and it moves fast.</p>
<p>And the steel, or most of it anyway, is stopped.</p>
<p>Before their very eyes the workers feel themselves changing. ‘What do we talk about in the plant?’ asks Tom Bartholomew. ‘Every day it’s the same: sex, booze and sport. On the picket line, and in the cars and vans, it’s all different. People start talking about the government, about the Labour Party, about the union; about how we’re going to change the world.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘You see blokes on the picket line you’d never have dreamed would be there. And often they’re the ones who have the best ideas about what to do next.</p>
<p class="quote">‘I suppose most of the blokes still feel that this is just part of ordinary life. But I must admit for me it’s like living history. I feel that one day I’ll be telling those children’s children what it was like being in the Great Steel Strike of 1980.’</p>
<p class="fst">By activating almost the whole rank and file in the area, by holding regular weekly mass branch meetings to report on and supplement all the picketing activity, the organisers have taken away from the Tories their one hope for outright victory over the steelworkers: an apathetic and uninformed rank and file.</p>
<p>If only it were so all through the industry! The South Yorkshire men know that it is not. They can see how in other areas, even in Scunthorpe which is only a few miles away, the strike is still held firmly by the old leadership, with picketing limited and the rank and file told to stay at home and watch the telly until they are told to go back to work.</p>
<p>A great tussle is already joined between the powerhouses at places like Rotherham and Stocksbridge and the slow-witted pessimism in many other steel areas.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Rotherham lads are here!
(February 1980)
From Socialist Worker, 2 February 1980.
Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), In the Heat of the Struggle, Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.186-7.
Transcribed & marked up by marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Paul Foot reports from the strike committee in Rotherham
‘BEFORE THE strike, when you came in here, you felt you were coming to see God. Now the place belongs to all of us.’
Bob Bartholomew, crane driver at the Templeborough steel plant, Rotherham, was talking at the Rotherham headquarters of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, the steelworkers’ union.
You could hardly hear him above the hubbub of voices. Voices organising; voices arguing; voices telling the story of yesterday’s picket.
The prim building with its thick carpets was built for tidy and genteel officials with tidy and genteel routines. It has suddenly become the central powerhouse of the steel strike. As with the miners’ strike exactly eight years ago, the motivating power behind the action has shifted to South Yorkshire.
John Ratcliffe, a branch secretary and strike committee member, spelt out the details. There are 50 ‘cells’ each of 50 steelworkers, each of them based on a steel plant or a stockholder in the Rotherham area.
These cells mount pickets 24 hours a day. They also provide volunteers for the flying pickets. John says that the strike organisers have the names of 7,000 workers, all of whom can be mobilised at very short notice indeed.
The very energy of the strike activity from the Rotherham centre has brought workers into the action.
‘We forgot about the women workers,’ says John. ‘We hadn’t allocated them for any action. But yesterday they were in here demanding to know why they weren’t in the cells, and flooding out onto the pickets with the others.’
As the plants and stockholders shut down in Rotherham and the surrounding towns, so the pickets began to move further afield. News came in of possible steel movements into the ports.
Pickets visited Hull where the dockers, without even asking their union leaders, have stopped moving anything which could even remotely be used by the steel industry. The same has happened at Grimsby, Immingham and Boston.
Last week the steelworkers started to move off for long stays in places they had hardly ever heard of: the smaller ports of East Anglia and Kent.
John said that by last weekend there were South Yorkshire steel pickets guarding every port in Kent.
The money and accommodation for that huge operation had been supplied without a moment’s hesitation by the Kent miners. The miners have contacted dockers and other transport workers. The information is accurate and it moves fast.
And the steel, or most of it anyway, is stopped.
Before their very eyes the workers feel themselves changing. ‘What do we talk about in the plant?’ asks Tom Bartholomew. ‘Every day it’s the same: sex, booze and sport. On the picket line, and in the cars and vans, it’s all different. People start talking about the government, about the Labour Party, about the union; about how we’re going to change the world.
‘You see blokes on the picket line you’d never have dreamed would be there. And often they’re the ones who have the best ideas about what to do next.
‘I suppose most of the blokes still feel that this is just part of ordinary life. But I must admit for me it’s like living history. I feel that one day I’ll be telling those children’s children what it was like being in the Great Steel Strike of 1980.’
By activating almost the whole rank and file in the area, by holding regular weekly mass branch meetings to report on and supplement all the picketing activity, the organisers have taken away from the Tories their one hope for outright victory over the steelworkers: an apathetic and uninformed rank and file.
If only it were so all through the industry! The South Yorkshire men know that it is not. They can see how in other areas, even in Scunthorpe which is only a few miles away, the strike is still held firmly by the old leadership, with picketing limited and the rank and file told to stay at home and watch the telly until they are told to go back to work.
A great tussle is already joined between the powerhouses at places like Rotherham and Stocksbridge and the slow-witted pessimism in many other steel areas.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Socialism and democracy</h1>
<h3>(April 1997)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Election special</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.207, April 1997, pp.11-14.<br>
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review. Published on MIA with the permission of the <a href="https://secure.marxists.org/copyright-permissions/paul-foot.txt" class="absref" target="new">Estate of Paul Foot</a>. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
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<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Roll on 1 May. Nothing could have been more gloriously crass of John Major than his decision to call the general election on May Day, the festival day for socialists all over the world. The date adds a sweetness to the excitement which accompanies all general elections and especially this one – an excitement which springs from the ability of all of us to take part in removing our government, in this case the most despised, mocked and corrupt administration of modern times. Anyone who says the election ‘makes no difference’ should remember their despondency on 9 April 1992 and compare it with the joyful anticipation with which we expect to greet the departure from public life of David Evans and William Waldegrave, and, who knows, perhaps even Ann Widdecombe, Peter Lilley and Michael Howard into the bargain. Even the vision of the removal vans outside Downing Street and the loading into them of the possessions of John Major and Kenneth Clarke is delicious beyond description.</p>
<p>Yet all these happy thoughts are marred by a more pervasive unease. In 1997, after almost a century of the Labour Party, our power to kick the Tories out seems absurdly limited to just that. We can kick the Tories out, but what then? Will the Blair government which comes to office take a single step to solve the problems which led to his victory? Will there be even the softest remedy for the horrors of the rampant free market? We have it on the firmest authority from Blair himself that everything will go on much the same as before. The man who uses the word ‘new’ as though he had invented it is now assuring us in almost every speech that his government will have nothing new to offer, and that the ‘change’ which he has advocated with such earnest passion will be no change at all. How to explain this contradiction between the thrill of our power to topple the Tories and our disgust at the Labour alternative? How has this apparently massive democratic power in which we can all participate shrunk to this little measure?</p>
<p>One answer, perhaps the most important one, lies in the relationship between parliamentary democracy and socialism. The idea of representative government – that the people should regularly elect their rulers – was popular before anyone even thought of socialism. The American and French revolutions at the end of the 18th century established forms of representative government for which most men could vote. In Britain there was a long and bitter fight to extend the vote from the small minority of wealthy men who’d had it from the Middle Ages, and whose numbers were only marginally increased by the absurdly named ‘Great’ Reform Act of 1832. Frustration with the results of that Reform Act built up into something truly great – the Chartist revolt which lasted from 1839 to 1848. In that final year, though the Chartists were beaten, revolutions broke out all over Europe and established new forms of parliamentary government. At the same time, the idea of socialism began for the first time to be widely circulated, most notably through the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong> by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.</p>
<p>Before Marx and Engels, socialism had been seen mainly as an ideal, to be imposed from on high by idealists. It was an almost ethereal concept of an equal society in which everybody shared – far too beautiful to be achieved or administered by the rather selfish and ignorant masses. Such idealists were inclined to dismiss the rising clamour for the vote as irrelevant to the socialist cause, at best a diversion, at worst an obstacle. Marx and Engels took an entirely different view. As Hal Draper puts it, ‘Marx was the first socialist figure to come to an acceptance of the socialist idea through the battle for the consistent extension of democratic control from below.’ The young Marx first came to politics as what Draper calls ‘a democratic extremist’. One of his earliest essays was a hymn to the freedom of the press – a hymn, incidentally, which never embarrassed him in later life and which he happily reprinted. The young democratic extremist was inspired by a loathing of censorship, of torture and imprisonment without trial, of arbitrary power of every kind. His outrage led him away from utopias and schemes in the heads of people at the top and towards retaliatory action by the people at the bottom. His socialism developed out of this democratic extremism. He identified the mainspring of the hierarchical undemocratic society he hated as the hierarchy of property. The most profoundly undemocratic aspect of capitalist society was precisely capitalism, the control over all the things of life by a handful of people who owned the means of production. Socialism, the social control of the means of production, could not, therefore, be counterposed to democracy. Democracy, control from below, was an essential ingredient of socialism, its very essence.</p>
<p>So Marx’s attitude to the rising tide of demands for universal suffrage was very different to that of most of his socialist contemporaries. He did not turn his back on the suffrage movement. On the contrary he consistently supported any demand which shifted power from the top to the bottom. He demanded the maximum suffrage, universal suffrage. He unconditionally supported the Chartists’ six points for extending the vote by secret ballot to all men. These demands (except one, for annual parliaments) have all been conceded. They seem today unremarkable – an integral part of capitalist society. Yet in 1839-48 they were the rallying standard for a vast working class army which linked their political demands – for votes and ballots – with economic demands to put an end to the exploitation of the poor by the rich.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Marx noticed that the new ‘democratic’ constitutions proclaimed by the revolutions in France and Germany were no threat at all to the rich. In a detailed analysis of those constitutions, he demonstrated how, in the name of universal suffrage, the freedom of the press and assembly, they reserved for the rulers the power to smash the freedom of the press and assembly and even to limit or abolish the suffrage. The thread which ran through all his discussions of these problems started in his democratic extremism. His criterion was, as Draper explained, ‘What will maximise the influence exercised from below, by the masses in movement, on the political forces above?’ If whatever was proposed did maximise that influence, if the masses were in movement, he supported it. If it cut down that influence and encouraged the passivity of the masses, he opposed it. An example in Britain was Marx’s approach to the Reform League which was formed in the 1860s to keep up the pressure for universal suffrage. Marx claimed, rather excessively, that he and his supporters in the International Working Men’s Association had effectively founded the League, and he supported it throughout. But when someone moved that the League’s founder and chairman, Edward Beales, should join the Committee of the International, Marx bristled with indignation. Beales, he grumbled, had parliamentary ambitions in Marylebone. As a campaigner for universal suffrage, he should be supported. As a parliamentary careerist, he should be shunned.</p>
<p>During most of Marx’s life the word ‘democracy’ had a revolutionary significance, which it does not have today. To most people it conjured up not just a representative parliament but a democratic share out of the economy as well. There seemed to be no difference between the power to vote for a government and the power which that vote would confer on the people’s representatives to redistribute society’s wealth. It seemed obvious on both sides of the class divide that if the majority, the workers and the poor, had the vote, the economic balance of society would shift towards them. Most of the Chartist leaders assumed that if they won their demand for universal suffrage, they would also win their demands for a fairer economic system. Universal suffrage meant working class power.</p>
<p>True, there were lurking doubts, especially from the United States where a wide franchise seemed to have made little difference to the ever expanding gap between rich and poor. This puzzled the London Working Men’s Association, where the <em>People’s Charter</em> was first drafted. In 1837 the Association, controlled by what later became the right wing of the Chartist movement under William Lovett, sent an address to the working classes of America, which asked:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Why, after 60 years of freedom have you not progressed further ... Why has so much of your fertile country been parcelled out between swindling bankers and grinding capitalists ... Why have so many of your cities, towns, railways, canals and manufactories become the monopolised property of those who “toil not neither do they spin”?’</p>
<p class="fst">No credible answer came to the question. But after the Chartists were defeated and the British economy glided into a period of unprecedented growth, the question came back with force on both sides of the class divide. Was it possible to concede political democracy without conceding economic democracy? Was it possible for the rich to tolerate a representative parliament without giving away a penny of their wealth to the workers? Could ‘democracy’ be defined to mean a parliament elected over long periods whose boundaries of power stopped well short of the domain of the swindling bankers and grinding capitalists?</p>
<p>Gradually, gingerly, as the nightmare of the Chartist revolt faded into the historical background, the newly confident British ruling class put these questions to the test. In 1867 a Tory government widened the franchise to skilled working men in the cities. In 1884 a Liberal government did the same for the better off workers in the countryside. In 1918 a Tory-Liberal coalition gave the vote to all men and to women over 30. In 1928 a Tory government extended this to all women. Thus the vote was conceded in four measures over 61 years. In general, the rulers found to their delight that the new democracy, restricted to politics and kept well away from economics, not only worked more smoothly than previously but encouraged large sections of the growing workers’ movement to join or support the Liberal Party and seek redress not through their own activity, as Marx had urged, but through ‘friendly’ Liberal members of parliament.</p>
<p>The consensus between a political democracy and an economic hierarchy was jolted by the formation in 1900 of the Labour Party whose purpose was to represent organised labour in parliament. The founders of the Labour Party clearly intended to use any political power they might win through the vote for economic purposes. When he wrote the Labour Party constitution in 1918 Sidney Webb borrowed an old phrase from the Chartists, ‘the fruits of industry’. Clause Four of the constitution, which appeared on every Labour Party card for more than 70 years, was the classic definition of the Labour founders’ intention to use the new political democracy to pursue economic democracy, ‘to secure for the workers the full fruits of their industry’ by passing into law ‘the best available system of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and exchange’. The intention was clear. Gradually, but persistently, elected Labour governments would use the power conferred on them by the vote to encroach on the power of the rich and transfer the ownership of the means of production from the rich to the people. This was not simply an intention. It was also used as a powerful argument to those who clung to the old ideas of democratic revolution. The argument ran like this. Why countenance revolution, with all its violence and unpleasantness, when the same ends – the common ownership of the means of production – can be achieved by peaceful means, through voting Labour to office in parliament?</p>
<p>The argument, which swept like wildfire through the rapidly growing labour parties in Europe, was contested by a revolutionary minority boosted by two enormously powerful pamphlets – Rosa Luxemburg’s <strong>Reform or Revolution</strong> (1900) and Lenin’s <strong>State and Revolution</strong>, written in the revolutionary summer of 1917. Both pamphlets continued in the tradition set out by Marx in the 1840s. Far from contrasting socialism with democracy, they started from the principle of a democratic society controlled from below. Lenin specifically hailed the ‘elective principle’ as indispensable to a socialist society. Rosa Luxemburg’s passionate identification with the spontaneous movements of the masses shines out of every sentence she wrote. Her whole approach was democratic from start to finish.</p>
<p>Like Marx’s, their argument was not at all that there is some choice to be made between socialism and democracy but that the two are indivisible. The problem, they argued, with the ‘democratic’ approach proposed by the main European workers’ parties was that their democracy was not strong enough to contest the hierarchies of the rich. It locked democracy up in a small parliamentary island, while control over the ocean – industry, finance, law, armed forces, police, media – stayed in the hands of the unelected rich. The contest between the new confined democracy in parliament and the boundless undemocratic hierarchies of the rich would be, they warned, no contest. The rich would win; and in the process the workers would lose confidence in themselves and lower their guard still further. For the essence of the parliamentary argument was that ordinary people could and should do nothing to emancipate themselves. They should leave the sophisticated business of emancipation to their betters, to the educated elite within the movement who would make their way to parliament. If and when, as was inevitable, this elite failed to achieve even a small part of the emancipation they promised, the workers would be left high and dry, rudderless and hopeless. If the educated elite couldn’t do the job, they would ask, who could? Passivity would lead to despair, to the triumph of the right, with disastrous consequences for democracy.</p>
<p>The experience of parliamentary democracy this century grimly vindicates what Lenin and Luxemburg predicted. This is not to pretend that no advances have been made for the workers by parliamentary endeavour. In Britain majority Labour governments in 1945-51, 1964-70 and 1974-79 all attempted to intervene in the world of the capitalist hierarchy, and reverse the priorities of the rich. The rate of their success has followed a consistent downward curve – each majority Labour government achieved less intervention and redistribution than the one before. But in general the overwhelming triumph in the continuing tussle between political (parliamentary) democracy and capitalist hierarchy has gone to the capitalists. Again and again Labour’s plans for intervening, for nationalising, for switching resources from profit to people, have been sidetracked, shelved or reversed. At the end of each period of Labour government, even the relatively confident one of 1945-51, the general impression conveyed by the defeated Labour ministers was of puzzlement, weariness, above all of impotence. The very idea of Labour ‘in power’ has shifted over the century to one of Labour in impotent office, not very different from the Tories in office. The resulting disillusionment has made it easy for the Tories and their media to turn the elections to their own advantage, and then to claim their ‘democratic’ victories at the polls as justifications for enlarging and reinforcing their hierarchical and entirely undemocratic monopolies.</p>
<p>The disillusionment has entered into the very soul of the Labour leaders themselves. The failure of their predecessors to keep their promises, and the Tory majorities at the polls from 1979 seem to have convinced Blair and his colleagues that capitalism is all powerful. The aspirations of their predecessors to intervene in the capitalist economy to protect and assist the people who vote Labour have been abandoned. In the past, they say, Labour made promises to their supporters which they broke. Their shock remedy has been not to make any promises to Labour supporters, and to talk instead of ‘newness’ and ‘change’ not in policy but in style and personnel. The process of 100 years of conflict between a political democracy and a capitalist hierarchy has left us with a choice between a bemused bespectacled grinning prime minister in his fifties, and a grinning prime minister in his forties who for the moment is neither bespectacled nor bemused. No wonder so many rich and powerful union bashers and exploiters are flocking to Blair.</p>
<p>A common New Labour justification for this process is that, although they no longer regard themselves as socialists, they still remain fervent democrats. They perpetuate the divide between socialism and democracy which was initiated by the sectarians of the 1840s. In truth, however, the experience of a century of failure has detached them from democracy as well. Perhaps the most depressing feature of the whole New Labour retreat has been its leaders’ willingness to jettison the most elementary democratic freedoms. The enthusiasm with which Jack Straw joined up with possibly the most odious Tory minister of the century, Michael Howard, to propose sweeping new powers for police and special agents to enter and bug people’s homes was the most ominous sign of New Labour’s threat to civil liberties. The commitment to ‘socialism from above’ has now been replaced by a new exciting concept, ‘democracy from above’, personified by Detective Inspector Straw and his merry men bugging the homes of dissidents, rounding them up, shoving them in prison, and shackling them to their hospital beds as they fall ill. Straw stands in the long lugubrious tradition of social democratic ministers who set out to change the world but decide before long to continue to administer it by repression.</p>
<p>In their desperate enthusiasm to run the corrupt capitalism of the age, Labour leaders have moved far to the right of their supporters. The course which they have plotted never mind the degrees to which they will be blown even off that course by a militant capitalist class – will place them almost at once in conflict with large groups of their supporters who will be boosted by the electoral victory and even less tolerant than in the old days of Labour prevarication. There are tumultuous times ahead in which the need for a new mass socialist organisation will be at once obvious and desperate. In building such a new organisation, the history of the century spells out two vital lessons. The first is not to dissipate our energies once again in seeking to regulate or alter capitalist society from the top, but to mobilise and coordinate the enormous forces at the disposal of the workers and their movement. The second, and even more important, is to avoid the sanctuary of the ivory tower, and the temptation in hard times to retreat into a sectarian dugout, where the floundering of what is left of democracy can be observed with grim and irrelevant delight. The sidelining of socialism has led to the sidelining of democracy, and socialists will have to fight for both with renewed determination. One of the oldest tricks of Labour ministers in office who propose to legislate against democratic freedoms is to pretend that these ‘bourgeois issues’ are the preoccupation of the ‘chattering classes’, and have nothing to do with good old salty proletarians like Jack Straw or Harriet Harman. This is bilge. Socialists are going to have to lead the battle for elementary democratic rights – for trial by jury, for legal aid, for the freedom of the minority press, against media witch hunts and baton happy policemen.</p>
<p>Marx’s rule of thumb is just as vital as a century and a half ago. Anything, however remote or small, which builds and sustains control from below is part of the overall struggle to change the social order, and worth fighting for. When he was repeatedly asked what socialism would be like, he grew irritable and impatient. The nearest he ever came to a blueprint was when he told his idealist correspondents that if they wanted a glimpse of the new society they should join the fight against capitalism. The seeds of the new society are sown in the struggle against the old one.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Socialism and democracy
(April 1997)
From Election special, Socialist Review, No.207, April 1997, pp.11-14.
Copyright © 1997 Socialist Review. Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Roll on 1 May. Nothing could have been more gloriously crass of John Major than his decision to call the general election on May Day, the festival day for socialists all over the world. The date adds a sweetness to the excitement which accompanies all general elections and especially this one – an excitement which springs from the ability of all of us to take part in removing our government, in this case the most despised, mocked and corrupt administration of modern times. Anyone who says the election ‘makes no difference’ should remember their despondency on 9 April 1992 and compare it with the joyful anticipation with which we expect to greet the departure from public life of David Evans and William Waldegrave, and, who knows, perhaps even Ann Widdecombe, Peter Lilley and Michael Howard into the bargain. Even the vision of the removal vans outside Downing Street and the loading into them of the possessions of John Major and Kenneth Clarke is delicious beyond description.
Yet all these happy thoughts are marred by a more pervasive unease. In 1997, after almost a century of the Labour Party, our power to kick the Tories out seems absurdly limited to just that. We can kick the Tories out, but what then? Will the Blair government which comes to office take a single step to solve the problems which led to his victory? Will there be even the softest remedy for the horrors of the rampant free market? We have it on the firmest authority from Blair himself that everything will go on much the same as before. The man who uses the word ‘new’ as though he had invented it is now assuring us in almost every speech that his government will have nothing new to offer, and that the ‘change’ which he has advocated with such earnest passion will be no change at all. How to explain this contradiction between the thrill of our power to topple the Tories and our disgust at the Labour alternative? How has this apparently massive democratic power in which we can all participate shrunk to this little measure?
One answer, perhaps the most important one, lies in the relationship between parliamentary democracy and socialism. The idea of representative government – that the people should regularly elect their rulers – was popular before anyone even thought of socialism. The American and French revolutions at the end of the 18th century established forms of representative government for which most men could vote. In Britain there was a long and bitter fight to extend the vote from the small minority of wealthy men who’d had it from the Middle Ages, and whose numbers were only marginally increased by the absurdly named ‘Great’ Reform Act of 1832. Frustration with the results of that Reform Act built up into something truly great – the Chartist revolt which lasted from 1839 to 1848. In that final year, though the Chartists were beaten, revolutions broke out all over Europe and established new forms of parliamentary government. At the same time, the idea of socialism began for the first time to be widely circulated, most notably through the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
Before Marx and Engels, socialism had been seen mainly as an ideal, to be imposed from on high by idealists. It was an almost ethereal concept of an equal society in which everybody shared – far too beautiful to be achieved or administered by the rather selfish and ignorant masses. Such idealists were inclined to dismiss the rising clamour for the vote as irrelevant to the socialist cause, at best a diversion, at worst an obstacle. Marx and Engels took an entirely different view. As Hal Draper puts it, ‘Marx was the first socialist figure to come to an acceptance of the socialist idea through the battle for the consistent extension of democratic control from below.’ The young Marx first came to politics as what Draper calls ‘a democratic extremist’. One of his earliest essays was a hymn to the freedom of the press – a hymn, incidentally, which never embarrassed him in later life and which he happily reprinted. The young democratic extremist was inspired by a loathing of censorship, of torture and imprisonment without trial, of arbitrary power of every kind. His outrage led him away from utopias and schemes in the heads of people at the top and towards retaliatory action by the people at the bottom. His socialism developed out of this democratic extremism. He identified the mainspring of the hierarchical undemocratic society he hated as the hierarchy of property. The most profoundly undemocratic aspect of capitalist society was precisely capitalism, the control over all the things of life by a handful of people who owned the means of production. Socialism, the social control of the means of production, could not, therefore, be counterposed to democracy. Democracy, control from below, was an essential ingredient of socialism, its very essence.
So Marx’s attitude to the rising tide of demands for universal suffrage was very different to that of most of his socialist contemporaries. He did not turn his back on the suffrage movement. On the contrary he consistently supported any demand which shifted power from the top to the bottom. He demanded the maximum suffrage, universal suffrage. He unconditionally supported the Chartists’ six points for extending the vote by secret ballot to all men. These demands (except one, for annual parliaments) have all been conceded. They seem today unremarkable – an integral part of capitalist society. Yet in 1839-48 they were the rallying standard for a vast working class army which linked their political demands – for votes and ballots – with economic demands to put an end to the exploitation of the poor by the rich.
On the other hand, Marx noticed that the new ‘democratic’ constitutions proclaimed by the revolutions in France and Germany were no threat at all to the rich. In a detailed analysis of those constitutions, he demonstrated how, in the name of universal suffrage, the freedom of the press and assembly, they reserved for the rulers the power to smash the freedom of the press and assembly and even to limit or abolish the suffrage. The thread which ran through all his discussions of these problems started in his democratic extremism. His criterion was, as Draper explained, ‘What will maximise the influence exercised from below, by the masses in movement, on the political forces above?’ If whatever was proposed did maximise that influence, if the masses were in movement, he supported it. If it cut down that influence and encouraged the passivity of the masses, he opposed it. An example in Britain was Marx’s approach to the Reform League which was formed in the 1860s to keep up the pressure for universal suffrage. Marx claimed, rather excessively, that he and his supporters in the International Working Men’s Association had effectively founded the League, and he supported it throughout. But when someone moved that the League’s founder and chairman, Edward Beales, should join the Committee of the International, Marx bristled with indignation. Beales, he grumbled, had parliamentary ambitions in Marylebone. As a campaigner for universal suffrage, he should be supported. As a parliamentary careerist, he should be shunned.
During most of Marx’s life the word ‘democracy’ had a revolutionary significance, which it does not have today. To most people it conjured up not just a representative parliament but a democratic share out of the economy as well. There seemed to be no difference between the power to vote for a government and the power which that vote would confer on the people’s representatives to redistribute society’s wealth. It seemed obvious on both sides of the class divide that if the majority, the workers and the poor, had the vote, the economic balance of society would shift towards them. Most of the Chartist leaders assumed that if they won their demand for universal suffrage, they would also win their demands for a fairer economic system. Universal suffrage meant working class power.
True, there were lurking doubts, especially from the United States where a wide franchise seemed to have made little difference to the ever expanding gap between rich and poor. This puzzled the London Working Men’s Association, where the People’s Charter was first drafted. In 1837 the Association, controlled by what later became the right wing of the Chartist movement under William Lovett, sent an address to the working classes of America, which asked:
‘Why, after 60 years of freedom have you not progressed further ... Why has so much of your fertile country been parcelled out between swindling bankers and grinding capitalists ... Why have so many of your cities, towns, railways, canals and manufactories become the monopolised property of those who “toil not neither do they spin”?’
No credible answer came to the question. But after the Chartists were defeated and the British economy glided into a period of unprecedented growth, the question came back with force on both sides of the class divide. Was it possible to concede political democracy without conceding economic democracy? Was it possible for the rich to tolerate a representative parliament without giving away a penny of their wealth to the workers? Could ‘democracy’ be defined to mean a parliament elected over long periods whose boundaries of power stopped well short of the domain of the swindling bankers and grinding capitalists?
Gradually, gingerly, as the nightmare of the Chartist revolt faded into the historical background, the newly confident British ruling class put these questions to the test. In 1867 a Tory government widened the franchise to skilled working men in the cities. In 1884 a Liberal government did the same for the better off workers in the countryside. In 1918 a Tory-Liberal coalition gave the vote to all men and to women over 30. In 1928 a Tory government extended this to all women. Thus the vote was conceded in four measures over 61 years. In general, the rulers found to their delight that the new democracy, restricted to politics and kept well away from economics, not only worked more smoothly than previously but encouraged large sections of the growing workers’ movement to join or support the Liberal Party and seek redress not through their own activity, as Marx had urged, but through ‘friendly’ Liberal members of parliament.
The consensus between a political democracy and an economic hierarchy was jolted by the formation in 1900 of the Labour Party whose purpose was to represent organised labour in parliament. The founders of the Labour Party clearly intended to use any political power they might win through the vote for economic purposes. When he wrote the Labour Party constitution in 1918 Sidney Webb borrowed an old phrase from the Chartists, ‘the fruits of industry’. Clause Four of the constitution, which appeared on every Labour Party card for more than 70 years, was the classic definition of the Labour founders’ intention to use the new political democracy to pursue economic democracy, ‘to secure for the workers the full fruits of their industry’ by passing into law ‘the best available system of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and exchange’. The intention was clear. Gradually, but persistently, elected Labour governments would use the power conferred on them by the vote to encroach on the power of the rich and transfer the ownership of the means of production from the rich to the people. This was not simply an intention. It was also used as a powerful argument to those who clung to the old ideas of democratic revolution. The argument ran like this. Why countenance revolution, with all its violence and unpleasantness, when the same ends – the common ownership of the means of production – can be achieved by peaceful means, through voting Labour to office in parliament?
The argument, which swept like wildfire through the rapidly growing labour parties in Europe, was contested by a revolutionary minority boosted by two enormously powerful pamphlets – Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution (1900) and Lenin’s State and Revolution, written in the revolutionary summer of 1917. Both pamphlets continued in the tradition set out by Marx in the 1840s. Far from contrasting socialism with democracy, they started from the principle of a democratic society controlled from below. Lenin specifically hailed the ‘elective principle’ as indispensable to a socialist society. Rosa Luxemburg’s passionate identification with the spontaneous movements of the masses shines out of every sentence she wrote. Her whole approach was democratic from start to finish.
Like Marx’s, their argument was not at all that there is some choice to be made between socialism and democracy but that the two are indivisible. The problem, they argued, with the ‘democratic’ approach proposed by the main European workers’ parties was that their democracy was not strong enough to contest the hierarchies of the rich. It locked democracy up in a small parliamentary island, while control over the ocean – industry, finance, law, armed forces, police, media – stayed in the hands of the unelected rich. The contest between the new confined democracy in parliament and the boundless undemocratic hierarchies of the rich would be, they warned, no contest. The rich would win; and in the process the workers would lose confidence in themselves and lower their guard still further. For the essence of the parliamentary argument was that ordinary people could and should do nothing to emancipate themselves. They should leave the sophisticated business of emancipation to their betters, to the educated elite within the movement who would make their way to parliament. If and when, as was inevitable, this elite failed to achieve even a small part of the emancipation they promised, the workers would be left high and dry, rudderless and hopeless. If the educated elite couldn’t do the job, they would ask, who could? Passivity would lead to despair, to the triumph of the right, with disastrous consequences for democracy.
The experience of parliamentary democracy this century grimly vindicates what Lenin and Luxemburg predicted. This is not to pretend that no advances have been made for the workers by parliamentary endeavour. In Britain majority Labour governments in 1945-51, 1964-70 and 1974-79 all attempted to intervene in the world of the capitalist hierarchy, and reverse the priorities of the rich. The rate of their success has followed a consistent downward curve – each majority Labour government achieved less intervention and redistribution than the one before. But in general the overwhelming triumph in the continuing tussle between political (parliamentary) democracy and capitalist hierarchy has gone to the capitalists. Again and again Labour’s plans for intervening, for nationalising, for switching resources from profit to people, have been sidetracked, shelved or reversed. At the end of each period of Labour government, even the relatively confident one of 1945-51, the general impression conveyed by the defeated Labour ministers was of puzzlement, weariness, above all of impotence. The very idea of Labour ‘in power’ has shifted over the century to one of Labour in impotent office, not very different from the Tories in office. The resulting disillusionment has made it easy for the Tories and their media to turn the elections to their own advantage, and then to claim their ‘democratic’ victories at the polls as justifications for enlarging and reinforcing their hierarchical and entirely undemocratic monopolies.
The disillusionment has entered into the very soul of the Labour leaders themselves. The failure of their predecessors to keep their promises, and the Tory majorities at the polls from 1979 seem to have convinced Blair and his colleagues that capitalism is all powerful. The aspirations of their predecessors to intervene in the capitalist economy to protect and assist the people who vote Labour have been abandoned. In the past, they say, Labour made promises to their supporters which they broke. Their shock remedy has been not to make any promises to Labour supporters, and to talk instead of ‘newness’ and ‘change’ not in policy but in style and personnel. The process of 100 years of conflict between a political democracy and a capitalist hierarchy has left us with a choice between a bemused bespectacled grinning prime minister in his fifties, and a grinning prime minister in his forties who for the moment is neither bespectacled nor bemused. No wonder so many rich and powerful union bashers and exploiters are flocking to Blair.
A common New Labour justification for this process is that, although they no longer regard themselves as socialists, they still remain fervent democrats. They perpetuate the divide between socialism and democracy which was initiated by the sectarians of the 1840s. In truth, however, the experience of a century of failure has detached them from democracy as well. Perhaps the most depressing feature of the whole New Labour retreat has been its leaders’ willingness to jettison the most elementary democratic freedoms. The enthusiasm with which Jack Straw joined up with possibly the most odious Tory minister of the century, Michael Howard, to propose sweeping new powers for police and special agents to enter and bug people’s homes was the most ominous sign of New Labour’s threat to civil liberties. The commitment to ‘socialism from above’ has now been replaced by a new exciting concept, ‘democracy from above’, personified by Detective Inspector Straw and his merry men bugging the homes of dissidents, rounding them up, shoving them in prison, and shackling them to their hospital beds as they fall ill. Straw stands in the long lugubrious tradition of social democratic ministers who set out to change the world but decide before long to continue to administer it by repression.
In their desperate enthusiasm to run the corrupt capitalism of the age, Labour leaders have moved far to the right of their supporters. The course which they have plotted never mind the degrees to which they will be blown even off that course by a militant capitalist class – will place them almost at once in conflict with large groups of their supporters who will be boosted by the electoral victory and even less tolerant than in the old days of Labour prevarication. There are tumultuous times ahead in which the need for a new mass socialist organisation will be at once obvious and desperate. In building such a new organisation, the history of the century spells out two vital lessons. The first is not to dissipate our energies once again in seeking to regulate or alter capitalist society from the top, but to mobilise and coordinate the enormous forces at the disposal of the workers and their movement. The second, and even more important, is to avoid the sanctuary of the ivory tower, and the temptation in hard times to retreat into a sectarian dugout, where the floundering of what is left of democracy can be observed with grim and irrelevant delight. The sidelining of socialism has led to the sidelining of democracy, and socialists will have to fight for both with renewed determination. One of the oldest tricks of Labour ministers in office who propose to legislate against democratic freedoms is to pretend that these ‘bourgeois issues’ are the preoccupation of the ‘chattering classes’, and have nothing to do with good old salty proletarians like Jack Straw or Harriet Harman. This is bilge. Socialists are going to have to lead the battle for elementary democratic rights – for trial by jury, for legal aid, for the freedom of the minority press, against media witch hunts and baton happy policemen.
Marx’s rule of thumb is just as vital as a century and a half ago. Anything, however remote or small, which builds and sustains control from below is part of the overall struggle to change the social order, and worth fighting for. When he was repeatedly asked what socialism would be like, he grew irritable and impatient. The nearest he ever came to a blueprint was when he told his idealist correspondents that if they wanted a glimpse of the new society they should join the fight against capitalism. The seeds of the new society are sown in the struggle against the old one.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>How history comes alive</h1>
<h3>(9 September 1993)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 9 September 1993.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 58–59.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">I met the historian Christopher Hill once, last summer. I went with BBC producer Fiona Maclean to interview him in his Warwickshire home for a programme about poetry and revolution.</p>
<p>He took us into his garden on a bright summer afternoon and questioned us closely on how much time he had on air. He ascertained that he had a quarter of an hour. He then vanished upstairs and re-emerged staggering under a huge pile of books.</p>
<p>The tape recorder was switched on and he spoke, uninterrupted except by an infernal bee, referring to and quoting freely from his books for an hour. He spoke about Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell and above all John Milton, and their relationship to the English Revolution.</p>
<p>He spoke with such power and persuasive passion that we wondered, as we made our dazed way home, whether we should devote our whole 50 minutes to him alone.</p>
<p>After the interview I told him I had been searching everywhere for his <strong>Milton and the English Revolution</strong>, first published in 1978. Did he have a spare copy? No, he said nervously, he had none left.</p>
<p>So the search went on. It ended a year later on the top rung of a ladder in a second hand bookshop in Chicago.<br>
</p>
<h4>Quaint and absurd</h4>
<p class="fst">A book like this cannot be absorbed in snatched moments – it has to wait for a holiday. And so my summer holiday has been enriched beyond description by this wonderful book – the best, in my judgement, of all Christopher Hill’s long lifetime’s work on the English Revolution.</p>
<p>‘I am arguing a case’, he writes in his introduction. That was a dangerous enough confession from the Master of Balliol College, but far more subversive when the ‘case’ was that John Milton, the academics’ darling, the source of endless textual nitpicking from A level students to classical English Literature scholars, ‘got his ideas not only from books but also from talking to his contemporaries’.</p>
<p>In other words a lot of <em>Paradise Lost</em>, <em>Paradise Regained</em>, and especially <em>Samson Agonistes</em> has more to do with the ‘loony left’ – known in the mid-17th century as Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians etc – than with any classical text or Latin scholarship.</p>
<p>Christopher Hill’s great genius as a historian is not just that he can think himself back 300 years, and translate what often seem quaint and absurd religious discussions into the politics of the time. The relationship of the Son to the Father, the Trinity, the destination of the soul after death, the Serpent and the Apple, Adam and Eve – all these dead notions come alive in the revolutionary forces of the time.</p>
<p>Some of this is hard to follow but, thanks to Christopher Hill’s dry humour and unbending commitment, never difficult to read. For example:</p>
<p class="quoteb">When a modern theologian writes ‘it would no longer seem appropriate to speak of a God existing apart from man, or a human self existing apart from God’, we may dismiss this as an attempt to adapt Christianity to the modern world, to preserve a God who is in fact dead.</p>
<p class="quote">But we should not let our scepticism about trendy modern theologians reflect back upon the fantastic daring of the 17th century thinkers, who expressed their hard won belief in the importance of human beings through the medium of theology.</p>
<p class="quote">For them it was not a trick, not a last hope of drawing a congregation: it was a tremendous and tremendously new concept, won through spiritual torment and exaltation.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
How history comes alive
(9 September 1993)
From Socialist Worker, 9 September 1993.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 58–59.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
I met the historian Christopher Hill once, last summer. I went with BBC producer Fiona Maclean to interview him in his Warwickshire home for a programme about poetry and revolution.
He took us into his garden on a bright summer afternoon and questioned us closely on how much time he had on air. He ascertained that he had a quarter of an hour. He then vanished upstairs and re-emerged staggering under a huge pile of books.
The tape recorder was switched on and he spoke, uninterrupted except by an infernal bee, referring to and quoting freely from his books for an hour. He spoke about Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell and above all John Milton, and their relationship to the English Revolution.
He spoke with such power and persuasive passion that we wondered, as we made our dazed way home, whether we should devote our whole 50 minutes to him alone.
After the interview I told him I had been searching everywhere for his Milton and the English Revolution, first published in 1978. Did he have a spare copy? No, he said nervously, he had none left.
So the search went on. It ended a year later on the top rung of a ladder in a second hand bookshop in Chicago.
Quaint and absurd
A book like this cannot be absorbed in snatched moments – it has to wait for a holiday. And so my summer holiday has been enriched beyond description by this wonderful book – the best, in my judgement, of all Christopher Hill’s long lifetime’s work on the English Revolution.
‘I am arguing a case’, he writes in his introduction. That was a dangerous enough confession from the Master of Balliol College, but far more subversive when the ‘case’ was that John Milton, the academics’ darling, the source of endless textual nitpicking from A level students to classical English Literature scholars, ‘got his ideas not only from books but also from talking to his contemporaries’.
In other words a lot of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and especially Samson Agonistes has more to do with the ‘loony left’ – known in the mid-17th century as Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians etc – than with any classical text or Latin scholarship.
Christopher Hill’s great genius as a historian is not just that he can think himself back 300 years, and translate what often seem quaint and absurd religious discussions into the politics of the time. The relationship of the Son to the Father, the Trinity, the destination of the soul after death, the Serpent and the Apple, Adam and Eve – all these dead notions come alive in the revolutionary forces of the time.
Some of this is hard to follow but, thanks to Christopher Hill’s dry humour and unbending commitment, never difficult to read. For example:
When a modern theologian writes ‘it would no longer seem appropriate to speak of a God existing apart from man, or a human self existing apart from God’, we may dismiss this as an attempt to adapt Christianity to the modern world, to preserve a God who is in fact dead.
But we should not let our scepticism about trendy modern theologians reflect back upon the fantastic daring of the 17th century thinkers, who expressed their hard won belief in the importance of human beings through the medium of theology.
For them it was not a trick, not a last hope of drawing a congregation: it was a tremendous and tremendously new concept, won through spiritual torment and exaltation.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Dead ringer</h1>
<h3>(November 1989)</h3>
<hr class="infotop">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker Review</strong>, No. 125 (November 1989).<br>
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot. Published on MIA with the permission of the <a href="https://secure.marxists.org/copyright-permissions/paul-foot.txt" class="absref" target="new">Estate</a>. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2013.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot">
<p class="fst"><em>Dead Poets Society</em><br>
Director: Peter Weir</p>
<p class="fst">THE MAIN characteristic of the school I went to was barbarism. It was a “top flight” public school – Shrewsbury – and it was run on the standard lines of British public schools throughout the ages.</p>
<p>It cost a lot of money to go to Shrewsbury, and what the parents got in return was children well equipped to be rulers.</p>
<p>“You are the leaders of the future,” a general bellowed at us every year as we dressed up in uniform and paraded around like toy soldiers. “See that you live up to it!”</p>
<p>To be leaders of the future it was necessary to know what it was like to be bullied in order to turn out a good bully yourself. Almost every relationship at school was founded on discipline, violence and hierarchy.</p>
<p>Looking back on all this now, I wonder how it was that, at least in the last two years of my schooldays, I enjoyed them so much. The answer lies in the character and style of two teachers whose very presence at the school seemed to flout its essence.</p>
<p>One of these men was small, bald, and on first acquaintance, almost certainly off his rocker. He taught English to boys who were learning other subjects for exams, and was therefore not expected to help anyone pass anything. On my first appearance in his classroom he made one of my friends <em>stand on a chair</em> and recite two lines which he had written on the blackboard. I recall them exactly:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="quoteb">anyone lived in a pretty how<br>
town<br>
with up so floating many<br>
bells down.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The teacher – we called him Kek – told us that these lines were by a man called ee cummings (who spelt his name like that, <em>without capital letters</em>, and the whole of the rest of the poem was like those first two lines – gibberish, and badly punctuated gibberish at that).</p>
<p>We learnt his “spells”, as he called his gobbets of prose and poetry in endless different languages, were hypnotised by them, learnt the bits around them and became quite literally spellbound. All the guff learnt for exams has long since been forgotten but Kek’s spells still roll around in my head today.</p>
<p>They are <em>still</em> part of a new world, something completely different to the world I can see and feel day to day.</p>
<p>The only other teacher I remember at Shrewsbury was also an eccentric. I think he was a Liberal, or even perhaps a “moderate” Tory, but he was constantly provoking dissent.</p>
<p>He introduced us – in 1956 – to the <strong>New Statesman</strong>, which was quite shockingly subversive of everything the school seemed to be telling us. He pushed us to write in the school magazine all kinds of subversive and satirical material.</p>
<p>So far did he push me down the road to radical ideas that I even started (just before I left) wondering what he, and Kek for that matter, were doing at Shrewsbury at all. Were they not contradicting everything the school stood for? Were they not subverting the very values which inspired people to go out and form an empire?</p>
<p>The answer was, in part, yes. The Kek spells and the <strong>New Statesman</strong> did open up closed minds.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there was even at Shrewsbury in the 1950s, as in every public school, the eccentric oddball teacher. It was perhaps important for boys to learn to think for themselves, if only to come to the correct conclusion about their role in life as rulers. The question which dogged the authorities was – how far can we let these eccentrics go?</p>
<p>I do realise that not everybody who goes to see <em>Dead Poets Society</em> was likely to have been at Shrewsbury (or any public school) in the 1950s.</p>
<p>Some may have gone to the film simply because they read a disgustingly philistine and reactionary review in <strong>City Limits</strong> (once a principled magazine, now a worthless rag).</p>
<p>But as the film went on, I felt it could hardly be a coincidence that so many experiences of mine at a British public school in the 1950s should be reproduced in a film about an American school founded on all that’s worst in the British school tradition in 1959.</p>
<p>The hero of the film is a teacher who wants to break the walls of convention which hem his pupils in. He wants them to see things differently, which is one reason he makes them stand on their desks to recite poetry.</p>
<p>Just as Kek was hooked on Auden and Eliot and ee cummings because they used words which sounded like what they should mean, so Mr Keating in the film is turned on by the great idealists of the American tradition: Thoreau, who was forever writing of Utopias where people behaved decently to one another; Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, who spent their lives urging people to take the unlikely and unusual paths of life rather than perish in conformity.</p>
<p>The question for Keating is the same as it was for Kek. How would the authorities react? Would they patronise him? Or would he stray too far beyond the bounds of orthodoxy?</p>
<p>As always in such matters, the dividing line is crossed when talk turns to action: when cosy theory about an ideal society turns into practice which changes the very lifestyles and aspirations of the leaders of the future.</p>
<p>Many who see the film and did not go to a school of this kind will find it incredible if not a little contemptible, that a man of Keating’s idealism and visions could find himself in a barbaric place like that in the first place.</p>
<p>They underestimate the ability of the public school system to patronise eccentricity and, where possible, to make a virtue out of it. When one of his pupils revolts against the headmaster in a quite wonderful prank, Keating himself quite genuinely intervenes on the side of authority.</p>
<p>He is happy to flout the authority of the world outside, provided he does not flout the authority of the school. In the end the logic of revolt takes its course, and he is seen, wrongly as it turns out, to go too far.</p>
<p>This is a glorious film with a gloriously subversive ending, and any reader of the <strong>Review</strong> who does not see it should suffer the worst possible penalty – a life subscription to <strong>City Limits</strong>.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Dead ringer
(November 1989)
From Socialist Worker Review, No. 125 (November 1989).
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot. Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2013.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Dead Poets Society
Director: Peter Weir
THE MAIN characteristic of the school I went to was barbarism. It was a “top flight” public school – Shrewsbury – and it was run on the standard lines of British public schools throughout the ages.
It cost a lot of money to go to Shrewsbury, and what the parents got in return was children well equipped to be rulers.
“You are the leaders of the future,” a general bellowed at us every year as we dressed up in uniform and paraded around like toy soldiers. “See that you live up to it!”
To be leaders of the future it was necessary to know what it was like to be bullied in order to turn out a good bully yourself. Almost every relationship at school was founded on discipline, violence and hierarchy.
Looking back on all this now, I wonder how it was that, at least in the last two years of my schooldays, I enjoyed them so much. The answer lies in the character and style of two teachers whose very presence at the school seemed to flout its essence.
One of these men was small, bald, and on first acquaintance, almost certainly off his rocker. He taught English to boys who were learning other subjects for exams, and was therefore not expected to help anyone pass anything. On my first appearance in his classroom he made one of my friends stand on a chair and recite two lines which he had written on the blackboard. I recall them exactly:
anyone lived in a pretty how
town
with up so floating many
bells down.
The teacher – we called him Kek – told us that these lines were by a man called ee cummings (who spelt his name like that, without capital letters, and the whole of the rest of the poem was like those first two lines – gibberish, and badly punctuated gibberish at that).
We learnt his “spells”, as he called his gobbets of prose and poetry in endless different languages, were hypnotised by them, learnt the bits around them and became quite literally spellbound. All the guff learnt for exams has long since been forgotten but Kek’s spells still roll around in my head today.
They are still part of a new world, something completely different to the world I can see and feel day to day.
The only other teacher I remember at Shrewsbury was also an eccentric. I think he was a Liberal, or even perhaps a “moderate” Tory, but he was constantly provoking dissent.
He introduced us – in 1956 – to the New Statesman, which was quite shockingly subversive of everything the school seemed to be telling us. He pushed us to write in the school magazine all kinds of subversive and satirical material.
So far did he push me down the road to radical ideas that I even started (just before I left) wondering what he, and Kek for that matter, were doing at Shrewsbury at all. Were they not contradicting everything the school stood for? Were they not subverting the very values which inspired people to go out and form an empire?
The answer was, in part, yes. The Kek spells and the New Statesman did open up closed minds.
Nevertheless, there was even at Shrewsbury in the 1950s, as in every public school, the eccentric oddball teacher. It was perhaps important for boys to learn to think for themselves, if only to come to the correct conclusion about their role in life as rulers. The question which dogged the authorities was – how far can we let these eccentrics go?
I do realise that not everybody who goes to see Dead Poets Society was likely to have been at Shrewsbury (or any public school) in the 1950s.
Some may have gone to the film simply because they read a disgustingly philistine and reactionary review in City Limits (once a principled magazine, now a worthless rag).
But as the film went on, I felt it could hardly be a coincidence that so many experiences of mine at a British public school in the 1950s should be reproduced in a film about an American school founded on all that’s worst in the British school tradition in 1959.
The hero of the film is a teacher who wants to break the walls of convention which hem his pupils in. He wants them to see things differently, which is one reason he makes them stand on their desks to recite poetry.
Just as Kek was hooked on Auden and Eliot and ee cummings because they used words which sounded like what they should mean, so Mr Keating in the film is turned on by the great idealists of the American tradition: Thoreau, who was forever writing of Utopias where people behaved decently to one another; Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, who spent their lives urging people to take the unlikely and unusual paths of life rather than perish in conformity.
The question for Keating is the same as it was for Kek. How would the authorities react? Would they patronise him? Or would he stray too far beyond the bounds of orthodoxy?
As always in such matters, the dividing line is crossed when talk turns to action: when cosy theory about an ideal society turns into practice which changes the very lifestyles and aspirations of the leaders of the future.
Many who see the film and did not go to a school of this kind will find it incredible if not a little contemptible, that a man of Keating’s idealism and visions could find himself in a barbaric place like that in the first place.
They underestimate the ability of the public school system to patronise eccentricity and, where possible, to make a virtue out of it. When one of his pupils revolts against the headmaster in a quite wonderful prank, Keating himself quite genuinely intervenes on the side of authority.
He is happy to flout the authority of the world outside, provided he does not flout the authority of the school. In the end the logic of revolt takes its course, and he is seen, wrongly as it turns out, to go too far.
This is a glorious film with a gloriously subversive ending, and any reader of the Review who does not see it should suffer the worst possible penalty – a life subscription to City Limits.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Big Business and Government</small><br>
Tony Blair’s well oiled machine</h1>
<h3>(October 2000)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>News Review</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.245, October 2000, p.5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The reports of the ‘crisis meetings’ between Blair and Co and the oil company chiefs have been greeted with profound merriment in the corridors of oil power. The prime minister and his ruthless home secretary, Jack Straw – were widely reported to have issued ‘stern warnings’ to the executives about their duty to the public, and even threats that unless they got the oil moving they could all be in serious trouble.</p>
<p>The merriment arises from the fact that no section of British industry has provided more of New Labour’s business initiatives than oil. The best example is Nick Butler, who is so senior in BP that he can’t afford to be a cabinet minister. Butler has been an ideological pillar of New Labour ever since he wrote a book with Neil Kinnock in 1987 trying to persuade people to vote Labour because the party had changed its attitude to shareholders and had been converted to the case for making money for nothing. Butler was not available for comment after that first tense meeting with the prime minister – indeed, in the interests of a free press, no oil executive would appear in any media until the dispute was almost over.</p>
<p>Butler’s squeamishness about taking a ministerial post was not shared by Lord Simon, former chairman of BP, who was Blair’s choice as his first minister for Europe. Somehow Simon managed to take his new post without sacrificing a penny of his vast shareholding in BP, and without batting an eyelid when his company’s association with the drug barons of Colombia was exposed.</p>
<p>The Simon connection did not last long, but there are plenty of other associations between oil industry bosses and the Labour government many of which are set out in the 22 September issue of <strong>Private Eye</strong>. In 1998, during his brief career as trade secretary (before he was sacked for borrowing nearly £400,000 from the government’s paymaster general to buy an appropriate London mansion), Peter Mandelson set up an oil price ‘task force’. Its task was to keep the price of oil up in defiance of the market, and its force included the managing directors of Shell, Texaco and BP Exploration.</p>
<p>Other bizarre appointments of the same kind include: Shell chairman Mark Moody-Stuart to chair the renewable energy task force; Jyoti Munsiff, Shell’s company secretary, as a member of the government’s sustainable development education panel; Bryan Sanderson, BP’s managing director, as chairman of the Learning and Skills Council; Stella Earnshaw, former regional finance chief for Shell, as a member of the Funding Agency for Schools; John Harte (Shell) and John Morgan (BP} to the Oil and Pipelines Agency which oversees bulk transportation for the Ministry of Defence, (These appointments could be embarrassing if the government sends in the army to sort out the oil crisis.) As for the NHS – which health secretary Milburn put on ‘red alert’ during the crisis – did anyone hear a word of protest from Bryan Grote, an influential member of the government’s public services productivity council, set up by new Labour 1998 to deliver improvements in productivity and efficiency’? Mr Grote is executive vice-president of BP.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Big Business and Government
Tony Blair’s well oiled machine
(October 2000)
From News Review, Socialist Review, No.245, October 2000, p.5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The reports of the ‘crisis meetings’ between Blair and Co and the oil company chiefs have been greeted with profound merriment in the corridors of oil power. The prime minister and his ruthless home secretary, Jack Straw – were widely reported to have issued ‘stern warnings’ to the executives about their duty to the public, and even threats that unless they got the oil moving they could all be in serious trouble.
The merriment arises from the fact that no section of British industry has provided more of New Labour’s business initiatives than oil. The best example is Nick Butler, who is so senior in BP that he can’t afford to be a cabinet minister. Butler has been an ideological pillar of New Labour ever since he wrote a book with Neil Kinnock in 1987 trying to persuade people to vote Labour because the party had changed its attitude to shareholders and had been converted to the case for making money for nothing. Butler was not available for comment after that first tense meeting with the prime minister – indeed, in the interests of a free press, no oil executive would appear in any media until the dispute was almost over.
Butler’s squeamishness about taking a ministerial post was not shared by Lord Simon, former chairman of BP, who was Blair’s choice as his first minister for Europe. Somehow Simon managed to take his new post without sacrificing a penny of his vast shareholding in BP, and without batting an eyelid when his company’s association with the drug barons of Colombia was exposed.
The Simon connection did not last long, but there are plenty of other associations between oil industry bosses and the Labour government many of which are set out in the 22 September issue of Private Eye. In 1998, during his brief career as trade secretary (before he was sacked for borrowing nearly £400,000 from the government’s paymaster general to buy an appropriate London mansion), Peter Mandelson set up an oil price ‘task force’. Its task was to keep the price of oil up in defiance of the market, and its force included the managing directors of Shell, Texaco and BP Exploration.
Other bizarre appointments of the same kind include: Shell chairman Mark Moody-Stuart to chair the renewable energy task force; Jyoti Munsiff, Shell’s company secretary, as a member of the government’s sustainable development education panel; Bryan Sanderson, BP’s managing director, as chairman of the Learning and Skills Council; Stella Earnshaw, former regional finance chief for Shell, as a member of the Funding Agency for Schools; John Harte (Shell) and John Morgan (BP} to the Oil and Pipelines Agency which oversees bulk transportation for the Ministry of Defence, (These appointments could be embarrassing if the government sends in the army to sort out the oil crisis.) As for the NHS – which health secretary Milburn put on ‘red alert’ during the crisis – did anyone hear a word of protest from Bryan Grote, an influential member of the government’s public services productivity council, set up by new Labour 1998 to deliver improvements in productivity and efficiency’? Mr Grote is executive vice-president of BP.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>“This bright day of Summer”:<br>
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381</h1>
<h3>(June 1981)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">First published June 1981. Produced and distributed for the SWP by Socialists Unlimited, London.<br>
The text of this pamphlet was first given as a talk in celebration of the 600th Anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt at the Socialist Workers Party Rally in Skegness, Easter 1981.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Matthew Caygill.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<table align="center" width="80%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>1381</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em><strong>‘Matters cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all things shall be held in common, when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.’</strong></em></p>
<p class="fst"><strong>For this ideal, 140,000 peasants marched on London under the elected leadership of Wat Tyler in June 1381, camping at Blackheath in the south and Barnet in the north in an attempt to force from the king charters abolishing their serfdom and repealing oppressive laws.</strong></p>
<p><strong>It was perhaps the first time the standard of socialism was raised in Britain.</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">TO START with a couple of announcements. The first comes from Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop will <em>not</em> be attending this year any of the celebrations which are being held to commemorate the Peasants’ Revolt.</p>
<p>He won’t be going to Canterbury where a lot of respectable people have arranged a commemoration of the Peasants Revolt. He won’t be going to Blackheath, or Mile End, or St Albans where there are other celebrations in June.</p>
<p>And it’s not because he’s busy. A spokesman for the archbishop was quoted a fortnight ago as saying: ‘This is <em>not</em> a celebration with which Dr Runcie would want to be associated’. And that’s not altogether surprising, because the first thing that the rebels did when they got into the Tower of London on June 16th 1381 was to search out the Archbishop of Canterbury, to tell him what they thought of him, and to chop off his head.</p>
<p>Now the second announcement comes from Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty the Queen will not be attending any celebrations this year to commemorate the Peasants’ Revolt – and that <em>is</em> rather surprising really, because, if there’s one thing that can explain the immediate failure of the Peasants’ Revolt, it is that the people had faith in their monarch. I think it’s a bit churlish of her majesty not to commemorate that fact – but perhaps she feels that people won’t make the same mistake again.</p>
<p>Many socialists <em>will</em> be gathering in a whole lot of places where there are to be celebrations this June, and it is worth remembering why. To do that we’ve got to go back a long way, six hundred years, to an England where there were only two and a half million people living and all of them bound in one way or another to the land they were working, and to the lord who owned that land. ‘The serf works the land, and the lord works the serf’ – that’s the explanation of the feudal system in a single sentence. The lords owned everything, lacking only the right to buy and sell people, which was something that happened under the Roman Empire, and would happen again in Africa and America. Everything that the serf or the villein did, everything they produced on the land was the property of the lord – <em>everything</em>. Even their daughters were subject to the sexual pleasures of the lord. The relationship between the lord and the people who produced their wealth was like the relationship between the lord and the beast of burden, except that probably the beast of burden was more generously treated.</p>
<p>What the lord on earth didn’t take, the lord in heaven did. The church, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, had found a quotation from the story of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis: ‘Of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee’. They’d rewritten it to: ‘Of all that thou shalt make, thou shalt surely give a tenth to me.’ That’s how they saw it, and that was what the tithe barns were built for, and that was what the tithes meant: that a tenth of what you made, on top of what you gave to the lord, went to the church.</p>
<p>And if you died, it was extremely expensive. If you died under the age of sixty, the lord took your best beast – to compensate for the amount of military service that you would have given if only you had lived to be sixty – and the church then took your second beast, to compensate for the tithes you would have paid if only you’d had the decency to live to the proper age. Since no working families at all had more than two beasts, you can see the poverty that system caused.</p>
<p>The feudal system, which is described so often as though it was part of the natural order, as something tidy and well parcelled up, was in fact utterly brutal and utterly horrible. And at the time we are discussing it was beginning to crack up, or at any rate to fray at the edges.</p>
<p>Rich people were beginning to understand that they didn’t have to produce one-for-one in each manor, but that they could trade across the board, produce a lot of things cheaper, and make a lot of money that way. Money flowed into a feudal system that had largely depended on barter, and new merchants ran the system of buying and selling. And some working people discovered that, if they worked really hard, they could produce a little bit of surplus even on top of what they were giving to their lord and the church.</p>
<p>But the break-up of feudalism was hardly felt at all by the serf at the bottom of society. Only tiny particles of freedom came to him. Even at the top of society it wasn’t making any substantial difference. The previous rulers of England had been the king, the barons, the landed gentry and the clergy. Now they were, by way of a change, the king, the barons, the landed gentry, the clergy – and the monopolists, the merchants who dominated the new trade.</p>
<p>Now who <em>were</em> the rulers of England at this time?</p>
<p>Most of the time up to the Peasants’ Revolt, though not actually during it, there was a fine -old tyrant called Edward III – usually described in school history books as ‘a good king’. Always be suspicious when that is written about a king. The thing that Edward liked to do most was to go to war. That was because he didn’t have to do any of the fighting – and because it was the quickest way to make booty. He couldn’t get loot out of the barons or the monopolists very easily, but he found that if he could win (or somebody else could win for him) a battle in France, such as Crecy or Poitiers, then the riches flowed in. So he was always off to war. In fact he was one of the inspirers of what’s known as the Hundred Years War.</p>
<p>One of the things he did in the process, which is relevant to this story, was that he insisted that the people should be armed, or at any rate instructed in the processes of arms, and he was very adamant that there shouldn’t be any pastimes undertaken by anyone that would take time away from archery practice. There’s a statute in 1341 which decrees that anyone caught playing football, handball, hockey or racing dogs was liable to imprisonment.</p>
<p>King Edward had a gang. They were known as a gang. The central figure was his brother, John of Gaunt. In Shakespeare John O’Gaunt appears as a benevolent old man, usually dying. At this time he was very much not dying: he was always fighting. He had an obsession that he wanted to become the King of Castille. He was <em>determined</em> to become the King of Castille, and he didn’t see why there should be a King of Castille if it wasn’t him. This drove him to all kinds of ridiculous and relentless adventures. If he couldn’t fight in Castille he would get in some practice by fighting the Scots.</p>
<p><em>He</em> laid claim, with every justification to being the most hated man in England. He was strongly challenged for the title, though, by Sir Robert Hales, who was the Treasurer of England, what’s known today as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was widely known even by his friends as ‘Hob the Robber’, because of his habit of stealing other people’s estates.</p>
<p>Simon of Sudbury, was another member of the gang, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor – just in case there should be any doubt that the church laid down the laws, he made sure he was head of the church and head of the law at the same time.</p>
<p>The fifth member of the gang, the monopolist who joined them, was a man called Richard Lyons. He had discovered (mathematics was very in vogue at the time) that if he paid for the king’s wars, he could get the monopoly over the buying and selling of wool, and that there would be a big profit in it. I’ll explain it, because these things are complicated, He bought the wool for six pounds by order of the king, and he sold it for fourteen pounds by order of the king, and therefore made a profit. Only a few people in society could understand that sort of subtlety, but Lyons made himself extremely rich by this process.</p>
<p>Now this was the gang that ruled England. They represented different powers, and as different powers do, they were constantly quarrelling with one another about who was to pay for the wars, where were the taxes going to come from, who was to collect the taxes? All the time arguments were going on between the king, the clergy, the barons and the monopolists.</p>
<p>But as they were arguing – and as the wars went badly the arguments got fiercer – so the single point on which they could unite also became more solid. Namely their hatred and contempt for all the people who produced the wealth over which they were quarrelling.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">IN 1348, THERE CAME something which increased that hatred and contempt enormously: the Black Death, a great bubonic plague coming up from Europe and sweeping through the country, killing people at a rate it’s almost impossible to imagine.</p>
<p>Perhaps 15 per cent of the population were killed as a result of this plague. Three hundred thousand people out of about two million. And of course the numbers killed among the serfage and the villeinage, among the people at the bottom of society, were far, far greater in proportion to those at the top.</p>
<p>The immediate economic effect of this, however, was that there were fewer serfs and fewer villeins, but more work to do. So for the first time since the Norman Conquest the people at the bottom of society began to feel a growing confidence about their economic condition in society. They began to feel that they were in demand. Instead of the demand all the time being made <em>of</em> them, they could make demands of someone else because <em>they</em> were scarce. Their labour was scarce, and their labour was vital to the society, and so out of the scarcity they could benefit.</p>
<p>And just as soon as they <em>did</em> start to make some advancement, and to press for higher wages if they were wage-earners, or for more freedom if they were serfs or villeins, so the government started to move in repression against them. In 1351 was passed the first known statutory incomes policy in Britain. People think that incomes policy is a modern thing. Not at all. The Statute of Labourers – you’re taught that at school, but no one teaches you that it was an incomes policy. It’s a perfect precursor for all the people who have recently been conducting incomes policies, all the Barbara Castles, Ted Heaths, Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlons. Listen to this:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Because a great part of the people, and especially workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and the great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they receive excessive wages and some willing to beg in idlesness rather than by labour to get their living. We, considering the grievious incommodities which of the lack, especially of ploughmen and such labourers as may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty of the prelates and nobles and learned men assisting us, ordained:</p>
<p class="quote">‘One: Every able-bodied person under sixty shall be bound to serve when required at no higher wage than in the twentieth year of the reign or else be committed to prison.’</p>
<p class="fst">That’s the way to do it. You don’t muck around with ‘guidelines’ and all that sort of thing. Three simple rules: one, you’ve got to work; two: you’ve got to work for what you had ten years ago; and three: if you don’t, you’ll go to prison.</p>
<p>Now that was passed, and when you passed laws in those days that was the end of the matter, except that this time the gang found things went rather differently: they had passed a law which was promptly broken, and broken, and broken. And not only by the people underneath, but also by some of the employers, who decided that they would rather produce things than not produce things, and would rather pay higher wages to the wandering workers than obey the Statute of Labourers.</p>
<p>So, for thirty years following that Statute, from 1351 to 1381, there was a relentless class campaign with the people at the top, who were trying to hold on to their property, passing law after law in order to try to keep themselves in control and their property at the level to which they were accustomed.</p>
<p>Here are some of those laws:</p>
<ul>
<li>1360: Punishment of labourers who depart from their service to another town or county. ‘If he cannot be found, he is to be outlawed and a writ issued to every sheriff in England to take and bring him back to the county where the writ was issued and there to have the letter F, for falsity, branded on his forehead.’<br>
</li>
<li>1361: ‘The sheriff shall have power to restrain all evil-doers, rioters and barrators’ – whatever they are – ‘and to pursue, arrest, take and chastise them according to their trespass.’</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">It’s awfully old language, isn’t it? Sounds an awfully long time ago, that 1361 Statute. But in December 1932 Tom Mann, the Communist agitator and unemployed workers’ organiser, was arrested under the Statute of 1361 and held for three days without charge while the unemployed demonstration that he’d organised took place. Before, they passed the Criminal Trespass Act in parliament recently, this statute of 1361 was the one they used to procure criminal charges against people who were engaged in trespass.</p>
<ul>
<li>1363: Petition in parliament to prevent women wearing clothes that ought to belong to a higher rank.</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">In 1377 King Edward died and was replaced by his grandson Richard, who was only ten years old. But the statutes went on.</p>
<ul>
<li>1378: ‘No bondswoman may put her children to school.’ Why should she put her children to school when they could well be put to work?<br>
</li>
<li>1379: (This is one I like particularly) ‘For punishment of devisers of false news and reporters of horrible and false lies concerning prelates, dukes, earls, barons and other nobles and great men of the realm, whereof great peril and mischief might come to all the realm and quick subversion and destruction of the said realm if due remedy be not provided.’</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">Due remedy was of course provided. Brandings, and burnings, and imprisonments.</p>
<p>This last law was directed, not at the investigative reporters of that time, for there were none, but against the people who carried the news by word of mouth to meeting places in village after village. These were religious people, working within the framework of religion but attacking the way in which religion was being carried out. Excommunicated monks and priests were beginning to challenge the power of the church over people’s minds, over how people thought.</p>
<p>John Wycliff started off the process – he wasn’t a wandering priest at all, he was the Master of Balliol. He said for instance that there could be such a thing, there <em>could</em> be such a thing as a corrupt priest. Unheard of! Unimaginable! That there should be such a thing said! But he said it, and he also said that if there is a corrupt priest, that priest should not be obeyed.</p>
<p>And from challenging the church, the wandering preachers, excommunicated and imprisoned and constantly harassed by these statutes, started to take ‘false rumours’ about prelates and earls to the village meetings. From 1360 to 1381, for those twenty years before the revolt, these people moved around carrying these simple messages.</p>
<p>Most famous of them, the one we know most about, was John Ball, who was the parish priest at St James Church in Colchester.</p>
<p>John Ball applied himself to the arguments used by the church to justify the division of human society by property. What was the justification for that? People seemed to have the same physical characteristics, they seemed to be the same, what was the justification for this great division?</p>
<p>The church came up with an answer. Read the bible, they said. Adam and Eve had three sons: Cain and Abel and Seth. Cain did a terrible thing. He killed his brother, Abel. Cain therefore represented the evil, the barbarous, the people who were ineducable, the people at the bottom of society. If you are at the bottom of society you’re descended from Cain, and that’s why you’re there.</p>
<p>Then there were the people who were descended from Seth, who was quite a different character. Very respectable gentleman, never slaughtered his brother in public anyway, and eventually begat Noah. Noah, you know, was the absolute <em>pinnacle</em> of respectability, who behaved with great foresight and vision. When there was a natural disaster he packed an ark with all the important people, namely his own family, and even all the important animals. His example shines down to the people who are arranging the guest lists for the nuclear shelters today.</p>
<p>If you were descended from Seth – and there were very few people descended from Seth – then you were <em>civilised, educated</em>, fit to be on top of society. Thus did the Bible ‘explain’ the division of the human race.</p>
<p>John Ball came to this argument and wiped it clean with a wonderful rhyming couplet which was the theme of all his speeches.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em><strong>‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’</strong></em></p>
<p class="fst">It means two things. In the beginning, when people first existed, when human beings were first able to use their brain power to conquer the animal kingdom and to conquer nature, then where could you say that one person was more important than the other? Where could you see the class origins then?</p>
<p>It also means something else. In those same circumstances, where was the evidence that the man was superior to the woman?</p>
<p>We don’t have reports of John Balls’s speeches unfortunately. There were no scribes taking down in shorthand what John Ball and all the others were saying at that time. Occasionally a chronicler in a monastery would note one down, just to show how terrible these revolutionaries were! Here’s one such fragment which shows the inspiration and the ideal which John Ball held out to his audiences.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘My good friends, matters cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all things shall be held in common, when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.’</p>
<p class="fst">Simple, elementary equality, preached there within the framework of religion. Not just the <em>idea</em> of equality, not just the inspiration, but most important and central to this entire story, the <em>organisation</em> that went with that idea. The belief that the idea <em>could be put into effect</em> if people took action. The John Balls weren’t just going around the villages saying nice things about how all .things could be held in common. They were agitators, engaged in thirty years of organisation, of inspiration to action, of the appointment of representatives, of linking the experience between town and country.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">AGAIN AND AGAIN the authorities tried to suppress them. In 1379, in forty-five ‘hundreds’, which is not a very big area, around and about Essex, £10,000 was taken in fines on the peasantry in a single year.</p>
<p>That sounds quite a lot even today, but then the average <em>monthly</em> wage paid to ploughmen and reapers was one shilling, that is a twentieth of a pound.</p>
<p>The enormous numbers of people in prison, the large numbers of brandings, and the tremendous amount of money taken in fines, all these are indications of what was going on. But all to no avail.</p>
<p>John Gower was a landlord and a lawyer (you really had to be one in order to be the other). Shortly before the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, he wrote, with all the prejudices of the class he represented, the most extraordinary prophecy:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Three things, all of the same sort, are merciless when they get the upper hand, a water flood, a wasting fire, and the common multitude of small folk. For these will never be checked by reason or discipline and therefore, to speak in brief, the present world is so troubled by them that it is well to set a remedy thereunto. Ha! Age of ours, whither turnest thou? For the poor and small folk who should cleeve to their labour demand to be better fed than their masters. Moreover, they bedeck themselves in fine colours and fine attire whereas were it not for their pride and their privy conspiracies they could be clad in sackcloth as of old.’</p>
<p class="fst">That shows just how worried they were about the rise in the peasants’ standard of living. In spite of all that repression, of all those law courts, of all the religious preaching in the churches, the villeins and the serfs and the wage-earners were beginning to encroach upon the wealth of the rulers.</p>
<p>The king’s gang were in great difficulty, because the wars were going badly in France. They needed more money to maintain their own standard of living. In December 1380 John of Gaunt took his parliament to Northampton, where they decided they were going to have a poll tax, which is a sort of VAT, except that you didn’t have to buy anything to pay it, you just paid the tax. Every person over the age of fourteen had to pay at least a shilling, that is at least a monthly wage – <em>every</em> person.</p>
<p>Now the problem with a poll tax was how to collect it. The standard procedure for tax collection was useless. People had found out how to escape from one village to another, how to get off the tax roll on this village and off it on that, how to dodge the bailiffs when they came – and many of the bailiffs were themselves dissatisfied about the taxes they had to collect.</p>
<p>So John of Gaunt’s parliament enrolled a special squad of tax collectors under a particularly revolting specimen called John Leg. John Leg was conceivably the nastiest person in the whole of this very nasty story. He was a sort of mixture of a Black’n’Tan corporal and a racist immigration officer at London Airport. Those were the sort of people he engaged around him to collect these poll taxes.</p>
<p>I mentioned the immigration officers at London Airport deliberately. One of the tasks of John Leg’s gang was to discover whether people were fourteen or not. John Legg devised what he called the ‘puberty test’, which has its echo, doesn’t it, in the ‘virginity test’ that has been forced on immigrants coming to Britain today. For to decide whether sons and daughters were over 14, and so liable to the tax, they would measure the pubic hairs. That, as you can imagine, was not particularly popular.</p>
<p>Through January, February and March 1381 they collected their forces, a new, drilled gang of tax collectors. They started collecting in April, and as though to mark the date, on April 26th John Ball was arrested and locked up in Maidstone Prison. The counter-offensive, the gang’s attempt to crack down once and for all on this insubordination of the last thirty years, had started.</p>
<p>Instead it was the spark to the flame, and unlike peasants’ revolts in other parts of Europe at the time, it was spark to fuel and tinder that had been carefully piled up over a whole number of years.</p>
<p>On May 30th a man called Thomas Bampton, a very, very important man indeed, rode into Brentwood in Essex at the head of a group of five or six armed people to complain about the low taxation of the Essex village of Fobbing. The men of Fobbing said they had paid the taxes and they didn’t intend to pay any more, and so of course Bampton ordered their arrest. And then something fantastic happened. The Fobbing men refused to be arrested! Then something <em>more</em> fantastic happened: twenty men with longbows were suddenly standing outside the court. And they politely asked Mr Bampton if he would mind getting on his horse and going out of Brentwood – which he did with amazing alacrity.</p>
<p>He went to see the authorities, to see a man called Sir Robert Belnap. Thomas Bampton was a very important person, but Sir Robert Belnap was the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. I can’t describe how important he was.</p>
<p>He came to Brentwood with fifteen men – fifteen, that’s a lot you know. You don’t need fifteen men to carry out a puberty test on a fifteen-year-old child. He came to Brentwood and commanded a jury to charge the rebels. ‘These men have revolted against the crown, let’s have a jury,’ he declared. Well, two people in Brentwood agreed to form a jury – that was enough for Sir Robert. Two good men and true. So he started to hold his court ... and suddenly there <em>were a hundred</em> men outside with longbows. They took hold of Sir Robert Belnap and they put him the wrong way round on his horse, tied him to it, and sent him out of the town. He’d gone a long way before someone got him down. Then he saw another horse coming towards him, and on the horse were the severed heads of the jurors who had agreed to indict the rebels of Brentwood.</p>
<p>Now on the same day, <em>on the same day</em> – you see, people say the thing wasn’t planned, that it was sporadic outburst – but on the same day, June 2nd, in Dartford in Kent, which is some way away, one of John Leg’s gangs went to the house of John Tyler.</p>
<p>Here is a description of what happened:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Some of Leg’s fellow criminals ... (this is actually quite a moderate historian, not a socialist at all, a man called Edmund Maurice, a liberal, and even he refers to ‘Leg’s fellow criminals’)</p>
<p class="quote">‘Some of Let’s fellow criminals had already arrived, and had gone to the house of one John Tyler and commanded of his wife the payment of the poll tax on behalf of herself, her husband and her daughter. She refused to pay for her daughter, as not being of age, and the collector thereupon seized the daughter, declaring he would discover if this were true.’</p>
<p class="fst">Maurice then quotes from Stowe’s chronicle:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Neighbours came running in, and John Tyler, being at work in the same town tiling of an house when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand and ran reeking home, where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words and strake at the tiler. Whereupon the tiler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with the lathing staff that the brains flew out of his head, wherethrough great noise arose in the streets and the poor people, being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.’</p>
<p class="fst">That’s the <em>original chronicler</em>, not the modern historian. Just as Brentwood had provided the spark in Essex, so Dartford set fire to Kent.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">TROOPS OF ARMED PEASANTS suddenly started arriving at the main townships of Essex and Kent within 24 hours. On June 3rd the monastery at Erith had fallen. On June 5th the castle at Rochester fell to the peasants – never had it been taken since the Norman Conquest.</p>
<p>On June 6th John Ball was set free from Maidstone Prison – and it was there, as he was set free, that rebel forces representing twenty, thirty, perhaps forty thousand men, elected as their leader a man called Wat Tyler. Not the John Tyler we have met before, but Wat Tyler, about whom, to his enormous credit, we know absolutely nothing. We don’t know what he looked like, we don’t know what he did for a living, we don’t know anything about him save that he led the biggest rising of ordinary people in Britain before Oliver Cromwell.</p>
<p>I know there are lots of academic people who like to hear from sensible, university professors about Wat Tyler, so here is Professor <em>Sir</em> Charles Oman – you couldn’t get better than that could you? He writes in <strong>The Great Revolt</strong>, published by Oxford University Press 1906: ‘it is probable that Tyler was an adventurer of unknown antecedents, and we may well believe the Kentishman who declared that he was a well-known rogue and highwayman.’</p>
<p>That’s the way <em>professors</em> write, when they’ve <em>really</em> done the research, who accept only facts ... ‘we may well believe’, he writes! ‘it is probably ...!’</p>
<p>At any rate, this ‘rogue and highwayman’ was leading an army of seventy thousand people through Kent. At the same time Jack Straw was leading another army of seventy thousand through Essex. Every day the army was growing. Through Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, even Lincolnshire, there were peasants meeting together in the villages. Representatives had been previously appointed and marked down. We know that because when John Ball was released from prison in Maidstone he wrote and sent a series of letters. Only two or three have come down to us, but the letters are direct, like Party circulars mobilising the membership. They are to Jack So-and-so, get out there and get the people out. You there, John this or Wat that, go for this particular landlord, or for that particular set of manorial rolls.</p>
<p>The peasants didn’t sack the monasteries, they didn’t even burn them down. They didn’t burn or loot anywhere at random. Everything was done by pre-arranged plan. They went for the manorial rolls which listed the crimes that people had committed, their liability for tax, and what tax had been paid. Those rolls were specially feared and hated, and were systematically destroyed.</p>
<p>On June 11th these two big armies from Kent and from Essex (incidentally representing two different levels of exploitation, the men of Kent much more advanced and aware, but the men of Essex much more exploited and therefore more ferocious) camped outside London. Tyler’s army came to Blackheath and Straw’s to Barnet.</p>
<p>You can imagine then the feelings of the King’s gang inside the Tower of London. The only decision that was taken, by the way, was to shut the gates. You can imagine it in there: 70,000 men at Black-heath, and probably another 70,000 at Barnet, and the situation is really rather serious because Sir David McNee is not here, we don’t have any police, we don’t have any riot shields, we don’t know what we’re going to do about this situation. The people are in motion – we can’t even trust the people of London not to join these vagabonds.</p>
<p>The only hope they had was the faith that the people had in their king, Richard, then a boy of fourteen. For this faith was at the root of the demands of the peasants. Their slogan was ‘For King Richard and the true commons.’ They believed in the king – and it’s a strange thing that you hear the echo even today – saying that the fault was in the courtiers, the hangers-on, the family, the John of Gaunt, Hob the Robber, the Archbishop. But the king himself came from God. The king could do no wrong. The king believed in the people over whom he ruled and had an indissoluble link with the people over whom he ruled and the king would see them straight.</p>
<p>The king’s council realised that their only hope was to use the people’s faith in the king. They made a desperate attempt to stop the armies going into London. The king and his closest advisers took a barge and went down the Thames to Rotherhithe, a village south east of London, and called upon Wat Tyler and the people to come and meet them there with their demands.</p>
<p>Froissart, the most descriptive of the chroniclers, tells the story:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Accordingly, attended by the earls of Salisbury, Warwick and Suffolk and other knights, Richard rowed down the Thames towards Rotherhithe’ (that doesn’t of course mean that <em>he</em> rowed, you understand. He <em>was</em> rowed down the Thames towards Rotherhithe) ‘where were upwards often thousand men who had come from Blackheath to see the king and to speak with him. When the king and his lords saw this crowd of people and the wildness of their manner, there was not one among them so bold and determined but felt alarmed.</p>
<p class="quote">‘The king was advised by his barons not to land, but to have his barge rowed up and down the river. “What do you wish for?” demanded the king. “I have come hither to hear what ye have to say.” Those near him cried out with one voice: “We wish thee to land, when we will remonstrate with thee and tell thee more at our ease what our wants are.” The Earl of Salisbury then replied for the king and said: “Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor in a fit condition for the king to talk with you.” Nothing more was said, for the king was desired to return to the Tower of London from whence he had set out.’</p>
<p class="fst">The earls and marquesses of Salisbury have been saying it for 600 years: ‘You’re improperly dressed’.</p>
<p>Naturally enough, the rebels were undismayed by this performance. They moved at once into the City of London, from both-sides, and once again they acted swiftly and with great restraint. They went for two areas, two areas that were particularly hated. They went for the Temple, representing all the lawyers – all respectable lawyers operated from the Temple, still do as a matter of fact – and they burnt it down. Then they went to the Savoy, which was the palace of John of Gaunt, and they burnt that down with the most systematic savagery. Every single thing in it was burnt and burnt and burnt again. Only one person died in all this, and he was a looter who was seen taking something out of the Savoy, which wouldn’t then have been burnt. The crowd were so angry that anything connected with John of Gaunt should not be burnt that they killed the looter and burnt the thing that he had taken.</p>
<p>The next day, June 14th, the king admitted defeat and opened the gates of the Tower of London and went to Mile End to meet Tyler’s army and agreed to all the rebels’ demands, <em>all</em> of them; repeal of the Statue of Labourers and all the repressive statutes of the last thirty years, an end to bondage and villeinage. Worst of all for the landed gentry was that he decreed: ‘all game and fish to be open to the commons and all the common land which had prevously been taken by the monasteries to be returned to the commons.’</p>
<p>The king didn’t give just his word. He sat <em>all day</em> at Mile End in his tent signing charters for the people of this village, the people of that village, all over the home counties.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in the city, the rebel army moved on the Tower. No looting, no destruction, no burning of the Tower. The peasants knew what they wanted, and they got them. They got the Archbishop Sudbury. They got Hales. They got the detested Leg. They got Lyons. All of them lost their heads. The gang, except for the king, and John of Gaunt, who was fighting one of his pet wars in Scotland, had gone forever.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">BUT OF COURSE there was another gang to replace that gang, and they understood the central weakness of the peasant armies: that they could not last forever, that they couldn’t be supplied, and so would be forced to disband and return to their fields. Above all, they trusted the king. So after waiting a week, in which gradually they built up their own forces, the lords and the barons set up a new and this time very successful intrigue. I don’t want to go into it in detail because if there’s any part of the story that’s known well it’s this part.</p>
<p>Pretending that they wanted new talks with Tyler’s army, the king and a large gang of courtiers went to Srnithfield. They insisted that Tyler come alone at least a mile from his army and talk to the king’s men about his demands and whether the army would disband. Tyler, still, trusting the king, came, alone, on his horse, and engaged in absurd negotiaions for a few moments. It’s not exactly known what happened. Somebody shouted out some insulting remark. Tyler drew his dagger. Five people jumped on him, stabbed him, and he fell dying to the ground.</p>
<p>Then the king, alone, went to the peasant army and explained that there had been an accident, a mistake. We don’t know exactly what he said to them, but he managed to persuade them that their demands <em>would</em> be met full, indeed <em>had</em> been met in full, and that it was a terrible thing that their leader had been killed. He led them out of the city.</p>
<p>That moment is the climax of the revolt, which begins to falter from there. The confidence of those peasant armies depended on their success, and now the success has stopped.</p>
<p>It’s difficult even to imagine, in those circumstances, how they could have conceded to King Richard as they did. The only explanation lies in the tremendous power which the royal presence had at that time over the common people.</p>
<p>I don’t want to deal too long on the period that followed the rebellion. It was only too familiar. Every home in London was visited by the forces of the king and asked to swear an oath of allegiance on pain of death. John Ball was half-hanged, disembowelled while still alive, hanged again and drawn at St Albans. John Rawe, Jack Straw, John Sherwin of Sussex, William Grindcobbe in St Albans, all of them were executed in one way or another after varying forms of resistance in different towns.</p>
<p>William Grindcobbe from St Albans was arrested, imprisoned, and told that he would be killed unless he went back and told the insurgents to lay down their arms. He agreed to go back, and spoke to some 100-150 armed men at St Albans. He told them on no account to lay down their arms, to continue the struggle – and he was taken from behind while he was speaking and executed. Such was the spirit of the Peasants’ Revolt.</p>
<p>In Billericay five hundred were put to death by a particularly revolting lawyer who ran a competition to see how many could be hanged on the branch of one tree. The record was nineteen.</p>
<p>The proportions of the deaths during the rising and afterwards are familiar for all the revolts and rebellions and risings before and since. In the rising itself, perhaps a hundred dead, most of them people guilty of the most terrible extortion and exploitation over a long period of time. In the putting down of the rising, perhaps three thousand dead. That’s roughly the proportion that has been followed in similar events all the way through history. The rulers, in their retribution, are always far more savage than those who oppose them.</p>
<p>The men of Essex, finally beaten and broken down by this force of arms, got through three messengers to the court of King Richard with the charter that he had signed at Mile End, reminding him of his commitment to do away with bondage and villeinage. The reply of this boy king, this hero of the hour, is really what sums him up better than anything you’ll ever read in Shakespeare or anywhere else:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Serfs you have been and serfs you shall remain in bondage, not such as you have hitherto been subjected to, but incomparably viler. For so long as we live and rule by God’s grace over this kingdom we shall use our strength, sense and property to treat you that your slavery may be an example to posterity and that those who live now and hereafter, who may be like you, may always have before their eyes, as it were in a glass, your misery and reasons for cursing you and the fear of doing things like those which you have done.’</p>
<p class="fst">That’s the real spokesman of class war in victory. Promising his people a measure of freedom at Mile End signing the charters, and only nine day later tearing up the promises with all the contempt and hatred of a king who has felt the breath of his people in revolt.</p>
<p>But the truth of the matter is not, as historians always tell you, that the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 left the peasants worse off than they were before, that the rising would have been better for the peasants not to have happened. For Richard, as he spoke those words, was whistling in the dark and he <em>knew</em> he was whistling in the dark, because he and his nobles had seen the strength and the potential of the risen people, and he wasn’t going to risk that in any circumstances again.</p>
<p>In 1382 a new poll tax was ordered by John of Gaunt’s parliament, but this time <em>for landowners only</em>. In 1390 the attempt to hold down wages by law was formally abandoned and the Statute of Labourers effectively repealed. By 1430, only fifty years from the end of the Peasants’ Revolt bondage and villeinage had been abolished, in England before anywhere else in Europe.</p>
<p>When you ask: why was England first in the fight against feudalism? Why was it first in England in the revolution of the 1640s that feudalism was crushed? One of the best answers is precisely in the <em>success</em> of the Peasants’ Revolt, more successful than all the peasants’ revolts in Europe – such as Jacquerie in France – <em>because it was organised</em>.</p>
<p>Here is the conclusion of Reg Groves’ and Philip Lindsay’s marvellous book on this subject. And that’s by far the best book, by the way, about the Peasants’ Revolt:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em><strong>‘All that we know about the commoners of fourteenth century England suggests that they had long awaited and prepared for extensive and radical revolution.’</strong></em></p>
<p class="fst">That’s the most important thing about it: the organisation and the propaganda, the linking of the organisation and propaganda, the appointment of representatives, the linking from the town to the country, from county to county. By these means, by planning and organisation, men like Ball, Tyler, Rawe, Grindcobbe and Straw, from the darkest depths of feudal England, were able to raise two mighty armies which scared the living daylights out of the rulers of the time.</p>
<p>The scaring has gone on for 600 years. Nothing concentrates the minds of the hereditary landlords and capitalists quite like the memory of Wat Tyler.</p>
<p><strong>Bleak House</strong>, by Charles Dickens, has a wonderful character in it called Sir Lester Dedlock – the names in Dickens always sum the person up. He was always worried about the ‘floodgates’ of society, whether they might open and sweep the social order away.</p>
<p>There is a passage about a case in the Court of Chancery:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘He, Sir Lester, regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a “something” devised in conjunction with a variety of other “somethings”, by the perfection of human wisdom for the external settlement of everything. And he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints respecting the Court of Chancery would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere ... like Wat Tyler.’</p>
<p class="fst">Throughout the whole book, Sir Lester Dedlock, when someone says something wrong at a party, or eats with the wrong knife, or doesn’t come home at the time that they ought to, Sir Lester is reminded of Wat Tyler and of people who meet by torchlight with grim and swarthy expressions.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">THERE’S A TENDENCY among people who think about history, even, perhaps especially, among Marxists who think about history, to divide it into sealed compartments. They say that the peasant comes from a different age, is separate from us, has nothing to do with us, and that history moves by stages, scientific stages, and the peasant is one stage, and the workers are in another.</p>
<p>It’s nothing therefore to do with us what happened six hundred years ago, in a quite different sort of economy. We can leave it on one side. We’re not peasants, we’re very advanced people, we’ve been an industrial working class burrowing away for years and we’ve got pretty well nowhere, but we’re terribly important and we’re much more important than any peasant.</p>
<p>I think that that is not only reactionary and wrong but paralysing – because the whole idea that history determines things and that everything’s inevitable paralyses us, leaves out the activity which is at the centre of the Peasants’ Revolt. It is also insulting to the people who carried those standards for us all through those years before. What’s most extraordinary about the Peasants’ Revolt is not the differences between us and them, which are obvious and expected, but the similarities. We’re bound together by this relentless struggle between the classes, which persists all the way through their story and all the way through ours.</p>
<p>In 1881, one hundred years ago, inspired by the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt, William Morris, a great socialist writer, grappled with this same idea. We do have something in common with what John Ball and Wat Tyler were doing in 1381. How could William Morris, with his enormous writing powers, try to bridge the gap for the socialists of his time? He did it in a really very brilliant piece of writing. It took him a long time to do it, and didn’t in fact appear until 1885.</p>
<p>He imagined himself or somebody like himself, a socialist in 1881, being plunged back into the villages of Kent in 1381, beating off the barons and the nobles. He describes John Ball coming to a village – probably the best description there is, better than the chronicles themselves because William Morris really went into it and found out about it.</p>
<p>At the end of the piece, which is called <a href="../../../morris/works/1886/johnball/index.htm" target="new"><strong>The Dream of John Ball</strong></a>, this man, who has all this experience of 500 years after 1381, has a long discussion with John Ball about what will happen. John Ball says, in effect, that he knows the revolt is going to fail, but asks what is going to happen after that? When, he asks, is his dream of all people living in common and sharing everything and there not being any vassals or lords going to come about?</p>
<p>Morris replies sadly that it won’t come for 500 years at least.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, John Ball gets a bit depressed about that. He reminds his guest that he is marching to certain defeat and execution, and asks: For what? Is it worth it?</p>
<p>Here is the reply:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘John Ball, be of good cheer, for once more thou knowest as I know that the fellowship of man shall endure, however many tribulations it may have to wear through. It may well be that this bright day of summer, which is now dawning upon us, is no image of the beginning of the day that shall be – but rather shall that day dawn be cold and grey and surly, and yet, by its light shall men see things as they verily are, and, no longer enchanted by the gleam of the moon and the glamour of the dream-tide, by such grey light shall wise men and valiant souls see the remedy and deal with it, a real thing that may be touched and handled and no glory of the heavens to be worshipped from afar off.</p>
<p class="quote">‘And what shall it be, as I told thee before, save that men shall be determined to be free, yea free as thou wouldst have them, when thine hope rises the highest and thou arte thinking, not of the king’s uncles and poll-grote bailiffs and the villeinage of Essex, but of the end of it all, when men shall have the fruits of the earth and the fruits of the earth and the fruits of their toil thereon without money and without price. That time shall come, John Ball, when that dream of thine shall this one day be, shall be a thing that man shall talk of soberly, and as a thing soon to come about as even with thee they talk of the villeins becoming tenants paying their lord quit-rent.</p>
<p class="quote">‘Therefore hast thou done well to hope it, and thy name shall abide by thy hope in those days to come, and thou shalt not be forgotten.’</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
“This bright day of Summer”:
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
(June 1981)
First published June 1981. Produced and distributed for the SWP by Socialists Unlimited, London.
The text of this pamphlet was first given as a talk in celebration of the 600th Anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt at the Socialist Workers Party Rally in Skegness, Easter 1981.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Matthew Caygill.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
1381
‘Matters cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all things shall be held in common, when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.’
For this ideal, 140,000 peasants marched on London under the elected leadership of Wat Tyler in June 1381, camping at Blackheath in the south and Barnet in the north in an attempt to force from the king charters abolishing their serfdom and repealing oppressive laws.
It was perhaps the first time the standard of socialism was raised in Britain.
TO START with a couple of announcements. The first comes from Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop will not be attending this year any of the celebrations which are being held to commemorate the Peasants’ Revolt.
He won’t be going to Canterbury where a lot of respectable people have arranged a commemoration of the Peasants Revolt. He won’t be going to Blackheath, or Mile End, or St Albans where there are other celebrations in June.
And it’s not because he’s busy. A spokesman for the archbishop was quoted a fortnight ago as saying: ‘This is not a celebration with which Dr Runcie would want to be associated’. And that’s not altogether surprising, because the first thing that the rebels did when they got into the Tower of London on June 16th 1381 was to search out the Archbishop of Canterbury, to tell him what they thought of him, and to chop off his head.
Now the second announcement comes from Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty the Queen will not be attending any celebrations this year to commemorate the Peasants’ Revolt – and that is rather surprising really, because, if there’s one thing that can explain the immediate failure of the Peasants’ Revolt, it is that the people had faith in their monarch. I think it’s a bit churlish of her majesty not to commemorate that fact – but perhaps she feels that people won’t make the same mistake again.
Many socialists will be gathering in a whole lot of places where there are to be celebrations this June, and it is worth remembering why. To do that we’ve got to go back a long way, six hundred years, to an England where there were only two and a half million people living and all of them bound in one way or another to the land they were working, and to the lord who owned that land. ‘The serf works the land, and the lord works the serf’ – that’s the explanation of the feudal system in a single sentence. The lords owned everything, lacking only the right to buy and sell people, which was something that happened under the Roman Empire, and would happen again in Africa and America. Everything that the serf or the villein did, everything they produced on the land was the property of the lord – everything. Even their daughters were subject to the sexual pleasures of the lord. The relationship between the lord and the people who produced their wealth was like the relationship between the lord and the beast of burden, except that probably the beast of burden was more generously treated.
What the lord on earth didn’t take, the lord in heaven did. The church, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, had found a quotation from the story of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis: ‘Of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee’. They’d rewritten it to: ‘Of all that thou shalt make, thou shalt surely give a tenth to me.’ That’s how they saw it, and that was what the tithe barns were built for, and that was what the tithes meant: that a tenth of what you made, on top of what you gave to the lord, went to the church.
And if you died, it was extremely expensive. If you died under the age of sixty, the lord took your best beast – to compensate for the amount of military service that you would have given if only you had lived to be sixty – and the church then took your second beast, to compensate for the tithes you would have paid if only you’d had the decency to live to the proper age. Since no working families at all had more than two beasts, you can see the poverty that system caused.
The feudal system, which is described so often as though it was part of the natural order, as something tidy and well parcelled up, was in fact utterly brutal and utterly horrible. And at the time we are discussing it was beginning to crack up, or at any rate to fray at the edges.
Rich people were beginning to understand that they didn’t have to produce one-for-one in each manor, but that they could trade across the board, produce a lot of things cheaper, and make a lot of money that way. Money flowed into a feudal system that had largely depended on barter, and new merchants ran the system of buying and selling. And some working people discovered that, if they worked really hard, they could produce a little bit of surplus even on top of what they were giving to their lord and the church.
But the break-up of feudalism was hardly felt at all by the serf at the bottom of society. Only tiny particles of freedom came to him. Even at the top of society it wasn’t making any substantial difference. The previous rulers of England had been the king, the barons, the landed gentry and the clergy. Now they were, by way of a change, the king, the barons, the landed gentry, the clergy – and the monopolists, the merchants who dominated the new trade.
Now who were the rulers of England at this time?
Most of the time up to the Peasants’ Revolt, though not actually during it, there was a fine -old tyrant called Edward III – usually described in school history books as ‘a good king’. Always be suspicious when that is written about a king. The thing that Edward liked to do most was to go to war. That was because he didn’t have to do any of the fighting – and because it was the quickest way to make booty. He couldn’t get loot out of the barons or the monopolists very easily, but he found that if he could win (or somebody else could win for him) a battle in France, such as Crecy or Poitiers, then the riches flowed in. So he was always off to war. In fact he was one of the inspirers of what’s known as the Hundred Years War.
One of the things he did in the process, which is relevant to this story, was that he insisted that the people should be armed, or at any rate instructed in the processes of arms, and he was very adamant that there shouldn’t be any pastimes undertaken by anyone that would take time away from archery practice. There’s a statute in 1341 which decrees that anyone caught playing football, handball, hockey or racing dogs was liable to imprisonment.
King Edward had a gang. They were known as a gang. The central figure was his brother, John of Gaunt. In Shakespeare John O’Gaunt appears as a benevolent old man, usually dying. At this time he was very much not dying: he was always fighting. He had an obsession that he wanted to become the King of Castille. He was determined to become the King of Castille, and he didn’t see why there should be a King of Castille if it wasn’t him. This drove him to all kinds of ridiculous and relentless adventures. If he couldn’t fight in Castille he would get in some practice by fighting the Scots.
He laid claim, with every justification to being the most hated man in England. He was strongly challenged for the title, though, by Sir Robert Hales, who was the Treasurer of England, what’s known today as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was widely known even by his friends as ‘Hob the Robber’, because of his habit of stealing other people’s estates.
Simon of Sudbury, was another member of the gang, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor – just in case there should be any doubt that the church laid down the laws, he made sure he was head of the church and head of the law at the same time.
The fifth member of the gang, the monopolist who joined them, was a man called Richard Lyons. He had discovered (mathematics was very in vogue at the time) that if he paid for the king’s wars, he could get the monopoly over the buying and selling of wool, and that there would be a big profit in it. I’ll explain it, because these things are complicated, He bought the wool for six pounds by order of the king, and he sold it for fourteen pounds by order of the king, and therefore made a profit. Only a few people in society could understand that sort of subtlety, but Lyons made himself extremely rich by this process.
Now this was the gang that ruled England. They represented different powers, and as different powers do, they were constantly quarrelling with one another about who was to pay for the wars, where were the taxes going to come from, who was to collect the taxes? All the time arguments were going on between the king, the clergy, the barons and the monopolists.
But as they were arguing – and as the wars went badly the arguments got fiercer – so the single point on which they could unite also became more solid. Namely their hatred and contempt for all the people who produced the wealth over which they were quarrelling.
IN 1348, THERE CAME something which increased that hatred and contempt enormously: the Black Death, a great bubonic plague coming up from Europe and sweeping through the country, killing people at a rate it’s almost impossible to imagine.
Perhaps 15 per cent of the population were killed as a result of this plague. Three hundred thousand people out of about two million. And of course the numbers killed among the serfage and the villeinage, among the people at the bottom of society, were far, far greater in proportion to those at the top.
The immediate economic effect of this, however, was that there were fewer serfs and fewer villeins, but more work to do. So for the first time since the Norman Conquest the people at the bottom of society began to feel a growing confidence about their economic condition in society. They began to feel that they were in demand. Instead of the demand all the time being made of them, they could make demands of someone else because they were scarce. Their labour was scarce, and their labour was vital to the society, and so out of the scarcity they could benefit.
And just as soon as they did start to make some advancement, and to press for higher wages if they were wage-earners, or for more freedom if they were serfs or villeins, so the government started to move in repression against them. In 1351 was passed the first known statutory incomes policy in Britain. People think that incomes policy is a modern thing. Not at all. The Statute of Labourers – you’re taught that at school, but no one teaches you that it was an incomes policy. It’s a perfect precursor for all the people who have recently been conducting incomes policies, all the Barbara Castles, Ted Heaths, Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlons. Listen to this:
‘Because a great part of the people, and especially workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and the great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they receive excessive wages and some willing to beg in idlesness rather than by labour to get their living. We, considering the grievious incommodities which of the lack, especially of ploughmen and such labourers as may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty of the prelates and nobles and learned men assisting us, ordained:
‘One: Every able-bodied person under sixty shall be bound to serve when required at no higher wage than in the twentieth year of the reign or else be committed to prison.’
That’s the way to do it. You don’t muck around with ‘guidelines’ and all that sort of thing. Three simple rules: one, you’ve got to work; two: you’ve got to work for what you had ten years ago; and three: if you don’t, you’ll go to prison.
Now that was passed, and when you passed laws in those days that was the end of the matter, except that this time the gang found things went rather differently: they had passed a law which was promptly broken, and broken, and broken. And not only by the people underneath, but also by some of the employers, who decided that they would rather produce things than not produce things, and would rather pay higher wages to the wandering workers than obey the Statute of Labourers.
So, for thirty years following that Statute, from 1351 to 1381, there was a relentless class campaign with the people at the top, who were trying to hold on to their property, passing law after law in order to try to keep themselves in control and their property at the level to which they were accustomed.
Here are some of those laws:
1360: Punishment of labourers who depart from their service to another town or county. ‘If he cannot be found, he is to be outlawed and a writ issued to every sheriff in England to take and bring him back to the county where the writ was issued and there to have the letter F, for falsity, branded on his forehead.’
1361: ‘The sheriff shall have power to restrain all evil-doers, rioters and barrators’ – whatever they are – ‘and to pursue, arrest, take and chastise them according to their trespass.’
It’s awfully old language, isn’t it? Sounds an awfully long time ago, that 1361 Statute. But in December 1932 Tom Mann, the Communist agitator and unemployed workers’ organiser, was arrested under the Statute of 1361 and held for three days without charge while the unemployed demonstration that he’d organised took place. Before, they passed the Criminal Trespass Act in parliament recently, this statute of 1361 was the one they used to procure criminal charges against people who were engaged in trespass.
1363: Petition in parliament to prevent women wearing clothes that ought to belong to a higher rank.
In 1377 King Edward died and was replaced by his grandson Richard, who was only ten years old. But the statutes went on.
1378: ‘No bondswoman may put her children to school.’ Why should she put her children to school when they could well be put to work?
1379: (This is one I like particularly) ‘For punishment of devisers of false news and reporters of horrible and false lies concerning prelates, dukes, earls, barons and other nobles and great men of the realm, whereof great peril and mischief might come to all the realm and quick subversion and destruction of the said realm if due remedy be not provided.’
Due remedy was of course provided. Brandings, and burnings, and imprisonments.
This last law was directed, not at the investigative reporters of that time, for there were none, but against the people who carried the news by word of mouth to meeting places in village after village. These were religious people, working within the framework of religion but attacking the way in which religion was being carried out. Excommunicated monks and priests were beginning to challenge the power of the church over people’s minds, over how people thought.
John Wycliff started off the process – he wasn’t a wandering priest at all, he was the Master of Balliol. He said for instance that there could be such a thing, there could be such a thing as a corrupt priest. Unheard of! Unimaginable! That there should be such a thing said! But he said it, and he also said that if there is a corrupt priest, that priest should not be obeyed.
And from challenging the church, the wandering preachers, excommunicated and imprisoned and constantly harassed by these statutes, started to take ‘false rumours’ about prelates and earls to the village meetings. From 1360 to 1381, for those twenty years before the revolt, these people moved around carrying these simple messages.
Most famous of them, the one we know most about, was John Ball, who was the parish priest at St James Church in Colchester.
John Ball applied himself to the arguments used by the church to justify the division of human society by property. What was the justification for that? People seemed to have the same physical characteristics, they seemed to be the same, what was the justification for this great division?
The church came up with an answer. Read the bible, they said. Adam and Eve had three sons: Cain and Abel and Seth. Cain did a terrible thing. He killed his brother, Abel. Cain therefore represented the evil, the barbarous, the people who were ineducable, the people at the bottom of society. If you are at the bottom of society you’re descended from Cain, and that’s why you’re there.
Then there were the people who were descended from Seth, who was quite a different character. Very respectable gentleman, never slaughtered his brother in public anyway, and eventually begat Noah. Noah, you know, was the absolute pinnacle of respectability, who behaved with great foresight and vision. When there was a natural disaster he packed an ark with all the important people, namely his own family, and even all the important animals. His example shines down to the people who are arranging the guest lists for the nuclear shelters today.
If you were descended from Seth – and there were very few people descended from Seth – then you were civilised, educated, fit to be on top of society. Thus did the Bible ‘explain’ the division of the human race.
John Ball came to this argument and wiped it clean with a wonderful rhyming couplet which was the theme of all his speeches.
‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’
It means two things. In the beginning, when people first existed, when human beings were first able to use their brain power to conquer the animal kingdom and to conquer nature, then where could you say that one person was more important than the other? Where could you see the class origins then?
It also means something else. In those same circumstances, where was the evidence that the man was superior to the woman?
We don’t have reports of John Balls’s speeches unfortunately. There were no scribes taking down in shorthand what John Ball and all the others were saying at that time. Occasionally a chronicler in a monastery would note one down, just to show how terrible these revolutionaries were! Here’s one such fragment which shows the inspiration and the ideal which John Ball held out to his audiences.
‘My good friends, matters cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all things shall be held in common, when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.’
Simple, elementary equality, preached there within the framework of religion. Not just the idea of equality, not just the inspiration, but most important and central to this entire story, the organisation that went with that idea. The belief that the idea could be put into effect if people took action. The John Balls weren’t just going around the villages saying nice things about how all .things could be held in common. They were agitators, engaged in thirty years of organisation, of inspiration to action, of the appointment of representatives, of linking the experience between town and country.
AGAIN AND AGAIN the authorities tried to suppress them. In 1379, in forty-five ‘hundreds’, which is not a very big area, around and about Essex, £10,000 was taken in fines on the peasantry in a single year.
That sounds quite a lot even today, but then the average monthly wage paid to ploughmen and reapers was one shilling, that is a twentieth of a pound.
The enormous numbers of people in prison, the large numbers of brandings, and the tremendous amount of money taken in fines, all these are indications of what was going on. But all to no avail.
John Gower was a landlord and a lawyer (you really had to be one in order to be the other). Shortly before the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, he wrote, with all the prejudices of the class he represented, the most extraordinary prophecy:
‘Three things, all of the same sort, are merciless when they get the upper hand, a water flood, a wasting fire, and the common multitude of small folk. For these will never be checked by reason or discipline and therefore, to speak in brief, the present world is so troubled by them that it is well to set a remedy thereunto. Ha! Age of ours, whither turnest thou? For the poor and small folk who should cleeve to their labour demand to be better fed than their masters. Moreover, they bedeck themselves in fine colours and fine attire whereas were it not for their pride and their privy conspiracies they could be clad in sackcloth as of old.’
That shows just how worried they were about the rise in the peasants’ standard of living. In spite of all that repression, of all those law courts, of all the religious preaching in the churches, the villeins and the serfs and the wage-earners were beginning to encroach upon the wealth of the rulers.
The king’s gang were in great difficulty, because the wars were going badly in France. They needed more money to maintain their own standard of living. In December 1380 John of Gaunt took his parliament to Northampton, where they decided they were going to have a poll tax, which is a sort of VAT, except that you didn’t have to buy anything to pay it, you just paid the tax. Every person over the age of fourteen had to pay at least a shilling, that is at least a monthly wage – every person.
Now the problem with a poll tax was how to collect it. The standard procedure for tax collection was useless. People had found out how to escape from one village to another, how to get off the tax roll on this village and off it on that, how to dodge the bailiffs when they came – and many of the bailiffs were themselves dissatisfied about the taxes they had to collect.
So John of Gaunt’s parliament enrolled a special squad of tax collectors under a particularly revolting specimen called John Leg. John Leg was conceivably the nastiest person in the whole of this very nasty story. He was a sort of mixture of a Black’n’Tan corporal and a racist immigration officer at London Airport. Those were the sort of people he engaged around him to collect these poll taxes.
I mentioned the immigration officers at London Airport deliberately. One of the tasks of John Leg’s gang was to discover whether people were fourteen or not. John Legg devised what he called the ‘puberty test’, which has its echo, doesn’t it, in the ‘virginity test’ that has been forced on immigrants coming to Britain today. For to decide whether sons and daughters were over 14, and so liable to the tax, they would measure the pubic hairs. That, as you can imagine, was not particularly popular.
Through January, February and March 1381 they collected their forces, a new, drilled gang of tax collectors. They started collecting in April, and as though to mark the date, on April 26th John Ball was arrested and locked up in Maidstone Prison. The counter-offensive, the gang’s attempt to crack down once and for all on this insubordination of the last thirty years, had started.
Instead it was the spark to the flame, and unlike peasants’ revolts in other parts of Europe at the time, it was spark to fuel and tinder that had been carefully piled up over a whole number of years.
On May 30th a man called Thomas Bampton, a very, very important man indeed, rode into Brentwood in Essex at the head of a group of five or six armed people to complain about the low taxation of the Essex village of Fobbing. The men of Fobbing said they had paid the taxes and they didn’t intend to pay any more, and so of course Bampton ordered their arrest. And then something fantastic happened. The Fobbing men refused to be arrested! Then something more fantastic happened: twenty men with longbows were suddenly standing outside the court. And they politely asked Mr Bampton if he would mind getting on his horse and going out of Brentwood – which he did with amazing alacrity.
He went to see the authorities, to see a man called Sir Robert Belnap. Thomas Bampton was a very important person, but Sir Robert Belnap was the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. I can’t describe how important he was.
He came to Brentwood with fifteen men – fifteen, that’s a lot you know. You don’t need fifteen men to carry out a puberty test on a fifteen-year-old child. He came to Brentwood and commanded a jury to charge the rebels. ‘These men have revolted against the crown, let’s have a jury,’ he declared. Well, two people in Brentwood agreed to form a jury – that was enough for Sir Robert. Two good men and true. So he started to hold his court ... and suddenly there were a hundred men outside with longbows. They took hold of Sir Robert Belnap and they put him the wrong way round on his horse, tied him to it, and sent him out of the town. He’d gone a long way before someone got him down. Then he saw another horse coming towards him, and on the horse were the severed heads of the jurors who had agreed to indict the rebels of Brentwood.
Now on the same day, on the same day – you see, people say the thing wasn’t planned, that it was sporadic outburst – but on the same day, June 2nd, in Dartford in Kent, which is some way away, one of John Leg’s gangs went to the house of John Tyler.
Here is a description of what happened:
‘Some of Leg’s fellow criminals ... (this is actually quite a moderate historian, not a socialist at all, a man called Edmund Maurice, a liberal, and even he refers to ‘Leg’s fellow criminals’)
‘Some of Let’s fellow criminals had already arrived, and had gone to the house of one John Tyler and commanded of his wife the payment of the poll tax on behalf of herself, her husband and her daughter. She refused to pay for her daughter, as not being of age, and the collector thereupon seized the daughter, declaring he would discover if this were true.’
Maurice then quotes from Stowe’s chronicle:
‘Neighbours came running in, and John Tyler, being at work in the same town tiling of an house when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand and ran reeking home, where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words and strake at the tiler. Whereupon the tiler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with the lathing staff that the brains flew out of his head, wherethrough great noise arose in the streets and the poor people, being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.’
That’s the original chronicler, not the modern historian. Just as Brentwood had provided the spark in Essex, so Dartford set fire to Kent.
TROOPS OF ARMED PEASANTS suddenly started arriving at the main townships of Essex and Kent within 24 hours. On June 3rd the monastery at Erith had fallen. On June 5th the castle at Rochester fell to the peasants – never had it been taken since the Norman Conquest.
On June 6th John Ball was set free from Maidstone Prison – and it was there, as he was set free, that rebel forces representing twenty, thirty, perhaps forty thousand men, elected as their leader a man called Wat Tyler. Not the John Tyler we have met before, but Wat Tyler, about whom, to his enormous credit, we know absolutely nothing. We don’t know what he looked like, we don’t know what he did for a living, we don’t know anything about him save that he led the biggest rising of ordinary people in Britain before Oliver Cromwell.
I know there are lots of academic people who like to hear from sensible, university professors about Wat Tyler, so here is Professor Sir Charles Oman – you couldn’t get better than that could you? He writes in The Great Revolt, published by Oxford University Press 1906: ‘it is probable that Tyler was an adventurer of unknown antecedents, and we may well believe the Kentishman who declared that he was a well-known rogue and highwayman.’
That’s the way professors write, when they’ve really done the research, who accept only facts ... ‘we may well believe’, he writes! ‘it is probably ...!’
At any rate, this ‘rogue and highwayman’ was leading an army of seventy thousand people through Kent. At the same time Jack Straw was leading another army of seventy thousand through Essex. Every day the army was growing. Through Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, even Lincolnshire, there were peasants meeting together in the villages. Representatives had been previously appointed and marked down. We know that because when John Ball was released from prison in Maidstone he wrote and sent a series of letters. Only two or three have come down to us, but the letters are direct, like Party circulars mobilising the membership. They are to Jack So-and-so, get out there and get the people out. You there, John this or Wat that, go for this particular landlord, or for that particular set of manorial rolls.
The peasants didn’t sack the monasteries, they didn’t even burn them down. They didn’t burn or loot anywhere at random. Everything was done by pre-arranged plan. They went for the manorial rolls which listed the crimes that people had committed, their liability for tax, and what tax had been paid. Those rolls were specially feared and hated, and were systematically destroyed.
On June 11th these two big armies from Kent and from Essex (incidentally representing two different levels of exploitation, the men of Kent much more advanced and aware, but the men of Essex much more exploited and therefore more ferocious) camped outside London. Tyler’s army came to Blackheath and Straw’s to Barnet.
You can imagine then the feelings of the King’s gang inside the Tower of London. The only decision that was taken, by the way, was to shut the gates. You can imagine it in there: 70,000 men at Black-heath, and probably another 70,000 at Barnet, and the situation is really rather serious because Sir David McNee is not here, we don’t have any police, we don’t have any riot shields, we don’t know what we’re going to do about this situation. The people are in motion – we can’t even trust the people of London not to join these vagabonds.
The only hope they had was the faith that the people had in their king, Richard, then a boy of fourteen. For this faith was at the root of the demands of the peasants. Their slogan was ‘For King Richard and the true commons.’ They believed in the king – and it’s a strange thing that you hear the echo even today – saying that the fault was in the courtiers, the hangers-on, the family, the John of Gaunt, Hob the Robber, the Archbishop. But the king himself came from God. The king could do no wrong. The king believed in the people over whom he ruled and had an indissoluble link with the people over whom he ruled and the king would see them straight.
The king’s council realised that their only hope was to use the people’s faith in the king. They made a desperate attempt to stop the armies going into London. The king and his closest advisers took a barge and went down the Thames to Rotherhithe, a village south east of London, and called upon Wat Tyler and the people to come and meet them there with their demands.
Froissart, the most descriptive of the chroniclers, tells the story:
‘Accordingly, attended by the earls of Salisbury, Warwick and Suffolk and other knights, Richard rowed down the Thames towards Rotherhithe’ (that doesn’t of course mean that he rowed, you understand. He was rowed down the Thames towards Rotherhithe) ‘where were upwards often thousand men who had come from Blackheath to see the king and to speak with him. When the king and his lords saw this crowd of people and the wildness of their manner, there was not one among them so bold and determined but felt alarmed.
‘The king was advised by his barons not to land, but to have his barge rowed up and down the river. “What do you wish for?” demanded the king. “I have come hither to hear what ye have to say.” Those near him cried out with one voice: “We wish thee to land, when we will remonstrate with thee and tell thee more at our ease what our wants are.” The Earl of Salisbury then replied for the king and said: “Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor in a fit condition for the king to talk with you.” Nothing more was said, for the king was desired to return to the Tower of London from whence he had set out.’
The earls and marquesses of Salisbury have been saying it for 600 years: ‘You’re improperly dressed’.
Naturally enough, the rebels were undismayed by this performance. They moved at once into the City of London, from both-sides, and once again they acted swiftly and with great restraint. They went for two areas, two areas that were particularly hated. They went for the Temple, representing all the lawyers – all respectable lawyers operated from the Temple, still do as a matter of fact – and they burnt it down. Then they went to the Savoy, which was the palace of John of Gaunt, and they burnt that down with the most systematic savagery. Every single thing in it was burnt and burnt and burnt again. Only one person died in all this, and he was a looter who was seen taking something out of the Savoy, which wouldn’t then have been burnt. The crowd were so angry that anything connected with John of Gaunt should not be burnt that they killed the looter and burnt the thing that he had taken.
The next day, June 14th, the king admitted defeat and opened the gates of the Tower of London and went to Mile End to meet Tyler’s army and agreed to all the rebels’ demands, all of them; repeal of the Statue of Labourers and all the repressive statutes of the last thirty years, an end to bondage and villeinage. Worst of all for the landed gentry was that he decreed: ‘all game and fish to be open to the commons and all the common land which had prevously been taken by the monasteries to be returned to the commons.’
The king didn’t give just his word. He sat all day at Mile End in his tent signing charters for the people of this village, the people of that village, all over the home counties.
Meanwhile in the city, the rebel army moved on the Tower. No looting, no destruction, no burning of the Tower. The peasants knew what they wanted, and they got them. They got the Archbishop Sudbury. They got Hales. They got the detested Leg. They got Lyons. All of them lost their heads. The gang, except for the king, and John of Gaunt, who was fighting one of his pet wars in Scotland, had gone forever.
BUT OF COURSE there was another gang to replace that gang, and they understood the central weakness of the peasant armies: that they could not last forever, that they couldn’t be supplied, and so would be forced to disband and return to their fields. Above all, they trusted the king. So after waiting a week, in which gradually they built up their own forces, the lords and the barons set up a new and this time very successful intrigue. I don’t want to go into it in detail because if there’s any part of the story that’s known well it’s this part.
Pretending that they wanted new talks with Tyler’s army, the king and a large gang of courtiers went to Srnithfield. They insisted that Tyler come alone at least a mile from his army and talk to the king’s men about his demands and whether the army would disband. Tyler, still, trusting the king, came, alone, on his horse, and engaged in absurd negotiaions for a few moments. It’s not exactly known what happened. Somebody shouted out some insulting remark. Tyler drew his dagger. Five people jumped on him, stabbed him, and he fell dying to the ground.
Then the king, alone, went to the peasant army and explained that there had been an accident, a mistake. We don’t know exactly what he said to them, but he managed to persuade them that their demands would be met full, indeed had been met in full, and that it was a terrible thing that their leader had been killed. He led them out of the city.
That moment is the climax of the revolt, which begins to falter from there. The confidence of those peasant armies depended on their success, and now the success has stopped.
It’s difficult even to imagine, in those circumstances, how they could have conceded to King Richard as they did. The only explanation lies in the tremendous power which the royal presence had at that time over the common people.
I don’t want to deal too long on the period that followed the rebellion. It was only too familiar. Every home in London was visited by the forces of the king and asked to swear an oath of allegiance on pain of death. John Ball was half-hanged, disembowelled while still alive, hanged again and drawn at St Albans. John Rawe, Jack Straw, John Sherwin of Sussex, William Grindcobbe in St Albans, all of them were executed in one way or another after varying forms of resistance in different towns.
William Grindcobbe from St Albans was arrested, imprisoned, and told that he would be killed unless he went back and told the insurgents to lay down their arms. He agreed to go back, and spoke to some 100-150 armed men at St Albans. He told them on no account to lay down their arms, to continue the struggle – and he was taken from behind while he was speaking and executed. Such was the spirit of the Peasants’ Revolt.
In Billericay five hundred were put to death by a particularly revolting lawyer who ran a competition to see how many could be hanged on the branch of one tree. The record was nineteen.
The proportions of the deaths during the rising and afterwards are familiar for all the revolts and rebellions and risings before and since. In the rising itself, perhaps a hundred dead, most of them people guilty of the most terrible extortion and exploitation over a long period of time. In the putting down of the rising, perhaps three thousand dead. That’s roughly the proportion that has been followed in similar events all the way through history. The rulers, in their retribution, are always far more savage than those who oppose them.
The men of Essex, finally beaten and broken down by this force of arms, got through three messengers to the court of King Richard with the charter that he had signed at Mile End, reminding him of his commitment to do away with bondage and villeinage. The reply of this boy king, this hero of the hour, is really what sums him up better than anything you’ll ever read in Shakespeare or anywhere else:
‘Serfs you have been and serfs you shall remain in bondage, not such as you have hitherto been subjected to, but incomparably viler. For so long as we live and rule by God’s grace over this kingdom we shall use our strength, sense and property to treat you that your slavery may be an example to posterity and that those who live now and hereafter, who may be like you, may always have before their eyes, as it were in a glass, your misery and reasons for cursing you and the fear of doing things like those which you have done.’
That’s the real spokesman of class war in victory. Promising his people a measure of freedom at Mile End signing the charters, and only nine day later tearing up the promises with all the contempt and hatred of a king who has felt the breath of his people in revolt.
But the truth of the matter is not, as historians always tell you, that the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 left the peasants worse off than they were before, that the rising would have been better for the peasants not to have happened. For Richard, as he spoke those words, was whistling in the dark and he knew he was whistling in the dark, because he and his nobles had seen the strength and the potential of the risen people, and he wasn’t going to risk that in any circumstances again.
In 1382 a new poll tax was ordered by John of Gaunt’s parliament, but this time for landowners only. In 1390 the attempt to hold down wages by law was formally abandoned and the Statute of Labourers effectively repealed. By 1430, only fifty years from the end of the Peasants’ Revolt bondage and villeinage had been abolished, in England before anywhere else in Europe.
When you ask: why was England first in the fight against feudalism? Why was it first in England in the revolution of the 1640s that feudalism was crushed? One of the best answers is precisely in the success of the Peasants’ Revolt, more successful than all the peasants’ revolts in Europe – such as Jacquerie in France – because it was organised.
Here is the conclusion of Reg Groves’ and Philip Lindsay’s marvellous book on this subject. And that’s by far the best book, by the way, about the Peasants’ Revolt:
‘All that we know about the commoners of fourteenth century England suggests that they had long awaited and prepared for extensive and radical revolution.’
That’s the most important thing about it: the organisation and the propaganda, the linking of the organisation and propaganda, the appointment of representatives, the linking from the town to the country, from county to county. By these means, by planning and organisation, men like Ball, Tyler, Rawe, Grindcobbe and Straw, from the darkest depths of feudal England, were able to raise two mighty armies which scared the living daylights out of the rulers of the time.
The scaring has gone on for 600 years. Nothing concentrates the minds of the hereditary landlords and capitalists quite like the memory of Wat Tyler.
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, has a wonderful character in it called Sir Lester Dedlock – the names in Dickens always sum the person up. He was always worried about the ‘floodgates’ of society, whether they might open and sweep the social order away.
There is a passage about a case in the Court of Chancery:
‘He, Sir Lester, regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a “something” devised in conjunction with a variety of other “somethings”, by the perfection of human wisdom for the external settlement of everything. And he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints respecting the Court of Chancery would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere ... like Wat Tyler.’
Throughout the whole book, Sir Lester Dedlock, when someone says something wrong at a party, or eats with the wrong knife, or doesn’t come home at the time that they ought to, Sir Lester is reminded of Wat Tyler and of people who meet by torchlight with grim and swarthy expressions.
THERE’S A TENDENCY among people who think about history, even, perhaps especially, among Marxists who think about history, to divide it into sealed compartments. They say that the peasant comes from a different age, is separate from us, has nothing to do with us, and that history moves by stages, scientific stages, and the peasant is one stage, and the workers are in another.
It’s nothing therefore to do with us what happened six hundred years ago, in a quite different sort of economy. We can leave it on one side. We’re not peasants, we’re very advanced people, we’ve been an industrial working class burrowing away for years and we’ve got pretty well nowhere, but we’re terribly important and we’re much more important than any peasant.
I think that that is not only reactionary and wrong but paralysing – because the whole idea that history determines things and that everything’s inevitable paralyses us, leaves out the activity which is at the centre of the Peasants’ Revolt. It is also insulting to the people who carried those standards for us all through those years before. What’s most extraordinary about the Peasants’ Revolt is not the differences between us and them, which are obvious and expected, but the similarities. We’re bound together by this relentless struggle between the classes, which persists all the way through their story and all the way through ours.
In 1881, one hundred years ago, inspired by the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt, William Morris, a great socialist writer, grappled with this same idea. We do have something in common with what John Ball and Wat Tyler were doing in 1381. How could William Morris, with his enormous writing powers, try to bridge the gap for the socialists of his time? He did it in a really very brilliant piece of writing. It took him a long time to do it, and didn’t in fact appear until 1885.
He imagined himself or somebody like himself, a socialist in 1881, being plunged back into the villages of Kent in 1381, beating off the barons and the nobles. He describes John Ball coming to a village – probably the best description there is, better than the chronicles themselves because William Morris really went into it and found out about it.
At the end of the piece, which is called The Dream of John Ball, this man, who has all this experience of 500 years after 1381, has a long discussion with John Ball about what will happen. John Ball says, in effect, that he knows the revolt is going to fail, but asks what is going to happen after that? When, he asks, is his dream of all people living in common and sharing everything and there not being any vassals or lords going to come about?
Morris replies sadly that it won’t come for 500 years at least.
Not surprisingly, John Ball gets a bit depressed about that. He reminds his guest that he is marching to certain defeat and execution, and asks: For what? Is it worth it?
Here is the reply:
‘John Ball, be of good cheer, for once more thou knowest as I know that the fellowship of man shall endure, however many tribulations it may have to wear through. It may well be that this bright day of summer, which is now dawning upon us, is no image of the beginning of the day that shall be – but rather shall that day dawn be cold and grey and surly, and yet, by its light shall men see things as they verily are, and, no longer enchanted by the gleam of the moon and the glamour of the dream-tide, by such grey light shall wise men and valiant souls see the remedy and deal with it, a real thing that may be touched and handled and no glory of the heavens to be worshipped from afar off.
‘And what shall it be, as I told thee before, save that men shall be determined to be free, yea free as thou wouldst have them, when thine hope rises the highest and thou arte thinking, not of the king’s uncles and poll-grote bailiffs and the villeinage of Essex, but of the end of it all, when men shall have the fruits of the earth and the fruits of the earth and the fruits of their toil thereon without money and without price. That time shall come, John Ball, when that dream of thine shall this one day be, shall be a thing that man shall talk of soberly, and as a thing soon to come about as even with thee they talk of the villeins becoming tenants paying their lord quit-rent.
‘Therefore hast thou done well to hope it, and thy name shall abide by thy hope in those days to come, and thou shalt not be forgotten.’
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">P. Foot</a></p>
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Beyond the Powell</h1>
<h3>(March 1998)</h3>
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<p class="info"><em>Obituary of Enoch Powell</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.217, March 1998, p.12.<br>
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.<br>
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Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Everyone who wrote about him was certain of one thing: Enoch Powell was not a racist. He ‘said things we didn’t agree with’ (Tony Blair). He was ‘an extreme nationalist, but not a racialist’ (Denis Healey). He inspired racialists ‘but was not a racialist himself’ (Tony Benn). The Tory papers which revered him and called for parliament to be prorogued in his memory would not contemplate the possibility that he was a racialist. The unanimity was complete. Which is all very odd because the most important thing by far about Enoch Powell was that he was a racist pig of the most despicable variety.</p>
<p>The point is easily proved. In a private speech to lobby correspondents some years before he started speaking in public on immigration, he said, ‘Often when I am kneeling down in church I think to myself how much we should thank god, the holy ghost, for the gift of capitalism.’ Powell believed in capitalism just as a religious nut believes in the holy ghost. When fighting elections in Wolverhampton he would spell out the ‘simple choice’ between ‘free enterprise and a planned society’. He gloried in what he called the symmetry of capitalism. Ponderously, with a deliberate form of speech which many mistook for careful thought, he explained how the market drove and inspired the capitalist economy to ever higher summits of perfection. There was only one condition: that capital should be left to find its own place and its own direction.</p>
<p>It followed naturally that if free moving capital were to be allowed the full thrust of its energy, labour must be free to follow. The free movement of labour was therefore as vital a plank of capitalism as was the free movement of capital. ‘Pettifogging bureaucracy’ must be cleared out of the way of rampant capitalism – and of the docile and happy labourers who were pleased to follow. Thus in Powell’s early speeches in the House of Commons in the 1950s, his talk was all of free enterprise. In his first 11 years as an MP there was no control on empire or commonwealth immigration into Britain. Theoretically 600 million people could come to the ‘mother country’ and settle here without restraint. Powell could see nothing wrong in that, in theory. When someone raised the matter with him at a meeting in Wolverhampton in 1956, he spoke out against imposing controls on immigration. During the arguments about the first Commonwealth Immigration Control Act in 1960 and 1961 Powell was minister of health. His department sent emissaries to the West Indies to recruit nurses and ancillary workers for the National Health Service. When he fought the 1964 general election, and loyally supported his government’s immigration control acts, he concentrated still on a ‘pure’ capitalist argument which saw no difference in workers with different coloured skins. ‘I have set and always will set my face like flint’, he said in a sudden rush of the portentous rhetoric for which he was famous, ‘against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on grounds of his origin.’</p>
<p>All this was theory, pure theory which needed to be tested by practice. And the first big test for Powell was the undoubted fact, which he could see with his own eyes, that an increasing number of people in the two places he knew well – London and Wolverhampton – were black. They were not just black visitors to goggle at nor black maharajahs to remind him of his time in the Indian army, but black workers and their families, spreading all over what Powell continually called ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. If he had been true to his ideology, Powell might have glossed over this fact, perhaps even welcomed it. But he could not be true to his ideology. It conflicted with a passion stronger even than his belief in pure capitalism: a passion for empire, and with it an incontrovertible belief that the white man was ordained by god to conquer and control the world which was populated mainly by inferior black people. Enoch Powell was, in short, a racist to his bones.</p>
<p>It was, he concluded, utterly shocking that these black people should have been allowed into the country at all. As he started, slowly at first, to articulate this conclusion, he noticed something else. Large numbers of people shared his prejudices and rejoiced to hear them legitimised by a front-ranking politician. In 1965 Powell stood for the leadership of the Tory Party against Edward Heath and Reginald Maudling and was humiliated with only 15 votes. He was out of office and out in the cold. From 1967, when he first made a racist speech in Walsall, he realised he could get endless publicity and undreamt of popularity by mouthing his racist prejudices. He launched himself on a racist campaign culminating in his notorious speech in Birmingham in April 1968.</p>
<p>The speech pretended to deal with reality but in fact dealt only in myth. Racist myths were common at the time. Stories passed from area to area about the crime, filth and sexual licence of black people. Politicians steered clear of these myths which were kept away from the public arena. Powell devoted his entire speech to them. A woman in his constituency, so he had heard, had excreta pushed through her letter box and was then hounded by ‘grinning piccaninnies’ who shouted, ‘Racialist!’ at her. The blacks were preparing for power and within 20 years would have ‘the whip hand in this country’. Almost licking his lips, he looked forward to race riots.</p>
<p>The effect of his speech was to unblock a racist sewer and send it swirling freely through public life. The word went round – if Enoch Powell MP said these things, they must be true! Dockers marched in his support (though the racist campaign in the docks soon died out). Floods of letters poured into Powell at the House of Commons. When the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> denounced him as a racialist, he sued for libel. The paper demanded discovery of all the letters he got after his speech. He promptly dropped the case. The letters proved that the effect of his speech was to whip up the vilest racism.</p>
<p>Powell went on with this racism all his life. There was no satisfying his racist appetite. When immigration slowed to nothing, he demanded repatriation. He extended his colour prejudice to anti-European racism and then to Catholics in Northern Ireland. Whatever else he ever said is drowned out for posterity by the grim cacophony of his racism.</p>
<p>‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Mark Anthony’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar gets it exactly wrong. Quite the opposite is usually true. The evil that Powell did was interred with his bones by almost all his obituaries. But it is important for us to remember the awful damage caused by his disgusting campaign, if only to prepare for the next racist demagogue to come along, and to shut him up.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Beyond the Powell
(March 1998)
Obituary of Enoch Powell, Socialist Review, No.217, March 1998, p.12.
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Everyone who wrote about him was certain of one thing: Enoch Powell was not a racist. He ‘said things we didn’t agree with’ (Tony Blair). He was ‘an extreme nationalist, but not a racialist’ (Denis Healey). He inspired racialists ‘but was not a racialist himself’ (Tony Benn). The Tory papers which revered him and called for parliament to be prorogued in his memory would not contemplate the possibility that he was a racialist. The unanimity was complete. Which is all very odd because the most important thing by far about Enoch Powell was that he was a racist pig of the most despicable variety.
The point is easily proved. In a private speech to lobby correspondents some years before he started speaking in public on immigration, he said, ‘Often when I am kneeling down in church I think to myself how much we should thank god, the holy ghost, for the gift of capitalism.’ Powell believed in capitalism just as a religious nut believes in the holy ghost. When fighting elections in Wolverhampton he would spell out the ‘simple choice’ between ‘free enterprise and a planned society’. He gloried in what he called the symmetry of capitalism. Ponderously, with a deliberate form of speech which many mistook for careful thought, he explained how the market drove and inspired the capitalist economy to ever higher summits of perfection. There was only one condition: that capital should be left to find its own place and its own direction.
It followed naturally that if free moving capital were to be allowed the full thrust of its energy, labour must be free to follow. The free movement of labour was therefore as vital a plank of capitalism as was the free movement of capital. ‘Pettifogging bureaucracy’ must be cleared out of the way of rampant capitalism – and of the docile and happy labourers who were pleased to follow. Thus in Powell’s early speeches in the House of Commons in the 1950s, his talk was all of free enterprise. In his first 11 years as an MP there was no control on empire or commonwealth immigration into Britain. Theoretically 600 million people could come to the ‘mother country’ and settle here without restraint. Powell could see nothing wrong in that, in theory. When someone raised the matter with him at a meeting in Wolverhampton in 1956, he spoke out against imposing controls on immigration. During the arguments about the first Commonwealth Immigration Control Act in 1960 and 1961 Powell was minister of health. His department sent emissaries to the West Indies to recruit nurses and ancillary workers for the National Health Service. When he fought the 1964 general election, and loyally supported his government’s immigration control acts, he concentrated still on a ‘pure’ capitalist argument which saw no difference in workers with different coloured skins. ‘I have set and always will set my face like flint’, he said in a sudden rush of the portentous rhetoric for which he was famous, ‘against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on grounds of his origin.’
All this was theory, pure theory which needed to be tested by practice. And the first big test for Powell was the undoubted fact, which he could see with his own eyes, that an increasing number of people in the two places he knew well – London and Wolverhampton – were black. They were not just black visitors to goggle at nor black maharajahs to remind him of his time in the Indian army, but black workers and their families, spreading all over what Powell continually called ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. If he had been true to his ideology, Powell might have glossed over this fact, perhaps even welcomed it. But he could not be true to his ideology. It conflicted with a passion stronger even than his belief in pure capitalism: a passion for empire, and with it an incontrovertible belief that the white man was ordained by god to conquer and control the world which was populated mainly by inferior black people. Enoch Powell was, in short, a racist to his bones.
It was, he concluded, utterly shocking that these black people should have been allowed into the country at all. As he started, slowly at first, to articulate this conclusion, he noticed something else. Large numbers of people shared his prejudices and rejoiced to hear them legitimised by a front-ranking politician. In 1965 Powell stood for the leadership of the Tory Party against Edward Heath and Reginald Maudling and was humiliated with only 15 votes. He was out of office and out in the cold. From 1967, when he first made a racist speech in Walsall, he realised he could get endless publicity and undreamt of popularity by mouthing his racist prejudices. He launched himself on a racist campaign culminating in his notorious speech in Birmingham in April 1968.
The speech pretended to deal with reality but in fact dealt only in myth. Racist myths were common at the time. Stories passed from area to area about the crime, filth and sexual licence of black people. Politicians steered clear of these myths which were kept away from the public arena. Powell devoted his entire speech to them. A woman in his constituency, so he had heard, had excreta pushed through her letter box and was then hounded by ‘grinning piccaninnies’ who shouted, ‘Racialist!’ at her. The blacks were preparing for power and within 20 years would have ‘the whip hand in this country’. Almost licking his lips, he looked forward to race riots.
The effect of his speech was to unblock a racist sewer and send it swirling freely through public life. The word went round – if Enoch Powell MP said these things, they must be true! Dockers marched in his support (though the racist campaign in the docks soon died out). Floods of letters poured into Powell at the House of Commons. When the Sunday Times denounced him as a racialist, he sued for libel. The paper demanded discovery of all the letters he got after his speech. He promptly dropped the case. The letters proved that the effect of his speech was to whip up the vilest racism.
Powell went on with this racism all his life. There was no satisfying his racist appetite. When immigration slowed to nothing, he demanded repatriation. He extended his colour prejudice to anti-European racism and then to Catholics in Northern Ireland. Whatever else he ever said is drowned out for posterity by the grim cacophony of his racism.
‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Mark Anthony’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar gets it exactly wrong. Quite the opposite is usually true. The evil that Powell did was interred with his bones by almost all his obituaries. But it is important for us to remember the awful damage caused by his disgusting campaign, if only to prepare for the next racist demagogue to come along, and to shut him up.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Election</small><br>
Is this what democracy looks like?</h1>
<h3>(June 2001)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>Editorial</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.253, June 2001, p.7.<br>
Copyright © 2001 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em><strong>Paul Foot</strong> examines why New Labour is increasingly becoming old Tory</em></p>
<p class="fst">Shaun Woodward was the driving force behind John Major’s election victory in 1992. He personally supervised the campaign of John Major’s friend Jeffrey Archer to become mayor of London. No one took more pride in the success of the Tory campaign in 1992, a success which landed us with five more years of Tory rule studded with jewels such as the privatisation of the railways. He defended the Tories against allegations of sleaze while championing Archer, the most contemptible sleazeball of them all.</p>
<p>Now Woodward is the prospective Labour candidate for one of the largest working class areas in Britain, St Helens. Woodward is very rich. He shot to his huge fortune by the time-honoured method of marrying an heiress. No more than a handful of people in St Helens could ever dream of eating in the same restaurant or driving the same sort of car as Shaun Woodward. Yet somehow, after a series of backstage deals that would have brought cheers in Tammany Hall, this Tory political fixer has been selected to stand for Labour in St Helens.</p>
<p>A shiver of disgust runs through what’s left of the Labour movement in that part of the world. It seems almost incredible that the fixers of Millbank can achieve such a monstrous perversion of Labour representation. Yet there is nothing new about it. Ever since Blair became party leader the word has gone out from his apparatchiks to dump anything to do with Old Labour and, if possible, use the mass working class vote to enrich the House of Commons with the rich.</p>
<p>Mark Fisher, Labour MP for Stoke Central, was rung up recently by a senior official at Millbank and asked two bizarre questions: did he not think it admirable that Tory MPs should desert their party and cross the floor to Labour and, if so, did he not think that MPs with big majorities (like him) should sacrifice their seat to a Tory apostate? It was sometime before Mark realised exactly that the bureaucrat was proposing that he, Mark Fisher, should give up his seat to someone like Woodward and make his way without fuss to the new House of Lords, where seats are apparently as available as they were to any corrupt businessman who lavished part of his wealth on the Tories or former Liberal leader David Lloyd George. Perhaps, as he furiously abused the man from Millbank, Mark Fisher recalled that after 18 months as arts minister he was suddenly and arbitrarily sacked by Blair to make way for another Blair favourite, Major’s former social services minister, the Tory Alan Howarth. Howarth was imposed on the Labour voters of Newport in exactly the same scurrilous way in which Woodward has been imposed on St Helens.</p>
<p>Fisher’s indignation was immediate and glorious – the Millbank courtier was sent packing. But the same trick was then tried more successfully on the MP for St Helens, Gerry Bermingham. Bermingham denies that he is going to the House of Lords. But he has vacated his seat and abandoned his constituents so that yet another millionaire can take his place in the House of Commons. It is truly hard to imagine a more ridiculous way to end a mediocre parliamentary career, nor a worse fate to bestow on his unfortunate constituents of St Helens.<br>
</p>
<h4>Tory millionaire</h4>
<p class="fst">What does it prove? It proves that Tony Blair and his timeservers at Millbank have nothing but contempt, not just for the Labour movement – that has been obvious for some time – but for the whole system of representation and selection in that movement. He much prefers to have an ex-Tory millionaire in parliament than to allow the ordinary process of Labour local selection to take its course. Blair believes, moreover, that the Parliamentary Labour Party is his own fiefdom and that he can and must choose the right sort of people to sit under him in parliament. It is not simply that he wants an MP for St Helens who will vote for him in the lobbies. He wants an MP for St Helens who by his past record, his wealth, his photogenic wife and children, his stately home and everything else about him, will fit the image of New Labour – the image of the smooth talking plutocrat who represents patronage, privilege and undemocratic power.</p>
<p>He wants the Labour benches in the House of Commons (and the House of Lords, which he has revived) stuffed with people like Lord Sainsbury, who deserted Labour for the SDP, and Geoffrey Robinson, a beneficiary of that famous Labour millionaire Robert Maxwell. Both have been generous hosts to Blair. He would like to be surrounded by an even more generous coterie consisting of millionaires like Bernie Ecclestone and the Hinduja brothers. The mark of a good MP or minister in his eyes is to do what Tony says in public life and, in private, to make as much money as possible in the free market.</p>
<p>These figures are not just symbols. They are the reality of what is happening to British Labour. For if the Tory millionaire is to be marked out for advancement in the movement, it follows that the politics and priorities of the millionaire will become the policies and priorities of the Labour Party. Many people find it hard to understand, for instance, why Blair and Brown are so determined not to raise the higher rate of tax, or why they beg rich businessmen to take their slice of what used to be public enterprise. But when the high income tax payers and the rich businessmen are personally preferred to the people who do the work, then the mystery vanishes. New Labour is not new Labour at all. It is becoming, not just in rhetoric but in reality, Old Tory.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Election
Is this what democracy looks like?
(June 2001)
Editorial, Socialist Review, No.253, June 2001, p.7.
Copyright © 2001 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Paul Foot examines why New Labour is increasingly becoming old Tory
Shaun Woodward was the driving force behind John Major’s election victory in 1992. He personally supervised the campaign of John Major’s friend Jeffrey Archer to become mayor of London. No one took more pride in the success of the Tory campaign in 1992, a success which landed us with five more years of Tory rule studded with jewels such as the privatisation of the railways. He defended the Tories against allegations of sleaze while championing Archer, the most contemptible sleazeball of them all.
Now Woodward is the prospective Labour candidate for one of the largest working class areas in Britain, St Helens. Woodward is very rich. He shot to his huge fortune by the time-honoured method of marrying an heiress. No more than a handful of people in St Helens could ever dream of eating in the same restaurant or driving the same sort of car as Shaun Woodward. Yet somehow, after a series of backstage deals that would have brought cheers in Tammany Hall, this Tory political fixer has been selected to stand for Labour in St Helens.
A shiver of disgust runs through what’s left of the Labour movement in that part of the world. It seems almost incredible that the fixers of Millbank can achieve such a monstrous perversion of Labour representation. Yet there is nothing new about it. Ever since Blair became party leader the word has gone out from his apparatchiks to dump anything to do with Old Labour and, if possible, use the mass working class vote to enrich the House of Commons with the rich.
Mark Fisher, Labour MP for Stoke Central, was rung up recently by a senior official at Millbank and asked two bizarre questions: did he not think it admirable that Tory MPs should desert their party and cross the floor to Labour and, if so, did he not think that MPs with big majorities (like him) should sacrifice their seat to a Tory apostate? It was sometime before Mark realised exactly that the bureaucrat was proposing that he, Mark Fisher, should give up his seat to someone like Woodward and make his way without fuss to the new House of Lords, where seats are apparently as available as they were to any corrupt businessman who lavished part of his wealth on the Tories or former Liberal leader David Lloyd George. Perhaps, as he furiously abused the man from Millbank, Mark Fisher recalled that after 18 months as arts minister he was suddenly and arbitrarily sacked by Blair to make way for another Blair favourite, Major’s former social services minister, the Tory Alan Howarth. Howarth was imposed on the Labour voters of Newport in exactly the same scurrilous way in which Woodward has been imposed on St Helens.
Fisher’s indignation was immediate and glorious – the Millbank courtier was sent packing. But the same trick was then tried more successfully on the MP for St Helens, Gerry Bermingham. Bermingham denies that he is going to the House of Lords. But he has vacated his seat and abandoned his constituents so that yet another millionaire can take his place in the House of Commons. It is truly hard to imagine a more ridiculous way to end a mediocre parliamentary career, nor a worse fate to bestow on his unfortunate constituents of St Helens.
Tory millionaire
What does it prove? It proves that Tony Blair and his timeservers at Millbank have nothing but contempt, not just for the Labour movement – that has been obvious for some time – but for the whole system of representation and selection in that movement. He much prefers to have an ex-Tory millionaire in parliament than to allow the ordinary process of Labour local selection to take its course. Blair believes, moreover, that the Parliamentary Labour Party is his own fiefdom and that he can and must choose the right sort of people to sit under him in parliament. It is not simply that he wants an MP for St Helens who will vote for him in the lobbies. He wants an MP for St Helens who by his past record, his wealth, his photogenic wife and children, his stately home and everything else about him, will fit the image of New Labour – the image of the smooth talking plutocrat who represents patronage, privilege and undemocratic power.
He wants the Labour benches in the House of Commons (and the House of Lords, which he has revived) stuffed with people like Lord Sainsbury, who deserted Labour for the SDP, and Geoffrey Robinson, a beneficiary of that famous Labour millionaire Robert Maxwell. Both have been generous hosts to Blair. He would like to be surrounded by an even more generous coterie consisting of millionaires like Bernie Ecclestone and the Hinduja brothers. The mark of a good MP or minister in his eyes is to do what Tony says in public life and, in private, to make as much money as possible in the free market.
These figures are not just symbols. They are the reality of what is happening to British Labour. For if the Tory millionaire is to be marked out for advancement in the movement, it follows that the politics and priorities of the millionaire will become the policies and priorities of the Labour Party. Many people find it hard to understand, for instance, why Blair and Brown are so determined not to raise the higher rate of tax, or why they beg rich businessmen to take their slice of what used to be public enterprise. But when the high income tax payers and the rich businessmen are personally preferred to the people who do the work, then the mystery vanishes. New Labour is not new Labour at all. It is becoming, not just in rhetoric but in reality, Old Tory.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Tribune of the People</h1>
<h4>An interview</h4>
<h3>(May 2000)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.241, May 2000, pp.10-11.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em><strong>Paul Foot</strong> has been voted <strong>What the Papers Say</strong> Journalist of the Decade. He spoke to <strong>Judy Cox</strong> about what the award means to him, and about his experiences as a socialist journalist during the 1990s.</em></p>
<p class="fst">The award was especially encouraging because Paul has been so ill: ‘When I knew I had won something I couldn’t work out what it was. I spent nine months of 1999 very ill, so I knew I couldn’t have won anything for last year. Instead it was for the whole decade, the first time they have ever given such an award.’ Winning high profile awards helps his campaigns: ‘Recently I was asking about the case of Sarah Friday, the sacked rail worker from Waterloo. I rang the press office at South West Trains and the representative knew that the issue had to be taken seriously.’</p>
<p>But Paul thinks his best writing was inspired by workers’ struggles: ‘I never won an award during the six years I worked on <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, yet that was the best work I ever did. It was the only time I was able to report what I saw and what I felt, and put general arguments against the way society worked. I am sure that the reports I did in the early 1970s, in concert with workers’ struggles, were the best things I have done.’</p>
<p>For 14 years Paul Foot wrote a weekly column in the <strong>Mirror</strong>, which had a unique relationship with its readers: ‘I was appointed to the <strong>Mirror</strong> in autumn 1979 as a reaction to Thatcher’s election. I still regard it as a complete miracle that I ever got onto the <strong>Mirror</strong>. They asked me to be an investigative journalist, but I had only just stopped working for <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> and I was a very keen member of the SWP. I didn’t want to become part of a big capitalist machine. I insisted on having a regular space under my control, and I was astonished when the paper agreed to my terms. I had to allow those I was attacking space to defend themselves, which is a rule I have always followed because the writing has more impact if you are seen to be fair. The first five years on the Mirror were brilliant, because I depended on people sending lots of stories to me.</p>
<p>‘Then one day in 1984 the awful figure of Robert Maxwell wrote out a cheque for £100 million and bought the whole enterprise. He called me and John Pilger up. We thought we were going to be sacked. Maxwell promised that he wouldn’t interfere with anything we wrote. I replied that was an academic question, because if he did, I wouldn’t go on. He called me a “space imperialist”; he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone controlling anything he owned. I wasn’t afraid of being sacked – I didn’t have much to lose. I put up a list of his friends in the office, which was an invitation to other journalists to attack them, though we had to be sure of the facts because they always phoned Maxwell to complain.’<br>
</p>
<h4>Halcyon days</h4>
<p class="fst">‘I held onto the column for seven years under Maxwell, with the backing of the editors. Maxwell died in 1991, and from November 1991 to October 1992 we had real halcyon days without any management or proprietor. For the first time we gained in circulation on the Sun. Everything worked very well, but it was in contradiction to the rules of capitalist society, so they had to smash it up. Significantly, on the day of the big march against pit closures they moved. Most unions in the print industry were wiped out in 1986, but an active NUJ chapel at the <strong>Mirror</strong> had survived, even managing to avert threatened redundancies through a sit-in. They brought David Montgomery in from Murdoch’s stable with the sole intention of smashing the unions and the whole culture we had built up. The editors were sacked and replaced with clones. We hung on for six months because they didn’t dare sack me, but it became impossible. I left by publishing a column exposing what was going on, called <em>Look in the Mirror</em>, which got some publicity.’</p>
<p>Paul was at the forefront of exposing Tory sleaze: ‘Max Hastings, who became the editor of the <strong>Evening Standard</strong> in the mid-1990s, developed a great hostility to Jeffrey Archer. I wrote a piece for him in 1997 called, <em>Do You Want This Man As Mayor Of London?</em> which brought together all the stories about Archer, including how I had gone to Canada to investigate his alleged theft of some suits. Journalistically I recovered quickly, but politically it was much harder to recover from the defeat at the <strong>Mirror</strong>.’</p>
<p>In the mid-1990s many of Paul’s investigations began to take on new momentum: ‘When I left the <strong>Mirror</strong> all the big campaigns I had been involved in had apparently failed. I used to tell people, “Don’t come to me – I always lose.” Then, one by one, the major cases were reopened and reversed These included the release of Eddie Browning, who was falsely accused of the murder of Marie Wilkes, in 1994, the quashing of Colin Wallace’s conviction in 1996 and the release of the Bridgewater Four in 1997. So when I was back at <strong>Private Eye</strong> there was a series of victories in old campaigns, and new campaigns starting. As early as 1994 we raised doubts about the Stephen Lawrence case. In three articles called <em>Sergeants’ Mess</em> we pointed out that Stephen’s murderers were not prosecuted because Duwayne Brooks’s identification of two suspects was rubbished by a police officer who had absolutely no justification in rubbishing him. We also covered the Aitken story and the arms to Iraq affair.</p>
<p>‘Recently I went to a course for investigative journalists where everyone agreed that if journalists are politically committed their integrity is compromised. I am completely at odds with everyone on that question, because I am openly committed to the SWP. I have never felt that life would be easier if I was not in the SWP – the advantages are so enormous. Firstly you have access to other people so you can pool your resources and demonstrate, and raise voices of protest On the intellectual side, people say joining an organisation stops you thinking for yourself. I have always found the exact opposite to be true – my judgements are much better when they are arrived at through discussion and debate with others. So practically and intellectually it is much better to be in a party.’<br>
</p>
<h4>Labour damages democracy</h4>
<p class="fst">For the last ten years Paul has been working on a book about voting and power in British history, ‘about how workers used their power to win the vote, and the history of Labour governments which have damaged the democracy which put them in office. It has meant taking many of my idols and putting them in their historical context. Figures as diverse as Tom Paine, Shelley, the Chartist leaders, the great revolutionaries of the 20th century, and Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Harry McShane all come to life in their historical perspective.’</p>
<p>Paul is very optimistic about the possibilities raised by the London Socialist Alliance: ‘The Scottish Socialist Party got 4.2 percent of the vote in the Ayr by-election, a very good result for a socialist to the left of Labour in a non working class town. If we get 4.2 percent in London, there is a possibility that we could get someone elected to the assembly – I am top of the list so it would probably be me. We are very lucky because what Labour is doing is so monstrous that thousands and thousands of people inside and outside the Labour Party are very annoyed. The Livingstone split in the Labour Party has opened a massive space for us. People will vote in large numbers for Ken, but then have to decide who to vote for in the assembly. Those who have any inkling to the left, who care about the underground or privatisation generally, will be looking for left wing candidates. Having an alliance of socialists is great I stood in the Stetchford by-election in Birmingham in 1977 against another left wing group. The left got a respectable 1,000 votes but they were split, which was disastrous. That is behind us now, and we are working alongside socialists from many organisations.</p>
<p>‘Now is definitely the time to break from Labour. Break with Labour over these elections and then take it from there. The best thing is to get active and involved in some issue or campaign, such as opposing Clause 28, and make choices based on that experience.</p>
<p>‘The idea that in the labour movement power corrupts is wrong – what corrupts us is impotence. Absolute impotence corrupts absolutely, and the greatest example of this is the government’s impotence over the Rover crisis. Even in 1977 when British Leyland, Rover’s predecessor, was going to the wall the government nationalised it, almost by instinct. Now, even when there are tens of thousands of people on the streets of Birmingham, angry and asking, “What shall we do?”: the answer comes, “Absolutely nothing.”</p>
<p>‘Tony Woodley says whatever we do it is going to be worse, so people think there is no alternative. An occupation now could set off another Upper Clyde Shipbuilders [the Glasgow occupation in 1971], and the union leaders and MPs are all afraid of it We have to build up the feeling of confidence.’</p>
<p>Paul has been a spokesperson for the revolutionary left for many years: ‘I am now 62. Many of my contemporaries have gone on the same dreary path to the right, but I have never had even the slightest temptation to go in that direction. That is partly because of meeting people like Tony Cliff when I was young. It was very important when things were difficult for socialists that I was in touch with people who identified the situation and worked out what to do about it.</p>
<p>‘Central to the idea of socialism is understanding that things will change – one day the people at the top who are now doing the bashing will be bashed by people at the bottom. I am greatly helped by the fact that I lived through the 1970s when we believed revolution was imminent. When I joined <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> in October 1972 I was confident that a revolution was coming. Events seemed to confirm it, and even right wingers said the same. If you have lived through that, it is easier to see it happening again. Everything in our history points to the fact that things will swing around, and all kinds of hopes and optimisms flourish again. Although the 1990s were depressing in some respects, not a single thing has happened to make me doubt that things will change in our direction. It will happen very unexpectedly and catch us by surprise, so we must be prepared, be bigger and win more influence inside the working class. We must plug into those areas where things are happening now, and the LSA is definitely one of those areas.’</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Tribune of the People
An interview
(May 2000)
From Socialist Review, No.241, May 2000, pp.10-11.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Paul Foot has been voted What the Papers Say Journalist of the Decade. He spoke to Judy Cox about what the award means to him, and about his experiences as a socialist journalist during the 1990s.
The award was especially encouraging because Paul has been so ill: ‘When I knew I had won something I couldn’t work out what it was. I spent nine months of 1999 very ill, so I knew I couldn’t have won anything for last year. Instead it was for the whole decade, the first time they have ever given such an award.’ Winning high profile awards helps his campaigns: ‘Recently I was asking about the case of Sarah Friday, the sacked rail worker from Waterloo. I rang the press office at South West Trains and the representative knew that the issue had to be taken seriously.’
But Paul thinks his best writing was inspired by workers’ struggles: ‘I never won an award during the six years I worked on Socialist Worker, yet that was the best work I ever did. It was the only time I was able to report what I saw and what I felt, and put general arguments against the way society worked. I am sure that the reports I did in the early 1970s, in concert with workers’ struggles, were the best things I have done.’
For 14 years Paul Foot wrote a weekly column in the Mirror, which had a unique relationship with its readers: ‘I was appointed to the Mirror in autumn 1979 as a reaction to Thatcher’s election. I still regard it as a complete miracle that I ever got onto the Mirror. They asked me to be an investigative journalist, but I had only just stopped working for Socialist Worker and I was a very keen member of the SWP. I didn’t want to become part of a big capitalist machine. I insisted on having a regular space under my control, and I was astonished when the paper agreed to my terms. I had to allow those I was attacking space to defend themselves, which is a rule I have always followed because the writing has more impact if you are seen to be fair. The first five years on the Mirror were brilliant, because I depended on people sending lots of stories to me.
‘Then one day in 1984 the awful figure of Robert Maxwell wrote out a cheque for £100 million and bought the whole enterprise. He called me and John Pilger up. We thought we were going to be sacked. Maxwell promised that he wouldn’t interfere with anything we wrote. I replied that was an academic question, because if he did, I wouldn’t go on. He called me a “space imperialist”; he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone controlling anything he owned. I wasn’t afraid of being sacked – I didn’t have much to lose. I put up a list of his friends in the office, which was an invitation to other journalists to attack them, though we had to be sure of the facts because they always phoned Maxwell to complain.’
Halcyon days
‘I held onto the column for seven years under Maxwell, with the backing of the editors. Maxwell died in 1991, and from November 1991 to October 1992 we had real halcyon days without any management or proprietor. For the first time we gained in circulation on the Sun. Everything worked very well, but it was in contradiction to the rules of capitalist society, so they had to smash it up. Significantly, on the day of the big march against pit closures they moved. Most unions in the print industry were wiped out in 1986, but an active NUJ chapel at the Mirror had survived, even managing to avert threatened redundancies through a sit-in. They brought David Montgomery in from Murdoch’s stable with the sole intention of smashing the unions and the whole culture we had built up. The editors were sacked and replaced with clones. We hung on for six months because they didn’t dare sack me, but it became impossible. I left by publishing a column exposing what was going on, called Look in the Mirror, which got some publicity.’
Paul was at the forefront of exposing Tory sleaze: ‘Max Hastings, who became the editor of the Evening Standard in the mid-1990s, developed a great hostility to Jeffrey Archer. I wrote a piece for him in 1997 called, Do You Want This Man As Mayor Of London? which brought together all the stories about Archer, including how I had gone to Canada to investigate his alleged theft of some suits. Journalistically I recovered quickly, but politically it was much harder to recover from the defeat at the Mirror.’
In the mid-1990s many of Paul’s investigations began to take on new momentum: ‘When I left the Mirror all the big campaigns I had been involved in had apparently failed. I used to tell people, “Don’t come to me – I always lose.” Then, one by one, the major cases were reopened and reversed These included the release of Eddie Browning, who was falsely accused of the murder of Marie Wilkes, in 1994, the quashing of Colin Wallace’s conviction in 1996 and the release of the Bridgewater Four in 1997. So when I was back at Private Eye there was a series of victories in old campaigns, and new campaigns starting. As early as 1994 we raised doubts about the Stephen Lawrence case. In three articles called Sergeants’ Mess we pointed out that Stephen’s murderers were not prosecuted because Duwayne Brooks’s identification of two suspects was rubbished by a police officer who had absolutely no justification in rubbishing him. We also covered the Aitken story and the arms to Iraq affair.
‘Recently I went to a course for investigative journalists where everyone agreed that if journalists are politically committed their integrity is compromised. I am completely at odds with everyone on that question, because I am openly committed to the SWP. I have never felt that life would be easier if I was not in the SWP – the advantages are so enormous. Firstly you have access to other people so you can pool your resources and demonstrate, and raise voices of protest On the intellectual side, people say joining an organisation stops you thinking for yourself. I have always found the exact opposite to be true – my judgements are much better when they are arrived at through discussion and debate with others. So practically and intellectually it is much better to be in a party.’
Labour damages democracy
For the last ten years Paul has been working on a book about voting and power in British history, ‘about how workers used their power to win the vote, and the history of Labour governments which have damaged the democracy which put them in office. It has meant taking many of my idols and putting them in their historical context. Figures as diverse as Tom Paine, Shelley, the Chartist leaders, the great revolutionaries of the 20th century, and Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Harry McShane all come to life in their historical perspective.’
Paul is very optimistic about the possibilities raised by the London Socialist Alliance: ‘The Scottish Socialist Party got 4.2 percent of the vote in the Ayr by-election, a very good result for a socialist to the left of Labour in a non working class town. If we get 4.2 percent in London, there is a possibility that we could get someone elected to the assembly – I am top of the list so it would probably be me. We are very lucky because what Labour is doing is so monstrous that thousands and thousands of people inside and outside the Labour Party are very annoyed. The Livingstone split in the Labour Party has opened a massive space for us. People will vote in large numbers for Ken, but then have to decide who to vote for in the assembly. Those who have any inkling to the left, who care about the underground or privatisation generally, will be looking for left wing candidates. Having an alliance of socialists is great I stood in the Stetchford by-election in Birmingham in 1977 against another left wing group. The left got a respectable 1,000 votes but they were split, which was disastrous. That is behind us now, and we are working alongside socialists from many organisations.
‘Now is definitely the time to break from Labour. Break with Labour over these elections and then take it from there. The best thing is to get active and involved in some issue or campaign, such as opposing Clause 28, and make choices based on that experience.
‘The idea that in the labour movement power corrupts is wrong – what corrupts us is impotence. Absolute impotence corrupts absolutely, and the greatest example of this is the government’s impotence over the Rover crisis. Even in 1977 when British Leyland, Rover’s predecessor, was going to the wall the government nationalised it, almost by instinct. Now, even when there are tens of thousands of people on the streets of Birmingham, angry and asking, “What shall we do?”: the answer comes, “Absolutely nothing.”
‘Tony Woodley says whatever we do it is going to be worse, so people think there is no alternative. An occupation now could set off another Upper Clyde Shipbuilders [the Glasgow occupation in 1971], and the union leaders and MPs are all afraid of it We have to build up the feeling of confidence.’
Paul has been a spokesperson for the revolutionary left for many years: ‘I am now 62. Many of my contemporaries have gone on the same dreary path to the right, but I have never had even the slightest temptation to go in that direction. That is partly because of meeting people like Tony Cliff when I was young. It was very important when things were difficult for socialists that I was in touch with people who identified the situation and worked out what to do about it.
‘Central to the idea of socialism is understanding that things will change – one day the people at the top who are now doing the bashing will be bashed by people at the bottom. I am greatly helped by the fact that I lived through the 1970s when we believed revolution was imminent. When I joined Socialist Worker in October 1972 I was confident that a revolution was coming. Events seemed to confirm it, and even right wingers said the same. If you have lived through that, it is easier to see it happening again. Everything in our history points to the fact that things will swing around, and all kinds of hopes and optimisms flourish again. Although the 1990s were depressing in some respects, not a single thing has happened to make me doubt that things will change in our direction. It will happen very unexpectedly and catch us by surprise, so we must be prepared, be bigger and win more influence inside the working class. We must plug into those areas where things are happening now, and the LSA is definitely one of those areas.’
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Ambushing the news</h1>
<h3>(3 July 1993)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 3 July 1993.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 235–236.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">When Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Television bid successfully for the right to screen First Division football matches live, the chief executive of London Weekend Television, Greg Dyke, put on a grand display of righteous indignation. It was, he said, shocking that commercial interests should deprive people of the programmes they wanted to watch.</p>
<p>He was right, of course. But is he consistent?</p>
<p>Now he appears in secret conference with other TV bosses, in particular Paul Jackson, the managing director of Carlton TV, which purveys television programmes in London on weekdays. Jackson, Dyke and all the other commercial TV bosses met recently to discuss the future of the most successful and popular regular television shows ever – <em>News at Ten</em>.</p>
<p><em>News at Ten</em> started in 1967. It lasted for half an hour. From the outset it proved just as popular as the BBC’s news. It has lasted for 26 years, has an enormous and loyal following, and the two minutes of advertising which split it in two bring in nearly £100 million – by far the most profitable regular two minutes for the ITV companies.</p>
<p>The success of television news on BBC and ITV gave the lie to all those who said that the masses were not interested in news.</p>
<p>While the tabloid press published less and less news – and gave more and more space to sport and nudes – the television news, presented on the whole without nudes and without even much sport, proved hugely popular.</p>
<p>Millions of people were gluttons for the news. When Channel 4 introduced its own extended 50 minute ITN news (called <em>Channel 4 News</em>) at 7 p.m., millions tuned in.</p>
<p>Together the two ITN programmes were watched by something like half the adult population. They established minimal standards of fairness and accuracy, which compared favourably with the bias and hysteria of the tabloid press. The only people who refuse to recognise the astonishing popularity and success of <em>News at Ten</em> are the television proprietors.</p>
<p>They don’t like news at any time, but they specially don’t like it at 10 o’clock at night when it interrupts much more juicy profit-making with cheap movies or rotten sitcom shows.</p>
<p>For years now the heads of the ITV companies have been plotting a coup on <em>News at Ten</em>. Last week they finally ambushed it and started to leak plans for putting on a new news programme at 6.30 p.m.</p>
<p>Everyone agrees that most of the standards of <em>News at Ten</em> would be lost in a 6.30 programme – it is too early to develop the day’s news it will compete absurdly with <em>Channel 4 News</em>. It will be seen as a demotion, a device to get the news out of the way before getting on with the trivia.</p>
<p>But years of ‘deregulation’, in television, as in everything else, have made it impossible for the ‘watchdogs’ to intervene. Profit-hungry bosses like Greg Dyke, who, with his fellow directors at LWT, has just helped himself to millions of pounds in a scandalous share scheme, are left free to plunder the networks.</p>
<p>Even though she had her own friends on the ITV companies, Thatcher grew to loathe them for their power and their lack of right wing bias. She waged war to the death with Thames Television over <em>Death on the Rock</em>, the expose of the Gibraltar murders by the SAS.</p>
<p>Her hatred spilled over into <em>News at Ten</em>.</p>
<p>The ideological imperative from the right to sweep away anything which can for a moment present the public with some of the facts about the world we live in has engulfed the creations even of the right’s own children.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Ambushing the news
(3 July 1993)
From Socialist Worker, 3 July 1993.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 235–236.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
When Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Television bid successfully for the right to screen First Division football matches live, the chief executive of London Weekend Television, Greg Dyke, put on a grand display of righteous indignation. It was, he said, shocking that commercial interests should deprive people of the programmes they wanted to watch.
He was right, of course. But is he consistent?
Now he appears in secret conference with other TV bosses, in particular Paul Jackson, the managing director of Carlton TV, which purveys television programmes in London on weekdays. Jackson, Dyke and all the other commercial TV bosses met recently to discuss the future of the most successful and popular regular television shows ever – News at Ten.
News at Ten started in 1967. It lasted for half an hour. From the outset it proved just as popular as the BBC’s news. It has lasted for 26 years, has an enormous and loyal following, and the two minutes of advertising which split it in two bring in nearly £100 million – by far the most profitable regular two minutes for the ITV companies.
The success of television news on BBC and ITV gave the lie to all those who said that the masses were not interested in news.
While the tabloid press published less and less news – and gave more and more space to sport and nudes – the television news, presented on the whole without nudes and without even much sport, proved hugely popular.
Millions of people were gluttons for the news. When Channel 4 introduced its own extended 50 minute ITN news (called Channel 4 News) at 7 p.m., millions tuned in.
Together the two ITN programmes were watched by something like half the adult population. They established minimal standards of fairness and accuracy, which compared favourably with the bias and hysteria of the tabloid press. The only people who refuse to recognise the astonishing popularity and success of News at Ten are the television proprietors.
They don’t like news at any time, but they specially don’t like it at 10 o’clock at night when it interrupts much more juicy profit-making with cheap movies or rotten sitcom shows.
For years now the heads of the ITV companies have been plotting a coup on News at Ten. Last week they finally ambushed it and started to leak plans for putting on a new news programme at 6.30 p.m.
Everyone agrees that most of the standards of News at Ten would be lost in a 6.30 programme – it is too early to develop the day’s news it will compete absurdly with Channel 4 News. It will be seen as a demotion, a device to get the news out of the way before getting on with the trivia.
But years of ‘deregulation’, in television, as in everything else, have made it impossible for the ‘watchdogs’ to intervene. Profit-hungry bosses like Greg Dyke, who, with his fellow directors at LWT, has just helped himself to millions of pounds in a scandalous share scheme, are left free to plunder the networks.
Even though she had her own friends on the ITV companies, Thatcher grew to loathe them for their power and their lack of right wing bias. She waged war to the death with Thames Television over Death on the Rock, the expose of the Gibraltar murders by the SAS.
Her hatred spilled over into News at Ten.
The ideological imperative from the right to sweep away anything which can for a moment present the public with some of the facts about the world we live in has engulfed the creations even of the right’s own children.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>London, 27 February 1900</h1>
<h3>(February 1999)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Red Letter Days</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.227, February 1999, p.35.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Anyone who has been around the London left for any length of time will be familiar with smallish meetings, usually in the Conway Hall, which set up some committee or other to fight or defend something or other, which to everyone’s fury is then completely ignored by the capitalist press.</p>
<p>The meeting in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, on 27 February 1900 was, to all appearances, another of these. There were only 120 people there, all of them saying they were ‘delegates’. The mood was not exuberant. The arguments were long, dull and apparently of little significance outside the hall. No one in the press or in the organised labour movement seemed to show the slightest interest.</p>
<p>Yet the meeting of what called itself the Labour Representation Committee, the forerunner of the Labour Party, was historic. Its aim, which it achieved, was for the first time to break the umbilical cord which bound the leaders of organised labour to the Liberal Party; and to form a new political party to represent the interests of the working masses in parliament.</p>
<p>Three distinct groups were represented at the Memorial Hall. By far the largest was the trade union leaders. At almost every annual conference since the Trades Union Congress first met in 1867, a prominent subject for debate had been the need for wider parliamentary representation for labour.</p>
<p>In the general election of 1874, two working men, Thomas Hurt and Alexander Macdonald, both miners, had been elected. They were joined by Henry Broadhurst in 1880 and, briefly, by a handful of other workers, mostly miners, in the 1885 general election after the extension of the franchise.</p>
<p>Throughout all this time, the TUC’s political strategy was to act as a pressure group on the Liberal Party. The TUC’s influential parliamentary committee, dominated for years by Henry Broadhurst, never even questioned its allegiance to the Liberal Party under its revered leader, the ‘phrasemaker’, William Gladstone. The Labour Representation League, which was formed soon after the TUC came into being, was a talking shop in which the union leaders bowed and scraped to their Liberal heroes. One result was that socialist ideas were not just ignored but positively opposed. Even parliamentary measures to improve workers’ conditions were frowned on by these union leaders who accepted Liberal arguments about the beautiful symmetry of the free market and the dangers of interfering in it.</p>
<p>These arguments began to wilt in the 1880s. The severe depression which started in 1879, and which was heralded by Engels as the beginning of the end for British monopolistic domination of world markets, led to widespread closures and bankruptcies and a steep decline in the already marginal influence of the unions. In the late 1880s the great victories of the match girls, the gas workers and the London dockers further threatened the old Liberal union leaders with a ‘new unionism’ extending far beyond the fixed boundaries of the labour aristocracy.</p>
<p>These old leaders hurriedly set up the Labour Electoral Association, whose second annual meeting marvelled at the relative representative interests of different groups in society. Landlords and landowners had 209 MPs, armed service officers 128, lawyers 136, manufacturing bosses and commercial services 136, railway bosses 62, bankers 33, brewers 24 – and labour (even at its widest definition) just nine. Some 650,000 miners had five MPs – a few hundred coal-owners had 20. Yet even when confronted by these figures, the Labour Electoral Association leaders continued to stick with the Liberals and to denounce the growing demands for independent Labour representation.</p>
<p>Through the 1890s, in a series of debates at the TUC and elsewhere, the argument slipped away from the old leaders. Gladstone died, and the new Liberal leaders grew even more indifferent to the demands of labour. Broadhurst and Co often won the votes at Congress, but lost the argument. In 1899 Congress instructed its leaders to take part in a conference to sponsor independent Labour MPs. Hence the meeting at the Memorial Hall.</p>
<p>Two much smaller groups attended the conference, both of them socialist. The first was the Independent Labour Party (ILP), whose leader Keir Hardie had clashed repeatedly with Broadhurst. The second was the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), a small organisation led by the former stockbroker H.M. Hyndman. Some of the leaders of the great strikes of the 1880s, notably Will Thorne of the transport workers and Ben Tillett, the dockers’ union leader, were in the hall, but such men were much influenced by syndicalist anti-parliamentary arguments and played little part in the proceedings.</p>
<p>When the SDF moved that the new Labour Party should be openly socialist ‘based upon the recognition of the class war’ their motion was overwhelmingly rejected. But the old Liberal union leaders did not get everything their own way. Keir Hardie moved and carried a motion committing the conference to a ‘distinct Labour Group in Parliament’, with its own whips and its own policy.</p>
<p>The resolution was full of holes, which were relentlessly exploited by the growing Labour Group in the Commons. But for all the weaknesses and hesitancy of the LRC, the decisive break with the old bourgeois parties had been made, and would continue for 100 years until now, when Tony Blair is trying to get in bed with the Liberals once again.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
London, 27 February 1900
(February 1999)
From Red Letter Days, Socialist Review, No.227, February 1999, p.35.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Anyone who has been around the London left for any length of time will be familiar with smallish meetings, usually in the Conway Hall, which set up some committee or other to fight or defend something or other, which to everyone’s fury is then completely ignored by the capitalist press.
The meeting in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, on 27 February 1900 was, to all appearances, another of these. There were only 120 people there, all of them saying they were ‘delegates’. The mood was not exuberant. The arguments were long, dull and apparently of little significance outside the hall. No one in the press or in the organised labour movement seemed to show the slightest interest.
Yet the meeting of what called itself the Labour Representation Committee, the forerunner of the Labour Party, was historic. Its aim, which it achieved, was for the first time to break the umbilical cord which bound the leaders of organised labour to the Liberal Party; and to form a new political party to represent the interests of the working masses in parliament.
Three distinct groups were represented at the Memorial Hall. By far the largest was the trade union leaders. At almost every annual conference since the Trades Union Congress first met in 1867, a prominent subject for debate had been the need for wider parliamentary representation for labour.
In the general election of 1874, two working men, Thomas Hurt and Alexander Macdonald, both miners, had been elected. They were joined by Henry Broadhurst in 1880 and, briefly, by a handful of other workers, mostly miners, in the 1885 general election after the extension of the franchise.
Throughout all this time, the TUC’s political strategy was to act as a pressure group on the Liberal Party. The TUC’s influential parliamentary committee, dominated for years by Henry Broadhurst, never even questioned its allegiance to the Liberal Party under its revered leader, the ‘phrasemaker’, William Gladstone. The Labour Representation League, which was formed soon after the TUC came into being, was a talking shop in which the union leaders bowed and scraped to their Liberal heroes. One result was that socialist ideas were not just ignored but positively opposed. Even parliamentary measures to improve workers’ conditions were frowned on by these union leaders who accepted Liberal arguments about the beautiful symmetry of the free market and the dangers of interfering in it.
These arguments began to wilt in the 1880s. The severe depression which started in 1879, and which was heralded by Engels as the beginning of the end for British monopolistic domination of world markets, led to widespread closures and bankruptcies and a steep decline in the already marginal influence of the unions. In the late 1880s the great victories of the match girls, the gas workers and the London dockers further threatened the old Liberal union leaders with a ‘new unionism’ extending far beyond the fixed boundaries of the labour aristocracy.
These old leaders hurriedly set up the Labour Electoral Association, whose second annual meeting marvelled at the relative representative interests of different groups in society. Landlords and landowners had 209 MPs, armed service officers 128, lawyers 136, manufacturing bosses and commercial services 136, railway bosses 62, bankers 33, brewers 24 – and labour (even at its widest definition) just nine. Some 650,000 miners had five MPs – a few hundred coal-owners had 20. Yet even when confronted by these figures, the Labour Electoral Association leaders continued to stick with the Liberals and to denounce the growing demands for independent Labour representation.
Through the 1890s, in a series of debates at the TUC and elsewhere, the argument slipped away from the old leaders. Gladstone died, and the new Liberal leaders grew even more indifferent to the demands of labour. Broadhurst and Co often won the votes at Congress, but lost the argument. In 1899 Congress instructed its leaders to take part in a conference to sponsor independent Labour MPs. Hence the meeting at the Memorial Hall.
Two much smaller groups attended the conference, both of them socialist. The first was the Independent Labour Party (ILP), whose leader Keir Hardie had clashed repeatedly with Broadhurst. The second was the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), a small organisation led by the former stockbroker H.M. Hyndman. Some of the leaders of the great strikes of the 1880s, notably Will Thorne of the transport workers and Ben Tillett, the dockers’ union leader, were in the hall, but such men were much influenced by syndicalist anti-parliamentary arguments and played little part in the proceedings.
When the SDF moved that the new Labour Party should be openly socialist ‘based upon the recognition of the class war’ their motion was overwhelmingly rejected. But the old Liberal union leaders did not get everything their own way. Keir Hardie moved and carried a motion committing the conference to a ‘distinct Labour Group in Parliament’, with its own whips and its own policy.
The resolution was full of holes, which were relentlessly exploited by the growing Labour Group in the Commons. But for all the weaknesses and hesitancy of the LRC, the decisive break with the old bourgeois parties had been made, and would continue for 100 years until now, when Tony Blair is trying to get in bed with the Liberals once again.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The dream of Tony Blair</h1>
<h3>(26 August 1995)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No. 1457, 26 August 1995, p. 11.<br>
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>DOES TONY Blair dream? Does he have a vision of what could be? The answer is yes, and I can prove it.</strong></p>
<p>I’ve been reading an article in the London <strong>Evening Standard</strong> of 8 January 1993. It was not written by the teenage son of a Tory cabinet minister, though it could have been.</p>
<p>The author was Tony Blair, then Labour’s front bench spokesman for home affairs. He was glowing with enthusiasm and delight after a glimpse of the New World.</p>
<p>He had just come back from Washington, which was excitedly preparing for the inauguration of the new president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton. What struck the impressionable Blair was the democratic, even proletarian, spirit of the new presidential order.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Bill Clinton will arrive in Washington,” Blair reported, “not on the presidential plane or in a bulletproof limousine or even, a specially chartered train. He will come by bus ...”</p>
<p class="fst">Blair explained that this unlikely form of transport (Clinton has probably never travelled in a bus since) was symbolic of a “people’s inauguration ceremony designed to reflect both the populism of the anti-establishment campaign that won him his presidency and the new dynamism of an administration pledged to the theme of national renewal”.<br>
</p>
<h4>Too specific</h4>
<p class="fst">Everywhere, Blair reported, there was change – the new faces of the new government included a woman attorney general, a former civil rights lawyer devoted to law reform, a vice-president who for the first time for years sat down for talks with trade union leaders from the motor car industry, and a “British educated” Labour secretary with “ideas for transforming education and training”.</p>
<p><strong>Comparing the “energy and drive” of the new Democrats in America with the “fatigue of our Conservative government” left Tony Blair feeling, he admitted, a “little envious”.</strong></p>
<p>But even in his excitement and enthusiasm, Blair did not forget his most consistent political characteristic: caution. Clinton’s policy for the election, he thought, was “over detailed”, too specific about promises which might not be kept.</p>
<p>“Great expectations”, he warned, “are never wholly fulfilled.” Moreover, “much can go wrong as the new administration is buffeted by events”. And it was therefore loo early to tell” whether Clinton will “ring in the changes he has promised”.</p>
<p>Clinton’s promises, Blair conceded, might not be fulfilled – but so what? The real aim of the campaign – victory at the polls – had been achieved. That was far more important than what might follow.<br>
</p>
<h4>Blind blundering</h4>
<p class="fst">The process of a form of politics which starts and ends at elections had come to its logical conclusion. The election victory was a dream far more vital than any nightmare which might follow.</p>
<p><strong>How does Tony Blair feel, therefore, as he contemplates the wreckage of the Clinton administration, the surrender of every economic and social reform, the hesitation and blind blundering which have been followed inevitably by one of the nastiest reactionary backlashes ever seen in the reactionary history of United States policies?</strong></p>
<p>Does he flinch as the reforming welfare advisers he celebrated cut the pittances of dole and benefits which even George Bush tolerated; as those reforming civil rights lawyers he praised preside over the mass executions of prisoners on Death Row; as the new talks with the union leaders develop into a new burst of anti-union legislation and official strikebreaking? Does any of this make him flinch from his 1993 hero worship of the Clinton-Gore gang?</p>
<p>Not at all. They won the election, didn’t they, and what else matters?</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The dream of Tony Blair
(26 August 1995)
From Socialist Worker, No. 1457, 26 August 1995, p. 11.
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
DOES TONY Blair dream? Does he have a vision of what could be? The answer is yes, and I can prove it.
I’ve been reading an article in the London Evening Standard of 8 January 1993. It was not written by the teenage son of a Tory cabinet minister, though it could have been.
The author was Tony Blair, then Labour’s front bench spokesman for home affairs. He was glowing with enthusiasm and delight after a glimpse of the New World.
He had just come back from Washington, which was excitedly preparing for the inauguration of the new president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton. What struck the impressionable Blair was the democratic, even proletarian, spirit of the new presidential order.
“Bill Clinton will arrive in Washington,” Blair reported, “not on the presidential plane or in a bulletproof limousine or even, a specially chartered train. He will come by bus ...”
Blair explained that this unlikely form of transport (Clinton has probably never travelled in a bus since) was symbolic of a “people’s inauguration ceremony designed to reflect both the populism of the anti-establishment campaign that won him his presidency and the new dynamism of an administration pledged to the theme of national renewal”.
Too specific
Everywhere, Blair reported, there was change – the new faces of the new government included a woman attorney general, a former civil rights lawyer devoted to law reform, a vice-president who for the first time for years sat down for talks with trade union leaders from the motor car industry, and a “British educated” Labour secretary with “ideas for transforming education and training”.
Comparing the “energy and drive” of the new Democrats in America with the “fatigue of our Conservative government” left Tony Blair feeling, he admitted, a “little envious”.
But even in his excitement and enthusiasm, Blair did not forget his most consistent political characteristic: caution. Clinton’s policy for the election, he thought, was “over detailed”, too specific about promises which might not be kept.
“Great expectations”, he warned, “are never wholly fulfilled.” Moreover, “much can go wrong as the new administration is buffeted by events”. And it was therefore loo early to tell” whether Clinton will “ring in the changes he has promised”.
Clinton’s promises, Blair conceded, might not be fulfilled – but so what? The real aim of the campaign – victory at the polls – had been achieved. That was far more important than what might follow.
Blind blundering
The process of a form of politics which starts and ends at elections had come to its logical conclusion. The election victory was a dream far more vital than any nightmare which might follow.
How does Tony Blair feel, therefore, as he contemplates the wreckage of the Clinton administration, the surrender of every economic and social reform, the hesitation and blind blundering which have been followed inevitably by one of the nastiest reactionary backlashes ever seen in the reactionary history of United States policies?
Does he flinch as the reforming welfare advisers he celebrated cut the pittances of dole and benefits which even George Bush tolerated; as those reforming civil rights lawyers he praised preside over the mass executions of prisoners on Death Row; as the new talks with the union leaders develop into a new burst of anti-union legislation and official strikebreaking? Does any of this make him flinch from his 1993 hero worship of the Clinton-Gore gang?
Not at all. They won the election, didn’t they, and what else matters?
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Passports and Politics</small><br>
A beautiful symmetry</h1>
<h3>(February 2001)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>News Review</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.249, February 2001, p.5.<br>
Copyright © 2001 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">At some time during his stay in Northern Ireland a strange thing happened to Peter Mandelson. He lost what was left of his conscience.</p>
<p>When he resigned two years ago after his vast loan from former Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson was revealed, he was subdued, almost contrite. He applied what became known as the Hartlepool test – what would the ordinary Labour voter in poor old Hartlepool make of their MP borrowing £400,000 from a rich pal so that he could buy himself a decent house? The answer was pretty obvious. Mandelson accepted it, and left the stage.</p>
<p>Apply the same test to the recent hullabaloo about the Hinduja brothers, and it goes something like this. What would a manual worker in Hartlepool make of his MP intervening on behalf of a billionaire who had been a generous supporter of Margaret Thatcher and who was being investigated by the Indian authorities for his part in a notorious arms scandal? The answer, if anything, would be even more unprintable than the answer over the Robinson loan scandal.</p>
<p>But Peter Mandelson has been so long in office that he has lost sight of his own simple test. So, it seems, have the entire media. So the questions which are being asked – by the newspapers, television, and mainly by the Tories, who are as deep in the Hinduja mire as anyone else – are about which ministers rang which colleagues, exactly what they said and whether their behaviour contradicted some legalistic code drawn up by MPs with the purpose of shielding them from public criticism. On this level it seems to be important whether it was Mandelson himself or his private secretary who rang the Home Office to ask about the Hindujas’ passport. This is an entirely trivial matter. No one suggests that the private secretary would have made such an inquiry without her boss’s instruction.</p>
<p>The point is that at a time when the Hindujas were offering vast sums to bolster the ghastly Dome, for which Mandelson was the responsible minister, Mandelson, or someone on his behalf, tried to secure for the billionaire the British citizenship which is craved by millions of desperately poor people all over the world. That is not a question of detail – who rang whom and when. That is a simple question of principle – of attempting to secure for a very rich donor a deeply-prized privilege.</p>
<p>The Tories, of course, are having a field day at Labour’s expense. Their jubilation will last as long as it takes to find out and publish what is already widely suspected – that the Hindujas were generous contributors to Tory Party coffers, were profound admirers of Margaret Thatcher, and were supported in all sorts of ways by senior Tory politicians and functionaries. The charge against Mandelson is the same sort of charge as that traditionally levelled against the Tories – of preferential treatment for the rich, and of seeking for the rich privileges and passports which are denied to impoverished masses of the same colour and culture.</p>
<p>The beautiful symmetry of the whole affair can best be appreciated by recalling that the original guru of New Labour, the man who dedicated himself to the re-writing of Clause Four of Labour’s constitution, and who devoted his entire life as a minister to sucking up to the rich and expecting them constantly to come to the rescue of the Labour government, is, you’ve got it in one, Peter Mandelson. And look where it all got him.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Passports and Politics
A beautiful symmetry
(February 2001)
From News Review, Socialist Review, No.249, February 2001, p.5.
Copyright © 2001 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
At some time during his stay in Northern Ireland a strange thing happened to Peter Mandelson. He lost what was left of his conscience.
When he resigned two years ago after his vast loan from former Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson was revealed, he was subdued, almost contrite. He applied what became known as the Hartlepool test – what would the ordinary Labour voter in poor old Hartlepool make of their MP borrowing £400,000 from a rich pal so that he could buy himself a decent house? The answer was pretty obvious. Mandelson accepted it, and left the stage.
Apply the same test to the recent hullabaloo about the Hinduja brothers, and it goes something like this. What would a manual worker in Hartlepool make of his MP intervening on behalf of a billionaire who had been a generous supporter of Margaret Thatcher and who was being investigated by the Indian authorities for his part in a notorious arms scandal? The answer, if anything, would be even more unprintable than the answer over the Robinson loan scandal.
But Peter Mandelson has been so long in office that he has lost sight of his own simple test. So, it seems, have the entire media. So the questions which are being asked – by the newspapers, television, and mainly by the Tories, who are as deep in the Hinduja mire as anyone else – are about which ministers rang which colleagues, exactly what they said and whether their behaviour contradicted some legalistic code drawn up by MPs with the purpose of shielding them from public criticism. On this level it seems to be important whether it was Mandelson himself or his private secretary who rang the Home Office to ask about the Hindujas’ passport. This is an entirely trivial matter. No one suggests that the private secretary would have made such an inquiry without her boss’s instruction.
The point is that at a time when the Hindujas were offering vast sums to bolster the ghastly Dome, for which Mandelson was the responsible minister, Mandelson, or someone on his behalf, tried to secure for the billionaire the British citizenship which is craved by millions of desperately poor people all over the world. That is not a question of detail – who rang whom and when. That is a simple question of principle – of attempting to secure for a very rich donor a deeply-prized privilege.
The Tories, of course, are having a field day at Labour’s expense. Their jubilation will last as long as it takes to find out and publish what is already widely suspected – that the Hindujas were generous contributors to Tory Party coffers, were profound admirers of Margaret Thatcher, and were supported in all sorts of ways by senior Tory politicians and functionaries. The charge against Mandelson is the same sort of charge as that traditionally levelled against the Tories – of preferential treatment for the rich, and of seeking for the rich privileges and passports which are denied to impoverished masses of the same colour and culture.
The beautiful symmetry of the whole affair can best be appreciated by recalling that the original guru of New Labour, the man who dedicated himself to the re-writing of Clause Four of Labour’s constitution, and who devoted his entire life as a minister to sucking up to the rich and expecting them constantly to come to the rescue of the Labour government, is, you’ve got it in one, Peter Mandelson. And look where it all got him.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>‘Seeds of new society are sown in battle with the old’</h1>
<h3>(23 November 2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1827, 23 November 2002.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/" target="new"><em>Socialist Worker</em> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="c"><strong>Campaigning journalist Paul Foot writes on why strikes are key to radical change</strong></p>
<p class="fst">THE FIREFIGHTERS’ strike dominates the headlines and causes something approaching panic in New Labour leaders and hysteria in the right wing press. Two arguments in particular are launched against the strikers from inside the labour movement. From the right comes the view of New Labour’s favourite (and knighted) professor, George Bain.</p>
<p>This is that the 11 percent offer over two years with strong strings is more than any other group of workers has been offered, and that the firefighters’ jobs are secure and sought after. To quote the prime minister, “no sensible government on earth” could meet the firefighters’ full claim.</p>
<p>From the left comes the querulous complaint that we should be concentrating on “the big issues” such as the threat of war in Iraq or the permanent menace of globalisation so majestically opposed by the recent demonstration in Florence. Why should we be diverted from such worldwide matters by a strike of a single small union in Britain?</p>
<p>Are not the firefighters, like all such strikers, just after lining their own individual pockets and using their disproportionate industrial muscle to achieve for themselves what other workers with less muscle, such as nurses, can never hope for?</p>
<p>Should not these matters of the distribution of resources to different sets of workers be decided by elected governments and not by the wholly arbitrary use of industrial power? All such arguments focus so intensely on the trees of the argument that they don’t even catch sight of the wood. The central characteristic of the society we live in is that it is divided by class.</p>
<p>The class in control – mean, greedy and above all hierarchical – owes its power, its wealth and its prestige to the exploitation and humiliation of the people who do the work. It therefore encourages a system in which workers are encouraged to heed and obey their masters.</p>
<p>Obedience and respect for the high, the mighty and the rich is a central principle of capitalist society. Anything that challenges any of these things is a threat, but as long as the threat can be contained within the accepted structure of the society, it can easily be contained.</p>
<p>So, for instance, some workers are so outraged by the way they are treated that they “blow the whistle” on their employers. Others vote against parties which appear to represent their employers. But all such activity, however annoying it may be to particular employers, is contained firmly within a system of exploitation and class control. As long as revolt can be confined to a ballot box or an individual act of resistance, the culture of deference, and the insecurity and distress on which it depends, is unruffled.</p>
<p>This is one of the reasons, though by no means the only one, why the prospect of radically changing society simply by voting every so often is such a gloomy one. Governments come and governments go but the bosses seem to go on forever. A strike is a quite different weapon. First, it challenges exploitation directly. It sends a message to employers that they are no longer in control. Their businesses cannot run without workers. The paraphernalia of exploitation – dividends, share options and all the rest of that claptrap – suddenly vanishes.</p>
<p>All the little side-effects of exploitation, the petty day to day commanding and bullying, are stopped in their tracks. At once the striking worker gets a sense of liberation from the tedious dictatorship of everyday working life. No one who has ever been in a strike fails to notice that sense of liberation. It inspires and exalts workers into emancipated human beings they often find difficult to recognise as their old selves.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>Sense of liberation</h4>
<p class="fst">In a lifetime reporting industrial disputes I cannot remember a single one where the strikers have not commented on the astonishing change in their characters and their own approach to life. This sense of liberation does not spring only from the fact that they no longer have to work for a boss.</p>
<p>It arises in the main from the sense that they themselves are collectively in control, that they depend on one another and need to organise their own working lives together and democratically. The result is a democracy far richer than anything that comes out of local councils or parliament.</p>
<p>I remember during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 how the miners who came to stay with me in London insisted each night on turning on any TV current affairs programme that happened to be on. These programmes were watched by only a tiny percentage of the population and normally would have bored the miners rigid. But now they understood the issues – not just the miners’ issues but all the political and industrial issues of the time – and they wanted to discuss them.</p>
<p>Secondly, strikes challenge and upset the accepted rules of control. If, for instance, a council closes libraries, its decision may infuriate whole sections of the population. In Hackney, for instance, such a decision by the council has led to widespread protest from people who use the libraries. But the only time the council even thought about reconsidering its decision was when the library workers started to strike.</p>
<p>Without the workers, of course there could be no libraries, and at last some kind of real pressure was put on the council – pressure a million times more powerful than individual protest from citizens. This power, the feeling that the status quo can be changed or altered, enthuses the strikers with a sense that they can do much more than protest. They can change the world they live and work in – a sense they seldom get in the ordinary business of living and working.</p>
<p>Thirdly, strikes more often than not involve workers who are organised in trade unions and have a history of confronting their employers. If they win their strike, they pull other less organised workers up the ladder after them. If they never went on strike, no one, certainly not the unorganised or the completely dispossessed, would get anything.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>‘Muck of ages’</h4>
<p class="fst">What has all this got to do with socialism? Of course a strike, even if it is successful, is no guarantee of socialism. Of course most strikes are about improving the wages and conditions of one group of workers, not all of them.</p>
<p>The point about strikes is not that they lead automatically to socialism, but that a socialist society – a society owned and controlled from below – will never come about unless the majority of workers have shaken off what Marx called the “muck of ages” – decades, if not centuries, of instinctive deference. There is no more certain method of shaking off that muck than taking part in a strike. Some proof of that is the history of the working class movement over the last 50 years.</p>
<p>For the early part of that period there were a lot of strikes, most of them won by the workers. The climax of that period came in the “glorious summer”, 1972 to 1974. Two victorious miners’ strikes, a victorious building workers’ strike and countless victorious smaller disputes changed the whole shape and pattern of class society. This was a period of fantastic advance across the whole of the movement.</p>
<p>Those of us socialists lucky enough to remember those times recall as though it were yesterday the enthusiasm with which the socialist message and socialist papers like Socialist Worker were greeted. Pick up any old book over the last half-century that proclaims a socialist or even a radical message and you can be pretty sure it will be dated in the early 1970s.</p>
<p>There followed, as a direct result of the victorious strikes, a great flowering of radical and socialist ideas, from the liberation of women to the isolation of apartheid and racism, to a healthy contempt for posturing parliamentary politicians of all parties.</p>
<p>The seeds of a new socialist society were sown in the struggle against the old capitalist one. The agitation of those years led among other things to the toppling of the Tories and the election of two Labour governments.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>Two sides of struggle</h4>
<p class="fst">Those governments and their allies among the trade union leaders, using precisely the arguments that are used today against the firefighters, discouraged strikes, including a firefighters’ strike, and reined in the militants.</p>
<p>The result was a slackening in workers’ confidence and, as a direct consequence, a reactionary shift in the political mood that led to Margaret Thatcher and a series of outright employers’ victories from which we have never recovered. Now we have to put up with Blair and Prescott mouthing Thatcherite slogans and preparing to break an official strike of people who are claiming even less of a rise than the arrogant ministers have paid themselves.</p>
<p>So what exactly is the relationship between strikes and socialist progress? Almost 100 years ago, the Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, perhaps the most eloquent socialist agitator of all time, confronted the question in an exhilarating pamphlet inspired by the 1905 revolution in Russia.</p>
<p>It was called <strong>The Mass Strike</strong>, and it mercilessly mocked the notion that political progress could be divorced from industrial action:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth.</p>
<p class="quote">“And vice versa. The ceaseless state of economic war of the worker with capital keeps the fighting energy alive at every political pause.</p>
<p class="quote">“It forms, so to speak, the ever-fresh reservoir of the strength of the working class, out of which the political struggle continually renews its strength.</p>
<p class="quote">“And at the same time it always leads the untiring economic boring action of the working class, now here, now there, to individual sharp conflicts out of which, unexpectedly, political conflicts on a large scale explode.”</p>
<p class="fst">The two sides of the struggle, the strikes and the political activity, are essential to one another, and you can’t have one without the other.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
‘Seeds of new society are sown in battle with the old’
(23 November 2002)
From Socialist Worker, No.1827, 23 November 2002.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Campaigning journalist Paul Foot writes on why strikes are key to radical change
THE FIREFIGHTERS’ strike dominates the headlines and causes something approaching panic in New Labour leaders and hysteria in the right wing press. Two arguments in particular are launched against the strikers from inside the labour movement. From the right comes the view of New Labour’s favourite (and knighted) professor, George Bain.
This is that the 11 percent offer over two years with strong strings is more than any other group of workers has been offered, and that the firefighters’ jobs are secure and sought after. To quote the prime minister, “no sensible government on earth” could meet the firefighters’ full claim.
From the left comes the querulous complaint that we should be concentrating on “the big issues” such as the threat of war in Iraq or the permanent menace of globalisation so majestically opposed by the recent demonstration in Florence. Why should we be diverted from such worldwide matters by a strike of a single small union in Britain?
Are not the firefighters, like all such strikers, just after lining their own individual pockets and using their disproportionate industrial muscle to achieve for themselves what other workers with less muscle, such as nurses, can never hope for?
Should not these matters of the distribution of resources to different sets of workers be decided by elected governments and not by the wholly arbitrary use of industrial power? All such arguments focus so intensely on the trees of the argument that they don’t even catch sight of the wood. The central characteristic of the society we live in is that it is divided by class.
The class in control – mean, greedy and above all hierarchical – owes its power, its wealth and its prestige to the exploitation and humiliation of the people who do the work. It therefore encourages a system in which workers are encouraged to heed and obey their masters.
Obedience and respect for the high, the mighty and the rich is a central principle of capitalist society. Anything that challenges any of these things is a threat, but as long as the threat can be contained within the accepted structure of the society, it can easily be contained.
So, for instance, some workers are so outraged by the way they are treated that they “blow the whistle” on their employers. Others vote against parties which appear to represent their employers. But all such activity, however annoying it may be to particular employers, is contained firmly within a system of exploitation and class control. As long as revolt can be confined to a ballot box or an individual act of resistance, the culture of deference, and the insecurity and distress on which it depends, is unruffled.
This is one of the reasons, though by no means the only one, why the prospect of radically changing society simply by voting every so often is such a gloomy one. Governments come and governments go but the bosses seem to go on forever. A strike is a quite different weapon. First, it challenges exploitation directly. It sends a message to employers that they are no longer in control. Their businesses cannot run without workers. The paraphernalia of exploitation – dividends, share options and all the rest of that claptrap – suddenly vanishes.
All the little side-effects of exploitation, the petty day to day commanding and bullying, are stopped in their tracks. At once the striking worker gets a sense of liberation from the tedious dictatorship of everyday working life. No one who has ever been in a strike fails to notice that sense of liberation. It inspires and exalts workers into emancipated human beings they often find difficult to recognise as their old selves.
Sense of liberation
In a lifetime reporting industrial disputes I cannot remember a single one where the strikers have not commented on the astonishing change in their characters and their own approach to life. This sense of liberation does not spring only from the fact that they no longer have to work for a boss.
It arises in the main from the sense that they themselves are collectively in control, that they depend on one another and need to organise their own working lives together and democratically. The result is a democracy far richer than anything that comes out of local councils or parliament.
I remember during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 how the miners who came to stay with me in London insisted each night on turning on any TV current affairs programme that happened to be on. These programmes were watched by only a tiny percentage of the population and normally would have bored the miners rigid. But now they understood the issues – not just the miners’ issues but all the political and industrial issues of the time – and they wanted to discuss them.
Secondly, strikes challenge and upset the accepted rules of control. If, for instance, a council closes libraries, its decision may infuriate whole sections of the population. In Hackney, for instance, such a decision by the council has led to widespread protest from people who use the libraries. But the only time the council even thought about reconsidering its decision was when the library workers started to strike.
Without the workers, of course there could be no libraries, and at last some kind of real pressure was put on the council – pressure a million times more powerful than individual protest from citizens. This power, the feeling that the status quo can be changed or altered, enthuses the strikers with a sense that they can do much more than protest. They can change the world they live and work in – a sense they seldom get in the ordinary business of living and working.
Thirdly, strikes more often than not involve workers who are organised in trade unions and have a history of confronting their employers. If they win their strike, they pull other less organised workers up the ladder after them. If they never went on strike, no one, certainly not the unorganised or the completely dispossessed, would get anything.
‘Muck of ages’
What has all this got to do with socialism? Of course a strike, even if it is successful, is no guarantee of socialism. Of course most strikes are about improving the wages and conditions of one group of workers, not all of them.
The point about strikes is not that they lead automatically to socialism, but that a socialist society – a society owned and controlled from below – will never come about unless the majority of workers have shaken off what Marx called the “muck of ages” – decades, if not centuries, of instinctive deference. There is no more certain method of shaking off that muck than taking part in a strike. Some proof of that is the history of the working class movement over the last 50 years.
For the early part of that period there were a lot of strikes, most of them won by the workers. The climax of that period came in the “glorious summer”, 1972 to 1974. Two victorious miners’ strikes, a victorious building workers’ strike and countless victorious smaller disputes changed the whole shape and pattern of class society. This was a period of fantastic advance across the whole of the movement.
Those of us socialists lucky enough to remember those times recall as though it were yesterday the enthusiasm with which the socialist message and socialist papers like Socialist Worker were greeted. Pick up any old book over the last half-century that proclaims a socialist or even a radical message and you can be pretty sure it will be dated in the early 1970s.
There followed, as a direct result of the victorious strikes, a great flowering of radical and socialist ideas, from the liberation of women to the isolation of apartheid and racism, to a healthy contempt for posturing parliamentary politicians of all parties.
The seeds of a new socialist society were sown in the struggle against the old capitalist one. The agitation of those years led among other things to the toppling of the Tories and the election of two Labour governments.
Two sides of struggle
Those governments and their allies among the trade union leaders, using precisely the arguments that are used today against the firefighters, discouraged strikes, including a firefighters’ strike, and reined in the militants.
The result was a slackening in workers’ confidence and, as a direct consequence, a reactionary shift in the political mood that led to Margaret Thatcher and a series of outright employers’ victories from which we have never recovered. Now we have to put up with Blair and Prescott mouthing Thatcherite slogans and preparing to break an official strike of people who are claiming even less of a rise than the arrogant ministers have paid themselves.
So what exactly is the relationship between strikes and socialist progress? Almost 100 years ago, the Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, perhaps the most eloquent socialist agitator of all time, confronted the question in an exhilarating pamphlet inspired by the 1905 revolution in Russia.
It was called The Mass Strike, and it mercilessly mocked the notion that political progress could be divorced from industrial action:
“After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth.
“And vice versa. The ceaseless state of economic war of the worker with capital keeps the fighting energy alive at every political pause.
“It forms, so to speak, the ever-fresh reservoir of the strength of the working class, out of which the political struggle continually renews its strength.
“And at the same time it always leads the untiring economic boring action of the working class, now here, now there, to individual sharp conflicts out of which, unexpectedly, political conflicts on a large scale explode.”
The two sides of the struggle, the strikes and the political activity, are essential to one another, and you can’t have one without the other.
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<h2 class="western">Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Late Developer</h1>
<h3>(February 1985)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>London Review of Books</strong>, February 1990.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990</strong> (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 125–131.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Review of <em>Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–1976</em> by Tony Benn.</strong></p>
<p class="fst">For nearly a century, Labour MPs have been going to parliament to change the world, but have ended up changing only themselves. Tony Benn is unique. He went to parliament to change himself, but has ended up determined only to change the world. This extraordinary conversion has taken place not on the backbenches, where a young socialist’s revolutionary determination is often toughened by being passed over for high office, but in high office itself. Indeed, the higher the office Tony Benn occupied, the more his eyes were opened to the horror of capitalist society, and to the impotence of socialists in high office to change it.</p>
<p>The unique journey from right to left adds enormously to the value of Tony Benn’s <strong>Diaries</strong>. His contemporaries Dick Crossman and Barbara Castle have also published diaries. Others have written autobiographies. All are full of evidence of the impotence of office. Even Denis Healey in his recent popular autobiography admits that the notorious ‘IMF cuts’ in 1976 were probably based on a false prospectus presented to him by international bankers who knew they were deceiving him. But in all these cases the former Secretaries of State have a basic belief in what they were doing. ‘We tried to change the world’ is their theme. ‘We had a little bit of success, and would have done more if it hadn’t been for bankers or, as Harold Wilson used to call his hidden enemies, “speculators”.’ Only Tony Benn, even as he was signing papers in the red dispatch boxes, travelling round in chauffeur-driven limousines and dining at Lockets, began to realize that he was playing a lead part in a grim charade whose chief effect was to hypnotize and paralyse the people who voted Labour.</p>
<p>In his foreword, Benn says he has included whole passages which embarrass him today. We have to trust him and his editors when they say that the editing of what he read into the tape evening after evening has not been influenced by what has happened since 1976. It does not seem as if it has. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this volume is the open and apparently unembarrassed way in which Tony Benn’s conversion – from career politician to committed socialist – lumbers from contradiction to contradiction: here leaning backwards to his careerist past, here leaning forwards to his campaigning future, and here stuck in between, not knowing what to think or which way to turn. The volume starts rather curiously with the final year of Labour in opposition, during which Tony Benn’s ideas were increasingly winning the votes at Labour Party conferences and among the rank and file. There runs through all the diary entries of this period a tremendous confidence. At a CBI dinner in October 1973, he rounded on the gloomy industrialists, telling them: ‘You’re licked, pessimistic. There is more vitality on the union side than there is on the management side. We have got to have redistribution of power and establish a new social contract.’ None of the guests, it seems, could manage a reply. Industrialists, bankers, rich Tories of every description felt that the day of doom was nigh. John Davies, Secretary of State for Industry in the Tory Government and a former Director-General of the CBI, called his children round the hearth to tell them this was the last Christmas of its kind they would be enjoying together. Tony Benn, his planning agreements and his Social Contract were in the ascendant.</p>
<p>The Tories lost the election of February 1974, and Tony Benn went straight to the Department of Industry as Secretary of State. In April, his diary glowed with confidence:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Sunday April 28. As I look at it, I can see my way through now in breaking industry’s resistance to my policies. I shall win over the managers and the small businessmen, and I shall get the nationalized industries to welcome the planning agreements; I shall isolate the big Tory companies, then show how much money they have been getting from the government, and if they don’t want it, they don’t have to have it.</p>
<p class="fst">Very quickly, however, he began to find that he and his government depended on quite a different kind of confidence. At another dinner with bankers and Stock Exchange officials the same April, he was told, sternly: ‘We must restore confidence.’ ‘What is the price of restoring confidence?’ countered Benn. ‘Well,’ replied the Stock Exchange chieftain, ‘You have got to have better dividend distribution, otherwise equities will collapse.’ The confidence which mattered could be measured only by the flow of dividends. Benn replied with some heat, but as the months went on, the same argument started to be used by his own colleagues in the Labour cabinet.</p>
<p>He reports Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying at a meeting of top ministers which had been called to water down the already weak proposals of his Industry Bill: ‘The whole of our future depends on the confidence of businessmen.’ Healey’s policies were bent in every particular to building up that confidence. The climax comes at the end of the book, when, at a cabinet meeting on 7 December 1976, Healey proposed yet more cuts in public spending – he had already cut savagely, in 1975 and in the 1976 Budget. Benn reports: ‘Denis had a new paper to present and he was now asking for £1,199.25 million in 1977, which was nearly £200m over the billion proposed by the IMF. Crosland pointed this out but Denis said that confidence had been undermined by leaks and therefore we’d have to make more cuts in public expenditure to prevent further loss of confidence.’ Hospitals, schools, social security benefits, parks, swimming pools, public transport – all the things which had been at the centre of Labour’s programme – now had to be cut, not even because the IMF said it made sense (which, it later appeared, it didn’t), but because there were inaccurate leaks of what the IMF might have said.</p>
<p>All Tony Benn’s own confidence had vanished by the end of 1974 – even though in October Labour won another general election with an overall majority. He mused, to his top civil servant, just after the election: ‘I’ve been in the Department for seven months and I’m not aware of having done anything, made any progress at all.’ The steady chip, chop at his precious Industry Bill, and the Prime Minister’s continued insistence that he stop making public speeches which annoyed the City of London, drove him to reflect, as early as November 1975: ‘I am afraid that somehow, without quite knowing how it happens, I will slip into the position that I occupied between 1964 and 1970 when I went along with a lot of policies which I knew to be wrong.’ He could see perfectly well what was happening. His diary for the first few months of 1975 -the end of the honeymoon period between the Labour government and what Prime Minister Wilson called their ‘bailiffs’ – is far more perceptive than Barbara Castle’s (or even Denis Healey’s – though he had the advantage of hindsight): ‘The Tories now think that Wilson, Healey and Callaghan are doing their work so well that they don’t want a coalition government. Better to let the Labour Party do their work for them.’ This analysis led him to a startling prediction. On 11 May 1975, he wrote: ‘A coalition has been born without being formally declared: it is broadly the Tories and Liberals throwing their weight behind Callaghan, I think. They won’t touch Wilson. They’ll get rid of him just as they got rid of Heath ... I wouldn’t be surprised to find a Callaghan government formed within the next couple of months.’</p>
<p>He was out by only eight months. Wilson resigned in mysterious circumstances in March 1976. Callaghan was elected leader of the Labour Party and formed a government. From then on, the retreat which Benn had identified continued, through the grovelling to the IMF in 1976 to the coalition with the Liberals in 1977, and the long weary stumble to defeat. Before the end of 1976, he identified what he called ‘Thatcher’s Private Argument’:</p>
<p class="quoteb">That the Labour government are doing to the trade union movement what the Tories could never do: that in doing it the government are getting profits up and holding prices down and therefore restoring the vitality of the capitalist mechanism; and that by doing so they will disillusion their own supporters and make it possible for the Tories to return.</p>
<p class="fst">He could see what was happening all right, but what was he doing about it? From early on, he started to think about resigning from the government in protest. All his most reliable political friends – Dennis Skinner, Audrey Wise, Ken Coates, most of the activists in his Bristol constituency, even his son Stephen – advised him to do so. Benn’s own belief, often expressed here, that the power and influence that mattered came from below, from the shop stewards and socialist trade unionists, led logically to a resignation and a return to the rank and file. But he did not resign. In the summer of 1975, as the Labour government collapsed under the biggest run on sterling ever, he humbly accepted his demotion to Secretary of State for Energy. He sat through the cuts of 1976, opposing them in cabinet, but necessarily keeping his mouth shut outside it. His reasons for this – chiefly that resignation would be seen as disloyal to the government – are unconvincing, even apologetic. Doubt, hesitation and pain replaced the glad confident morning. On one page, for instance, he reveals his ambition: ‘If I want to do anything other than frolic around on the margins of politics, I must be leader and prime minister.’ On the very next page, he is not so sure: ‘If you set yourself that target, it is bound to begin the process of corruption.’ As the book goes on, the balance seems to tip against his ambition, but he still remains in office, and there is another volume to come which must somehow explain how he stuck it out right until the bitter end – until the Tory victory over a punch-drunk Labour movement which he had so accurately predicted. But even in 1975 his clinging to office was disturbing his sleep.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Friday, 10 October: I had a dream that Harold called me in and said: ‘I want you to be Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household with a seat in the House of Lords in charge of boxing under the Minister of Sport.’ He told me this in the great Cabinet room, which was full of people. ‘I’m afraid this doesn’t mean a place in the Cabinet for you,’ he said. I replied, ‘Harold, I must think about it,’ and Sir John Hunt said: ‘Boxing is very important. We must preserve the quality and excellence of the Lonsdale Belt.’</p>
<p class="fst">The book is full of political treasures. There is a host of stories, for instance, to prove what is now established fact: that MI5 or sections of it were using their vast and secret powers against the government they were meant to be serving. Benn was constantly at the sharp end of this. He proved on more than one occasion that his home telephone was tapped – but he, a senior secretary of state in the cabinet, could do nothing about it. When he complained to the general secretary of the telephone engineers’ union, Brian Stanley, Stanley said he thought his own phone was tapped too – by his own members. Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, the ‘terrible twins’ of the trade unions in the period which toppled the Heath government, became the leading spokesmen for wage restraint and cuts during the Labour government, and were rewarded by being blacklisted by MI5. Benn confirms that he wanted Jones on the National Enterprise Board but Jones was banned after hostile MI5 reports, which also, initially, knocked Hugh Scanlon off the Gas Council.</p>
<p>Tony Benn’s household was the subject of repeated press inquiries, mostly at the dead of night, about his son Joshua being in hospital. At least five times in two years, the Benn family was shattered by this dreadful news, conveyed usually by a concerned reporter from the <strong>Daily Mail</strong>. Each time, the information was entirely false. Joshua was not in hospital. When, after one specially unnerving inquiry, Benn rang David English, <strong>Daily Mail</strong> editor and Thatcher knight, to protest, he was told that the editor was at home, and could not be disturbed. Such double standards are the stuff of national newspaper editors. But where did the rumour originate? Perhaps from the same intelligence source which replied to Tony Benn when he complained about the sacking of a chiropodist in the civil service. The woman, said the reply, ‘may be a fairly regular reader of the <strong>Morning Star</strong>, the newspaper of the Communist Party’. Of course, she may not have been, but even if not, ‘she is known to have been interested in holidays arranged by the Young Communist League and in a sea trip to the Soviet Union’. To compound this scandal, ‘there was a reliable report in 1974 that her father also reads the <strong>Morning Star</strong>’. The intelligence officer’s report explained that ‘we would prefer to err on the side of caution in this case.’ The chiropodist remained sacked and there was nothing a secretary of state could do to reinstate her.</p>
<p>Benn has a sense of mischief which keeps his story rolling along. His sharp comments on his colleagues have stood the test of time. Of Tony Crosland: ‘For him informality is a sort of substitute for radicalism.’ Of Shirley Williams: ‘the most reactionary politician I know’. Of Neil Kinnock: ‘not a substantial person. He is a media figure really.’</p>
<p>The central fascination of these diaries is the gradual transformation of the bright young dynamic dinner-party careerist of the early sixties into the powerful and committed campaigner of the eighties. It emerges in fits and starts, but its progress is persistent, almost dogged. It shines most clearly on the rare occasions when Benn discusses what he has read. One of the insidious ways in which reformers are broken when they become ministers is by the denial of time to read. Reading anything outside red boxes or blue books is frowned on by literary civil servants, who encourage their minister to concentrate on the job in hand. Benn’s <strong>Diaries</strong> suggest that he started to read real books for the first time when he was a minister in the 1974–79 Labour government. As he declares his childlike zeal, say, for the Levellers or the Diggers in the English revolution, he gives the strong impression that he had never heard of any of these people before he met and quarrelled with Sir Anthony Part at the Department of Industry. The civil service mandarins seem to have driven him back to a glorious time when the King had his head chopped off and all his civil service supporters fled for their lives. Even more remarkable is his sudden discovery at the age of fifty of the socialist theory which inspired the movement which put him in parliament in the first place. The whole book bears warm testimony to the closeness and affection of the Benn family, and it is, apparently, to Caroline Benn that we owe the most gratitude for her husband’s conversion. At Christmas 1976, the Secretary of State hung out his Christmas stocking (as he had done for the previous fifty years or so). In it the next morning he found a copy of the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong>. He read it on Christmas Day, and it led him to this remarkable, and moving confession – the real key, I suspect, to his extraordinary political development:</p>
<p class="quoteb">There is no doubt that in the years up to 1968 I was just a career politician and in 1968 I began thinking about technology and participation and all that; it wasn’t particularly socialist and my Fabian tract of 1970 was almost anti-socialist, corporatist in character. Up to 1973 I shifted to the left and analysed the Left. Then in 1974, at the Department of Industry I learned it all again by struggle and by seeing it and thinking about it, and I have been driven further and further towards a real socialist position. I record this now while I am reading all the basic texts in order to try to understand what is going on.</p>
<p class="fst">I don’t really care whether it is Sir Anthony Part or Caroline Benn or Marx that we have to thank for that, but British politics of the last ten years has been the richer for it.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Late Developer
(February 1985)
From London Review of Books, February 1990.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990 (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 125–131.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Review of Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–1976 by Tony Benn.
For nearly a century, Labour MPs have been going to parliament to change the world, but have ended up changing only themselves. Tony Benn is unique. He went to parliament to change himself, but has ended up determined only to change the world. This extraordinary conversion has taken place not on the backbenches, where a young socialist’s revolutionary determination is often toughened by being passed over for high office, but in high office itself. Indeed, the higher the office Tony Benn occupied, the more his eyes were opened to the horror of capitalist society, and to the impotence of socialists in high office to change it.
The unique journey from right to left adds enormously to the value of Tony Benn’s Diaries. His contemporaries Dick Crossman and Barbara Castle have also published diaries. Others have written autobiographies. All are full of evidence of the impotence of office. Even Denis Healey in his recent popular autobiography admits that the notorious ‘IMF cuts’ in 1976 were probably based on a false prospectus presented to him by international bankers who knew they were deceiving him. But in all these cases the former Secretaries of State have a basic belief in what they were doing. ‘We tried to change the world’ is their theme. ‘We had a little bit of success, and would have done more if it hadn’t been for bankers or, as Harold Wilson used to call his hidden enemies, “speculators”.’ Only Tony Benn, even as he was signing papers in the red dispatch boxes, travelling round in chauffeur-driven limousines and dining at Lockets, began to realize that he was playing a lead part in a grim charade whose chief effect was to hypnotize and paralyse the people who voted Labour.
In his foreword, Benn says he has included whole passages which embarrass him today. We have to trust him and his editors when they say that the editing of what he read into the tape evening after evening has not been influenced by what has happened since 1976. It does not seem as if it has. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this volume is the open and apparently unembarrassed way in which Tony Benn’s conversion – from career politician to committed socialist – lumbers from contradiction to contradiction: here leaning backwards to his careerist past, here leaning forwards to his campaigning future, and here stuck in between, not knowing what to think or which way to turn. The volume starts rather curiously with the final year of Labour in opposition, during which Tony Benn’s ideas were increasingly winning the votes at Labour Party conferences and among the rank and file. There runs through all the diary entries of this period a tremendous confidence. At a CBI dinner in October 1973, he rounded on the gloomy industrialists, telling them: ‘You’re licked, pessimistic. There is more vitality on the union side than there is on the management side. We have got to have redistribution of power and establish a new social contract.’ None of the guests, it seems, could manage a reply. Industrialists, bankers, rich Tories of every description felt that the day of doom was nigh. John Davies, Secretary of State for Industry in the Tory Government and a former Director-General of the CBI, called his children round the hearth to tell them this was the last Christmas of its kind they would be enjoying together. Tony Benn, his planning agreements and his Social Contract were in the ascendant.
The Tories lost the election of February 1974, and Tony Benn went straight to the Department of Industry as Secretary of State. In April, his diary glowed with confidence:
Sunday April 28. As I look at it, I can see my way through now in breaking industry’s resistance to my policies. I shall win over the managers and the small businessmen, and I shall get the nationalized industries to welcome the planning agreements; I shall isolate the big Tory companies, then show how much money they have been getting from the government, and if they don’t want it, they don’t have to have it.
Very quickly, however, he began to find that he and his government depended on quite a different kind of confidence. At another dinner with bankers and Stock Exchange officials the same April, he was told, sternly: ‘We must restore confidence.’ ‘What is the price of restoring confidence?’ countered Benn. ‘Well,’ replied the Stock Exchange chieftain, ‘You have got to have better dividend distribution, otherwise equities will collapse.’ The confidence which mattered could be measured only by the flow of dividends. Benn replied with some heat, but as the months went on, the same argument started to be used by his own colleagues in the Labour cabinet.
He reports Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying at a meeting of top ministers which had been called to water down the already weak proposals of his Industry Bill: ‘The whole of our future depends on the confidence of businessmen.’ Healey’s policies were bent in every particular to building up that confidence. The climax comes at the end of the book, when, at a cabinet meeting on 7 December 1976, Healey proposed yet more cuts in public spending – he had already cut savagely, in 1975 and in the 1976 Budget. Benn reports: ‘Denis had a new paper to present and he was now asking for £1,199.25 million in 1977, which was nearly £200m over the billion proposed by the IMF. Crosland pointed this out but Denis said that confidence had been undermined by leaks and therefore we’d have to make more cuts in public expenditure to prevent further loss of confidence.’ Hospitals, schools, social security benefits, parks, swimming pools, public transport – all the things which had been at the centre of Labour’s programme – now had to be cut, not even because the IMF said it made sense (which, it later appeared, it didn’t), but because there were inaccurate leaks of what the IMF might have said.
All Tony Benn’s own confidence had vanished by the end of 1974 – even though in October Labour won another general election with an overall majority. He mused, to his top civil servant, just after the election: ‘I’ve been in the Department for seven months and I’m not aware of having done anything, made any progress at all.’ The steady chip, chop at his precious Industry Bill, and the Prime Minister’s continued insistence that he stop making public speeches which annoyed the City of London, drove him to reflect, as early as November 1975: ‘I am afraid that somehow, without quite knowing how it happens, I will slip into the position that I occupied between 1964 and 1970 when I went along with a lot of policies which I knew to be wrong.’ He could see perfectly well what was happening. His diary for the first few months of 1975 -the end of the honeymoon period between the Labour government and what Prime Minister Wilson called their ‘bailiffs’ – is far more perceptive than Barbara Castle’s (or even Denis Healey’s – though he had the advantage of hindsight): ‘The Tories now think that Wilson, Healey and Callaghan are doing their work so well that they don’t want a coalition government. Better to let the Labour Party do their work for them.’ This analysis led him to a startling prediction. On 11 May 1975, he wrote: ‘A coalition has been born without being formally declared: it is broadly the Tories and Liberals throwing their weight behind Callaghan, I think. They won’t touch Wilson. They’ll get rid of him just as they got rid of Heath ... I wouldn’t be surprised to find a Callaghan government formed within the next couple of months.’
He was out by only eight months. Wilson resigned in mysterious circumstances in March 1976. Callaghan was elected leader of the Labour Party and formed a government. From then on, the retreat which Benn had identified continued, through the grovelling to the IMF in 1976 to the coalition with the Liberals in 1977, and the long weary stumble to defeat. Before the end of 1976, he identified what he called ‘Thatcher’s Private Argument’:
That the Labour government are doing to the trade union movement what the Tories could never do: that in doing it the government are getting profits up and holding prices down and therefore restoring the vitality of the capitalist mechanism; and that by doing so they will disillusion their own supporters and make it possible for the Tories to return.
He could see what was happening all right, but what was he doing about it? From early on, he started to think about resigning from the government in protest. All his most reliable political friends – Dennis Skinner, Audrey Wise, Ken Coates, most of the activists in his Bristol constituency, even his son Stephen – advised him to do so. Benn’s own belief, often expressed here, that the power and influence that mattered came from below, from the shop stewards and socialist trade unionists, led logically to a resignation and a return to the rank and file. But he did not resign. In the summer of 1975, as the Labour government collapsed under the biggest run on sterling ever, he humbly accepted his demotion to Secretary of State for Energy. He sat through the cuts of 1976, opposing them in cabinet, but necessarily keeping his mouth shut outside it. His reasons for this – chiefly that resignation would be seen as disloyal to the government – are unconvincing, even apologetic. Doubt, hesitation and pain replaced the glad confident morning. On one page, for instance, he reveals his ambition: ‘If I want to do anything other than frolic around on the margins of politics, I must be leader and prime minister.’ On the very next page, he is not so sure: ‘If you set yourself that target, it is bound to begin the process of corruption.’ As the book goes on, the balance seems to tip against his ambition, but he still remains in office, and there is another volume to come which must somehow explain how he stuck it out right until the bitter end – until the Tory victory over a punch-drunk Labour movement which he had so accurately predicted. But even in 1975 his clinging to office was disturbing his sleep.
Friday, 10 October: I had a dream that Harold called me in and said: ‘I want you to be Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household with a seat in the House of Lords in charge of boxing under the Minister of Sport.’ He told me this in the great Cabinet room, which was full of people. ‘I’m afraid this doesn’t mean a place in the Cabinet for you,’ he said. I replied, ‘Harold, I must think about it,’ and Sir John Hunt said: ‘Boxing is very important. We must preserve the quality and excellence of the Lonsdale Belt.’
The book is full of political treasures. There is a host of stories, for instance, to prove what is now established fact: that MI5 or sections of it were using their vast and secret powers against the government they were meant to be serving. Benn was constantly at the sharp end of this. He proved on more than one occasion that his home telephone was tapped – but he, a senior secretary of state in the cabinet, could do nothing about it. When he complained to the general secretary of the telephone engineers’ union, Brian Stanley, Stanley said he thought his own phone was tapped too – by his own members. Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, the ‘terrible twins’ of the trade unions in the period which toppled the Heath government, became the leading spokesmen for wage restraint and cuts during the Labour government, and were rewarded by being blacklisted by MI5. Benn confirms that he wanted Jones on the National Enterprise Board but Jones was banned after hostile MI5 reports, which also, initially, knocked Hugh Scanlon off the Gas Council.
Tony Benn’s household was the subject of repeated press inquiries, mostly at the dead of night, about his son Joshua being in hospital. At least five times in two years, the Benn family was shattered by this dreadful news, conveyed usually by a concerned reporter from the Daily Mail. Each time, the information was entirely false. Joshua was not in hospital. When, after one specially unnerving inquiry, Benn rang David English, Daily Mail editor and Thatcher knight, to protest, he was told that the editor was at home, and could not be disturbed. Such double standards are the stuff of national newspaper editors. But where did the rumour originate? Perhaps from the same intelligence source which replied to Tony Benn when he complained about the sacking of a chiropodist in the civil service. The woman, said the reply, ‘may be a fairly regular reader of the Morning Star, the newspaper of the Communist Party’. Of course, she may not have been, but even if not, ‘she is known to have been interested in holidays arranged by the Young Communist League and in a sea trip to the Soviet Union’. To compound this scandal, ‘there was a reliable report in 1974 that her father also reads the Morning Star’. The intelligence officer’s report explained that ‘we would prefer to err on the side of caution in this case.’ The chiropodist remained sacked and there was nothing a secretary of state could do to reinstate her.
Benn has a sense of mischief which keeps his story rolling along. His sharp comments on his colleagues have stood the test of time. Of Tony Crosland: ‘For him informality is a sort of substitute for radicalism.’ Of Shirley Williams: ‘the most reactionary politician I know’. Of Neil Kinnock: ‘not a substantial person. He is a media figure really.’
The central fascination of these diaries is the gradual transformation of the bright young dynamic dinner-party careerist of the early sixties into the powerful and committed campaigner of the eighties. It emerges in fits and starts, but its progress is persistent, almost dogged. It shines most clearly on the rare occasions when Benn discusses what he has read. One of the insidious ways in which reformers are broken when they become ministers is by the denial of time to read. Reading anything outside red boxes or blue books is frowned on by literary civil servants, who encourage their minister to concentrate on the job in hand. Benn’s Diaries suggest that he started to read real books for the first time when he was a minister in the 1974–79 Labour government. As he declares his childlike zeal, say, for the Levellers or the Diggers in the English revolution, he gives the strong impression that he had never heard of any of these people before he met and quarrelled with Sir Anthony Part at the Department of Industry. The civil service mandarins seem to have driven him back to a glorious time when the King had his head chopped off and all his civil service supporters fled for their lives. Even more remarkable is his sudden discovery at the age of fifty of the socialist theory which inspired the movement which put him in parliament in the first place. The whole book bears warm testimony to the closeness and affection of the Benn family, and it is, apparently, to Caroline Benn that we owe the most gratitude for her husband’s conversion. At Christmas 1976, the Secretary of State hung out his Christmas stocking (as he had done for the previous fifty years or so). In it the next morning he found a copy of the Communist Manifesto. He read it on Christmas Day, and it led him to this remarkable, and moving confession – the real key, I suspect, to his extraordinary political development:
There is no doubt that in the years up to 1968 I was just a career politician and in 1968 I began thinking about technology and participation and all that; it wasn’t particularly socialist and my Fabian tract of 1970 was almost anti-socialist, corporatist in character. Up to 1973 I shifted to the left and analysed the Left. Then in 1974, at the Department of Industry I learned it all again by struggle and by seeing it and thinking about it, and I have been driven further and further towards a real socialist position. I record this now while I am reading all the basic texts in order to try to understand what is going on.
I don’t really care whether it is Sir Anthony Part or Caroline Benn or Marx that we have to thank for that, but British politics of the last ten years has been the richer for it.
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">P. Foot</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Why You Should<br>
Vote Socialist</h1>
<h3>(2001)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">First published 2001. Bookmarks Publications Ltd, c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3 QE, England.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<h4>Acknowledgements</h4>
<p class="fst"><small>Thanks to Louise Christian, Neil Davidson, Shaun Doherty, Lindsey German, Matt Gordon, Charlie Hore, Judith Orr, Allyson Pollack, John Rees and Tommy Sheridan, who read the draft and made invaluable corrections and suggestions, and special thanks to Emma Bircham, who did most of the research.</small></p>
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<br>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="">
<h4><a href="#pt1">A glorious May Day</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt2">The grim legacy of Thatcher</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt3">The great train robbery</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt4">The return of the Whigs</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt5">Sleazy does it</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt6">It takes two to quango</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt7">PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt8">Schools: ‘B’ is for Blair, Brown ... bog-standard</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt9">Fill ’em up: a new policy for prisons</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt10">Council houses, pensions: all up for grabs</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt11">Universities: only the rich need apply</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt12">The great train robbery continued</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt13">The last Straw: the attack on civil liberties</a>T<br>
<br>
<a href="#pt14">The fat cats directory</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt15">The politics of Polly Prudence</a><br>
<br>
<a href="#pt16">Your chance to vote socialist</a></h4>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h3>A glorious May Day</h3>
<p class="fst">Legendary and stupefying was the crassness of John Major, but his supreme achievement was to select May Day, the traditional day of celebration for the international labour movement, as the time when the British people, after five more grim years of Tory rule, were finally allowed to go to the polls.</p>
<p>Only the most joyless socialist will pretend that he or she was not moved by what happened that May Day election night. Seat after seat, including some that had been Tory ever since people started voting, fell to Labour, and the final overall Labour majority of 179 was higher by far than had ever before been achieved.</p>
<p>The huge majority was described at once by the new victors as a vindication of New Labour, the ‘project’ set out by Tony Blair, who had been elected party leader in 1994 and, with the help of his faithful spin-doctor Peter Mandelson, ‘refurbished’ the Labour Party with new ‘accessible’ policies and a new constitution which replaced the historic commitment to common ownership with a series of illiterate soundbites no one remembers.</p>
<p>One stark fact emerged from the election results to confound that view. The Liberal Democrats, successors of the old ‘moderate’ Alliance that so comprehensively wrecked Labour in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, won more seats in 1997 than in either of those years, but everywhere the swing to the Liberals was half the swing to Labour. This suggests that the results were not just an expression of fatigue and disgust at the long years of Tory rule – a reaction that could just as easily have favoured the Liberal Democrats. The results were proof of a swing to the left throughout the country.</p>
<p>The swing had very little to do with Blair, Mandelson or New Labour. The opinion polls showed a huge Labour lead – always more than 20 percent – long before Blair became leader. This lead dated back to the Tories’ enforced closure of coal mines in October 1992, and the imposition, in defiance of the Tory election pledge, of VAT on fuel.</p>
<p>The acclaim for the new government was an expression of relief and hope: relief that the long years of reaction shaped by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and continued under John Major in the 1990s were at last at an end; hope that the balance of power and wealth in Britain would be shifted away from the rich to the workers and the poor.</p>
<p>Labour councillors and their supporters assumed that Thatcher’s relentless campaign against local democracy, especially in Labour’s heartlands, would be reversed. Socialists everywhere assumed that the Thatcherite obsession with irresponsible greed and wealth would at last be replaced by a government committed to fairer distribution and more democratic control of the country’s wealth.</p>
<p>As we approach another general election four years later, all those hopes have been dashed to pieces. Slowly at first, but with gathering conviction, the New Labour government has stubbornly enforced the anti-union laws promulgated by Thatcher and Norman Tebbit, continued to dismantle local democracy, and privatised everything in sight.</p>
<p>This pamphlet sets out the record of that drift into reaction, and offers socialists a chance to use their vote to help stop it.<br>
<a name="pt2"> </a></p>
<h3>The grim legacy of Thatcher</h3>
<h4>Union-bashing</h4>
<p class="fst">Margaret Thatcher’s strategy during all the 11 years she held office was founded on her determination to reduce the trade unions to phantoms of their former selves. She knew that this could not be achieved simply by passing laws, and that the real power of trade unions lies not in their legal strength but in their willingness to use it. She was haunted by the great trade union victories of the 1970s: the miners’ flying pickets which reduced the government of Edward Heath, in whose cabinet she served, to ruins; the legendary militancy of the print unions which was always a threat to what she regarded and still regards as the freedom of the press (but in reality is the freedom of Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black and Lord Rothermere to print what they please); and the shocking insubordination of trade unionists in the docks who greeted the Tory government’s Industrial Relations Act with such defiance that the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress was forced to call a general strike to free them from prison.</p>
<p>The fundamental problem confronting Thatcher and her new ministers was that the unions had grown too strong on the ground. They had to be broken not just by new laws but in open struggle. The Tory campaign against them was drawn up by Thatcher’s adviser, the seasoned class warrior Nicholas Ridley, and leaked to the <strong>Economist</strong>.</p>
<p>The Ridley plan, as it became known, was based on open class war. It envisaged, first, the provocation of a series of strikes in the nationalised industries where the unions were weakest. Government victory in such strikes would be followed, the plan went on, by mass sackings in the defeated industries. Then, and only then, the plan envisaged long and careful preparation for a battle against the old enemy, the miners. Once the miners were beaten, the focus of battle could shift to the other two main areas of trade union strength, the print workers and the dockers.</p>
<p>The Ridley plan was followed with disciplined precision. Among Thatcher’s first appointments was that of the hard-bitten American banker Ian MacGregor as chairman and chief executive of British Steel. He provoked a strike almost at once, challenging the weak and inexperienced steel trade unions to a war they did not savour, and winning easily. Thousands of steel workers were sacked.</p>
<p>In 1983 MacGregor was made chairman of British Coal. Two years earlier the miners, under their new leader Arthur Scargill, had reacted spontaneously to a chance announcement by the energy secretary David Howell that 50 pits might have to close. An unofficial protest strike ripped through the coalfields and for a moment threatened the entire strategy of the Ridley plan. In some panic, Thatcher announced that there were, after all, no plans to close 50 pits, indeed no plans to close any pits at all. The wretched David Howell was pitchforked into the House of Lords. The miners went back to work, and Thatcher, Ridley and MacGregor went back to their plan.</p>
<p>Three years later, when they were ready, at the end of the 1983–84 winter, they announced a series of arbitrary pit closures. The closures challenged the miners’ union to a fight to the finish. The miners responded with guts and vigour. For a moment at the beginning of the strike it looked as though the railway workers and dockers might join in – a haunting reminder of the ‘Triple Alliance’ that had terrified previous Tory governments in 1921 and 1925. But after some skilful concessions the railway workers and dockers were appeased.</p>
<p>Assisted by new laws passed by the Tories in 1981 and 1983, the government went to court to demand control of the mine workers’ union’s assets. Oil-fired and nuclear power stations were utilised to the full to supplement already large coal stocks, and the rules that had divided the responsibilities of separate county police forces were swept aside. A new national police force was thrown with full force against the miners. Coal production continued in what for the union was the historically weak area of Nottinghamshire.</p>
<p>The Trades Union Congress stood timidly aside, and in March 1985, after nearly a year on strike, the miners were finally broken. They had been broken before, in 1921 and 1926, but this time the Tories were determined that they would never again be humiliated by the miners’ union. It was, ironically, Michael Heseltine, later to become Thatcher’s sworn enemy, who put the finishing touches to her campaign against the miners by effectively closing down the coal mining industry in 1992.</p>
<p>The miners’ defeat was followed by the breaking of the print workers at Wapping by Murdoch in 1986, and wholesale privatisation and union-busting in the docks in 1989. By the time Thatcher left office in 1990, pushed out not so much by unions as by organised resistance to her flagship social policy, the poll tax, the Ridley plan was triumphantly completed. The unions had been broken in a class battle in which the employers and the government had been enormously assisted by seven different laws restricting the right to strike.</p>
<p>As Thatcher proceeded to further election victories in 1983 and 1987, the new Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, dropped Labour’s objections to the Tories’ anti-union laws. He emphasised that Labour would not repeal the laws banning sympathy strikes. He was effectively agreeing with the Tory argument that while people could legally strike for themselves, for their own pay and conditions, they should on no account be allowed to strike for anyone else. Thus the central principle of trade unionism – ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ – was subtly rewritten to read ‘an injury to one is an injury to one’, and Labour agreed.</p>
<p>Kinnock’s argument was that he could not win an election if he clung to old laws allowing sympathy strikes. He was therefore prepared, as on the issue of unilateral British nuclear disarmament, to jettison a vital policy in exchange for office, which anyway he never achieved.<br>
</p>
<h4>Privatisation</h4>
<p class="fst">Thatcher’s strategy did not stop at emasculating the trade unions. Her theory was that strong trade unionism was the other side of the coin to public ownership. Breaking the unions was the first essential stage in her and her successors’ campaign to wrest control of industry and services from public hands, and give them back to capitalists and speculators. Thus the humiliation of the unions in steel and coal was followed by the privatisation of both industries. British Telecom was privatised in three instalments from 1984 to 1986; Cable and Wireless in 1985; British Gas in three instalments from 1986 to 1988; British Airways and the British Airports Authority in 1987; British Steel in 1988; the publicly-owned water companies in England and Wales in 1988–90; and electricity in 1990–91. By 1990, the end of the Thatcher decade, after a slow and nervous start, she and her ministers had succeeded in privatising pretty well all the major industries brought into public ownership by successive Labour governments from 1945 to 1979.</p>
<p>All these privatisations were vigorously opposed by the Labour Party in opposition. This opposition was based on principles dating back to the formation of the Labour Party at the start of the century. The reasoning behind it was admirably summarised in a composite motion to the Labour Party conference in the year of the miners’ strike, 1984. The motion was proposed by Moss Evans, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. The Tories’ privatisation policies, he argued, were designed: (a) to undermine wages, jobs and union organisation; (b) to take the benefits of public services and assets away from democratic control and into the hands of profiteers and speculators; and (c) to dismantle the welfare state by reducing public services to a minimum which totally failed to meet the needs and aspirations of those depending on them.</p>
<p>In his speech Moss Evans referred to the Ridley plan, and predicted with devastating accuracy that the breaking of the trade unions would be followed, if the Tories got their way, by a dismantling of the entire network of public ownership set up by Labour. He showed how, even as early as 1984, many of his predictions were being realised.</p>
<p>Huge speculative gains had been made on the stock exchange on the early privatisations. Far more grotesque windfalls were to follow with the massive privatisations of the utilities. A prime example was electricity, nationalised by the Labour government after the war and run with some efficiency ever since.</p>
<p>The privatisation of electricity was greeted with howls of fury from the young opposition energy spokesman, Tony Blair. At the Labour Party conference in 1989 Blair brought the delegates cheering to their feet with a furious summary of the case against the Tory plans:</p>
<p class="quoteb">At the outset we said that privatisation would mean higher prices, and it has done. We warned that the government would introduce a special nuclear tax for private nuclear power, and it has. We said that the government would be forced to admit there was no choice for consumers, and now they have. Born out of dogma, reared on deceit, this privatisation is now exposed for what it is and always has been, private prejudice masquerading as public policy. Let us send this message to the government. We do not want it postponed, we do not want it delayed, we do not want it put off – we want it abandoned here, now and forever.</p>
<p class="fst">Similar arguments were deployed by Labour leaders as they opposed all the other privatisations of that grim decade. The nightmares expressed by Labour politicians all became true.</p>
<p>The bureaucrats who had run the public industries on substantial but not exorbitant salaries suddenly took off into the orbit of the mega-rich. Iain Vallance, for instance, who had helped to run the Post Office on a reasonable salary suddenly found himself running British Telecom on £226,000 a year. He went from making 11 times the average salary of a BT worker in 1987 to making 38 times the average salary in 1990. By 1996 his salary was over £700,000, and it has grown considerably since. There was no recognisable increase in the efficiency or the performance of British Telecom following privatisation. The chief changes were that the unions were weakened, thousands of workers sacked and the new executives enrolled in the ranks of millionaires.</p>
<p>’Share options’ were introduced by the Tories to sweeten the new executives’ perks. When water was privatised a river of unearned slush flowed into the pockets of the new water bosses, most of whom were the same people who had run the old state industries. The monopolies remained monopolies, with no difference in the product as far as the consumers were concerned, but huge differences in the ‘remuneration’ which the new bosses heaped upon themselves, and in the strength and influence of the trade unions in their ability to protect jobs.</p>
<p>In every case a huge area of influence and power that had been, however distantly, accountable to elected politicians was transferred to wholly irresponsible boardrooms. The new utilities stopped being public utilities and became private commodities to be bought and sold, re-bought and re-sold in the international marketplace. The balance of democracy in Britain was tilted heavily away from the people and towards the new monopolists.</p>
<p>To their horror, the Labour politicians noticed that the craze for privatisation was extending to the very sanctuaries of public service of which Labour was most proud. There were cries from Tory ideologues to introduce fees for tuition in universities and colleges, and for schools to ‘opt out’ of local education authorities. Whole new organisations were set up by the Tories to campaign for state schools to ‘opt out’. These Tory plans were bitterly opposed by Labour.</p>
<p>Jack Straw, spokesman on education, told the Labour conference in 1991, ‘Opting out and privatisation of education will be stopped dead by a Labour government.’ He was utterly opposed, he said, to tuition fees for students. He told conference in 1989:</p>
<p class="quoteb">This government says that it wants an expansion of higher education, but by the introduction of student loans and the end of free tuition will make entry into higher education dependent more than ever on the size of a parent’s bank balance. It is the private schools today – it will be the private universities tomorrow.</p>
<p class="fst">Straw was a key backer of Blair for the Labour leadership in 1994, and was rewarded with the post of shadow home secretary. In that position he discovered a new Tory horror – the privatisation of prisons. This outrage, he argued, not only offended against efficiency as with the industrial privatisations. It was, he told the Prison Officers Association as late as 1996, an offence against morality as well. Prison privatisation was, he said, ‘wholly wrong in principle’.</p>
<p>Even worse for the Labour leaders was the suggestion that the Tories were threatening the inner sanctum of Labour’s post-war achievements, the National Health Service. The Tories, warned Labour spokesman Robin Cook in 1990, ‘are taking us down the road to the NHS run as a commercial business for commercial motives’.<br>
<a name="pt3"> </a></p>
<h3>The great train robbery</h3>
<p class="fst">By 1990, the year Thatcher was finally pushed out by the irreversible popular tide against her flagship poll tax, the Tory government had achieved most of her central aim – a fundamental shift of wealth and power towards the rich. On the industrial front, however, there remained one area where a combination of workers and consumers had obstinately beaten off all attempts at privatisation – the railways.</p>
<p>In 1989 Cecil Parkinson, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite minister, excited an otherwise dispirited Tory party conference with a proposal to privatise the railways. The proposal was taken up eagerly by his successor as minister of transport, John Mac-Gregor, who was advised by Sir Christopher Foster, a partner of the top accountants Coopers & Lybrand. Sir Christopher set his accounting genius to devising a scheme for splitting up the railways into several separate pockets, each of which could be made profitable provided the public subsidy continued. So brilliant was Sir Christopher’s advice that on the very day the railways were privatised in 1995 he became deputy chairman of Railtrack, the private company controlling the network.</p>
<p>Though the ideology of rail privatisation had delighted the Tory party conference, the new scheme proved even less popular with the public than any of the previous privatisations. By 1996 only 11 percent of the British people (and only a minority of Tories) supported it.</p>
<p>The whole scheme was rottenly devised and riddled with contradictions. A strong attack from Labour, coupled with an unequivocal assurance that a new Labour government would instantly renationalise the railways without a penny of speculative gain to the new owners, would have killed off the whole crazy enterprise before it started.</p>
<p>Leading Labour politicians quickly proved that they understood the importance of what they said about rail privatisation, and were not afraid to say it. As early as 1993, John Prescott, Labour’s shadow transport minister, did not mince his words to the party conference. He boomed:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Let me make it crystal clear that any privatisation of the railway system that does take place will, on the arrival of a Labour government, be quickly and effectively dealt with ... and be returned to public ownership.</p>
<p class="fst">By the following year (1994) it was time for crystal clarity once more – this time from the new shadow transport minister, Frank Dobson:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Let me give this pledge not just to this conference but to the people of Britain – the next Labour government will bring the railway system back into public ownership.</p>
<p class="fst">Another member of the crystal clear faction was Michael Meacher, shadow transport secretary in 1995. He understood the real problem – that there were private investors lining up to squeeze some profit out of the railways. He issued the clearest possible warning to such investors:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The railways depend on public subsidies to the tune of £1.8 billion a year. There is no guarantee that the subsidy will continue.</p>
<p class="fst">If the railways were privatised, he asked, could they depend on government subsidy, and what profit could they make if that subsidy was not forthcoming?</p>
<p>Such statements worried the City vultures lining up for a feast on the railways. When the three rail operating stock companies (roscos) came up for sale in January 1996, no big investor showed any interest, and the roscos were flogged off at bargain basement prices. The combination of half-baked Tory plans for privatisation and the clearest possible pledges that a new Labour government would renationalise the railways had put the privatisers off.</p>
<p>Then, sometime in the first few months of 1996, the whole Labour campaign collapsed. Two new shadow transport ministers, Clare Short and Andrew Smith, backed away from the ‘crystal clear’ pledges of their predecessors. By the time the conference came round again in 1996, there were no further promises to renationalise the railways – only a few bromide sentences about the need for a fully integrated railway. Confidence flowed back into the privatisers, and the roscos were sold on again at enormous profit for the former bureaucrats who had paid so little for them in the first place. One such, Sandy Anderson, made a personal profit of £38 million.</p>
<p>Brian Souter, whose company Stagecoach made a fortune from the privatisation of buses and railways, told a House of Commons committee that in 1995 no one would touch railway privatisation ‘with a bargepole’. It was not until Labour fudged the issue that it suddenly seemed possible that a Labour government would renege on its pledges to renationalise, and the big boys with the big wallets started to creep out of the cupboard.</p>
<p>When the party manifestos were published before the 1997 election many people noticed that all Labour’s past renationalisation pledges were left out. Even the pledge to bring the railways back into public ownership had been shelved. Even the ringing declaration of shadow transport minister Andrew Smith at the 1996 conference, replying to a Tory threat to privatise air traffic control – ‘our air is not for sale’ – did not develop into a manifesto commitment.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there were no plans in Labour’s manifesto to privatise anything, no specific promises not to nationalise or municipalise. Many optimists hoped that Labour politicians had shelved their real aspirations for public ownership just for the election period. There was a strong feeling that Labour, once elected, would rediscover its century-long commitment to public ownership and public control, and would reassert both. Labour was elected in a landslide victory in 1997, and what happened?<br>
<a name="pt4"> </a></p>
<h3>The return of the Whigs</h3>
<h4>How the Liberals, with 17 percent of the vote, got into government</h4>
<p class="fst">The first thing that happened was a curious shift of power and influence at the heart of the new Labour government – in 10 Downing Street. Two new advisers were appointed to prime minister Blair – Roger Liddle on defence and Europe, and Derek Scott on economics. Both had been founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), whose leaders had split from the Labour Party in 1981 and had run against the Labour Party in various elections since until the party’s absorption into the Liberal Democrats, formerly the Liberal Party from which Labour broke away on its formation in 1900.</p>
<p>Scott had stood against Labour in Swindon in 1983 and 1987, splitting the vote and letting in a Tory. Liddle had also been a founder member of the SDP and had been an SDP candidate, standing against Labour in Lambeth in 1983 and in the Fulham by-election in 1986. The SDP, with its new allies the Liberals, achieved 26 percent of the poll in the 1983 election, only 2 percent less than Labour. It could fairly be said that the formation of the SDP and its standing against Labour in 1983 and 1987 was the main electoral reason for Thatcher’s landslide victories in both elections.</p>
<p>The key policies put forward by the SDP differed only marginally from those of the Liberal Party. The SDP was for instance 100 percent opposed to more public ownership in any sector, and sought an accommodation with the rich and business executives, who welcomed them with open arms.</p>
<p>One of Liddle’s closest companions who stayed in the Labour Party was Peter Mandelson, a former television producer who had been rapidly promoted by Neil Kinnock to be campaigns director for the Labour Party for the 1992 election. Before Liddle split with Labour to form the SDP, Mandelson and Liddle had been Labour councillors at Lambeth in south London. In 1994 the two men co-authored an embarrassing hagiography of Tony Blair entitled <strong>The Blair Revolution</strong>. On close inspection, the policies and programme outlined by the book bore a striking resemblance to the not very challenging policies and programme of the defunct SDP.</p>
<p>Mandelson employed a young researcher called Derek Draper, who had been a director of a lobbying organisation called Prima Europe/GPC Market Access. The chairman of Prima Europe was Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, a former SDP founder member who later joined the Liberal Democrats. His predecessor as Prima Europe chairman was Lord Holme, a Liberal Democrat peer.</p>
<p>Further links between this magic circle and the SDP could be found in the home of Matthew Oakeshott, a founder member of the SDP who lived next door to Roger Liddle and was chairman of the ‘blind trust’ which invested Liddle’s shareholding in Prima Europe. In 1998, a year after the Blair government took office, another adviser took up residence in Downing Street. He was a journalist called Andrew Adonis – a former candidate for the Liberal Democrats. A founder director of Prima Europe was Lord Taverne of Pimlico, a former Labour minister who after leaving the party knocked Labour out of its seat in the Lincoln by-election in 1973. As for Prima Europe, the firm of lobbyists at the centre of this cabal, its clients included Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, Abbey National, British Nuclear Fuels, Rio Tinto Zinc, and the privatised energy companies Powergen and British Gas.<br>
<a name="pt5"> </a></p>
<h3>Sleazy does it</h3>
<p class="fst">Almost as soon as it took office the New Labour government, which prided itself on its freedom from sleaze, was caught up in sleaze. The government decided to renege on its manifesto commitment to ban tobacco advertisements, and allowed tobacco ads in their most lucrative area – on Formula One racing cars. This decision was promptly linked to a £1 million donation to the Labour Party by an established Tory, Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One racing billionaire. In some panic, Blair ordered the party to give Ecclestone back his million and explained to a sceptical public that he, Blair, was, after all, ‘a straight guy’.</p>
<p>Exactly how straight became a little clearer in the ‘cash for access’ scandal of 1998. Amazed by the new lobbyists who swarmed like locusts over the New Labour government and its ministers, the <strong>Observer</strong> journalist Gregory Palast interviewed Roger Liddle and Derek Draper. Liddle was quoted as saying:</p>
<p class="quoteb">... there is a circle and Derek is part of the circle. Anyone who says he isn’t is an enemy. Just tell me who you want to meet, and Derek and I will make the call for you.</p>
<p class="fst">Draper was even more direct:</p>
<p class="quoteb">There are 17 people in this country who count, and to say that I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century.</p>
<p class="fst">This novel approach to power and politics was based on the suggestion that rich clients using New Labour lobbyists could get close to New Labour ministers. Draper was sacked by Mandelson when this ‘cash for access’ scandal broke.</p>
<p>Mandelson himself was sacked from the cabinet at the end of 1998 when it was revealed that he had, without declaring it, borrowed some £400,000 from his cabinet colleague the Paymaster General, Geoffrey Robinson, to help buy himself a suitable house in fashionable Notting Hill. Geoffrey Robinson, whose only crime at the time seemed to have been that he lent Mandelson the money, was sacked too, never to return. But Mandelson, who got the loan, was taken back into the cabinet in 1999, only to be sacked again in February 2001 for intervening on behalf of the Indian billionaire Hinduja family.</p>
<p>The Hindujas, despite their involvement in a massive Indian arms scandal, applied for and got British passports in record time. Mandelson was ‘cleared’ of impropriety by an investigation, though there was no doubt that either he or his office asked questions about passports for the Hindujas.</p>
<p>As this pamphlet is written, yet another sleaze scandal breaks over Downing Street, this time about questions from leading Downing Street officials, including Blair’s chief of staff, about planning permission for an Oxford business school financed by the millionaire speculator Wafic Said. The same Said had hit the headlines all through the 1980s for his role in the brokering of the Al Yamamah arms deal between the British and Saudi Arabian governments – the biggest arms deal ever negotiated in the whole history of the world. Perhaps because of his role in that deal, Wafic Said became a close confidant of Margaret Thatcher and her sleazy son, Mark. The government changed its name but not its allies in big business. Wafic Said’s plans in Oxford had the eager support of Blair’s chief of staff, whose brother Charles had been a top aide to Margaret Thatcher.</p>
<p>Commenting on all these developments, and on the influence of so many millionaires on the highest echelons of the New Labour government, former Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley referred to the way in which Blair, Mandelson and Co had been systematically ‘dazzled’ by people of vast wealth.</p>
<p>This was not itself a new phenomenon for a Labour government. Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour leader, was almost permanently clinched in what Beatrice Webb called ‘the aristocratic embrace’. He took shares and a posh car from a biscuit king in exchange for a baronetcy. Harold Wilson, Labour leader in the 1960s and 1970s, was entranced by a new breed of businessmen who specialised in import/export deals with dictatorships in Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>But neither MacDonald’s aristocratic embrace nor Wilson’s close relationship with entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, nor even James Callaghan’s relationship with the Welsh financier Julian Hodge, could rival the sheer scale with which the New Labour government under Blair flung itself at the feet of any billionaire who asked its ministers to a party, or attended one of the Labour Party’s interminable fundraising dinners. Blair’s close friend Mandelson played a crucial part in delivering the leadership of the New Labour government into the hands of his business friends – and its former electoral enemies in the SDP and Liberal Democrats.<br>
<a name="pt6"> </a></p>
<h3>It takes two to quango</h3>
<p class="fst">New Labour’s hankering for the plaudits of the rich swept through all ranks of the new government. On the afternoon after polling day in May 1997 an exhausted John Prescott, confirmed as the new deputy prime minister and head of one of the biggest departments of state ever constituted, met the board members of BAA, the privatised monopoly that runs several British airports. BAA wanted an early commitment that the new government was friendly to its bid to build a fifth terminal at Heathrow airport. A public inquiry was still sitting, but BAA wanted to make its peace with the new administration. Prescott, who pretended to represent the old traditions of Labour, was pleased and proud to greet such important businessmen. He was the first of the new ministers to experience the advantages of the new partnership with big business that the new government was so anxious to promote.</p>
<p>Very soon the nature of that partnership began to take shape. Prescott himself became a keen supporter of the government’s plans to privatise air traffic control. Andrew Smith’s proud declaration – ‘our air is not for sale’ – was subtly changed to ‘our air is for sale’. And Andrew Smith became chief secretary at Gordon Brown’s Treasury.</p>
<p>At the last Labour Party conference before the election Gordon Brown had attacked ‘the quangocracy which threatens democracy’ and ‘the quango state’. ‘Quango’ stands for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation. In the bad old days of Tory government these cliques were made up of the great, the good and above all the rich. They were appointed by the Tories to take charge of key sections of society, separate from and unaccountable to parliament or elected local authorities.</p>
<p>The most blatant examples of the Tory quangos were the development corporations set up by the Tories in 14 areas with the ostensible aim of improving the standard of life in the inner cities. These new development corporations were packed with local businessmen, lawyers and accountants, with a couple of elected councillors ‘co-opted’ to add a democratic veneer. The new corporations swiped all planning powers from the elected local authorities in vast tracts of turban territory. They infuriated the more responsible Labour councillors and achieved next to nothing. They were opposed by Labour and finally collapsed in ignominy and a strong stink of corruption.</p>
<p>No sooner did the New Labour ministers take office, however, than they started to appoint a new set of ‘taskforces’ even more wide-ranging and unaccountable than the Tory quangos. In the first few months of the New Labour government nearly 300 of these quangos had been set up to cover almost every aspect of national life. The degree of ‘partnership’ involved in the new quangos could be detected in the background of the 3,013 people who made them up, and who were catalogued in a booklet produced by Democratic Audit. Only 73 (2 percent) of these new quangocrats were trade unionists. More than a third (1,107) were from private business or trade associations. Gordon Brown’s Treasury set up the most exclusive of the task-forces, burrowing deep in the warrens of the City of London for appropriate bankers and investment analysts to supervise the new dawn.<br>
<a name="pt7"> </a></p>
<h3>PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy</h3>
<h4>Hospitals</h4>
<p class="fst">Geoffrey Robinson, Paymaster General in the new government, had an office in Gordon Brown’s Treasury from which he proclaimed the Tory idea for public-private partnership known as PFI. Robinson brought in Malcolm Bates from the big construction company BICC to mastermind the government’s new plans for PFI. Bates was well used to the job – he had done the same thing under the Tories. PFI rapidly became the lynchpin of all the government’s construction policies. The theory was simple, if crude. Private business provided funds for the project up front, and the government paid back the money at substantial rates of interest over 30 years.</p>
<p>The first training ground for PFI was the National Health Service. Labour in opposition was not at all keen on PFI in the NHS. In 1996, when she spoke from the Labour front bench, Harriet Harman was horrified by the Tories’ obsession with PFI. ‘When the private sector is building, owning, managing and running a hospital,’ she declared, ‘that hospital has been privatised.’ Labour backbenchers cheered her attacks on creeping privatisation, but almost as soon as Harriet Harman became Secretary of State for Social Security, the new government rushed through the NHS (Private Finance) Act 1997, removing at a stroke all the barriers to the Private Finance Initiative in the NHS. Very soon a number of hospitals started to be built under PFI in circumstances exactly fitting Harriet Harman’s definition of hospital privatisation.</p>
<p>A typical example was the plan to close down the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and associated lucrative premises in the middle of Edinburgh, and replace them with a new hospital built by a private enterprise consortium on the outskirts the city. The area got a new hospital, the consortium got the business, but the people of Edinburgh got a hospital with 300 fewer beds than originally planned and substantial cuts in staff.</p>
<p>Any scepticism about these new schemes was initially drowned in popular relief and pleasure that, at last, a new hospital was being built. But detailed investigations of the schemes exposed their fatal flaw – a yawning gap between the cost of the new PFI hospital and the cost of a similar hospital built under the old scheme of straight public funding. The extra cost of borrowing on the open market plus the costs of dividends and bank charges, and clauses in the contracts which gave the consortia the right to vary the prices – all built up to a final cost of the hospital project far higher than the equivalent cost under the old public enterprise scheme. These extra costs had to be met by raiding other budgets in the NHS – by cutting beds or staff or both.</p>
<p>In papers written for the <strong>British Medical Journal</strong> as early as 1999, Professor Allyson Pollock and her team at the School of Public Policy at University College London investigated the ‘first wave’ of 14 hospitals built under PFI. They found, on average, a 30 percent reduction in beds and a 25–30 percent reduction in staff. All these cuts and sackings were caused by the shortfall in the PFI schemes when compared with the old public enterprise system. Some of the figures were quite astonishing. The new University College Hospital in London for instance would have cost £140 million under the old scheme. By July 2000 when the new scheme was signed, the cost had escalated to £430 million.</p>
<p>In Durham in the north east of England, the new Dryburn Hospital, built by a consortium headed inevitably by Balfour Beatty, was subjected to the PFI process. What was needed to replace the crumbling NHS in the area was a new hospital of 750 beds. PFI meant that the only way to make the new hospital ‘affordable’ to Balfour Beatty and Co was to cut the number of beds to 458, and staff by 25 percent. In Chepstow in Wales, if the surplus land round the new PFI hospital was sold, it would have provided 80 percent of the money for the new hospital without having to pay anything to the construction consortium which got the contract. These new hospital projects were handed over to PFI, even though in both cases the local Labour MPs had been bitter opponents of the original Tory PFI proposals. In Carlisle a new PFI hospital could only be built by cutting beds and staff to such a degree that the local hospital doctors denounced it as reverting to ‘Third World standards’. Much of the land owned by the NHS hospital was used for building a private hospital.</p>
<p>When the facts started to emerge about the costs and the cuts implied in the new schemes, public resentment grew. When a PFI plan to build a hospital at Worcester led to the closing of all acute services at Kidderminster Hospital, a local revolt led to the formation of a new organisation called Health Concern. By the beginning of 2001 Health Concern had 19 councillors at Wyre Forest – by far the biggest party in the area. When Tony Blair oozed up to Worcester to fraternise with the waterlogged population during the winter floods of January 2001, he was astonished to be surrounded and heckled by pensioners denouncing PFI.</p>
<p>As early as July 1999 Richard Smith, editor of the <strong>British Medical Journal</strong>, wrote a leading article entitled <em>PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy</em>. This editorial, which has effectively become British Medical Association policy ever since, argued that the increased costs of PFI for hospitals drives down the number of beds and cuts clinical services in other schemes. In Hereford, for instance, a proposal for a PFI hospital with 351 beds had to lose 100 beds before it became ‘viable’ (profitable) for the contracting company.</p>
<p>There were other even more serious problems: ‘Private Finance Initiatives may inevitably lead to an increase in the private sector and user charges, providing one way for the NHS to shrink to a rump service for the poor.’ Smith went on:</p>
<p class="quoteb">A second factor that infuriates many of those working within the NHS is the complete absence of any evidence in favour of the Private Finance Initiative. In fact all the evidence we have suggests it is a very bad idea.</p>
<p class="fst">Richard Smith’s warning about the gradual privatisation of the NHS seemed at first to be a trifle extreme. It conflicted, for instance, with the constant attacks by Blair and his health secretary Alan Milburn on Tory health policies as ‘creeping privatisation’. At a conference in 2001 Chancellor Gordon Brown told the general secretary of the TUC that under the next Labour government ‘only the NHS and the police’ would escape Labour’s plans for privatisation. A closer look at recent government initiatives on health suggest that Brown’s prognosis may have been optimistic, and that health too is in line for creeping privatisation under New Labour.</p>
<p>In November 2000 Professor Allyson Pollock of the University College London School of Public Policy and David Price of the University of Northumbria wrote a paper entitled <em>How the World Trade Organisation Threatens Public Healthcare Services – Where Does New Labour Stand?</em> The article examined the wording of the recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) treaty, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The treaty, the article suggests, ‘provides the WTO with crucial powers to promote what it calls ‘pro-competitive domestic policies’. The article traced what these policies had meant in India and sub-Saharan Africa, where ‘access care has suffered and infectious disease control programmes have been disrupted’. In Latin America, ‘privatised services have proved lucrative business propositions and attracted healthier patients, while sicker patients have gravitated to a reduced public sector’. In Brazil, such privatisation has led to an expanded private sector with 120,000 doctors, while the public sector which serves three quarters of the population has only 70,000 doctors.</p>
<p>What about Britain, the land of the universal health service, which prides itself on treating people according to their health, not their wallets? The authors note that the health secretary, Alan Milburn, faced with a shortfall of beds in the acute hospital sector under PFI, ‘has chosen not a full restoration of public provision or abandonment of PFI but a new concordat with the private hospital sector to make up the shortfall’. Milburn explains that spending NHS money on using up spare capacity in private hospitals is ‘common sense’.</p>
<p>It is certainly common sense to Norwich Union and the other big private healthcare providers whose health service cannot make as big a profit without the huge injection of public funds Milburn has provided. It is the opposite of common sense to those who believe that the more profitable private health becomes, the more damage is done to the principle and practice of a National Health Service. The plain fact is that under New Labour 4,000 NHS hospital beds have been lost every year in the PFI process, and ‘cost overruns’ in PFI projects have been three times as high as they were in the old NHS hospital projects.</p>
<p>This creeping privatisation of the NHS got another boost from Blair and Milburn in the crucial area of long term personal care. Soon after taking office the government set up a Royal Commission, which recommended to ministers’ horror that long term personal care should, in the best tradition of the NHS, be ‘free at the point of delivery’. The government rejected this recommendation, preferring the minority report signed by journalist David Lipsey, and Joel Joffe, founder of Allied Dunbar, a health insurance firm. Both men are now in the House of Lords. In the last session of the 2000–01 parliament the government introduced a Health and Social Care Bill. Clause 4 of the bill, entitled ‘Public-Private Partnerships’, allows the secretary of state to set up private companies ‘to provide facilities or services’. The clause opens the door to huge new areas of privatised healthcare, and flies in the face of the principles of the NHS laid down more than 50 years ago by Lord Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan.<br>
<a name="pt8"> </a></p>
<h3>Schools; ‘B’ is for Blair, Brown ...<br>
... Blunkett, Byers and bog-standard</h3>
<p class="fst">What’s bad for the National Health Service is probably bad for everything else, and at the end of four years in office the New Labour government is committed to PFI in every area of government construction. It is almost impossible for government, local or central, to build a shed in a park nowadays without attracting the cloying attention of PFI enthusiasts. If there is indeed no evidence that any member of the public benefits from any of these schemes, why does the government proceed with them? One answer has come from Carillion, formerly Tarmac, which revealed in January 2001 that it was boosting the strength of its Private Finance Initiative team as part of efforts to reduce its dependence ‘on low-margin competitive contracting’. In plain English this meant that Carillion could make more profit more quickly from PFI than from ordinary contracts in the commercial market.</p>
<p>What about education, always rated so highly by Blair and his ministers? Great has been the hype for the government’s alleged triumphs in education, but most of it was exposed by a brilliant piece of investigative journalism by the <strong>Guardian</strong>’s Nick Davies in March 2000. He wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The truth is that for his first two years in power Mr Blunkett [Labour’s education secretary] actually invested less in education than the Tories had, and by the end of this parliament he will still be only marginally ahead of the Tory level of spending, a level which he used to describe as ‘miserable’.</p>
<p class="fst">The sum of Blunkett’s achievement is that he has managed, on an annual average while he has been secretary of state, to spend 4.6 percent of gross domestic product on education, compared to the shocking average under the Tories – 5 percent. The chief reason for these figures was the government’s determination to stick to the Tories’ spending limits for 1997 and 1998.</p>
<p>Anyone with kids at state schools (and of course the kids themselves) can see the result – a tremendous increase in pressure and red tape for teachers, and a higher level of boredom for the children. The grand plans announced by Jack Straw for a ‘new partnership with teachers’ were effectively torn up when Blair and Blunkett agreed to reappoint for a fresh term of office as chief inspector of schools the man most hated by teachers in the whole history of state education.</p>
<p>Chris Woodhead was brought in by the Tory government to attack elected local authority education committees and to denounce teachers. When reappointed by New Labour, he continued with his former priorities as though nothing had happened. Votes of no confidence in him were passed regularly at all teachers’ union conferences, even those of headteachers. Doctrinaire and disciplinarian inspections intimidated teachers and cowed them.</p>
<p>When Blunkett and Blair announced that they intended to make it a criminal offence for a teacher to have sex with his or her pupils, they were embarrassed to discover that their own chief inspector of schools had engaged in a sexual affair with one of his pupils while he was teaching her at a school in Bristol. So loyal were Blair and Blunkett to Woodhead that they publicly defended him even when it became clear that his defence – that the affair had started only after the pupil had left school – was economical with the truth.</p>
<p>Finally, before even his term of office was complete, Woodhead resigned from his post and joined the <strong>Daily Telegraph</strong>, where his Tory anti-teacher prejudices could by fully arrayed, and where he could for a fee continue to bite the hands of the New Labour leaders who had reappointed him.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what remedy did Blunkett and his minister of schools Estelle Morris have for the failing state school system? The chief problem, they discovered, was that it was a state system controlled by elected authorities. So with the help of Woodhead, who was never happier than when he was denouncing elected education authorities, they developed a scheme in which education would be taken out of the control of elected councillors and handed over to their blessed private enterprise. Slowly at first but with gathering speed, the two Tory solutions so comprehensively denounced by Labour politicians in opposition – privatisation and selection – were ushered in, with inevitably catastrophic results. The ritual would be as follows. Ofsted under Woodhead would denounce a school or an authority. The school or the authority would be written off as ‘failing’, and a new privatised authority would be introduced to save the children.</p>
<p>In Southwark in south London the new authority will be supervised by Andrew Turner, a Tory candidate previously employed by the Tory party to campaign for the opting out of state schools – a policy savaged at the time by all the New Labour leaders, including Tony Blair. In Leeds the new privatised education authority will employ the services of Capita, a private company that has already made millions for its shareholders by taking over failed public services and continuing to fail with them. In Haringey, north London, schools minister Estelle Morris announced a ‘radical new venture’ to introduce the profit motive into state education. The bids from the three companies pitching for the contract, including Group 4, which had become a joke for its failure to keep control of prisoners, were all presented by former or present local authority education chiefs. The bids were all so hopelessly incompetent that they were rejected.</p>
<p>But by now ministers are so committed to privatisation in education they cannot, even if they want to, concentrate their attention on improving the service provided by government.</p>
<p>They are steeped so far in blood that going back is worse than going on. So they must grovel still deeper for what goes on eluding them – the private profit solution to public education.</p>
<p>In Glasgow, a city with a proud tradition of public education, the Labour-controlled authority has privatised the services of all its 29 secondary schools in a complicated lease-back arrangement which means public council spending over 30 years of £1.2 billion so that a private consortium can own and control those schools for all that time in exchange for its own investment of £420 million. Even then it is still not clear who will own the schools.</p>
<p>Another brilliant idea for dealing with what ministers regard as ‘failing’ schools (which usually means that most of the children are poor or black or both) was the notion of the ‘fresh start’. Schools failed by Ofsted were closed down altogether, their staff sacked, new headteachers and staff appointed, and the whole process started over again. Despite heavy public spending, and much media hype, these fresh starts proved in almost every case to be a dismal failure. This is because most of the children in the schools were still poor, and their exam results did not improve just because the headmaster changed and the staff were sacked.</p>
<p>At the last Labour Party conference before the 1997 election David Blunkett, rattled by a passionate defence of comprehensive education from Roy Hattersley and others, asked the conference to read his lips and promised that during the next Labour government there would be ‘no selection by examination or by interview’. This pledge has become a standing joke in schools, as selection either by exam or by interview, or usually by some less obvious but no less pernicious method, has become the norm.</p>
<p>This process was blessed by prime minister Blair in his last major speech on education, in which he proposed that 46 percent of schools should be turned into ‘specialist’ schools. He did not explain what would happen to the remaining 54 percent, nor what the difference was between the old barbaric system in which children were divided up at the age of 11, with the cleverer children sent to grammar schools and the less clever herded into secondary moderns. This was the system that Labour replaced with comprehensive schools.</p>
<p>Teachers reading Blair’s remarks started to think that Labour must be planning to put an end to comprehensive schools altogether and divide them up, half and half, between ‘specialist’ and ‘non-specialist’ schools. Then, as if to justify their fears, Blair’s press secretary Alistair Campbell delicately explained what the new proposals meant – ’no more bog-standard comprehensives’.<br>
<a name="pt9"> </a></p>
<h3>Fill ’em up: a new policy for prisons</h3>
<p class="fst">The same obsession with dismantling public accountability has seeped into every area of government policy. Home secretary Jack Straw became so concerned about the warning from shadow home secretary Jack Straw – that prison privatisation was immoral – that he set about privatising prisons almost as soon as he took office. Within days he had sanctioned two new private finance prison deals.</p>
<p>In the last four years the number of private-run adult and young offenders prisons has doubled. This trend looks set to continue, with the government now considering semi-privatisation of prisons along the lines of the extremely unpopular Treasury plans for the London Underground. This would involve the facilities and buildings being taken over by the private sector and split from the custodial operations – a variation on the model of division of ownership and responsibility which has proven so disastrous for the railways.</p>
<p>Under New Labour the number of people in prison rose from 60,000 in 1997 to 66,000 in 2001. Official statistics show that more people are imprisoned in England and Wales per head of the population than in Sudan, Saudi Arabia or China, and across Western Europe only Portugal has a greater proportion of its population behind bars.</p>
<p>’Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ had been the most quoted slogan of New Labour in opposition. In office, the New Labour ministers could remember only the first three words. They were tough on crime all right. The prisons were accurately described by the director of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, as ‘hellholes’. Some 36 jails in the UK have more than 100 inmates ‘doubled-up’ sharing cells.</p>
<p>Sir David Ramsbotham, a retired general brought in by the Tories as chief inspector of prisons to bend the stick away from his progressive predecessor, was almost physically sick at the conditions of the men and women confined to the prisons he inspected. He told the <strong>Guardian</strong> in February of this year that ‘20,000 inmates – women, boys, elderly, mentally ill, petty offenders – should never have been sent to jail.’ The more stridently his reports resorted to strong language to express his disgust, the more they were ignored by New Labour ministers in the Home Office.</p>
<p>Paul Boateng, the new prisons minister, had told his constituents when they returned him for the first time by a small majority in 1987, ‘Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto.’ Few who heard this rhetoric can have imagined that the smooth young radical would one day, as prisons minister, seek to refashion British prisons along lines laid down in Soweto. Boateng rapidly became a regular spokesman for every reactionary initiative from the Home Office. The nadir was reached under his regime when an Asian boy, Zahid Mubarek, on remand in Feltham young offenders centre, where some 600 prisoners get no education at all, was forced to share a cell with a psychotic racist thug who battered him to death.<br>
<a name="pt10"> </a></p>
<h3>Council houses, pensions<br>
All up for grabs</h3>
<p class="fst">The very core of Labour’s historic municipal advance – the public ownership and control of council housing – has been systematically attacked by New Labour. The government’s own spending plans for housing depend on the ‘transfer’ (sell-off) of 200,000 council homes a year. Since the government came to office in 1997 no less than 342,000 council homes have been sold off to organisations that are not elected, and that find it much easier to evict tenants. This policy is pursued by Labour councils with increasing vigour despite that fact that ballot after ballot of the tenants affected shows deep hostility to privatisation. In many cases, especially in London, the sell-offs have been backed and subsidised by large property companies whose intention is to evict working class families from their council homes and rebuild in their place homes fit for City parasites who have second homes in the country.</p>
<p>Pensions is another issue where the New Labour ministers have abandoned their previous commitments to old people in preference for their love affair with big insurance companies. In 1986, when Thatcher and her henchmen Norman Fowler and John Major started privatising pensions by using tax concessions to bribe people in perfectly workable pension schemes to take out private pensions, the Labour front bench, led by Margaret Beckett, exploded in rage. Year after year, Labour’s pensions spokespeople clung courageously to SERPS, the relatively decent pensions schemes relating pensions to earning established by Barbara Castle, a Labour left winger, in the 1970s.</p>
<p>By contrast, New Labour social security secretary Alistair Darling has scrapped SERPS, which was run entirely by the government, and replaced it with a scheme for ‘stakeholder pensions’ run by the private company which achieved the record for the most swindling under the mis-selling pensions scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s – the good old reliable Prudential.</p>
<p>As more and more private companies try to ‘adapt’ their pension schemes to the disadvantage of their pensioners – British Airways, Barclays Bank, IBM, etc. – the government stands by and nods them through. When the chief culprit in this regard, British Airways chairman Colin (Lord) Marshall, was honoured by fellow millionaires with a dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel in 1998, the guest of honour was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.</p>
<p>As for the state pension itself, the cornerstone of former Labour governments’ reforms, it has been allowed to slide into obsolescence. Endless pledges by Labour’s social security spokespeople that they would restore the link, established by past Labour governments and abolished under Thatcher, between the state pension and the rise in earnings have been cynically junked.<br>
<a name="pt11"> </a></p>
<h3>Universities<br>
Only the rich need apply</h3>
<p class="fst">Tessa Blackstone was one of the New Labour peers who had most vitriolically attacked the concept of private privilege in all forms of education. As a former ‘master’ of Birkbeck College in London and a member of the last Labour government’s cabinet think tank, no one was better qualified to go to the House of Lords and to become New Labour’s Minister of State for Education. There, almost at once, she found herself defending yet another New Labour U-turn – the decision to impose tuition fees on university students.</p>
<p>Did she remember Neil Kinnock’s famous speech to the Labour Party conference in which he boasted that he had been the first member of his family to be able to go to university because for the first time a young man from the working class could afford it? Or had she read the stinging speeches of Jack Straw when he was opposition spokesman (quoted above) in which he said that tuition fees would mean a slowdown in working class recruitment to universities, and in the end a system in which universities were almost entirely exclusive to the rich?</p>
<p>According to the National Union of Students, university students in England and Wales now pay £1.5 billion more than they did before Labour was elected in 1997. At the same time funding per student has declined by almost 40 percent in the last 12 years.</p>
<p>The culmination of old Tory cuts in the student grant, the old Tory provision of student loans and New Labour tuition fees has had a catastrophic effect on university students. Many of them live entirely on their loans without any real idea of how they can repay them. Others either drop out or (more usually) do not even bother to enrol in courses for which they are qualified. Enrolment in many universities has fallen, with over 50 universities reporting that they were more than 2 percent below their student recruitment targets in the current academic year.</p>
<p>Tuition fees were too much for Labour, and even the Liberals, in Scotland where they were abolished. In England and Wales they continue to cast a shadow over one of the areas of life which, thanks to Labour governments in the past, had held out some hope for the young.<br>
<a name="pt12"> </a></p>
<h3>The great train robbery continued</h3>
<p class="fst">Looming over this entire privatisation process has been the greatest scandal of them all – the railways. We have seen how fiercely Labour front benchers spoke out against privatisation in all the years the Tories proposed it, and how the same ministers took flight from their opposition when it might have made a difference. This abject surrender continued apace as Labour took office.</p>
<p>The railways were not renationalised. The hideous mess constructed by the Tories, the different competing railway organisations and the speculative millionaires they created, continued with hardly any change. The reason was trumpeted proudly by Blair, Prescott and Co whenever they were asked about it, usually by the transport unions which had contributed so many millions to Labour. They explained that they could not possibly afford the £4 billion it would have cost to create what Blair had promised – a ‘publicly owned, publicly accountable railway’. They had so many other priorities, they bleated, that they could not possibly waste public money on paying railway shareholders for their assets. Then came the great triumphs of railway privatisation, the disasters at Southall, Paddington and Hatfield.</p>
<p>At Hatfield, it was revealed, a train had come off the track because of a broken rail. Railtrack, the privatised company which owned and controlled the network, had known perfectly well of the dangers of broken rails. They had been spelled out to the company in great detail a year before the Hatfield crash by the new rail regulator, Tom Winsor, whose militant approach to the railway monopolies was held out by the government as proof of its continuing concern for and control over the railway. Winsor’s memorandum about the dangers of broken rails was scrupulously ignored in the interests of keeping trains moving and profits flowing.</p>
<p>After Hatfield, Railtrack panicked and subjected millions of long-suffering passengers to months of chaos and delays as some of the track was renewed. The militant Winsor decided that what was most important was that he should have a private company to regulate, so he announced that another £4 billion of taxpayers’ money would be released to keep the privatised railways running. By coincidence, £4 billion was the exact sum that Blair, Prescott and Co had estimated as the likely cost of renationalising the railways. The money they had ‘saved’ the taxpayer by leaving the railways in private hands was now being passed into those same private hands without any public accountability for it.</p>
<p>The sheer extravagance of the decision not to renationalise the railways was set out in an article early in 2001 in the journal <strong>Public Finance</strong>. The author, Jean Shaoul, calculated the cost of public subsidies in the four years before privatisation and the four years after. Adjusted for inflation, the figures were: 1991–94 £2,556 million; 1997–2000 £6,848 million. The cost to the taxpayer of subsidising the privately-owned railway had grown to three times the cost of subsidising the publicly-owned railway.<br>
<a name="pt13"> </a></p>
<h3>The last Straw<br>
The attack on civil liberties</h3>
<p class="fst">Many liberal-minded people were inclined to turn away from arguments about the unions and public ownership, believing or hoping that New Labour would address issues involving simple civil liberties, so many of which had been trampled on by past Tory governments. These optimists were the successors of those civil libertarians who measured their criticism of the 1964–70 Labour governments under Harold Wilson by recalling ‘at least’ that government had supported private member’s bills to ensure major social reforms – the abolition of capital punishment, the reform of the abortion law, and for the first time a major relaxation in the draconian laws which persecuted gay men and women.</p>
<p>Many believed that the huge majority for Labour in May 1997 would at least ensure a clutch of measures of that kind. At last, for instance, it was believed that here was a chance for a robust freedom of information act to expose future governments to the scrutiny of their electorates; a curb on the powers of the police that had so shocked and infuriated black people in the inner cities; a reform of the drugs laws to legalise at least some of the more harmless drugs which wasted so much of the time of the police and other legal authorities; a shift in the balance away from the judiciary and towards juries; an expansion of a legal aid scheme which in the past had left so many people deprived even of a hearing, let alone justice; repeal of the hated Section 28 which discriminated against gays; above all, at last, a government which showed a genuine respect for foreigners and people fleeing to Britain from persecution and terror.</p>
<p>Not one of these things happened. Most of them were the responsibility of the new home secretary, Jack Straw, who had come into politics as a campaigner for the National Union of Students and had been a protege of his predecessor as MP for Blackburn, the left winger Barbara Castle. We have come across Straw before as the man who maintained his moral objections to the privatisation of prisons in opposition by privatising them once in government. On all these matters of civil liberty he swiftly emerged as a dyed in the wool reactionary who might as well have donned a helmet from one of me more reckless policemen in his charge.</p>
<p>Straw was not originally responsible for the government’s new measure on freedom of information, but he rapidly ensured that he seized control of it from David Clark, the unassuming MP for South Shields. When Straw objected to Clark’s moderate proposals, Clark was sacked and replaced by Straw. Mark Fisher, minister for the arts, who spoke up in committee for a strong freedom of information act, was sacked too, and replaced as arts minister by Alan Howarth, former Tory MP for Stratford-on-Avon, who was catapulted into the safe Labour seat of Newport by diktat of New Labour headquarters in Millbank without anyone in Newport having the chance to select a proper Labour candidate. Straw took charge of the new freedom of information bill, and produced a measure so flimsy mat campaigners for freedom of information concluded that it is now, under New Labour, even more difficult to get information from the government than it was under the Tories.</p>
<p>The rest of New Labour’s record on civil liberties is no better than that of its Tory predecessors. Ministers boasted that they had adopted European law on human rights, but most of the proposals of the government in that area appeared to take away human rights. One of the oldest and most valuable human rights in the legal system, for instance – the right to be tried by jury – has been assailed again and again by Straw and his colleagues in the Home Office. Straw has proposed, at the moment without too much success, that in many instances the jury should be done away with altogether. Every reactionary notion that floats down to Straw from the Neanderthals on the Law Commission he adopts as quickly as he rejects any genuine reform.</p>
<p>The involvement of his own son in an embarrassing tangle with the police after he was found in possession of cannabis hardened Straw’s heart to any suggestion of relaxation of the laws on drugs, provided of course that the drugs in question, unlike alcohol and tobacco, are not sold by big corporations for profit.</p>
<p>Straw has publicly accepted the Law Commission’s recommendation to do away with the rule banning the trial of any defendant for a crime for which he or she has been acquitted. This proposal was heralded as a progressive measure since it had been proposed after the public inquiry into the racist killing of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence. A new band of ‘progressives’ in the police argued that the young men acquitted of murdering Stephen were protected by the double jeopardy rule from being charged again for the same offence. A more likely reason for the rule, and for the chorus in its favour, is that it allows police to re-charge some of the countless people who, usually because of police prejudice and incompetence, have been found not guilty of crimes for which they were wrongly convicted. Section 28, moreover, is still on the statute book in England and Wales.</p>
<p>Looming large over all the other of New Labour’s backward measures in the civil liberties field is the proposal for a replacement of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 1974. This act, which had to be renewed every year, was introduced in response to a series of IRA bombings in Britain that killed many innocent civilians. There was no such background to New Labour’s proposal for its replacement, the Terrorism Act. One purpose of this act was for the first time to make it illegal for anyone in Britain to take part in what the act describes as terrorist activities abroad. On the day the act came into force on 1 March 2001, the government banned 21 groups, most of them Islamic. The ban was extended to the PKK, or Kurdish Workers Party, which has a substantial following in Britain but which is hated by the Turkish government for its campaigns on behalf of the persecuted Kurdish minority. No evidence was produced by Jack Straw or anyone else to prove any terrorist act in Britain by any of me banned groups, but Straw told the Commons he was ‘entirely satisfied’ that all the groups were ‘concerned with terrorism’.</p>
<p>Close reading of the new bill by civil liberties groups, and by the campaigning magazine the <strong>Big Issue</strong>, revealed clauses which could be used against groups in Britain engaged in protests and campaigns. Anyone, for instance, supporting a revolution against the hated dictatorship in Iraq would be caught by the act, even though their aims might be shared by government ministers. The same applies to anyone advocating or supporting any uprising in the illegally occupied West Bank of Jordan, Gaza or Jerusalem.</p>
<p>As far as activity in Britain is concerned, the act actually defines terrorist activity as any violent activity designed ‘to influence the government or intimidate the public’, and includes any act which results in damage to property. The Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, Simon Hughes, told the Commons, ‘If you are a trade union leader calling for a strike at a hospital you would effectively be caught by this legislation.’ Just about the only organisation outside New Labour wholeheartedly to support the new act was the Conservative Party, whose spokesman complained that similar legislation proposed by the previous Tory government had been blocked by Labour.</p>
<p>Asylum seekers coming to Britain found themselves under sharp attack not just from racists and right wing fanatics but also from the New Labour government and its minister at the Home Office, Barbara Roche. She accused asylum seekers of ‘milking the system’ and then set about organising the system to ensure that there was nothing for asylum seekers to milk. Under her regime asylum seekers are deprived of social security benefits and provided instead with £36.54 a week in vouchers to buy food and clothes plus £10 a week in cash (there is no change from the vouchers). Asylum seekers are treated with the most disgusting contempt, housed in conditions unfit for human habitation and dispersed continually from refuge to refuge without discussion or consultation. Their vouchers and cash benefits are conditional on obeying orders to move.</p>
<p>When the Tory leader William Hague suggested locking up all asylum seekers, New Labour reacted with horror at such a gross breach of civil liberty, and promptly started building more detention centres for asylum seekers. The numbers of asylum seekers detained by New Labour have gone up from 800 to 1,200, and two new detention centres just built will take many more. More and more asylum seekers’ applications to stay in Britain are being turned down, including all such applications from Iraqi Kurds. A high point for New Labour policy was the refusal of an application to stay from a 24 year old Iraqi Kurd Ramin Khadeji. When he got his refusal he killed himself. Refusals have gone up from 35 percent of applications when New Labour took over to 60 percent.</p>
<p>Similarly, the proposals of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, on legal aid were intended to cut out of the legal system any lawyer who seeks diligently to represent a client who has no money. Most of the legal aid work under New Labour’s proposals will go to big firms who ‘process’ their clients through the courts with maximum speed and minimum consideration.</p>
<p>The Lord Chancellor himself, incidentally, is probably the only head of the legal profession in history to have lost a case in his own courts. In keeping with the cronyism of his government he appointed his mate Garry Hart from top City solicitors Herbert Smith as his chief adviser, paid by the taxpayer, even though no previous Lord Chancellor had ever had such an adviser. He was promptly sued by Jane Coker, a prominent immigration solicitor. She alleged that she had been discriminated against since there had been no public notice that the post was vacant. Lord Irvine treated the writ with casual disdain but was shocked when he lost the case in front of a unanimous tribunal. He appealed and, with the help of some of the most distinguished barristers in the land, managed to win by a margin of two to one at the Employment Appeals Tribunal. That decision has now gone to the House of Lords in a further appeal, but the case showed in the brightest possible colours how the arrogant appointment to high office of the government’s closest cronies in big business can even conflict with their own legislation.</p>
<p>A speciality of New Labour’s touch on crime policy has been a creation of a whole new range of offences under the broad heading of anti-social behaviour. The new Criminal Justice Act promulgates a series of new powers to arrest young people on what the police think is anti-social behaviour, and gives the police powers to impose on the spot fines and curfews. The new act comes at a time when the powers of the police are already considered far too wide by a larger and larger proportion of the young population, especially if they are black.<br>
<a name="pt14"> </a></p>
<h3>The fat cats directory</h3>
<p class="fst">George Monbiot’s recent book Captive State tells the story of how the big corporations took over the elected government. He started his book in the month Labour was elected, and plainly, like almost everyone else of the same opinion, hoped that the new government would at least put up a fight to take back some of the democratic power and control that had been surrendered by successive Tory governments. As his book proceeds, it becomes, almost reluctantly, a devastating attack on the New Labour government for continuing, and even heralding that surrender. Some 26 pages in the middle of the book are devoted to a comprehensive <em>Fat Cats Directory</em>. Under the enticing headings <em>Fat Cat</em>, <em>Previous Gluttony</em> and <em>Subsequent Creamery</em>, he lists the big businessmen, speculators, landlords and exploiters promoted by New Labour to positions of power and influence.</p>
<p>Almost every month since his book came out, new appointments have been made which can be added to his directory. In January 2001 Dr Ian Hudson, former top executive of the gargantuan pharmaceutical monopoly Smith Kline Beecham, was appointed head of the Medicines Control Agency, regulator of the British pharmaceutical industry. The following month Anne Parker, a director of private nursing agency and private healthcare firm Nestor, took charge of the government’s new National Care Standards Commission, the regulator of private care homes. Almost as an aside to this directory, Monbiot exposes the New Labour ministers who once promised so much, and are now no more than office boys and girls for the bosses they pretend to control. Here is Brian Wilson, once a socialist campaigner in the Scottish Highlands, as a Scottish Office minister justifying the monstrous toll charges levied by a US bank on the bridge to the island of Skye, and the cancellation of formerly government-owned ferries to Skye which might have offered dangerous competition to the profit-laden bridge.</p>
<p>Here is Nick Raynsford, once a resolute campaigner for the homeless, breezing round the world acting as salesman for British construction companies, chief among them Balfour Beatty, the construction company with the highest ever fine for a blatant breach of health and safety laws, and which was chiefly responsible for the broken rail at Hatfield. In January 2001 Raynsford introduced a new Homes Bill to the House of Commons. He started by rejecting what he called the ‘lie’ that homelessness had increased under New Labour. Not so, he insisted. In the last six months of the Tory government local authorities had accepted 110,000 homeless households, while four years of New Labour policies later the figure had been reduced – to 108,000. Other speakers in the debate complained that priority homelessness had actually increased during Mr Raynsford’s regime, and that the numbers of people in bed and breakfast accommodation had gone up under New Labour by 51 percent.</p>
<p>Here is Stephen Byers, a champion of public state education when he was chairman of the education committee in North Tyneside, now Secretary of State for Trade and Industry with not a word to say about the wholesale privatisation of education. Here is the new minister of science and supporter of genetically modified foods, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, whose exalted position has, we are assured, absolutely nothing to do with the millions he has pumped over the years into the coffers of the Labour Party. To these names many others should be added.</p>
<p>Patricia Hewitt, a senior Treasury minister, represents the growing links between the government’s privatisation policies and the sprawling consultancies of the big accounting monopolies. Before talking office Hewitt was director of research at Andersen Consulting, a firm which was one of the first to spot the growing fortunes of New Labour, and which laid out the fares of the entire Labour front bench – about 100 MPs – to go to Oxford in the summer of 1996 where they were instructed on how to be efficient ministers.</p>
<p>Andersen Consulting, which in 2001 changed its name fashionably and incomprehensibly to Accenture, became one of the new government’s favourite companies, being let off most of the full cost of the delays and disasters in the computer system it had constructed to store National Insurance data. A few months after taking office the government ended a long battle with Andersen Consulting’s sister company, the accountants Arthur Andersen, a battle that dated back more than a decade to the auditing of the accounts of the old crook John DeLorean. Infuriated by what it regarded as the accountants’ deceit, the Tory government banned Arthur Andersen from all government work, but New Labour quickly ended the ban on terms highly favourable to the company.</p>
<p>As for Patricia Hewitt, she leaped up the government hierarchy with increasing agility, reaching her peak in 2000 as minister for e-business with a sterling defence in parliament of the government’s support for the Ilusu dam, a scheme by the Turkish government with the help of big British contractors (including, inevitably, Balfour Beatty) to flood whole tracts of land occupied by Kurds. Ms Hewitt was the only speaker in the Commons debate to support the project.</p>
<p>Other honourable additions to Monbiot’s list should include Peter Hain, the former anti-apartheid and CND campaigner, who became the government’s chief spokesman for economic sanctions against Iraq which have killed thousands of innocent civilians, most of them children; Alan Milburn, former organiser of the Days of Hope left wing bookshop in Newcastle, who as Secretary of State for Health decided quite suddenly that one way to protect the National Health Service was to pay private hospitals for beds and services they provided for NHS patients; Clare Short, the former champion of the dispossessed whose Department for International Development became a stout supporter of the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has abandoned so many millions in the underdeveloped world to hope less poverty; and the former firebrand Robin Cook, foreign secretary, whose ‘ethical’ foreign policy was absolutely indistinguishable from its not so ethical Tory predecessor. The list I could go on forever.</p>
<p>The distinguishing features are a former commitment to a more egalitarian, fairer society, and a current exclusive commitment to the opposite priorities of big business.<br>
<a name="pt15"> </a></p>
<h3>The politics of Polly Prudence</h3>
<p class="fst">As this pamphlet is written, the Murdoch press and even the <strong>Daily Mail</strong> is loudly congratulating Gordon Brown on his election budget. They praise him not as he praises himself, for his alleged commitment to the poor, and to women and children, but for his prudence. Their prevailing fear is that a Labour chancellor might use the powers at his disposal to pump money into the pockets of the people who voted for him. They need not worry. The chancellor was far more concerned to impress his arbiters in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank than with the people with little or no money at his disposal.</p>
<p>He himself admits that his record over his five budgets has been exactly neutral. He has given almost exactly what he has taken away. Not surprisingly, his measures have had little or no effect on the distribution of wealth in Britain. Four years of New Labour in extremely favourable economic circumstances have left the Tory balance between rich and poor almost exactly what it was when the Tories left it. Millions are still plunged in hopeless poverty. The gap between rich and poor has actually widened under New Labour.</p>
<p>One way in which this grim fact has been disguised has been by publicising and heralding marginal changes to the plight of the poor and workers while maintaining discretionary secrecy about the rich. Everyone knows to the last detail what happens to the incomes of workers and the poor. No one knows in anything like the same detail what is happening to the rich. The grotesque advances in the incomes of the rich in the Labour years are literally incalculable. Income tax has come down, capital gains tax has been cut from 33 percent to 30 percent. Gordon Brown has continued his predecessor’s habit of extending tax breaks on share options and other perks for the rich without calculating their overall impact. A survey conducted by stockbrokers JP Morgan and published down the page in the Observer in February 2001 revealed that the UK has more households with an income of more than half a million dollars than any other country in Europe; and in the New Labour years the wealth of those with between half a million and $1 million rose by 8.1 percent, those with between $1 and $5 million by 10.5 percent; and those with over $5 million by 11.8 percent. Unto him that hath has been given, prudently, by New Labour, in great abundance.</p>
<p>Prudence Brown boasts that under his careful stewardship unemployment and inflation have come down. Modestly he ascribes this miracle to his own genius. Yet from the first moment he took office and handed the level of interest rates (previously set by elected government) to unelected bankers who benefit from high interest rates, he in effect admitted what he knows to be true – that elected governments of whatever colour cannot and do not determine what happens to the international capitalist economy unless they embark on the most determined and ruthless economic intervention.</p>
<p>Under capitalism, unemployment, inflation, the rise and fall of booms and slumps, are not brought about by governments, but by economic forces beyond government control. No one knows, for instance, why there was a recession in the so-called Tiger economies of Asia in 1998. Those economies were previously heralded as evidence that capitalism worked better when it was unfettered by trade unions or government regulation. The impact of that illusion is still being felt by the working people and the poor of those economies, notably in Indonesia where one corrupt and dictatorial government has been toppled, and its successor teeters on the brink of revolution on the one side and unspeakable racial violence on the other.</p>
<p>The most predictable feature of any capitalist economy is its unpredictability. Gordon Brown knows that perfectly well, which is probably why he prefers capitalist caution to socialist advance. He also knows that the more his government loosens its democratic grip on the engines of the economy, the less control he will have in the event of any future slump, and the more he consigns the future to a private enterprise chaos out of which he knows no road. Against the background of chaos and unpredictability, his refusal to spend his ‘war chest’ on the people and services who need it most is all the more reprehensible.</p>
<p>This, then, is the central charge against the New Labour government. All through the 20th century the Labour Party sought at least to some extent to use the power conferred on it by the votes of working people to shift the balance of wealth and power in their direction. Often the party failed miserably in that endeavour. Again and again elected governments bowed to what they regarded as superior forces in unelected private capital. They were, in Harold Wilson’s famous phrase, ‘blown off course’ by runs on sterling, investment strikes, judicial arrogance, media blitzes and other forces they did not understand, and did not dare to counter. But at least some effort was made in the right direction. At least some commitment was made to public ownership, to civil liberties, and to the building of strong trade unions. New Labour in the late 1990s and early 21st century has shifted so far to the right mat almost all its policies and achievements have converged with those of its Tory predecessors.</p>
<p>In a book published in September 1998 entitled <strong>The Political Economy of New Labour</strong>, Colin Hay devoted a whole chapter to this convergence. The results, even by 1998, are as follows. On trade union reform, five out of six policies converge (with the other almost completely converged). On employment law, two out of four policies converge, one (access to tribunals for unfair dismissal) is subject to qualified convergence, and only one (the pledge to sign the Maastricht treaty on employment) can be said to differ from that of the Tories. In six major areas of education policy, only one policy (the assisted places scheme) is not shared by the Tories. As for training, all four major policies are the same for both parties. Labour and Tory pension policy is exactly the same. So they are in all seven major areas of economic policy, and in three out of four areas of industrial policy (the fourth is the commitment to regional development agencies which are very similar to the wholly undemocratic Tory development corporations). On the four areas under the heading privatisation, the only (qualified) divergence is on Labour’s windfall tax on the privatised utilities, a tax which, though opposed by the Tories, has been borne by the new utility shareholders with a patient shrug, and on media regulation there is not a sliver of difference between the two parties.</p>
<p>Hay concludes, ‘Labour now accepts that there is simply no alternative to neo-liberalism in an era of heightened capital mobility and financial mobilisation’, and that ‘social democratic parties such as Labour must effectively abandon their social democratic credentials’. This is one answer to those optimistic social democratic commentators who have resigned themselves, often against their better judgement, to voting Labour. Polly Toynbee and David Walker of the <strong>Guardian</strong> have written a whole book to argue (a) that things didn’t get better quickly enough under New Labour, but (b) that another Labour government with a fresh mandate would surely rediscover its radical heritage and improve on every policy front to the satisfaction of the vast majority of its supporters.</p>
<p>One answer to Polly Toynbee is that she, as she recognises, was one of the prominent defectors from Labour to the SDP in 1981, and thus can be held at least partly responsible for all the Tory excesses that followed. But another has more resonance. It is that she and all her fellow ‘Vote Labour for real change’ enthusiasts are not listening to their leaders.</p>
<p>Tony Blair’s speeches about his next term of office carry not a whisper of trade union reform, or of a new era of public ownership and democratic responsibility, or of a widening of the comprehensive element in schools, or of a new assault on the grotesque bonanzas of the rich. Everything Blair says about the future points in exactly the opposite direction, towards more privatisation, more inequality, more chaos on road and rail, less planning, less intervention, and a fiercer attack on what his press officer calls bog-standard comprehensives, bog-standard council housing, bog-standard anything which derives from the traditional cooperation and solidarity of working class people.</p>
<p>The Toynbee-Walker thesis, that a new New Labour government would put the errors, omissions and mistakes of the last one behind it and engage on a new road to reform, is to ignore completely the triumphalism of Labour ministers and their single minded devotion to office whatever the price that has to be paid by the people who vote for them. They have abandoned their social democratic credentials without a word of regret, but with the singular jubilation of bog-standard politicians who have suddenly discovered the full fruits of high office and intend above all else to go on enjoying them.</p>
<p>There is another reaction to all these developments which is even more corrosive than Toynbee’s and Walker’s. This is Colin Hay’s assertion that there is ‘no alternative to neo-liberalism and globalisation’. He appears to argue that because Labour governments have now been corralled by capitalism, and forced to abandon their social democratic credentials, there is now no alternative to their policies. This is the policy of resignation and despair. There is no democratic alternative to Tory policies, argue the New Pessimists, so we had better accept them even when they are carried out by ministers calling themselves Labour. The inevitability of corporate power and corporate control commends itself most sweetly to the directors of corporations. But there is no reason why any of the rest of us should bow before them.</p>
<p>There is plenty of evidence in the past and even now that these policies can be resisted and reversed. Corporations do not always get their own way. The establishment of the British National Health Service, the ending of apartheid in South Africa, the toppling of post-war dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal – all these were accomplished against the corporate stream. Even today, while capitalism boasts its omnipotence, it is stopped in its tracks by mass protests in Seattle, Prague and Nice. Resistance can be as international, as globalised, as capitalism is, and, unlike capitalism, it offers hope and life to the exploited millions. There is nothing mystical or superhuman about capitalist power. It is managed and controlled by human beings and can also be changed by human beings. It can and must be resisted with all the power at our disposal.</p>
<p>On the eve of a general election, the abject performance of New Labour in office has a grim implication for all those who have believed in the past that their future depends at least to some extent on voting and maintaining a Labour government, but now no longer think the same. All such socialists, trade unionists, civil libertarians, environmentalists, National Health Service campaigners, are effectively disfranchised. With Labour’s link to the unions so weak and its commitment to public ownership and civil liberties reduced to the Private Finance Initiative and vouchers for asylum seekers, the choice before the voters is increasingly similar to the choice in the United States of America between the Republican Party (conservative) and the Democratic Party (conservative).</p>
<p>No sane person wants a return to Conservative government, led by Hague and Widdecombe, but more and more voters realise that Hague and Widdecombe have been pushed rightwards by a Labour government far more right wing than any of its predecessors – and they do not want to vote Labour again.<br>
<a name="pt16"> </a></p>
<h3>Your chance to vote socialist</h3>
<p class="fst">Is there an alternative? The answer in at least a third of the country is yes.</p>
<p>The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) is standing candidates in all 72 seats in Scotland. Each of them is committed to renationalising the railways, ending PFI, and restoring the rights and liberties of trade unionists, asylum seekers and the poor. The SSP has to fight not only against New Labour and the Tories, who have almost vanished north of the border, but also against the Scottish National Party. In the past the SNP was not averse to mouthing socialist policies, but instead of developing and expanding such policies, the SNP has backed away from them. No longer do we hear the SNP calling for renationalising the utilities, for a minimum pension of £90 a week, or for 50,000 new council houses. All these pledges have been dropped. The SNP’s pensions policy has even been trumped by Gordon Brown. The SNP has moved relentlessly to the right. Alex Salmond was more right wing than his predecessor, Jim Sillars, and the new leader, John Sweeney, is more right wing than Alex Salmond. The SNP has retreated into the narrow bourgeois nationalism from which it came.</p>
<p>In England and Wales the Socialist Alliance has already selected 80 candidates. The first major elections contested by the Socialist Alliance were for the Greater London Assembly (GLA) in 2000. The Socialist Alliance drew together several organisations and formed a united front proclaiming basic socialist policies. Since the GLA elections, Socialist Alliance and SSP candidates have performed creditably in national and council by-elections, and all of them are determined to present a socialist alternative to a wide spectrum of the general electorate. If you are unhappy with the convergence of Labour policies with Tory ones, if you want to see the railways and other privatised industries renationalised, and the Post Office and London Underground left in public hands, if you want an end to PFI and other schemes for backdoor privatisation, if you want to stop the creeping privatisation of the health service, if you are disgusted by the illiberal drift of New Labour on questions of civil liberties, then you should vote for your socialist candidate. If there is no such candidate in your constituency, find out where there is one in your town or city or county, and go to work on his or her behalf. If there is no Socialist Alliance or SSP candidate in your area, you may prefer to vote for a Labour candidate because he or she is a socialist, or even just to keep the Tories out, or you may want to vote for an independent candidate who represents working class resistance – such as Arthur Scargill in Hartlepool or Health Concern in Wyre Forest. The difference between this election and the last one is that on a nationwide scale there will be candidates in many areas who can represent some of your aspirations.</p>
<p>The Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Alliance offer more than a shift in politics. They offer a new style of campaigning – a clean break with the suffocating careerism that throttles so much reforming zeal. They realise that real change and progress in a class society cannot be brought about just by voting. They realise that the real threat to the power of the rich comes not from voting but from organised resistance from our side. All the real advances of the past century were rooted in the confidence of working people and their willingness not just to vote but to use their industrial power against their employers, or to organise in collective protest, or both.</p>
<p>The great social leap forward after the Second World War was accomplished not just by the enormous Labour vote, but also by the rising confidence among trade unionists of both sexes that had grown far beyond what anyone had imagined before the war. The further leaps forward in the 1970s depended almost entirely on the mighty strength of the organised working class and their willingness to use it.</p>
<p>Ideas and the votes they represent cannot be isolated from the real battles in society. Socialist ideas take root and grow in circumstances where people decide to organise and do something to change their circumstances. In the past few months we have seen the first faint stirrings of a revival of working class revolt. The sustained resistance to mass sackings under PFI at Dudley, the continued refusal of communication workers to accept the privatisation of the Post Office, the massive votes for industrial action in protest against the splitting up and privatisation of London Underground – all these are signs of a new mood of resistance and a new impatience with the clichés of New Labour. They come at least partly as a reaction to great international demonstrations of anti-capitalist protest.</p>
<p>Voting is only one infrequent and often emasculated form of protest. But voting is still a crucial opportunity to make use of our democratic rights. Our votes are important in proportion to their links to the real powers at our disposal. Every vote for the Socialist Alliance, every decent performance of the Socialist Alliance and SSP, will put new heart and spirit into the growing ranks of people prepared to fight.</p>
<p>Socialist candidates are standing not to further their own careers, still less to secure a parliamentary salary (they will only take an average wage if they get elected), but because they are horrified by what has happened to the labour movement and are determined to set it back on track. In a recent pamphlet, <strong>The Captive Party</strong>, the veteran socialist Michael Barratt Brown appealed to socialists to recall the alternative society that socialism promises:</p>
<p class="quoteb">All forms of health and childcare and the care of the disabled would be free. Education would be free at every age right through to lifelong learning. Housing would be available at reasonable rents with access by foot to shops and parks and gardens, and to many workplaces. There would be a wide range of opportunities for work in production and services with appropriate training built in. There would be no discrimination at work on grounds of gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Pensions for the aged and invalid, and payments during sickness and unemployment would be provided on a universal scheme based on contributions related to income. Planning of land use, road and rail transport, industrial location, and the balance of urban and rural activities would be subject to the most open examination and discussion. In all walks of life, at work and at home, in all workplaces and public institutions, management would be subject to agreed forms of consumers’ and workers’ controls. We have the resources for all this. We just have to find how to change the system from one of private greed to that of public gain.</p>
<p class="fst">As a start, just a start, you should vote socialist.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Why You Should
Vote Socialist
(2001)
First published 2001. Bookmarks Publications Ltd, c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3 QE, England.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Louise Christian, Neil Davidson, Shaun Doherty, Lindsey German, Matt Gordon, Charlie Hore, Judith Orr, Allyson Pollack, John Rees and Tommy Sheridan, who read the draft and made invaluable corrections and suggestions, and special thanks to Emma Bircham, who did most of the research.
A glorious May Day
The grim legacy of Thatcher
The great train robbery
The return of the Whigs
Sleazy does it
It takes two to quango
PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy
Schools: ‘B’ is for Blair, Brown ... bog-standard
Fill ’em up: a new policy for prisons
Council houses, pensions: all up for grabs
Universities: only the rich need apply
The great train robbery continued
The last Straw: the attack on civil libertiesT
The fat cats directory
The politics of Polly Prudence
Your chance to vote socialist
A glorious May Day
Legendary and stupefying was the crassness of John Major, but his supreme achievement was to select May Day, the traditional day of celebration for the international labour movement, as the time when the British people, after five more grim years of Tory rule, were finally allowed to go to the polls.
Only the most joyless socialist will pretend that he or she was not moved by what happened that May Day election night. Seat after seat, including some that had been Tory ever since people started voting, fell to Labour, and the final overall Labour majority of 179 was higher by far than had ever before been achieved.
The huge majority was described at once by the new victors as a vindication of New Labour, the ‘project’ set out by Tony Blair, who had been elected party leader in 1994 and, with the help of his faithful spin-doctor Peter Mandelson, ‘refurbished’ the Labour Party with new ‘accessible’ policies and a new constitution which replaced the historic commitment to common ownership with a series of illiterate soundbites no one remembers.
One stark fact emerged from the election results to confound that view. The Liberal Democrats, successors of the old ‘moderate’ Alliance that so comprehensively wrecked Labour in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, won more seats in 1997 than in either of those years, but everywhere the swing to the Liberals was half the swing to Labour. This suggests that the results were not just an expression of fatigue and disgust at the long years of Tory rule – a reaction that could just as easily have favoured the Liberal Democrats. The results were proof of a swing to the left throughout the country.
The swing had very little to do with Blair, Mandelson or New Labour. The opinion polls showed a huge Labour lead – always more than 20 percent – long before Blair became leader. This lead dated back to the Tories’ enforced closure of coal mines in October 1992, and the imposition, in defiance of the Tory election pledge, of VAT on fuel.
The acclaim for the new government was an expression of relief and hope: relief that the long years of reaction shaped by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and continued under John Major in the 1990s were at last at an end; hope that the balance of power and wealth in Britain would be shifted away from the rich to the workers and the poor.
Labour councillors and their supporters assumed that Thatcher’s relentless campaign against local democracy, especially in Labour’s heartlands, would be reversed. Socialists everywhere assumed that the Thatcherite obsession with irresponsible greed and wealth would at last be replaced by a government committed to fairer distribution and more democratic control of the country’s wealth.
As we approach another general election four years later, all those hopes have been dashed to pieces. Slowly at first, but with gathering conviction, the New Labour government has stubbornly enforced the anti-union laws promulgated by Thatcher and Norman Tebbit, continued to dismantle local democracy, and privatised everything in sight.
This pamphlet sets out the record of that drift into reaction, and offers socialists a chance to use their vote to help stop it.
The grim legacy of Thatcher
Union-bashing
Margaret Thatcher’s strategy during all the 11 years she held office was founded on her determination to reduce the trade unions to phantoms of their former selves. She knew that this could not be achieved simply by passing laws, and that the real power of trade unions lies not in their legal strength but in their willingness to use it. She was haunted by the great trade union victories of the 1970s: the miners’ flying pickets which reduced the government of Edward Heath, in whose cabinet she served, to ruins; the legendary militancy of the print unions which was always a threat to what she regarded and still regards as the freedom of the press (but in reality is the freedom of Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black and Lord Rothermere to print what they please); and the shocking insubordination of trade unionists in the docks who greeted the Tory government’s Industrial Relations Act with such defiance that the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress was forced to call a general strike to free them from prison.
The fundamental problem confronting Thatcher and her new ministers was that the unions had grown too strong on the ground. They had to be broken not just by new laws but in open struggle. The Tory campaign against them was drawn up by Thatcher’s adviser, the seasoned class warrior Nicholas Ridley, and leaked to the Economist.
The Ridley plan, as it became known, was based on open class war. It envisaged, first, the provocation of a series of strikes in the nationalised industries where the unions were weakest. Government victory in such strikes would be followed, the plan went on, by mass sackings in the defeated industries. Then, and only then, the plan envisaged long and careful preparation for a battle against the old enemy, the miners. Once the miners were beaten, the focus of battle could shift to the other two main areas of trade union strength, the print workers and the dockers.
The Ridley plan was followed with disciplined precision. Among Thatcher’s first appointments was that of the hard-bitten American banker Ian MacGregor as chairman and chief executive of British Steel. He provoked a strike almost at once, challenging the weak and inexperienced steel trade unions to a war they did not savour, and winning easily. Thousands of steel workers were sacked.
In 1983 MacGregor was made chairman of British Coal. Two years earlier the miners, under their new leader Arthur Scargill, had reacted spontaneously to a chance announcement by the energy secretary David Howell that 50 pits might have to close. An unofficial protest strike ripped through the coalfields and for a moment threatened the entire strategy of the Ridley plan. In some panic, Thatcher announced that there were, after all, no plans to close 50 pits, indeed no plans to close any pits at all. The wretched David Howell was pitchforked into the House of Lords. The miners went back to work, and Thatcher, Ridley and MacGregor went back to their plan.
Three years later, when they were ready, at the end of the 1983–84 winter, they announced a series of arbitrary pit closures. The closures challenged the miners’ union to a fight to the finish. The miners responded with guts and vigour. For a moment at the beginning of the strike it looked as though the railway workers and dockers might join in – a haunting reminder of the ‘Triple Alliance’ that had terrified previous Tory governments in 1921 and 1925. But after some skilful concessions the railway workers and dockers were appeased.
Assisted by new laws passed by the Tories in 1981 and 1983, the government went to court to demand control of the mine workers’ union’s assets. Oil-fired and nuclear power stations were utilised to the full to supplement already large coal stocks, and the rules that had divided the responsibilities of separate county police forces were swept aside. A new national police force was thrown with full force against the miners. Coal production continued in what for the union was the historically weak area of Nottinghamshire.
The Trades Union Congress stood timidly aside, and in March 1985, after nearly a year on strike, the miners were finally broken. They had been broken before, in 1921 and 1926, but this time the Tories were determined that they would never again be humiliated by the miners’ union. It was, ironically, Michael Heseltine, later to become Thatcher’s sworn enemy, who put the finishing touches to her campaign against the miners by effectively closing down the coal mining industry in 1992.
The miners’ defeat was followed by the breaking of the print workers at Wapping by Murdoch in 1986, and wholesale privatisation and union-busting in the docks in 1989. By the time Thatcher left office in 1990, pushed out not so much by unions as by organised resistance to her flagship social policy, the poll tax, the Ridley plan was triumphantly completed. The unions had been broken in a class battle in which the employers and the government had been enormously assisted by seven different laws restricting the right to strike.
As Thatcher proceeded to further election victories in 1983 and 1987, the new Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, dropped Labour’s objections to the Tories’ anti-union laws. He emphasised that Labour would not repeal the laws banning sympathy strikes. He was effectively agreeing with the Tory argument that while people could legally strike for themselves, for their own pay and conditions, they should on no account be allowed to strike for anyone else. Thus the central principle of trade unionism – ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ – was subtly rewritten to read ‘an injury to one is an injury to one’, and Labour agreed.
Kinnock’s argument was that he could not win an election if he clung to old laws allowing sympathy strikes. He was therefore prepared, as on the issue of unilateral British nuclear disarmament, to jettison a vital policy in exchange for office, which anyway he never achieved.
Privatisation
Thatcher’s strategy did not stop at emasculating the trade unions. Her theory was that strong trade unionism was the other side of the coin to public ownership. Breaking the unions was the first essential stage in her and her successors’ campaign to wrest control of industry and services from public hands, and give them back to capitalists and speculators. Thus the humiliation of the unions in steel and coal was followed by the privatisation of both industries. British Telecom was privatised in three instalments from 1984 to 1986; Cable and Wireless in 1985; British Gas in three instalments from 1986 to 1988; British Airways and the British Airports Authority in 1987; British Steel in 1988; the publicly-owned water companies in England and Wales in 1988–90; and electricity in 1990–91. By 1990, the end of the Thatcher decade, after a slow and nervous start, she and her ministers had succeeded in privatising pretty well all the major industries brought into public ownership by successive Labour governments from 1945 to 1979.
All these privatisations were vigorously opposed by the Labour Party in opposition. This opposition was based on principles dating back to the formation of the Labour Party at the start of the century. The reasoning behind it was admirably summarised in a composite motion to the Labour Party conference in the year of the miners’ strike, 1984. The motion was proposed by Moss Evans, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. The Tories’ privatisation policies, he argued, were designed: (a) to undermine wages, jobs and union organisation; (b) to take the benefits of public services and assets away from democratic control and into the hands of profiteers and speculators; and (c) to dismantle the welfare state by reducing public services to a minimum which totally failed to meet the needs and aspirations of those depending on them.
In his speech Moss Evans referred to the Ridley plan, and predicted with devastating accuracy that the breaking of the trade unions would be followed, if the Tories got their way, by a dismantling of the entire network of public ownership set up by Labour. He showed how, even as early as 1984, many of his predictions were being realised.
Huge speculative gains had been made on the stock exchange on the early privatisations. Far more grotesque windfalls were to follow with the massive privatisations of the utilities. A prime example was electricity, nationalised by the Labour government after the war and run with some efficiency ever since.
The privatisation of electricity was greeted with howls of fury from the young opposition energy spokesman, Tony Blair. At the Labour Party conference in 1989 Blair brought the delegates cheering to their feet with a furious summary of the case against the Tory plans:
At the outset we said that privatisation would mean higher prices, and it has done. We warned that the government would introduce a special nuclear tax for private nuclear power, and it has. We said that the government would be forced to admit there was no choice for consumers, and now they have. Born out of dogma, reared on deceit, this privatisation is now exposed for what it is and always has been, private prejudice masquerading as public policy. Let us send this message to the government. We do not want it postponed, we do not want it delayed, we do not want it put off – we want it abandoned here, now and forever.
Similar arguments were deployed by Labour leaders as they opposed all the other privatisations of that grim decade. The nightmares expressed by Labour politicians all became true.
The bureaucrats who had run the public industries on substantial but not exorbitant salaries suddenly took off into the orbit of the mega-rich. Iain Vallance, for instance, who had helped to run the Post Office on a reasonable salary suddenly found himself running British Telecom on £226,000 a year. He went from making 11 times the average salary of a BT worker in 1987 to making 38 times the average salary in 1990. By 1996 his salary was over £700,000, and it has grown considerably since. There was no recognisable increase in the efficiency or the performance of British Telecom following privatisation. The chief changes were that the unions were weakened, thousands of workers sacked and the new executives enrolled in the ranks of millionaires.
’Share options’ were introduced by the Tories to sweeten the new executives’ perks. When water was privatised a river of unearned slush flowed into the pockets of the new water bosses, most of whom were the same people who had run the old state industries. The monopolies remained monopolies, with no difference in the product as far as the consumers were concerned, but huge differences in the ‘remuneration’ which the new bosses heaped upon themselves, and in the strength and influence of the trade unions in their ability to protect jobs.
In every case a huge area of influence and power that had been, however distantly, accountable to elected politicians was transferred to wholly irresponsible boardrooms. The new utilities stopped being public utilities and became private commodities to be bought and sold, re-bought and re-sold in the international marketplace. The balance of democracy in Britain was tilted heavily away from the people and towards the new monopolists.
To their horror, the Labour politicians noticed that the craze for privatisation was extending to the very sanctuaries of public service of which Labour was most proud. There were cries from Tory ideologues to introduce fees for tuition in universities and colleges, and for schools to ‘opt out’ of local education authorities. Whole new organisations were set up by the Tories to campaign for state schools to ‘opt out’. These Tory plans were bitterly opposed by Labour.
Jack Straw, spokesman on education, told the Labour conference in 1991, ‘Opting out and privatisation of education will be stopped dead by a Labour government.’ He was utterly opposed, he said, to tuition fees for students. He told conference in 1989:
This government says that it wants an expansion of higher education, but by the introduction of student loans and the end of free tuition will make entry into higher education dependent more than ever on the size of a parent’s bank balance. It is the private schools today – it will be the private universities tomorrow.
Straw was a key backer of Blair for the Labour leadership in 1994, and was rewarded with the post of shadow home secretary. In that position he discovered a new Tory horror – the privatisation of prisons. This outrage, he argued, not only offended against efficiency as with the industrial privatisations. It was, he told the Prison Officers Association as late as 1996, an offence against morality as well. Prison privatisation was, he said, ‘wholly wrong in principle’.
Even worse for the Labour leaders was the suggestion that the Tories were threatening the inner sanctum of Labour’s post-war achievements, the National Health Service. The Tories, warned Labour spokesman Robin Cook in 1990, ‘are taking us down the road to the NHS run as a commercial business for commercial motives’.
The great train robbery
By 1990, the year Thatcher was finally pushed out by the irreversible popular tide against her flagship poll tax, the Tory government had achieved most of her central aim – a fundamental shift of wealth and power towards the rich. On the industrial front, however, there remained one area where a combination of workers and consumers had obstinately beaten off all attempts at privatisation – the railways.
In 1989 Cecil Parkinson, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite minister, excited an otherwise dispirited Tory party conference with a proposal to privatise the railways. The proposal was taken up eagerly by his successor as minister of transport, John Mac-Gregor, who was advised by Sir Christopher Foster, a partner of the top accountants Coopers & Lybrand. Sir Christopher set his accounting genius to devising a scheme for splitting up the railways into several separate pockets, each of which could be made profitable provided the public subsidy continued. So brilliant was Sir Christopher’s advice that on the very day the railways were privatised in 1995 he became deputy chairman of Railtrack, the private company controlling the network.
Though the ideology of rail privatisation had delighted the Tory party conference, the new scheme proved even less popular with the public than any of the previous privatisations. By 1996 only 11 percent of the British people (and only a minority of Tories) supported it.
The whole scheme was rottenly devised and riddled with contradictions. A strong attack from Labour, coupled with an unequivocal assurance that a new Labour government would instantly renationalise the railways without a penny of speculative gain to the new owners, would have killed off the whole crazy enterprise before it started.
Leading Labour politicians quickly proved that they understood the importance of what they said about rail privatisation, and were not afraid to say it. As early as 1993, John Prescott, Labour’s shadow transport minister, did not mince his words to the party conference. He boomed:
Let me make it crystal clear that any privatisation of the railway system that does take place will, on the arrival of a Labour government, be quickly and effectively dealt with ... and be returned to public ownership.
By the following year (1994) it was time for crystal clarity once more – this time from the new shadow transport minister, Frank Dobson:
Let me give this pledge not just to this conference but to the people of Britain – the next Labour government will bring the railway system back into public ownership.
Another member of the crystal clear faction was Michael Meacher, shadow transport secretary in 1995. He understood the real problem – that there were private investors lining up to squeeze some profit out of the railways. He issued the clearest possible warning to such investors:
The railways depend on public subsidies to the tune of £1.8 billion a year. There is no guarantee that the subsidy will continue.
If the railways were privatised, he asked, could they depend on government subsidy, and what profit could they make if that subsidy was not forthcoming?
Such statements worried the City vultures lining up for a feast on the railways. When the three rail operating stock companies (roscos) came up for sale in January 1996, no big investor showed any interest, and the roscos were flogged off at bargain basement prices. The combination of half-baked Tory plans for privatisation and the clearest possible pledges that a new Labour government would renationalise the railways had put the privatisers off.
Then, sometime in the first few months of 1996, the whole Labour campaign collapsed. Two new shadow transport ministers, Clare Short and Andrew Smith, backed away from the ‘crystal clear’ pledges of their predecessors. By the time the conference came round again in 1996, there were no further promises to renationalise the railways – only a few bromide sentences about the need for a fully integrated railway. Confidence flowed back into the privatisers, and the roscos were sold on again at enormous profit for the former bureaucrats who had paid so little for them in the first place. One such, Sandy Anderson, made a personal profit of £38 million.
Brian Souter, whose company Stagecoach made a fortune from the privatisation of buses and railways, told a House of Commons committee that in 1995 no one would touch railway privatisation ‘with a bargepole’. It was not until Labour fudged the issue that it suddenly seemed possible that a Labour government would renege on its pledges to renationalise, and the big boys with the big wallets started to creep out of the cupboard.
When the party manifestos were published before the 1997 election many people noticed that all Labour’s past renationalisation pledges were left out. Even the pledge to bring the railways back into public ownership had been shelved. Even the ringing declaration of shadow transport minister Andrew Smith at the 1996 conference, replying to a Tory threat to privatise air traffic control – ‘our air is not for sale’ – did not develop into a manifesto commitment.
On the other hand, there were no plans in Labour’s manifesto to privatise anything, no specific promises not to nationalise or municipalise. Many optimists hoped that Labour politicians had shelved their real aspirations for public ownership just for the election period. There was a strong feeling that Labour, once elected, would rediscover its century-long commitment to public ownership and public control, and would reassert both. Labour was elected in a landslide victory in 1997, and what happened?
The return of the Whigs
How the Liberals, with 17 percent of the vote, got into government
The first thing that happened was a curious shift of power and influence at the heart of the new Labour government – in 10 Downing Street. Two new advisers were appointed to prime minister Blair – Roger Liddle on defence and Europe, and Derek Scott on economics. Both had been founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), whose leaders had split from the Labour Party in 1981 and had run against the Labour Party in various elections since until the party’s absorption into the Liberal Democrats, formerly the Liberal Party from which Labour broke away on its formation in 1900.
Scott had stood against Labour in Swindon in 1983 and 1987, splitting the vote and letting in a Tory. Liddle had also been a founder member of the SDP and had been an SDP candidate, standing against Labour in Lambeth in 1983 and in the Fulham by-election in 1986. The SDP, with its new allies the Liberals, achieved 26 percent of the poll in the 1983 election, only 2 percent less than Labour. It could fairly be said that the formation of the SDP and its standing against Labour in 1983 and 1987 was the main electoral reason for Thatcher’s landslide victories in both elections.
The key policies put forward by the SDP differed only marginally from those of the Liberal Party. The SDP was for instance 100 percent opposed to more public ownership in any sector, and sought an accommodation with the rich and business executives, who welcomed them with open arms.
One of Liddle’s closest companions who stayed in the Labour Party was Peter Mandelson, a former television producer who had been rapidly promoted by Neil Kinnock to be campaigns director for the Labour Party for the 1992 election. Before Liddle split with Labour to form the SDP, Mandelson and Liddle had been Labour councillors at Lambeth in south London. In 1994 the two men co-authored an embarrassing hagiography of Tony Blair entitled The Blair Revolution. On close inspection, the policies and programme outlined by the book bore a striking resemblance to the not very challenging policies and programme of the defunct SDP.
Mandelson employed a young researcher called Derek Draper, who had been a director of a lobbying organisation called Prima Europe/GPC Market Access. The chairman of Prima Europe was Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, a former SDP founder member who later joined the Liberal Democrats. His predecessor as Prima Europe chairman was Lord Holme, a Liberal Democrat peer.
Further links between this magic circle and the SDP could be found in the home of Matthew Oakeshott, a founder member of the SDP who lived next door to Roger Liddle and was chairman of the ‘blind trust’ which invested Liddle’s shareholding in Prima Europe. In 1998, a year after the Blair government took office, another adviser took up residence in Downing Street. He was a journalist called Andrew Adonis – a former candidate for the Liberal Democrats. A founder director of Prima Europe was Lord Taverne of Pimlico, a former Labour minister who after leaving the party knocked Labour out of its seat in the Lincoln by-election in 1973. As for Prima Europe, the firm of lobbyists at the centre of this cabal, its clients included Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, Abbey National, British Nuclear Fuels, Rio Tinto Zinc, and the privatised energy companies Powergen and British Gas.
Sleazy does it
Almost as soon as it took office the New Labour government, which prided itself on its freedom from sleaze, was caught up in sleaze. The government decided to renege on its manifesto commitment to ban tobacco advertisements, and allowed tobacco ads in their most lucrative area – on Formula One racing cars. This decision was promptly linked to a £1 million donation to the Labour Party by an established Tory, Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One racing billionaire. In some panic, Blair ordered the party to give Ecclestone back his million and explained to a sceptical public that he, Blair, was, after all, ‘a straight guy’.
Exactly how straight became a little clearer in the ‘cash for access’ scandal of 1998. Amazed by the new lobbyists who swarmed like locusts over the New Labour government and its ministers, the Observer journalist Gregory Palast interviewed Roger Liddle and Derek Draper. Liddle was quoted as saying:
... there is a circle and Derek is part of the circle. Anyone who says he isn’t is an enemy. Just tell me who you want to meet, and Derek and I will make the call for you.
Draper was even more direct:
There are 17 people in this country who count, and to say that I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century.
This novel approach to power and politics was based on the suggestion that rich clients using New Labour lobbyists could get close to New Labour ministers. Draper was sacked by Mandelson when this ‘cash for access’ scandal broke.
Mandelson himself was sacked from the cabinet at the end of 1998 when it was revealed that he had, without declaring it, borrowed some £400,000 from his cabinet colleague the Paymaster General, Geoffrey Robinson, to help buy himself a suitable house in fashionable Notting Hill. Geoffrey Robinson, whose only crime at the time seemed to have been that he lent Mandelson the money, was sacked too, never to return. But Mandelson, who got the loan, was taken back into the cabinet in 1999, only to be sacked again in February 2001 for intervening on behalf of the Indian billionaire Hinduja family.
The Hindujas, despite their involvement in a massive Indian arms scandal, applied for and got British passports in record time. Mandelson was ‘cleared’ of impropriety by an investigation, though there was no doubt that either he or his office asked questions about passports for the Hindujas.
As this pamphlet is written, yet another sleaze scandal breaks over Downing Street, this time about questions from leading Downing Street officials, including Blair’s chief of staff, about planning permission for an Oxford business school financed by the millionaire speculator Wafic Said. The same Said had hit the headlines all through the 1980s for his role in the brokering of the Al Yamamah arms deal between the British and Saudi Arabian governments – the biggest arms deal ever negotiated in the whole history of the world. Perhaps because of his role in that deal, Wafic Said became a close confidant of Margaret Thatcher and her sleazy son, Mark. The government changed its name but not its allies in big business. Wafic Said’s plans in Oxford had the eager support of Blair’s chief of staff, whose brother Charles had been a top aide to Margaret Thatcher.
Commenting on all these developments, and on the influence of so many millionaires on the highest echelons of the New Labour government, former Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley referred to the way in which Blair, Mandelson and Co had been systematically ‘dazzled’ by people of vast wealth.
This was not itself a new phenomenon for a Labour government. Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour leader, was almost permanently clinched in what Beatrice Webb called ‘the aristocratic embrace’. He took shares and a posh car from a biscuit king in exchange for a baronetcy. Harold Wilson, Labour leader in the 1960s and 1970s, was entranced by a new breed of businessmen who specialised in import/export deals with dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
But neither MacDonald’s aristocratic embrace nor Wilson’s close relationship with entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, nor even James Callaghan’s relationship with the Welsh financier Julian Hodge, could rival the sheer scale with which the New Labour government under Blair flung itself at the feet of any billionaire who asked its ministers to a party, or attended one of the Labour Party’s interminable fundraising dinners. Blair’s close friend Mandelson played a crucial part in delivering the leadership of the New Labour government into the hands of his business friends – and its former electoral enemies in the SDP and Liberal Democrats.
It takes two to quango
New Labour’s hankering for the plaudits of the rich swept through all ranks of the new government. On the afternoon after polling day in May 1997 an exhausted John Prescott, confirmed as the new deputy prime minister and head of one of the biggest departments of state ever constituted, met the board members of BAA, the privatised monopoly that runs several British airports. BAA wanted an early commitment that the new government was friendly to its bid to build a fifth terminal at Heathrow airport. A public inquiry was still sitting, but BAA wanted to make its peace with the new administration. Prescott, who pretended to represent the old traditions of Labour, was pleased and proud to greet such important businessmen. He was the first of the new ministers to experience the advantages of the new partnership with big business that the new government was so anxious to promote.
Very soon the nature of that partnership began to take shape. Prescott himself became a keen supporter of the government’s plans to privatise air traffic control. Andrew Smith’s proud declaration – ‘our air is not for sale’ – was subtly changed to ‘our air is for sale’. And Andrew Smith became chief secretary at Gordon Brown’s Treasury.
At the last Labour Party conference before the election Gordon Brown had attacked ‘the quangocracy which threatens democracy’ and ‘the quango state’. ‘Quango’ stands for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation. In the bad old days of Tory government these cliques were made up of the great, the good and above all the rich. They were appointed by the Tories to take charge of key sections of society, separate from and unaccountable to parliament or elected local authorities.
The most blatant examples of the Tory quangos were the development corporations set up by the Tories in 14 areas with the ostensible aim of improving the standard of life in the inner cities. These new development corporations were packed with local businessmen, lawyers and accountants, with a couple of elected councillors ‘co-opted’ to add a democratic veneer. The new corporations swiped all planning powers from the elected local authorities in vast tracts of turban territory. They infuriated the more responsible Labour councillors and achieved next to nothing. They were opposed by Labour and finally collapsed in ignominy and a strong stink of corruption.
No sooner did the New Labour ministers take office, however, than they started to appoint a new set of ‘taskforces’ even more wide-ranging and unaccountable than the Tory quangos. In the first few months of the New Labour government nearly 300 of these quangos had been set up to cover almost every aspect of national life. The degree of ‘partnership’ involved in the new quangos could be detected in the background of the 3,013 people who made them up, and who were catalogued in a booklet produced by Democratic Audit. Only 73 (2 percent) of these new quangocrats were trade unionists. More than a third (1,107) were from private business or trade associations. Gordon Brown’s Treasury set up the most exclusive of the task-forces, burrowing deep in the warrens of the City of London for appropriate bankers and investment analysts to supervise the new dawn.
PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy
Hospitals
Geoffrey Robinson, Paymaster General in the new government, had an office in Gordon Brown’s Treasury from which he proclaimed the Tory idea for public-private partnership known as PFI. Robinson brought in Malcolm Bates from the big construction company BICC to mastermind the government’s new plans for PFI. Bates was well used to the job – he had done the same thing under the Tories. PFI rapidly became the lynchpin of all the government’s construction policies. The theory was simple, if crude. Private business provided funds for the project up front, and the government paid back the money at substantial rates of interest over 30 years.
The first training ground for PFI was the National Health Service. Labour in opposition was not at all keen on PFI in the NHS. In 1996, when she spoke from the Labour front bench, Harriet Harman was horrified by the Tories’ obsession with PFI. ‘When the private sector is building, owning, managing and running a hospital,’ she declared, ‘that hospital has been privatised.’ Labour backbenchers cheered her attacks on creeping privatisation, but almost as soon as Harriet Harman became Secretary of State for Social Security, the new government rushed through the NHS (Private Finance) Act 1997, removing at a stroke all the barriers to the Private Finance Initiative in the NHS. Very soon a number of hospitals started to be built under PFI in circumstances exactly fitting Harriet Harman’s definition of hospital privatisation.
A typical example was the plan to close down the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and associated lucrative premises in the middle of Edinburgh, and replace them with a new hospital built by a private enterprise consortium on the outskirts the city. The area got a new hospital, the consortium got the business, but the people of Edinburgh got a hospital with 300 fewer beds than originally planned and substantial cuts in staff.
Any scepticism about these new schemes was initially drowned in popular relief and pleasure that, at last, a new hospital was being built. But detailed investigations of the schemes exposed their fatal flaw – a yawning gap between the cost of the new PFI hospital and the cost of a similar hospital built under the old scheme of straight public funding. The extra cost of borrowing on the open market plus the costs of dividends and bank charges, and clauses in the contracts which gave the consortia the right to vary the prices – all built up to a final cost of the hospital project far higher than the equivalent cost under the old public enterprise scheme. These extra costs had to be met by raiding other budgets in the NHS – by cutting beds or staff or both.
In papers written for the British Medical Journal as early as 1999, Professor Allyson Pollock and her team at the School of Public Policy at University College London investigated the ‘first wave’ of 14 hospitals built under PFI. They found, on average, a 30 percent reduction in beds and a 25–30 percent reduction in staff. All these cuts and sackings were caused by the shortfall in the PFI schemes when compared with the old public enterprise system. Some of the figures were quite astonishing. The new University College Hospital in London for instance would have cost £140 million under the old scheme. By July 2000 when the new scheme was signed, the cost had escalated to £430 million.
In Durham in the north east of England, the new Dryburn Hospital, built by a consortium headed inevitably by Balfour Beatty, was subjected to the PFI process. What was needed to replace the crumbling NHS in the area was a new hospital of 750 beds. PFI meant that the only way to make the new hospital ‘affordable’ to Balfour Beatty and Co was to cut the number of beds to 458, and staff by 25 percent. In Chepstow in Wales, if the surplus land round the new PFI hospital was sold, it would have provided 80 percent of the money for the new hospital without having to pay anything to the construction consortium which got the contract. These new hospital projects were handed over to PFI, even though in both cases the local Labour MPs had been bitter opponents of the original Tory PFI proposals. In Carlisle a new PFI hospital could only be built by cutting beds and staff to such a degree that the local hospital doctors denounced it as reverting to ‘Third World standards’. Much of the land owned by the NHS hospital was used for building a private hospital.
When the facts started to emerge about the costs and the cuts implied in the new schemes, public resentment grew. When a PFI plan to build a hospital at Worcester led to the closing of all acute services at Kidderminster Hospital, a local revolt led to the formation of a new organisation called Health Concern. By the beginning of 2001 Health Concern had 19 councillors at Wyre Forest – by far the biggest party in the area. When Tony Blair oozed up to Worcester to fraternise with the waterlogged population during the winter floods of January 2001, he was astonished to be surrounded and heckled by pensioners denouncing PFI.
As early as July 1999 Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote a leading article entitled PFI: Perfidious Financial Idiocy. This editorial, which has effectively become British Medical Association policy ever since, argued that the increased costs of PFI for hospitals drives down the number of beds and cuts clinical services in other schemes. In Hereford, for instance, a proposal for a PFI hospital with 351 beds had to lose 100 beds before it became ‘viable’ (profitable) for the contracting company.
There were other even more serious problems: ‘Private Finance Initiatives may inevitably lead to an increase in the private sector and user charges, providing one way for the NHS to shrink to a rump service for the poor.’ Smith went on:
A second factor that infuriates many of those working within the NHS is the complete absence of any evidence in favour of the Private Finance Initiative. In fact all the evidence we have suggests it is a very bad idea.
Richard Smith’s warning about the gradual privatisation of the NHS seemed at first to be a trifle extreme. It conflicted, for instance, with the constant attacks by Blair and his health secretary Alan Milburn on Tory health policies as ‘creeping privatisation’. At a conference in 2001 Chancellor Gordon Brown told the general secretary of the TUC that under the next Labour government ‘only the NHS and the police’ would escape Labour’s plans for privatisation. A closer look at recent government initiatives on health suggest that Brown’s prognosis may have been optimistic, and that health too is in line for creeping privatisation under New Labour.
In November 2000 Professor Allyson Pollock of the University College London School of Public Policy and David Price of the University of Northumbria wrote a paper entitled How the World Trade Organisation Threatens Public Healthcare Services – Where Does New Labour Stand? The article examined the wording of the recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) treaty, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The treaty, the article suggests, ‘provides the WTO with crucial powers to promote what it calls ‘pro-competitive domestic policies’. The article traced what these policies had meant in India and sub-Saharan Africa, where ‘access care has suffered and infectious disease control programmes have been disrupted’. In Latin America, ‘privatised services have proved lucrative business propositions and attracted healthier patients, while sicker patients have gravitated to a reduced public sector’. In Brazil, such privatisation has led to an expanded private sector with 120,000 doctors, while the public sector which serves three quarters of the population has only 70,000 doctors.
What about Britain, the land of the universal health service, which prides itself on treating people according to their health, not their wallets? The authors note that the health secretary, Alan Milburn, faced with a shortfall of beds in the acute hospital sector under PFI, ‘has chosen not a full restoration of public provision or abandonment of PFI but a new concordat with the private hospital sector to make up the shortfall’. Milburn explains that spending NHS money on using up spare capacity in private hospitals is ‘common sense’.
It is certainly common sense to Norwich Union and the other big private healthcare providers whose health service cannot make as big a profit without the huge injection of public funds Milburn has provided. It is the opposite of common sense to those who believe that the more profitable private health becomes, the more damage is done to the principle and practice of a National Health Service. The plain fact is that under New Labour 4,000 NHS hospital beds have been lost every year in the PFI process, and ‘cost overruns’ in PFI projects have been three times as high as they were in the old NHS hospital projects.
This creeping privatisation of the NHS got another boost from Blair and Milburn in the crucial area of long term personal care. Soon after taking office the government set up a Royal Commission, which recommended to ministers’ horror that long term personal care should, in the best tradition of the NHS, be ‘free at the point of delivery’. The government rejected this recommendation, preferring the minority report signed by journalist David Lipsey, and Joel Joffe, founder of Allied Dunbar, a health insurance firm. Both men are now in the House of Lords. In the last session of the 2000–01 parliament the government introduced a Health and Social Care Bill. Clause 4 of the bill, entitled ‘Public-Private Partnerships’, allows the secretary of state to set up private companies ‘to provide facilities or services’. The clause opens the door to huge new areas of privatised healthcare, and flies in the face of the principles of the NHS laid down more than 50 years ago by Lord Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan.
Schools; ‘B’ is for Blair, Brown ...
... Blunkett, Byers and bog-standard
What’s bad for the National Health Service is probably bad for everything else, and at the end of four years in office the New Labour government is committed to PFI in every area of government construction. It is almost impossible for government, local or central, to build a shed in a park nowadays without attracting the cloying attention of PFI enthusiasts. If there is indeed no evidence that any member of the public benefits from any of these schemes, why does the government proceed with them? One answer has come from Carillion, formerly Tarmac, which revealed in January 2001 that it was boosting the strength of its Private Finance Initiative team as part of efforts to reduce its dependence ‘on low-margin competitive contracting’. In plain English this meant that Carillion could make more profit more quickly from PFI than from ordinary contracts in the commercial market.
What about education, always rated so highly by Blair and his ministers? Great has been the hype for the government’s alleged triumphs in education, but most of it was exposed by a brilliant piece of investigative journalism by the Guardian’s Nick Davies in March 2000. He wrote:
The truth is that for his first two years in power Mr Blunkett [Labour’s education secretary] actually invested less in education than the Tories had, and by the end of this parliament he will still be only marginally ahead of the Tory level of spending, a level which he used to describe as ‘miserable’.
The sum of Blunkett’s achievement is that he has managed, on an annual average while he has been secretary of state, to spend 4.6 percent of gross domestic product on education, compared to the shocking average under the Tories – 5 percent. The chief reason for these figures was the government’s determination to stick to the Tories’ spending limits for 1997 and 1998.
Anyone with kids at state schools (and of course the kids themselves) can see the result – a tremendous increase in pressure and red tape for teachers, and a higher level of boredom for the children. The grand plans announced by Jack Straw for a ‘new partnership with teachers’ were effectively torn up when Blair and Blunkett agreed to reappoint for a fresh term of office as chief inspector of schools the man most hated by teachers in the whole history of state education.
Chris Woodhead was brought in by the Tory government to attack elected local authority education committees and to denounce teachers. When reappointed by New Labour, he continued with his former priorities as though nothing had happened. Votes of no confidence in him were passed regularly at all teachers’ union conferences, even those of headteachers. Doctrinaire and disciplinarian inspections intimidated teachers and cowed them.
When Blunkett and Blair announced that they intended to make it a criminal offence for a teacher to have sex with his or her pupils, they were embarrassed to discover that their own chief inspector of schools had engaged in a sexual affair with one of his pupils while he was teaching her at a school in Bristol. So loyal were Blair and Blunkett to Woodhead that they publicly defended him even when it became clear that his defence – that the affair had started only after the pupil had left school – was economical with the truth.
Finally, before even his term of office was complete, Woodhead resigned from his post and joined the Daily Telegraph, where his Tory anti-teacher prejudices could by fully arrayed, and where he could for a fee continue to bite the hands of the New Labour leaders who had reappointed him.
Meanwhile, what remedy did Blunkett and his minister of schools Estelle Morris have for the failing state school system? The chief problem, they discovered, was that it was a state system controlled by elected authorities. So with the help of Woodhead, who was never happier than when he was denouncing elected education authorities, they developed a scheme in which education would be taken out of the control of elected councillors and handed over to their blessed private enterprise. Slowly at first but with gathering speed, the two Tory solutions so comprehensively denounced by Labour politicians in opposition – privatisation and selection – were ushered in, with inevitably catastrophic results. The ritual would be as follows. Ofsted under Woodhead would denounce a school or an authority. The school or the authority would be written off as ‘failing’, and a new privatised authority would be introduced to save the children.
In Southwark in south London the new authority will be supervised by Andrew Turner, a Tory candidate previously employed by the Tory party to campaign for the opting out of state schools – a policy savaged at the time by all the New Labour leaders, including Tony Blair. In Leeds the new privatised education authority will employ the services of Capita, a private company that has already made millions for its shareholders by taking over failed public services and continuing to fail with them. In Haringey, north London, schools minister Estelle Morris announced a ‘radical new venture’ to introduce the profit motive into state education. The bids from the three companies pitching for the contract, including Group 4, which had become a joke for its failure to keep control of prisoners, were all presented by former or present local authority education chiefs. The bids were all so hopelessly incompetent that they were rejected.
But by now ministers are so committed to privatisation in education they cannot, even if they want to, concentrate their attention on improving the service provided by government.
They are steeped so far in blood that going back is worse than going on. So they must grovel still deeper for what goes on eluding them – the private profit solution to public education.
In Glasgow, a city with a proud tradition of public education, the Labour-controlled authority has privatised the services of all its 29 secondary schools in a complicated lease-back arrangement which means public council spending over 30 years of £1.2 billion so that a private consortium can own and control those schools for all that time in exchange for its own investment of £420 million. Even then it is still not clear who will own the schools.
Another brilliant idea for dealing with what ministers regard as ‘failing’ schools (which usually means that most of the children are poor or black or both) was the notion of the ‘fresh start’. Schools failed by Ofsted were closed down altogether, their staff sacked, new headteachers and staff appointed, and the whole process started over again. Despite heavy public spending, and much media hype, these fresh starts proved in almost every case to be a dismal failure. This is because most of the children in the schools were still poor, and their exam results did not improve just because the headmaster changed and the staff were sacked.
At the last Labour Party conference before the 1997 election David Blunkett, rattled by a passionate defence of comprehensive education from Roy Hattersley and others, asked the conference to read his lips and promised that during the next Labour government there would be ‘no selection by examination or by interview’. This pledge has become a standing joke in schools, as selection either by exam or by interview, or usually by some less obvious but no less pernicious method, has become the norm.
This process was blessed by prime minister Blair in his last major speech on education, in which he proposed that 46 percent of schools should be turned into ‘specialist’ schools. He did not explain what would happen to the remaining 54 percent, nor what the difference was between the old barbaric system in which children were divided up at the age of 11, with the cleverer children sent to grammar schools and the less clever herded into secondary moderns. This was the system that Labour replaced with comprehensive schools.
Teachers reading Blair’s remarks started to think that Labour must be planning to put an end to comprehensive schools altogether and divide them up, half and half, between ‘specialist’ and ‘non-specialist’ schools. Then, as if to justify their fears, Blair’s press secretary Alistair Campbell delicately explained what the new proposals meant – ’no more bog-standard comprehensives’.
Fill ’em up: a new policy for prisons
The same obsession with dismantling public accountability has seeped into every area of government policy. Home secretary Jack Straw became so concerned about the warning from shadow home secretary Jack Straw – that prison privatisation was immoral – that he set about privatising prisons almost as soon as he took office. Within days he had sanctioned two new private finance prison deals.
In the last four years the number of private-run adult and young offenders prisons has doubled. This trend looks set to continue, with the government now considering semi-privatisation of prisons along the lines of the extremely unpopular Treasury plans for the London Underground. This would involve the facilities and buildings being taken over by the private sector and split from the custodial operations – a variation on the model of division of ownership and responsibility which has proven so disastrous for the railways.
Under New Labour the number of people in prison rose from 60,000 in 1997 to 66,000 in 2001. Official statistics show that more people are imprisoned in England and Wales per head of the population than in Sudan, Saudi Arabia or China, and across Western Europe only Portugal has a greater proportion of its population behind bars.
’Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ had been the most quoted slogan of New Labour in opposition. In office, the New Labour ministers could remember only the first three words. They were tough on crime all right. The prisons were accurately described by the director of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, as ‘hellholes’. Some 36 jails in the UK have more than 100 inmates ‘doubled-up’ sharing cells.
Sir David Ramsbotham, a retired general brought in by the Tories as chief inspector of prisons to bend the stick away from his progressive predecessor, was almost physically sick at the conditions of the men and women confined to the prisons he inspected. He told the Guardian in February of this year that ‘20,000 inmates – women, boys, elderly, mentally ill, petty offenders – should never have been sent to jail.’ The more stridently his reports resorted to strong language to express his disgust, the more they were ignored by New Labour ministers in the Home Office.
Paul Boateng, the new prisons minister, had told his constituents when they returned him for the first time by a small majority in 1987, ‘Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto.’ Few who heard this rhetoric can have imagined that the smooth young radical would one day, as prisons minister, seek to refashion British prisons along lines laid down in Soweto. Boateng rapidly became a regular spokesman for every reactionary initiative from the Home Office. The nadir was reached under his regime when an Asian boy, Zahid Mubarek, on remand in Feltham young offenders centre, where some 600 prisoners get no education at all, was forced to share a cell with a psychotic racist thug who battered him to death.
Council houses, pensions
All up for grabs
The very core of Labour’s historic municipal advance – the public ownership and control of council housing – has been systematically attacked by New Labour. The government’s own spending plans for housing depend on the ‘transfer’ (sell-off) of 200,000 council homes a year. Since the government came to office in 1997 no less than 342,000 council homes have been sold off to organisations that are not elected, and that find it much easier to evict tenants. This policy is pursued by Labour councils with increasing vigour despite that fact that ballot after ballot of the tenants affected shows deep hostility to privatisation. In many cases, especially in London, the sell-offs have been backed and subsidised by large property companies whose intention is to evict working class families from their council homes and rebuild in their place homes fit for City parasites who have second homes in the country.
Pensions is another issue where the New Labour ministers have abandoned their previous commitments to old people in preference for their love affair with big insurance companies. In 1986, when Thatcher and her henchmen Norman Fowler and John Major started privatising pensions by using tax concessions to bribe people in perfectly workable pension schemes to take out private pensions, the Labour front bench, led by Margaret Beckett, exploded in rage. Year after year, Labour’s pensions spokespeople clung courageously to SERPS, the relatively decent pensions schemes relating pensions to earning established by Barbara Castle, a Labour left winger, in the 1970s.
By contrast, New Labour social security secretary Alistair Darling has scrapped SERPS, which was run entirely by the government, and replaced it with a scheme for ‘stakeholder pensions’ run by the private company which achieved the record for the most swindling under the mis-selling pensions scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s – the good old reliable Prudential.
As more and more private companies try to ‘adapt’ their pension schemes to the disadvantage of their pensioners – British Airways, Barclays Bank, IBM, etc. – the government stands by and nods them through. When the chief culprit in this regard, British Airways chairman Colin (Lord) Marshall, was honoured by fellow millionaires with a dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel in 1998, the guest of honour was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.
As for the state pension itself, the cornerstone of former Labour governments’ reforms, it has been allowed to slide into obsolescence. Endless pledges by Labour’s social security spokespeople that they would restore the link, established by past Labour governments and abolished under Thatcher, between the state pension and the rise in earnings have been cynically junked.
Universities
Only the rich need apply
Tessa Blackstone was one of the New Labour peers who had most vitriolically attacked the concept of private privilege in all forms of education. As a former ‘master’ of Birkbeck College in London and a member of the last Labour government’s cabinet think tank, no one was better qualified to go to the House of Lords and to become New Labour’s Minister of State for Education. There, almost at once, she found herself defending yet another New Labour U-turn – the decision to impose tuition fees on university students.
Did she remember Neil Kinnock’s famous speech to the Labour Party conference in which he boasted that he had been the first member of his family to be able to go to university because for the first time a young man from the working class could afford it? Or had she read the stinging speeches of Jack Straw when he was opposition spokesman (quoted above) in which he said that tuition fees would mean a slowdown in working class recruitment to universities, and in the end a system in which universities were almost entirely exclusive to the rich?
According to the National Union of Students, university students in England and Wales now pay £1.5 billion more than they did before Labour was elected in 1997. At the same time funding per student has declined by almost 40 percent in the last 12 years.
The culmination of old Tory cuts in the student grant, the old Tory provision of student loans and New Labour tuition fees has had a catastrophic effect on university students. Many of them live entirely on their loans without any real idea of how they can repay them. Others either drop out or (more usually) do not even bother to enrol in courses for which they are qualified. Enrolment in many universities has fallen, with over 50 universities reporting that they were more than 2 percent below their student recruitment targets in the current academic year.
Tuition fees were too much for Labour, and even the Liberals, in Scotland where they were abolished. In England and Wales they continue to cast a shadow over one of the areas of life which, thanks to Labour governments in the past, had held out some hope for the young.
The great train robbery continued
Looming over this entire privatisation process has been the greatest scandal of them all – the railways. We have seen how fiercely Labour front benchers spoke out against privatisation in all the years the Tories proposed it, and how the same ministers took flight from their opposition when it might have made a difference. This abject surrender continued apace as Labour took office.
The railways were not renationalised. The hideous mess constructed by the Tories, the different competing railway organisations and the speculative millionaires they created, continued with hardly any change. The reason was trumpeted proudly by Blair, Prescott and Co whenever they were asked about it, usually by the transport unions which had contributed so many millions to Labour. They explained that they could not possibly afford the £4 billion it would have cost to create what Blair had promised – a ‘publicly owned, publicly accountable railway’. They had so many other priorities, they bleated, that they could not possibly waste public money on paying railway shareholders for their assets. Then came the great triumphs of railway privatisation, the disasters at Southall, Paddington and Hatfield.
At Hatfield, it was revealed, a train had come off the track because of a broken rail. Railtrack, the privatised company which owned and controlled the network, had known perfectly well of the dangers of broken rails. They had been spelled out to the company in great detail a year before the Hatfield crash by the new rail regulator, Tom Winsor, whose militant approach to the railway monopolies was held out by the government as proof of its continuing concern for and control over the railway. Winsor’s memorandum about the dangers of broken rails was scrupulously ignored in the interests of keeping trains moving and profits flowing.
After Hatfield, Railtrack panicked and subjected millions of long-suffering passengers to months of chaos and delays as some of the track was renewed. The militant Winsor decided that what was most important was that he should have a private company to regulate, so he announced that another £4 billion of taxpayers’ money would be released to keep the privatised railways running. By coincidence, £4 billion was the exact sum that Blair, Prescott and Co had estimated as the likely cost of renationalising the railways. The money they had ‘saved’ the taxpayer by leaving the railways in private hands was now being passed into those same private hands without any public accountability for it.
The sheer extravagance of the decision not to renationalise the railways was set out in an article early in 2001 in the journal Public Finance. The author, Jean Shaoul, calculated the cost of public subsidies in the four years before privatisation and the four years after. Adjusted for inflation, the figures were: 1991–94 £2,556 million; 1997–2000 £6,848 million. The cost to the taxpayer of subsidising the privately-owned railway had grown to three times the cost of subsidising the publicly-owned railway.
The last Straw
The attack on civil liberties
Many liberal-minded people were inclined to turn away from arguments about the unions and public ownership, believing or hoping that New Labour would address issues involving simple civil liberties, so many of which had been trampled on by past Tory governments. These optimists were the successors of those civil libertarians who measured their criticism of the 1964–70 Labour governments under Harold Wilson by recalling ‘at least’ that government had supported private member’s bills to ensure major social reforms – the abolition of capital punishment, the reform of the abortion law, and for the first time a major relaxation in the draconian laws which persecuted gay men and women.
Many believed that the huge majority for Labour in May 1997 would at least ensure a clutch of measures of that kind. At last, for instance, it was believed that here was a chance for a robust freedom of information act to expose future governments to the scrutiny of their electorates; a curb on the powers of the police that had so shocked and infuriated black people in the inner cities; a reform of the drugs laws to legalise at least some of the more harmless drugs which wasted so much of the time of the police and other legal authorities; a shift in the balance away from the judiciary and towards juries; an expansion of a legal aid scheme which in the past had left so many people deprived even of a hearing, let alone justice; repeal of the hated Section 28 which discriminated against gays; above all, at last, a government which showed a genuine respect for foreigners and people fleeing to Britain from persecution and terror.
Not one of these things happened. Most of them were the responsibility of the new home secretary, Jack Straw, who had come into politics as a campaigner for the National Union of Students and had been a protege of his predecessor as MP for Blackburn, the left winger Barbara Castle. We have come across Straw before as the man who maintained his moral objections to the privatisation of prisons in opposition by privatising them once in government. On all these matters of civil liberty he swiftly emerged as a dyed in the wool reactionary who might as well have donned a helmet from one of me more reckless policemen in his charge.
Straw was not originally responsible for the government’s new measure on freedom of information, but he rapidly ensured that he seized control of it from David Clark, the unassuming MP for South Shields. When Straw objected to Clark’s moderate proposals, Clark was sacked and replaced by Straw. Mark Fisher, minister for the arts, who spoke up in committee for a strong freedom of information act, was sacked too, and replaced as arts minister by Alan Howarth, former Tory MP for Stratford-on-Avon, who was catapulted into the safe Labour seat of Newport by diktat of New Labour headquarters in Millbank without anyone in Newport having the chance to select a proper Labour candidate. Straw took charge of the new freedom of information bill, and produced a measure so flimsy mat campaigners for freedom of information concluded that it is now, under New Labour, even more difficult to get information from the government than it was under the Tories.
The rest of New Labour’s record on civil liberties is no better than that of its Tory predecessors. Ministers boasted that they had adopted European law on human rights, but most of the proposals of the government in that area appeared to take away human rights. One of the oldest and most valuable human rights in the legal system, for instance – the right to be tried by jury – has been assailed again and again by Straw and his colleagues in the Home Office. Straw has proposed, at the moment without too much success, that in many instances the jury should be done away with altogether. Every reactionary notion that floats down to Straw from the Neanderthals on the Law Commission he adopts as quickly as he rejects any genuine reform.
The involvement of his own son in an embarrassing tangle with the police after he was found in possession of cannabis hardened Straw’s heart to any suggestion of relaxation of the laws on drugs, provided of course that the drugs in question, unlike alcohol and tobacco, are not sold by big corporations for profit.
Straw has publicly accepted the Law Commission’s recommendation to do away with the rule banning the trial of any defendant for a crime for which he or she has been acquitted. This proposal was heralded as a progressive measure since it had been proposed after the public inquiry into the racist killing of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence. A new band of ‘progressives’ in the police argued that the young men acquitted of murdering Stephen were protected by the double jeopardy rule from being charged again for the same offence. A more likely reason for the rule, and for the chorus in its favour, is that it allows police to re-charge some of the countless people who, usually because of police prejudice and incompetence, have been found not guilty of crimes for which they were wrongly convicted. Section 28, moreover, is still on the statute book in England and Wales.
Looming large over all the other of New Labour’s backward measures in the civil liberties field is the proposal for a replacement of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 1974. This act, which had to be renewed every year, was introduced in response to a series of IRA bombings in Britain that killed many innocent civilians. There was no such background to New Labour’s proposal for its replacement, the Terrorism Act. One purpose of this act was for the first time to make it illegal for anyone in Britain to take part in what the act describes as terrorist activities abroad. On the day the act came into force on 1 March 2001, the government banned 21 groups, most of them Islamic. The ban was extended to the PKK, or Kurdish Workers Party, which has a substantial following in Britain but which is hated by the Turkish government for its campaigns on behalf of the persecuted Kurdish minority. No evidence was produced by Jack Straw or anyone else to prove any terrorist act in Britain by any of me banned groups, but Straw told the Commons he was ‘entirely satisfied’ that all the groups were ‘concerned with terrorism’.
Close reading of the new bill by civil liberties groups, and by the campaigning magazine the Big Issue, revealed clauses which could be used against groups in Britain engaged in protests and campaigns. Anyone, for instance, supporting a revolution against the hated dictatorship in Iraq would be caught by the act, even though their aims might be shared by government ministers. The same applies to anyone advocating or supporting any uprising in the illegally occupied West Bank of Jordan, Gaza or Jerusalem.
As far as activity in Britain is concerned, the act actually defines terrorist activity as any violent activity designed ‘to influence the government or intimidate the public’, and includes any act which results in damage to property. The Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, Simon Hughes, told the Commons, ‘If you are a trade union leader calling for a strike at a hospital you would effectively be caught by this legislation.’ Just about the only organisation outside New Labour wholeheartedly to support the new act was the Conservative Party, whose spokesman complained that similar legislation proposed by the previous Tory government had been blocked by Labour.
Asylum seekers coming to Britain found themselves under sharp attack not just from racists and right wing fanatics but also from the New Labour government and its minister at the Home Office, Barbara Roche. She accused asylum seekers of ‘milking the system’ and then set about organising the system to ensure that there was nothing for asylum seekers to milk. Under her regime asylum seekers are deprived of social security benefits and provided instead with £36.54 a week in vouchers to buy food and clothes plus £10 a week in cash (there is no change from the vouchers). Asylum seekers are treated with the most disgusting contempt, housed in conditions unfit for human habitation and dispersed continually from refuge to refuge without discussion or consultation. Their vouchers and cash benefits are conditional on obeying orders to move.
When the Tory leader William Hague suggested locking up all asylum seekers, New Labour reacted with horror at such a gross breach of civil liberty, and promptly started building more detention centres for asylum seekers. The numbers of asylum seekers detained by New Labour have gone up from 800 to 1,200, and two new detention centres just built will take many more. More and more asylum seekers’ applications to stay in Britain are being turned down, including all such applications from Iraqi Kurds. A high point for New Labour policy was the refusal of an application to stay from a 24 year old Iraqi Kurd Ramin Khadeji. When he got his refusal he killed himself. Refusals have gone up from 35 percent of applications when New Labour took over to 60 percent.
Similarly, the proposals of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, on legal aid were intended to cut out of the legal system any lawyer who seeks diligently to represent a client who has no money. Most of the legal aid work under New Labour’s proposals will go to big firms who ‘process’ their clients through the courts with maximum speed and minimum consideration.
The Lord Chancellor himself, incidentally, is probably the only head of the legal profession in history to have lost a case in his own courts. In keeping with the cronyism of his government he appointed his mate Garry Hart from top City solicitors Herbert Smith as his chief adviser, paid by the taxpayer, even though no previous Lord Chancellor had ever had such an adviser. He was promptly sued by Jane Coker, a prominent immigration solicitor. She alleged that she had been discriminated against since there had been no public notice that the post was vacant. Lord Irvine treated the writ with casual disdain but was shocked when he lost the case in front of a unanimous tribunal. He appealed and, with the help of some of the most distinguished barristers in the land, managed to win by a margin of two to one at the Employment Appeals Tribunal. That decision has now gone to the House of Lords in a further appeal, but the case showed in the brightest possible colours how the arrogant appointment to high office of the government’s closest cronies in big business can even conflict with their own legislation.
A speciality of New Labour’s touch on crime policy has been a creation of a whole new range of offences under the broad heading of anti-social behaviour. The new Criminal Justice Act promulgates a series of new powers to arrest young people on what the police think is anti-social behaviour, and gives the police powers to impose on the spot fines and curfews. The new act comes at a time when the powers of the police are already considered far too wide by a larger and larger proportion of the young population, especially if they are black.
The fat cats directory
George Monbiot’s recent book Captive State tells the story of how the big corporations took over the elected government. He started his book in the month Labour was elected, and plainly, like almost everyone else of the same opinion, hoped that the new government would at least put up a fight to take back some of the democratic power and control that had been surrendered by successive Tory governments. As his book proceeds, it becomes, almost reluctantly, a devastating attack on the New Labour government for continuing, and even heralding that surrender. Some 26 pages in the middle of the book are devoted to a comprehensive Fat Cats Directory. Under the enticing headings Fat Cat, Previous Gluttony and Subsequent Creamery, he lists the big businessmen, speculators, landlords and exploiters promoted by New Labour to positions of power and influence.
Almost every month since his book came out, new appointments have been made which can be added to his directory. In January 2001 Dr Ian Hudson, former top executive of the gargantuan pharmaceutical monopoly Smith Kline Beecham, was appointed head of the Medicines Control Agency, regulator of the British pharmaceutical industry. The following month Anne Parker, a director of private nursing agency and private healthcare firm Nestor, took charge of the government’s new National Care Standards Commission, the regulator of private care homes. Almost as an aside to this directory, Monbiot exposes the New Labour ministers who once promised so much, and are now no more than office boys and girls for the bosses they pretend to control. Here is Brian Wilson, once a socialist campaigner in the Scottish Highlands, as a Scottish Office minister justifying the monstrous toll charges levied by a US bank on the bridge to the island of Skye, and the cancellation of formerly government-owned ferries to Skye which might have offered dangerous competition to the profit-laden bridge.
Here is Nick Raynsford, once a resolute campaigner for the homeless, breezing round the world acting as salesman for British construction companies, chief among them Balfour Beatty, the construction company with the highest ever fine for a blatant breach of health and safety laws, and which was chiefly responsible for the broken rail at Hatfield. In January 2001 Raynsford introduced a new Homes Bill to the House of Commons. He started by rejecting what he called the ‘lie’ that homelessness had increased under New Labour. Not so, he insisted. In the last six months of the Tory government local authorities had accepted 110,000 homeless households, while four years of New Labour policies later the figure had been reduced – to 108,000. Other speakers in the debate complained that priority homelessness had actually increased during Mr Raynsford’s regime, and that the numbers of people in bed and breakfast accommodation had gone up under New Labour by 51 percent.
Here is Stephen Byers, a champion of public state education when he was chairman of the education committee in North Tyneside, now Secretary of State for Trade and Industry with not a word to say about the wholesale privatisation of education. Here is the new minister of science and supporter of genetically modified foods, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, whose exalted position has, we are assured, absolutely nothing to do with the millions he has pumped over the years into the coffers of the Labour Party. To these names many others should be added.
Patricia Hewitt, a senior Treasury minister, represents the growing links between the government’s privatisation policies and the sprawling consultancies of the big accounting monopolies. Before talking office Hewitt was director of research at Andersen Consulting, a firm which was one of the first to spot the growing fortunes of New Labour, and which laid out the fares of the entire Labour front bench – about 100 MPs – to go to Oxford in the summer of 1996 where they were instructed on how to be efficient ministers.
Andersen Consulting, which in 2001 changed its name fashionably and incomprehensibly to Accenture, became one of the new government’s favourite companies, being let off most of the full cost of the delays and disasters in the computer system it had constructed to store National Insurance data. A few months after taking office the government ended a long battle with Andersen Consulting’s sister company, the accountants Arthur Andersen, a battle that dated back more than a decade to the auditing of the accounts of the old crook John DeLorean. Infuriated by what it regarded as the accountants’ deceit, the Tory government banned Arthur Andersen from all government work, but New Labour quickly ended the ban on terms highly favourable to the company.
As for Patricia Hewitt, she leaped up the government hierarchy with increasing agility, reaching her peak in 2000 as minister for e-business with a sterling defence in parliament of the government’s support for the Ilusu dam, a scheme by the Turkish government with the help of big British contractors (including, inevitably, Balfour Beatty) to flood whole tracts of land occupied by Kurds. Ms Hewitt was the only speaker in the Commons debate to support the project.
Other honourable additions to Monbiot’s list should include Peter Hain, the former anti-apartheid and CND campaigner, who became the government’s chief spokesman for economic sanctions against Iraq which have killed thousands of innocent civilians, most of them children; Alan Milburn, former organiser of the Days of Hope left wing bookshop in Newcastle, who as Secretary of State for Health decided quite suddenly that one way to protect the National Health Service was to pay private hospitals for beds and services they provided for NHS patients; Clare Short, the former champion of the dispossessed whose Department for International Development became a stout supporter of the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has abandoned so many millions in the underdeveloped world to hope less poverty; and the former firebrand Robin Cook, foreign secretary, whose ‘ethical’ foreign policy was absolutely indistinguishable from its not so ethical Tory predecessor. The list I could go on forever.
The distinguishing features are a former commitment to a more egalitarian, fairer society, and a current exclusive commitment to the opposite priorities of big business.
The politics of Polly Prudence
As this pamphlet is written, the Murdoch press and even the Daily Mail is loudly congratulating Gordon Brown on his election budget. They praise him not as he praises himself, for his alleged commitment to the poor, and to women and children, but for his prudence. Their prevailing fear is that a Labour chancellor might use the powers at his disposal to pump money into the pockets of the people who voted for him. They need not worry. The chancellor was far more concerned to impress his arbiters in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank than with the people with little or no money at his disposal.
He himself admits that his record over his five budgets has been exactly neutral. He has given almost exactly what he has taken away. Not surprisingly, his measures have had little or no effect on the distribution of wealth in Britain. Four years of New Labour in extremely favourable economic circumstances have left the Tory balance between rich and poor almost exactly what it was when the Tories left it. Millions are still plunged in hopeless poverty. The gap between rich and poor has actually widened under New Labour.
One way in which this grim fact has been disguised has been by publicising and heralding marginal changes to the plight of the poor and workers while maintaining discretionary secrecy about the rich. Everyone knows to the last detail what happens to the incomes of workers and the poor. No one knows in anything like the same detail what is happening to the rich. The grotesque advances in the incomes of the rich in the Labour years are literally incalculable. Income tax has come down, capital gains tax has been cut from 33 percent to 30 percent. Gordon Brown has continued his predecessor’s habit of extending tax breaks on share options and other perks for the rich without calculating their overall impact. A survey conducted by stockbrokers JP Morgan and published down the page in the Observer in February 2001 revealed that the UK has more households with an income of more than half a million dollars than any other country in Europe; and in the New Labour years the wealth of those with between half a million and $1 million rose by 8.1 percent, those with between $1 and $5 million by 10.5 percent; and those with over $5 million by 11.8 percent. Unto him that hath has been given, prudently, by New Labour, in great abundance.
Prudence Brown boasts that under his careful stewardship unemployment and inflation have come down. Modestly he ascribes this miracle to his own genius. Yet from the first moment he took office and handed the level of interest rates (previously set by elected government) to unelected bankers who benefit from high interest rates, he in effect admitted what he knows to be true – that elected governments of whatever colour cannot and do not determine what happens to the international capitalist economy unless they embark on the most determined and ruthless economic intervention.
Under capitalism, unemployment, inflation, the rise and fall of booms and slumps, are not brought about by governments, but by economic forces beyond government control. No one knows, for instance, why there was a recession in the so-called Tiger economies of Asia in 1998. Those economies were previously heralded as evidence that capitalism worked better when it was unfettered by trade unions or government regulation. The impact of that illusion is still being felt by the working people and the poor of those economies, notably in Indonesia where one corrupt and dictatorial government has been toppled, and its successor teeters on the brink of revolution on the one side and unspeakable racial violence on the other.
The most predictable feature of any capitalist economy is its unpredictability. Gordon Brown knows that perfectly well, which is probably why he prefers capitalist caution to socialist advance. He also knows that the more his government loosens its democratic grip on the engines of the economy, the less control he will have in the event of any future slump, and the more he consigns the future to a private enterprise chaos out of which he knows no road. Against the background of chaos and unpredictability, his refusal to spend his ‘war chest’ on the people and services who need it most is all the more reprehensible.
This, then, is the central charge against the New Labour government. All through the 20th century the Labour Party sought at least to some extent to use the power conferred on it by the votes of working people to shift the balance of wealth and power in their direction. Often the party failed miserably in that endeavour. Again and again elected governments bowed to what they regarded as superior forces in unelected private capital. They were, in Harold Wilson’s famous phrase, ‘blown off course’ by runs on sterling, investment strikes, judicial arrogance, media blitzes and other forces they did not understand, and did not dare to counter. But at least some effort was made in the right direction. At least some commitment was made to public ownership, to civil liberties, and to the building of strong trade unions. New Labour in the late 1990s and early 21st century has shifted so far to the right mat almost all its policies and achievements have converged with those of its Tory predecessors.
In a book published in September 1998 entitled The Political Economy of New Labour, Colin Hay devoted a whole chapter to this convergence. The results, even by 1998, are as follows. On trade union reform, five out of six policies converge (with the other almost completely converged). On employment law, two out of four policies converge, one (access to tribunals for unfair dismissal) is subject to qualified convergence, and only one (the pledge to sign the Maastricht treaty on employment) can be said to differ from that of the Tories. In six major areas of education policy, only one policy (the assisted places scheme) is not shared by the Tories. As for training, all four major policies are the same for both parties. Labour and Tory pension policy is exactly the same. So they are in all seven major areas of economic policy, and in three out of four areas of industrial policy (the fourth is the commitment to regional development agencies which are very similar to the wholly undemocratic Tory development corporations). On the four areas under the heading privatisation, the only (qualified) divergence is on Labour’s windfall tax on the privatised utilities, a tax which, though opposed by the Tories, has been borne by the new utility shareholders with a patient shrug, and on media regulation there is not a sliver of difference between the two parties.
Hay concludes, ‘Labour now accepts that there is simply no alternative to neo-liberalism in an era of heightened capital mobility and financial mobilisation’, and that ‘social democratic parties such as Labour must effectively abandon their social democratic credentials’. This is one answer to those optimistic social democratic commentators who have resigned themselves, often against their better judgement, to voting Labour. Polly Toynbee and David Walker of the Guardian have written a whole book to argue (a) that things didn’t get better quickly enough under New Labour, but (b) that another Labour government with a fresh mandate would surely rediscover its radical heritage and improve on every policy front to the satisfaction of the vast majority of its supporters.
One answer to Polly Toynbee is that she, as she recognises, was one of the prominent defectors from Labour to the SDP in 1981, and thus can be held at least partly responsible for all the Tory excesses that followed. But another has more resonance. It is that she and all her fellow ‘Vote Labour for real change’ enthusiasts are not listening to their leaders.
Tony Blair’s speeches about his next term of office carry not a whisper of trade union reform, or of a new era of public ownership and democratic responsibility, or of a widening of the comprehensive element in schools, or of a new assault on the grotesque bonanzas of the rich. Everything Blair says about the future points in exactly the opposite direction, towards more privatisation, more inequality, more chaos on road and rail, less planning, less intervention, and a fiercer attack on what his press officer calls bog-standard comprehensives, bog-standard council housing, bog-standard anything which derives from the traditional cooperation and solidarity of working class people.
The Toynbee-Walker thesis, that a new New Labour government would put the errors, omissions and mistakes of the last one behind it and engage on a new road to reform, is to ignore completely the triumphalism of Labour ministers and their single minded devotion to office whatever the price that has to be paid by the people who vote for them. They have abandoned their social democratic credentials without a word of regret, but with the singular jubilation of bog-standard politicians who have suddenly discovered the full fruits of high office and intend above all else to go on enjoying them.
There is another reaction to all these developments which is even more corrosive than Toynbee’s and Walker’s. This is Colin Hay’s assertion that there is ‘no alternative to neo-liberalism and globalisation’. He appears to argue that because Labour governments have now been corralled by capitalism, and forced to abandon their social democratic credentials, there is now no alternative to their policies. This is the policy of resignation and despair. There is no democratic alternative to Tory policies, argue the New Pessimists, so we had better accept them even when they are carried out by ministers calling themselves Labour. The inevitability of corporate power and corporate control commends itself most sweetly to the directors of corporations. But there is no reason why any of the rest of us should bow before them.
There is plenty of evidence in the past and even now that these policies can be resisted and reversed. Corporations do not always get their own way. The establishment of the British National Health Service, the ending of apartheid in South Africa, the toppling of post-war dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal – all these were accomplished against the corporate stream. Even today, while capitalism boasts its omnipotence, it is stopped in its tracks by mass protests in Seattle, Prague and Nice. Resistance can be as international, as globalised, as capitalism is, and, unlike capitalism, it offers hope and life to the exploited millions. There is nothing mystical or superhuman about capitalist power. It is managed and controlled by human beings and can also be changed by human beings. It can and must be resisted with all the power at our disposal.
On the eve of a general election, the abject performance of New Labour in office has a grim implication for all those who have believed in the past that their future depends at least to some extent on voting and maintaining a Labour government, but now no longer think the same. All such socialists, trade unionists, civil libertarians, environmentalists, National Health Service campaigners, are effectively disfranchised. With Labour’s link to the unions so weak and its commitment to public ownership and civil liberties reduced to the Private Finance Initiative and vouchers for asylum seekers, the choice before the voters is increasingly similar to the choice in the United States of America between the Republican Party (conservative) and the Democratic Party (conservative).
No sane person wants a return to Conservative government, led by Hague and Widdecombe, but more and more voters realise that Hague and Widdecombe have been pushed rightwards by a Labour government far more right wing than any of its predecessors – and they do not want to vote Labour again.
Your chance to vote socialist
Is there an alternative? The answer in at least a third of the country is yes.
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) is standing candidates in all 72 seats in Scotland. Each of them is committed to renationalising the railways, ending PFI, and restoring the rights and liberties of trade unionists, asylum seekers and the poor. The SSP has to fight not only against New Labour and the Tories, who have almost vanished north of the border, but also against the Scottish National Party. In the past the SNP was not averse to mouthing socialist policies, but instead of developing and expanding such policies, the SNP has backed away from them. No longer do we hear the SNP calling for renationalising the utilities, for a minimum pension of £90 a week, or for 50,000 new council houses. All these pledges have been dropped. The SNP’s pensions policy has even been trumped by Gordon Brown. The SNP has moved relentlessly to the right. Alex Salmond was more right wing than his predecessor, Jim Sillars, and the new leader, John Sweeney, is more right wing than Alex Salmond. The SNP has retreated into the narrow bourgeois nationalism from which it came.
In England and Wales the Socialist Alliance has already selected 80 candidates. The first major elections contested by the Socialist Alliance were for the Greater London Assembly (GLA) in 2000. The Socialist Alliance drew together several organisations and formed a united front proclaiming basic socialist policies. Since the GLA elections, Socialist Alliance and SSP candidates have performed creditably in national and council by-elections, and all of them are determined to present a socialist alternative to a wide spectrum of the general electorate. If you are unhappy with the convergence of Labour policies with Tory ones, if you want to see the railways and other privatised industries renationalised, and the Post Office and London Underground left in public hands, if you want an end to PFI and other schemes for backdoor privatisation, if you want to stop the creeping privatisation of the health service, if you are disgusted by the illiberal drift of New Labour on questions of civil liberties, then you should vote for your socialist candidate. If there is no such candidate in your constituency, find out where there is one in your town or city or county, and go to work on his or her behalf. If there is no Socialist Alliance or SSP candidate in your area, you may prefer to vote for a Labour candidate because he or she is a socialist, or even just to keep the Tories out, or you may want to vote for an independent candidate who represents working class resistance – such as Arthur Scargill in Hartlepool or Health Concern in Wyre Forest. The difference between this election and the last one is that on a nationwide scale there will be candidates in many areas who can represent some of your aspirations.
The Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Alliance offer more than a shift in politics. They offer a new style of campaigning – a clean break with the suffocating careerism that throttles so much reforming zeal. They realise that real change and progress in a class society cannot be brought about just by voting. They realise that the real threat to the power of the rich comes not from voting but from organised resistance from our side. All the real advances of the past century were rooted in the confidence of working people and their willingness not just to vote but to use their industrial power against their employers, or to organise in collective protest, or both.
The great social leap forward after the Second World War was accomplished not just by the enormous Labour vote, but also by the rising confidence among trade unionists of both sexes that had grown far beyond what anyone had imagined before the war. The further leaps forward in the 1970s depended almost entirely on the mighty strength of the organised working class and their willingness to use it.
Ideas and the votes they represent cannot be isolated from the real battles in society. Socialist ideas take root and grow in circumstances where people decide to organise and do something to change their circumstances. In the past few months we have seen the first faint stirrings of a revival of working class revolt. The sustained resistance to mass sackings under PFI at Dudley, the continued refusal of communication workers to accept the privatisation of the Post Office, the massive votes for industrial action in protest against the splitting up and privatisation of London Underground – all these are signs of a new mood of resistance and a new impatience with the clichés of New Labour. They come at least partly as a reaction to great international demonstrations of anti-capitalist protest.
Voting is only one infrequent and often emasculated form of protest. But voting is still a crucial opportunity to make use of our democratic rights. Our votes are important in proportion to their links to the real powers at our disposal. Every vote for the Socialist Alliance, every decent performance of the Socialist Alliance and SSP, will put new heart and spirit into the growing ranks of people prepared to fight.
Socialist candidates are standing not to further their own careers, still less to secure a parliamentary salary (they will only take an average wage if they get elected), but because they are horrified by what has happened to the labour movement and are determined to set it back on track. In a recent pamphlet, The Captive Party, the veteran socialist Michael Barratt Brown appealed to socialists to recall the alternative society that socialism promises:
All forms of health and childcare and the care of the disabled would be free. Education would be free at every age right through to lifelong learning. Housing would be available at reasonable rents with access by foot to shops and parks and gardens, and to many workplaces. There would be a wide range of opportunities for work in production and services with appropriate training built in. There would be no discrimination at work on grounds of gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Pensions for the aged and invalid, and payments during sickness and unemployment would be provided on a universal scheme based on contributions related to income. Planning of land use, road and rail transport, industrial location, and the balance of urban and rural activities would be subject to the most open examination and discussion. In all walks of life, at work and at home, in all workplaces and public institutions, management would be subject to agreed forms of consumers’ and workers’ controls. We have the resources for all this. We just have to find how to change the system from one of private greed to that of public gain.
As a start, just a start, you should vote socialist.
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">P. Foot</a></p>
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>How capitalism corrupts<br>
Labour politicians</h1>
<h3>(2004)</h3>
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<p class="info">Extract from <em>Their Democracy and Ours</em>, <strong>The Vote: How it was won and how it was undermined</strong>, London 2004.<br>
© Copyright Estate of Paul Foot<br>
Reprinted in <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.2153, 30 May 2009.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/" target="new"><em>Socialist Worker</em> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="c"><strong>Award winning investigative journalist and leading socialist campaigner Paul Foot was the bane of corrupt politicians and the champion of those who fell victim to miscarriages of justice. He completed his final book shortly before he died in 2004. <em>The Vote: How It Was Won And How It Was Undermined</em>, traces the history of the struggle for democracy, sets out the limits of parliament and attacks the breed of Labour politicians who use parliament to enrich themselves.</strong></p>
<p class="c"><strong><em>Socialist Worker</em> reprints this extract from the chapter, <em>Their Democracy and Ours</em>.</strong></p>
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<p class="fst">The history of the twentieth century in Britain has shown that whenever a Labour government in parliamentary office has found itself in conflict with the class wielding economic and industrial power, the government has been resisted, humiliated or defeated, usually all three.</p>
<p>On all sides, the elected government is at a disadvantage. Its members are elected by geographic constituency and are constrained by the necessity to represent all their constituents whatever class they come from or support.</p>
<p>Elected governments move at a snail’s pace, from Bill to Bill, formality to formality. Their ministries are cluttered with the most ridiculous pomp and tradition. They are obliged to submit their proposed laws to the Crown and to the House of Lords, which is dominated by the “great and good” (not elected). They are permanently subject to laws made by judges (not elected), enforced by police and army chiefs (not elected), and drawn up and supervised by civil servants (not elected).</p>
<p>The ruling-class chieftains have at their disposal whole armies of their own advisers and intellectuals, none of them elected. They take daily decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of people, sacking them, disciplining them, cutting their wages, sending them off to war, without any real threat of obstruction from the elected Parliament.</p>
<p>British representative democracy is founded on the notion of one person one vote. An industrial magnate has one vote, and so does each worker he can sack or impoverish. A millionaire landlord has one vote, and so does every person he evicts. A banker has one vote, so does every person impoverished by a rise in the bank rate or a financial takeover. A newspaper proprietor has one vote, so does each of the readers he deceives or seduces every day of the week. Are all these people really equally represented? Or does not the mighty, unrepresentative economic power of the wealthy minority consistently and completely overwhelm the representative power of Parliament?</p>
<p>Corruption in all its forms has always been a consistent companion of class rule. One of the promises of the early social democrats was that they would put a stop to corruption. In fact, corruption has prospered mightily in the age of social democracy. Again and again, social democratic representatives have found themselves at the mercy of the capitalist bribe.</p>
<p>The ministerial career of Jimmy Thomas, the trade-union leader who played so heroic a role in the betrayal of the [1926] general strike, ended with a whimper when he was caught leaking budget secrets to his wealthy golfing mates who speedily converted the information into a ripe profit on the stock exchange.</p>
<p>The notorious Poulson scandal of the 1960s [a property developer who bribed politicians] engulfed whole Labour councils who were bewitched by the Methodist architect and his Methodist largesse. T. Dan Smith [leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council], a Labour hero of the early 1960s, felt it was time he turned his considerable talent into making money for himself and ended up in prison with Poulson.</p>
<p>New Labour in the mid-1990s made a lot of political capital out of “sleaze”, a new word coined to describe the rather minor Tory Party corruption of that period. Yet when Labour ministers took office in 1997, and flung themselves headlong at the feet of the rich, they felt, like Dan Smith, that their time had come. Very soon their dependence on consultants and lobbyists from industry and finance landed the new government in further heaps of sleaze, as we have seen.</p>
<p>Another example was when the great sleaze slagheap of Enron finally collapsed in bankruptcy in 2000. Labour ministers scurried to cover the tracks of Enron’s consultants at Labour Party dinners and the close contacts the Labour leaders had established with Enron’s corrupt accountants.</p>
<p>Corruption is a natural ally of capitalism, and British Labour, as it made peace with capitalism, increasingly fell victim to corruption.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
How capitalism corrupts
Labour politicians
(2004)
Extract from Their Democracy and Ours, The Vote: How it was won and how it was undermined, London 2004.
© Copyright Estate of Paul Foot
Reprinted in Socialist Worker, No.2153, 30 May 2009.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Award winning investigative journalist and leading socialist campaigner Paul Foot was the bane of corrupt politicians and the champion of those who fell victim to miscarriages of justice. He completed his final book shortly before he died in 2004. The Vote: How It Was Won And How It Was Undermined, traces the history of the struggle for democracy, sets out the limits of parliament and attacks the breed of Labour politicians who use parliament to enrich themselves.
Socialist Worker reprints this extract from the chapter, Their Democracy and Ours.
The history of the twentieth century in Britain has shown that whenever a Labour government in parliamentary office has found itself in conflict with the class wielding economic and industrial power, the government has been resisted, humiliated or defeated, usually all three.
On all sides, the elected government is at a disadvantage. Its members are elected by geographic constituency and are constrained by the necessity to represent all their constituents whatever class they come from or support.
Elected governments move at a snail’s pace, from Bill to Bill, formality to formality. Their ministries are cluttered with the most ridiculous pomp and tradition. They are obliged to submit their proposed laws to the Crown and to the House of Lords, which is dominated by the “great and good” (not elected). They are permanently subject to laws made by judges (not elected), enforced by police and army chiefs (not elected), and drawn up and supervised by civil servants (not elected).
The ruling-class chieftains have at their disposal whole armies of their own advisers and intellectuals, none of them elected. They take daily decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of people, sacking them, disciplining them, cutting their wages, sending them off to war, without any real threat of obstruction from the elected Parliament.
British representative democracy is founded on the notion of one person one vote. An industrial magnate has one vote, and so does each worker he can sack or impoverish. A millionaire landlord has one vote, and so does every person he evicts. A banker has one vote, so does every person impoverished by a rise in the bank rate or a financial takeover. A newspaper proprietor has one vote, so does each of the readers he deceives or seduces every day of the week. Are all these people really equally represented? Or does not the mighty, unrepresentative economic power of the wealthy minority consistently and completely overwhelm the representative power of Parliament?
Corruption in all its forms has always been a consistent companion of class rule. One of the promises of the early social democrats was that they would put a stop to corruption. In fact, corruption has prospered mightily in the age of social democracy. Again and again, social democratic representatives have found themselves at the mercy of the capitalist bribe.
The ministerial career of Jimmy Thomas, the trade-union leader who played so heroic a role in the betrayal of the [1926] general strike, ended with a whimper when he was caught leaking budget secrets to his wealthy golfing mates who speedily converted the information into a ripe profit on the stock exchange.
The notorious Poulson scandal of the 1960s [a property developer who bribed politicians] engulfed whole Labour councils who were bewitched by the Methodist architect and his Methodist largesse. T. Dan Smith [leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council], a Labour hero of the early 1960s, felt it was time he turned his considerable talent into making money for himself and ended up in prison with Poulson.
New Labour in the mid-1990s made a lot of political capital out of “sleaze”, a new word coined to describe the rather minor Tory Party corruption of that period. Yet when Labour ministers took office in 1997, and flung themselves headlong at the feet of the rich, they felt, like Dan Smith, that their time had come. Very soon their dependence on consultants and lobbyists from industry and finance landed the new government in further heaps of sleaze, as we have seen.
Another example was when the great sleaze slagheap of Enron finally collapsed in bankruptcy in 2000. Labour ministers scurried to cover the tracks of Enron’s consultants at Labour Party dinners and the close contacts the Labour leaders had established with Enron’s corrupt accountants.
Corruption is a natural ally of capitalism, and British Labour, as it made peace with capitalism, increasingly fell victim to corruption.
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Last updated on 10 May 2010
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
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<h1><small><small>The Budget</small></small><br>
Not very taxing on the bosses</h1>
<h3>(May 2002)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <em>News Review</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.263, May 2002, p.7-8.<br>
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">A terrible squealing and squawking has been set up by the ruling class and their experts as they pretend to be ‘shocked’ by Gordon Brown’s Budget. Stephen Radley, chief economist at the Engineering Employers Federation, set the tone when he told the <strong>Financial Times</strong> on 19 April of ‘widespread anger’ among his members. ‘Some of them feel they have been shafted by the government,’ he whined. Ian Fletcher, head of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, was equally furious. He complained that the rises in National Insurance contributions for the poor and the workers were to some extent ‘cushioned’ by tax credits for families with children, while tax cuts for ‘business’ had been ‘overshadowed by the scale of the tax rises’. On all sides comes the awful din of wealthy outrage that a Labour government has dared to tax the employers and the rich to pay, of all things, for something the employers and the rich don’t even use – the National Health Service!</p>
<p>What is the truth behind the squealing? Well, this year (2002-03) the total extra charge in National Insurance and tax on the ruling class is nil. Tax relief for the rich and the employers (including fantastic handouts to big companies for their ‘research and development’) comes to nearly £500 million. Even next year (2003-04), when the full extent of Brown’s increases in National Insurance charges comes into effect, the cost to employers (£3.9 billion) will be heavily ‘cushioned’ by yet more tax relief for business and shareholdings amounting to £1.4 billion, and the year after that (2004-05) there is still £1 billion of tax relief for the rich and the employers. Some big companies, especially the big drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline, will actually benefit from the budget package.</p>
<p>Even the experts hired to speak up for the rich know that public services have been so dreadfully run down by the Tory government and its New Labour successor that much more money needs to be raised in tax to keep them up to the miserable standard to which they have sunk. The question for socialists is not whether more money needs to be raised, but how.</p>
<p>The obvious answer is that most of the money should be raised in income tax. The more people make, the more tax they should pay. But the chancellor and the prime minister made such an obvious remedy impossible when they recklessly included a pledge in the Labour manifesto not to increase income tax in the entire period of this parliament – all the way (at least) to 2005. That way they knocked out the fairest way of raising tax, and were forced back onto the alternative of increases in National Insurance.</p>
<p>Unlike income tax, National Insurance contributions are not ‘progressive’. They do not do more damage to the rich than the poor. They are flat rate increases, payable by all workers. Pensioners, even billionaire pensioners, don’t pay a penny towards National Insurance. Income from rent and dividends does not count when National Insurance contributions are assessed. But the worst aspect of National Insurance contributions is that the mega-rich are actually excluded from paying them.</p>
<p>While the poor under a certain level of poverty don’t pay income tax , the very rich over a certain level of wealth are ‘cut off’ from paying any more National Insurance contributions. Gordon Brown’s budget makes a pathetic attempt to cover up this grossly regressive aspect of National Insurance contributions by, for the first time, insisting that rich people who earn more than the ‘cut-off’ rate (£31,000 a year) now have to pay 1 percent of their earnings in National Insurance contributions. This has set off the predictable howl of indignation from the rich. But deep down the rich are thanking their lucky stars that the demon Brown has accepted the basic principle that the rich and very rich should be sheltered from National Insurance contributions.</p>
<p>Their real feelings were revealed two days after the budget, and buried deep in a <strong>Financial Times</strong> supplement that only the very rich were expected to read. ‘Top rate earners’, revealed <strong>Financial Times</strong> writer Kate Burgess, ‘will breathe a sigh of relief. Many were expecting Brown to abolish the upper earnings limit and levy a flat rate of National Insurance contributions on all earnings above £4,615 at, say, 10 percent. That would have meant those earning, for example, £100,000 a year would have had to stump up an extra £7,000 a year.’ How terrible! The article went on, ‘If this limit had been abolished individuals might have had to pay 11 percent on all earnings. That would have hit wealthy consumers’ discretionary spending.’ I think she means luxury spending. In the same article Eleanor Dowling, senior tax consultant at something called Mercer Human Resources Consulting, makes the same point in a different way. ‘This is the first rise in direct taxes since Labour came to power,’ she says, ‘and it isn’t that onerous.’</p>
<p>So the National Insurance rises are nothing like as bad as the rich feared or pretended. But that isn’t the only objection to Brown’s budget. He has bet everything on improving the National Health Service. Though education has been helped slightly, the other public services, most notably transport, have been left to rot. Everyone can rejoice at more money for the NHS, but there could have been much much more if it had been raised not by a payroll tax that falls on NHS workers as much as anyone else, but by income tax and especially by the long-forsaken supertax which would scoop more and more money from the burgeoning menagerie of fat cats.</p>
<p>It is as though Blair and Brown decided they must raise much more money for the NHS, but resolved in the process not to do too much damage to their friends and benefactors among the very rich. From now on, moreover, they will be straining every muscle further to ingratiate themselves with the rich and to ‘mend the fences’ they never erected in the first place.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Budget
Not very taxing on the bosses
(May 2002)
From News Review, Socialist Review, No.263, May 2002, p.7-8.
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
A terrible squealing and squawking has been set up by the ruling class and their experts as they pretend to be ‘shocked’ by Gordon Brown’s Budget. Stephen Radley, chief economist at the Engineering Employers Federation, set the tone when he told the Financial Times on 19 April of ‘widespread anger’ among his members. ‘Some of them feel they have been shafted by the government,’ he whined. Ian Fletcher, head of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, was equally furious. He complained that the rises in National Insurance contributions for the poor and the workers were to some extent ‘cushioned’ by tax credits for families with children, while tax cuts for ‘business’ had been ‘overshadowed by the scale of the tax rises’. On all sides comes the awful din of wealthy outrage that a Labour government has dared to tax the employers and the rich to pay, of all things, for something the employers and the rich don’t even use – the National Health Service!
What is the truth behind the squealing? Well, this year (2002-03) the total extra charge in National Insurance and tax on the ruling class is nil. Tax relief for the rich and the employers (including fantastic handouts to big companies for their ‘research and development’) comes to nearly £500 million. Even next year (2003-04), when the full extent of Brown’s increases in National Insurance charges comes into effect, the cost to employers (£3.9 billion) will be heavily ‘cushioned’ by yet more tax relief for business and shareholdings amounting to £1.4 billion, and the year after that (2004-05) there is still £1 billion of tax relief for the rich and the employers. Some big companies, especially the big drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline, will actually benefit from the budget package.
Even the experts hired to speak up for the rich know that public services have been so dreadfully run down by the Tory government and its New Labour successor that much more money needs to be raised in tax to keep them up to the miserable standard to which they have sunk. The question for socialists is not whether more money needs to be raised, but how.
The obvious answer is that most of the money should be raised in income tax. The more people make, the more tax they should pay. But the chancellor and the prime minister made such an obvious remedy impossible when they recklessly included a pledge in the Labour manifesto not to increase income tax in the entire period of this parliament – all the way (at least) to 2005. That way they knocked out the fairest way of raising tax, and were forced back onto the alternative of increases in National Insurance.
Unlike income tax, National Insurance contributions are not ‘progressive’. They do not do more damage to the rich than the poor. They are flat rate increases, payable by all workers. Pensioners, even billionaire pensioners, don’t pay a penny towards National Insurance. Income from rent and dividends does not count when National Insurance contributions are assessed. But the worst aspect of National Insurance contributions is that the mega-rich are actually excluded from paying them.
While the poor under a certain level of poverty don’t pay income tax , the very rich over a certain level of wealth are ‘cut off’ from paying any more National Insurance contributions. Gordon Brown’s budget makes a pathetic attempt to cover up this grossly regressive aspect of National Insurance contributions by, for the first time, insisting that rich people who earn more than the ‘cut-off’ rate (£31,000 a year) now have to pay 1 percent of their earnings in National Insurance contributions. This has set off the predictable howl of indignation from the rich. But deep down the rich are thanking their lucky stars that the demon Brown has accepted the basic principle that the rich and very rich should be sheltered from National Insurance contributions.
Their real feelings were revealed two days after the budget, and buried deep in a Financial Times supplement that only the very rich were expected to read. ‘Top rate earners’, revealed Financial Times writer Kate Burgess, ‘will breathe a sigh of relief. Many were expecting Brown to abolish the upper earnings limit and levy a flat rate of National Insurance contributions on all earnings above £4,615 at, say, 10 percent. That would have meant those earning, for example, £100,000 a year would have had to stump up an extra £7,000 a year.’ How terrible! The article went on, ‘If this limit had been abolished individuals might have had to pay 11 percent on all earnings. That would have hit wealthy consumers’ discretionary spending.’ I think she means luxury spending. In the same article Eleanor Dowling, senior tax consultant at something called Mercer Human Resources Consulting, makes the same point in a different way. ‘This is the first rise in direct taxes since Labour came to power,’ she says, ‘and it isn’t that onerous.’
So the National Insurance rises are nothing like as bad as the rich feared or pretended. But that isn’t the only objection to Brown’s budget. He has bet everything on improving the National Health Service. Though education has been helped slightly, the other public services, most notably transport, have been left to rot. Everyone can rejoice at more money for the NHS, but there could have been much much more if it had been raised not by a payroll tax that falls on NHS workers as much as anyone else, but by income tax and especially by the long-forsaken supertax which would scoop more and more money from the burgeoning menagerie of fat cats.
It is as though Blair and Brown decided they must raise much more money for the NHS, but resolved in the process not to do too much damage to their friends and benefactors among the very rich. From now on, moreover, they will be straining every muscle further to ingratiate themselves with the rich and to ‘mend the fences’ they never erected in the first place.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Saints and devils</h1>
<h3>(February 1992)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Reviews</em>, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.150, February 1992. p.29.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>The Russian Revolution 1899-1919</strong><br>
Richard Pipes<br>
<em>Collins Harvill £20</em></p>
<p class="fst">The Russian Revolution, Professor Pipes tells us in his very first sentence, was ‘arguably the most important event of the century’. He then spends 845 pages proving that it was nothing of the kind. Indeed, after that first flourish, he can hardly bring himself to call it a revolution at all. It was instead, he insists, a coup d’etat, led by a bunch of psychopaths and fanatics, whose consequence has brought nothing but pain and despair to the people of the world.</p>
<p>‘The historian’s problem,’ the professor’s introduction goes on, ‘is that the Russian Revolution being part of our own time, is difficult to deal with dispassionately.’ He does not, however, err on the side of objectivity. On the subject of Russia, socialism and communism he has all the neutrality of a man who served as an adviser on Russia and Eastern Europe in the US President’s own National Security Council. As he freely admits, one of his contemporary heroes is the ultra right wing free enterprise fanatic Milton Friedman.</p>
<p>Curiously for a man who makes his living and his reputation among intellectuals, Professor Pipes nurses a deep contempt for what he calls the ‘intelligentsia’. A good deal of the trouble in Russia which culminated in the revolution (whoops, sorry, <em>coup d’etat</em>), he argues, can be traced back to this intelligentsia which, he discloses, is a Russian word. The crux of his argument runs like this:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘A life ruled by reason is a life ruled by intellectuals: it is not surprising, therefore, that intellectuals want to change the world in accord with the requirement of “rationality”. A market economy, with its wasteful competition and swings between overproduction and shortage, is not “rational” and hence it does not find favour with intellectuals.’</p>
<p class="fst">It is hard to understand why the professor puts the words rational and rationality in inverted commas. It is quite clear from his book that he is highly suspicious of people who argue by way of reason. He finds irrationality far more reliable. He is disgusted, for instance, by the ‘preoccupation ... with legislation as a device for human betterment’. That to him is silly liberal nonsense, which explains why liberals so often ‘throw their lot in with revolutionaries’. Thus his psychotic hatred for the Russian revolutionaries extends to pretty well everyone to the left of General Kornilov.</p>
<p>The Russian Revolution was indeed arguably the most important event of the century – for one reason only: that for the first time since the French Revolution the working masses became active participants in their own political destiny. Professor Pipes duly devotes pretty well his entire book to proving that this was not the case.</p>
<p>This requires a great deal of misquotation and misunderstanding. For instance, after quoting Lenin’s view that the working class will not spontaneously take the path to revolution, but will only do so if led by a revolutionary party. Pipes caricatures it as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Unless the workers were led by a socialist party external to it and independent of it, they would betray their class interests. Only non-workers – that is, the intelligentsia – knew what these interests were.’</p>
<p class="fst">That is the precise opposite of Lenin’s view that only a party built as an integral part of the working class could possible ever lead it anywhere, let alone to revolution.</p>
<p>Pipes crude error infects his whole book. One of the most extraordinary aspects of what happened in Russia in 1917 was the way in which the new Soviets switched their allegiance from Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to Bolsheviks during the summer and autumn. The shift was so dramatic that Professor Pipes cannot bring himself to publish the figures. He does disclose that in June, at the First Congress of Soviets, the Social Revolutionaries had 285 delegates, the Mensheviks 248 and the Bolsheviks a mere 105. He does not disclose that at the next Congress – in October – the Social Revolutionaries had 160 delegates, the Mensheviks 72 and the Bolsheviks 390. The Bolshevik Party, the nasty, fanatical caucus of Professor Pipes’s imagination, had become the majority party inside the working class. As such, it had fulfilled what for Lenin was an unalterable precondition for a working class revolution.</p>
<p>Because he refuses to accept the deep penetration of revolutionary ideas and enthusiasms in the Russian working class at the time, Pipes cannot help us at all on how the revolution was sustained against all the odds. He allows into his record not a single word of the huge literature of enthusiasm about the revolution: the motor of its survival in its early years.</p>
<p>Professor Pipes ignores Lenin’s central passion – his view that the exploited people of the world could run it better than their exploiters – and so he can conclude predictably that ‘Stalin’s course had been charted by Lenin’. The evidence is mostly the other way however. Lenin’s view, as Pipes concedes, was that ‘unless the revolution spread to other countries, it was doomed’. Stalin’s regime was based on pursuing ‘socialism in one country’, often to the point of destroying revolutionary movements in other countries.</p>
<p>As the book bulldozes on, Pipes’s hatred for the Russian revolutionaries becomes more hysterical. At times he cannot contain his rage at their impertinence:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘That such rank amateurs would undertake to turn upside down the fifth-largest economy in the world, subjecting it to innovations never attempted anywhere even on a small scale, says something of the judgement of the people who in October 1917 seized power in Russia.’</p>
<p class="fst">Pipes the professional on the other hand can write this: ‘One can credit the Bolsheviks with having invented terror.’</p>
<p>The Bolsheviks invented terror! Pause for a moment’s reflection. Indeed, turn back to page 81 of Pipes’s own book where you can read this:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘In 1903, one third of the infantry and two-thirds of the cavalry stationed in European Russia engaged in repressive action.’</p>
<p class="fst">Some might conclude from that that the forces of the Tsar, not to mention the Black Hundreds of later years, were engaging in terror. They would be wrong, according to Professor Pipes, for terror was invented by the Bolsheviks.</p>
<p>The blurb for the book makes the horrifying prediction that it will ‘stand as the definitive history’ of the Russian Revolution. Nothing could be less deserved. I still recall my fury thirty years ago when reading Bertram Wolfe’s exposé of the Stalin School for Rewriting History in his <strong>Three Who Made A Revolution</strong>. Here was Orwell’s Ministry of Truth writ large. There was, it seemed clear, no stronger argument against Stalin’s Russia than its invention of its own history.</p>
<p>Professor Pipes’s book rewrites history the other way round. While Stalin lionised and mummified Lenin and the Russian revolutionaries. Pipes has turned them into devils. The result of both is that the Russian Revolution is either patronised or abused into something entirely unrecognisable from what it was.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Saints and devils
(February 1992)
From Reviews, Socialist Review, No.150, February 1992. p.29.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Russian Revolution 1899-1919
Richard Pipes
Collins Harvill £20
The Russian Revolution, Professor Pipes tells us in his very first sentence, was ‘arguably the most important event of the century’. He then spends 845 pages proving that it was nothing of the kind. Indeed, after that first flourish, he can hardly bring himself to call it a revolution at all. It was instead, he insists, a coup d’etat, led by a bunch of psychopaths and fanatics, whose consequence has brought nothing but pain and despair to the people of the world.
‘The historian’s problem,’ the professor’s introduction goes on, ‘is that the Russian Revolution being part of our own time, is difficult to deal with dispassionately.’ He does not, however, err on the side of objectivity. On the subject of Russia, socialism and communism he has all the neutrality of a man who served as an adviser on Russia and Eastern Europe in the US President’s own National Security Council. As he freely admits, one of his contemporary heroes is the ultra right wing free enterprise fanatic Milton Friedman.
Curiously for a man who makes his living and his reputation among intellectuals, Professor Pipes nurses a deep contempt for what he calls the ‘intelligentsia’. A good deal of the trouble in Russia which culminated in the revolution (whoops, sorry, coup d’etat), he argues, can be traced back to this intelligentsia which, he discloses, is a Russian word. The crux of his argument runs like this:
‘A life ruled by reason is a life ruled by intellectuals: it is not surprising, therefore, that intellectuals want to change the world in accord with the requirement of “rationality”. A market economy, with its wasteful competition and swings between overproduction and shortage, is not “rational” and hence it does not find favour with intellectuals.’
It is hard to understand why the professor puts the words rational and rationality in inverted commas. It is quite clear from his book that he is highly suspicious of people who argue by way of reason. He finds irrationality far more reliable. He is disgusted, for instance, by the ‘preoccupation ... with legislation as a device for human betterment’. That to him is silly liberal nonsense, which explains why liberals so often ‘throw their lot in with revolutionaries’. Thus his psychotic hatred for the Russian revolutionaries extends to pretty well everyone to the left of General Kornilov.
The Russian Revolution was indeed arguably the most important event of the century – for one reason only: that for the first time since the French Revolution the working masses became active participants in their own political destiny. Professor Pipes duly devotes pretty well his entire book to proving that this was not the case.
This requires a great deal of misquotation and misunderstanding. For instance, after quoting Lenin’s view that the working class will not spontaneously take the path to revolution, but will only do so if led by a revolutionary party. Pipes caricatures it as follows:
‘Unless the workers were led by a socialist party external to it and independent of it, they would betray their class interests. Only non-workers – that is, the intelligentsia – knew what these interests were.’
That is the precise opposite of Lenin’s view that only a party built as an integral part of the working class could possible ever lead it anywhere, let alone to revolution.
Pipes crude error infects his whole book. One of the most extraordinary aspects of what happened in Russia in 1917 was the way in which the new Soviets switched their allegiance from Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to Bolsheviks during the summer and autumn. The shift was so dramatic that Professor Pipes cannot bring himself to publish the figures. He does disclose that in June, at the First Congress of Soviets, the Social Revolutionaries had 285 delegates, the Mensheviks 248 and the Bolsheviks a mere 105. He does not disclose that at the next Congress – in October – the Social Revolutionaries had 160 delegates, the Mensheviks 72 and the Bolsheviks 390. The Bolshevik Party, the nasty, fanatical caucus of Professor Pipes’s imagination, had become the majority party inside the working class. As such, it had fulfilled what for Lenin was an unalterable precondition for a working class revolution.
Because he refuses to accept the deep penetration of revolutionary ideas and enthusiasms in the Russian working class at the time, Pipes cannot help us at all on how the revolution was sustained against all the odds. He allows into his record not a single word of the huge literature of enthusiasm about the revolution: the motor of its survival in its early years.
Professor Pipes ignores Lenin’s central passion – his view that the exploited people of the world could run it better than their exploiters – and so he can conclude predictably that ‘Stalin’s course had been charted by Lenin’. The evidence is mostly the other way however. Lenin’s view, as Pipes concedes, was that ‘unless the revolution spread to other countries, it was doomed’. Stalin’s regime was based on pursuing ‘socialism in one country’, often to the point of destroying revolutionary movements in other countries.
As the book bulldozes on, Pipes’s hatred for the Russian revolutionaries becomes more hysterical. At times he cannot contain his rage at their impertinence:
‘That such rank amateurs would undertake to turn upside down the fifth-largest economy in the world, subjecting it to innovations never attempted anywhere even on a small scale, says something of the judgement of the people who in October 1917 seized power in Russia.’
Pipes the professional on the other hand can write this: ‘One can credit the Bolsheviks with having invented terror.’
The Bolsheviks invented terror! Pause for a moment’s reflection. Indeed, turn back to page 81 of Pipes’s own book where you can read this:
‘In 1903, one third of the infantry and two-thirds of the cavalry stationed in European Russia engaged in repressive action.’
Some might conclude from that that the forces of the Tsar, not to mention the Black Hundreds of later years, were engaging in terror. They would be wrong, according to Professor Pipes, for terror was invented by the Bolsheviks.
The blurb for the book makes the horrifying prediction that it will ‘stand as the definitive history’ of the Russian Revolution. Nothing could be less deserved. I still recall my fury thirty years ago when reading Bertram Wolfe’s exposé of the Stalin School for Rewriting History in his Three Who Made A Revolution. Here was Orwell’s Ministry of Truth writ large. There was, it seemed clear, no stronger argument against Stalin’s Russia than its invention of its own history.
Professor Pipes’s book rewrites history the other way round. While Stalin lionised and mummified Lenin and the Russian revolutionaries. Pipes has turned them into devils. The result of both is that the Russian Revolution is either patronised or abused into something entirely unrecognisable from what it was.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Karl Marx: The Best Hated Man</h1>
<h3>(February 2004)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.282, February 2004, p.14-16.<br>
Copyright © 2004 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded from the new <a href="http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a><br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>Karl Marx continues to be damned because of the revolutionary power he identified, argues <strong>Paul Foot</strong>.</em></p>
<p class="fst">Karl Marx was so famous when he died in March 1883 that eleven people went to his funeral at Highgate cemetery. The funeral oration given by his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels ended with the observation that Marx, though he was a delightful character, a loyal friend and a devoted father, was the ‘best hated and calumniated man of his times’. That may have been true at the time but it became even more true later. Most socialists and revolutionaries can expect some relief from the abuse of high society after they are dead. But Marx has gone on being attacked and insulted for the 120 years since he died. At best he has been denounced as ‘out of date’. He is also denounced as immoral and cruel to those around him – did he not sleep with his servant? And lastly and more shockingly, he has been held responsible for monstrous tyrannies of our time, in Russia, China, Cambodia and so on, that pretended to be socialist but were in fact the opposite. Leaders of every academic discipline – politics, philosophy, economics, history, science and mathematics – have united to attack Marx. They kill him again and again only to regroup and kill him again. What I want to do is to try to understand why.<br>
</p>
<h4>Ideas</h4>
<p class="fst">The first and most obvious answer is the power of his ideas. Engels’s oration summed them up like this:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Just as Darwin discovered the laws of evolution in organic nature so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art, etc; and that therefore the means of life, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation on which the forms of government, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which these things must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa as has hitherto been the case.’</p>
<p class="fst">Central to these ideas was the fact that human society is cut into classes, based on the property they own and control, and that the history of human society is a history of a ceaseless struggle between those who have the wealth and those who don’t.</p>
<p>In themselves, these ideas, however profound and accurate they may be, don’t really answer our question. If the ideas were simply the result of academic scientific discovery, as Darwin’s were, then the discoverer could surely be left alone, almost revered for his discovery, as Darwin, for all the bigoted attacks on him, has been. Surely there was another element of Marx’s life and thought which singled him out for such exceptional and long-lived vituperation? To find it, we return a third time to Engels’s speech in Highgate:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘For Marx was, before all else, a revolutionary. His real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present day proletariat.’</p>
<p class="fst">There in a nutshell is the answer to our question. He was not only a man with revolutionary ideas. He wanted to put those ideas into practice. Nothing is more misunderstood about Marx than his own insistence that he was a ‘scientific socialist’. Did this mean, as the crudest of his supporters have sometimes claimed, that his classification of capitalist society meant that its overthrow could be accomplished by doing nothing? Quite the opposite. The science in Marx’s approach was in the analysis, not the prescription. He was irritated by philosophers who mused idealistically about the evils of capitalist society and did nothing about them. For centuries philosophers had sought to interpret the world, he observed in a famous passage, and concluded, ‘The point is to change it.’</p>
<p>The way to change it was the exact opposite of waiting to see if a scientific experiment would work out. It was for human beings to involve themselves in the struggle on the side of the oppressed. Marx’s life was a model of that involvement. In his youth, in quick succession, he was thrown out of Germany, Belgium and France, because he threw himself into the struggles of workers in all three countries. In France he associated closely with the fighting elements in the working class, and never forgot his admiration for them. Finally in 1849, aged 31, he came to England (where there was no immigration control) and settled here for the rest of his life. He spent a lot of that time as an investigative journalist of the highest quality. He buried himself in the information the reactionary governments of the time published about their activities. His aim was to find out relevant information and publish it to assist workers’ struggles.</p>
<p>The period from 1849 to 1883 when he died was a period of low class struggle. The Chartists, who had brought the country to the brink of revolution, had been defeated and the working class movement was, for the moment, cowed. Marx’s tiny organisation, the Socialist League, split and split again. In the end, when there were really only two members left, Marx and Engels, Marx decided to concentrate on his journalism and on expanding the ideas that he and Engels had set out in the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong> of 1848. In 20 years he wrote the three great theoretical works that set out his communist theory – the <strong>Critique of Political Economy</strong>, the <strong>Grundrisse</strong> and the greatest of them, <strong>Capital</strong>. There may be some of you, like me, who find these works difficult, and so they are. But <strong>Capital</strong> in particular is well worth persevering with. It is illustrated throughout with examples of human struggle, from the British workers fighting for the ten-hour day to black Americans fighting against slavery.</p>
<p>Yet even when he was composing these huge works, even though all the time he was trying to fend off abject poverty and considerable pain from skin disease, again and again he involved himself in the working class struggles of the time. I pick out three examples.<br>
</p>
<h4>The First International</h4>
<p class="fst">The first was the formation of the First International – the International Working Men’s Association – in 1864. The idea for the International came from trade union leaders who were fed up with the constant importation of scab labour to break strikes and weaken trade unionism. The International needed a written introduction to set out its aims. None of the trade union leaders could write anything comprehensible. When the various factions from foreign countries had a go, they made an even greater mess of it. Marx was asked for help. He suggested a subcommittee of one, and elected himself to it. The resulting articles of the International, clear and concise, start with the ringing dedication that the self emancipation of the working class is ‘the act of the working class themselves’. The articles went on all the membership cards of the International.</p>
<p>The second issue was universal male suffrage. This had been the demand of the Chartists, but since their defeat it had faded into the background. In 1866 a new organisation called the Reform League was formed to resurrect the demand. Marx organised a small group of socialists to try to take control of the Reform League and commit it to universal suffrage. He was so pleased with his efforts that he described the league as ‘all our work’. This claim was an example of another characteristic of Marx that often gets him criticised – his impatient optimism. He was inclined to put the best spin on any socialist initiative. The Reform League quickly deteriorated. It was not ‘all our work’ or anything like it. It attracted all sorts of reactionaries and compromisers who eventually won the day. Marx had got it wrong, but only in his intense enthusiasm to push the struggle forward – a sin, incidentally, that we ourselves commit more often than not, and are none the worse for.</p>
<p>The final example of his involvement that I’ve picked out is undoubtedly the greatest.</p>
<p>People sometimes ask me what work of Marx they should read first, and the obvious answer is the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong>. Second to that in my opinion is a pamphlet he wrote in 1871 called <strong>The Civil War in France</strong>. This was about the Paris Commune, formed by the working people of Paris in revolutionary circumstances in March 1871. It lasted for two months until it was suppressed by murderous military terror of the most revolting proportions. Marx followed the commune through almost every hour of its existence, demanding from friends, family and acquaintances any fragment of information from Paris. When the commune was suppressed, he sat down, boiling with rage, and in five days wrote his pamphlet which he read out loud to the council of the International. As a description of the commune, it has never been bettered before or since. It sets out, above all, the democratic nature of the commune; how it not only made laws but carried them out, how it replaced the machinery of the capitalist state with an entirely new democracy that could never be tolerated by capitalism and its armies, and, incidentally, has nothing whatever to do with the societies presided over by Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. <strong>The Civil War in France</strong> magnificently combines Marx’s terse journalism and his fighting spirit:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their “natural superiors”, and under circumstances of unexampled difficulty performed their work modestly, conscientiously and efficiently – performed it at salaries the highest of which barely amounted to one fifth of what, according to high scientific authority, is the minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school board – the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labour, floating over the Hotel de Ville.’</p>
<p class="fst">That passage (and indeed the whole pamphlet) takes us closer to the reason why Marx has been hated and calumnied for so long. It is not his ideas alone which important people detest – it is the drive to put them into practice. It is not simply that his ideas have not lost their relevance over all this time – there is still a class society after all, that is every bit as foully exploitative as it ever was – it is the fact that there are people inspired by Marx who still want to change the world in the direction to which he pointed. So people are still ridiculed and abused by the professors of the profiteers because we want to fight, as he did, to rid the world of riches altogether and to get rid of poverty at the same time. Such people, such Marxists, are prepared moreover to organise to do so.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">This is an edited version of a talk given at a Karl Marx day school on 10 January 2004, held to mark the republication of Alex Callinicos’s <strong>The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx</strong>.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Karl Marx: The Best Hated Man
(February 2004)
From Socialist Review, No.282, February 2004, p.14-16.
Copyright © 2004 Socialist Review.
Downloaded from the new Socialist Review Archive
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Karl Marx continues to be damned because of the revolutionary power he identified, argues Paul Foot.
Karl Marx was so famous when he died in March 1883 that eleven people went to his funeral at Highgate cemetery. The funeral oration given by his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels ended with the observation that Marx, though he was a delightful character, a loyal friend and a devoted father, was the ‘best hated and calumniated man of his times’. That may have been true at the time but it became even more true later. Most socialists and revolutionaries can expect some relief from the abuse of high society after they are dead. But Marx has gone on being attacked and insulted for the 120 years since he died. At best he has been denounced as ‘out of date’. He is also denounced as immoral and cruel to those around him – did he not sleep with his servant? And lastly and more shockingly, he has been held responsible for monstrous tyrannies of our time, in Russia, China, Cambodia and so on, that pretended to be socialist but were in fact the opposite. Leaders of every academic discipline – politics, philosophy, economics, history, science and mathematics – have united to attack Marx. They kill him again and again only to regroup and kill him again. What I want to do is to try to understand why.
Ideas
The first and most obvious answer is the power of his ideas. Engels’s oration summed them up like this:
‘Just as Darwin discovered the laws of evolution in organic nature so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art, etc; and that therefore the means of life, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation on which the forms of government, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which these things must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa as has hitherto been the case.’
Central to these ideas was the fact that human society is cut into classes, based on the property they own and control, and that the history of human society is a history of a ceaseless struggle between those who have the wealth and those who don’t.
In themselves, these ideas, however profound and accurate they may be, don’t really answer our question. If the ideas were simply the result of academic scientific discovery, as Darwin’s were, then the discoverer could surely be left alone, almost revered for his discovery, as Darwin, for all the bigoted attacks on him, has been. Surely there was another element of Marx’s life and thought which singled him out for such exceptional and long-lived vituperation? To find it, we return a third time to Engels’s speech in Highgate:
‘For Marx was, before all else, a revolutionary. His real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present day proletariat.’
There in a nutshell is the answer to our question. He was not only a man with revolutionary ideas. He wanted to put those ideas into practice. Nothing is more misunderstood about Marx than his own insistence that he was a ‘scientific socialist’. Did this mean, as the crudest of his supporters have sometimes claimed, that his classification of capitalist society meant that its overthrow could be accomplished by doing nothing? Quite the opposite. The science in Marx’s approach was in the analysis, not the prescription. He was irritated by philosophers who mused idealistically about the evils of capitalist society and did nothing about them. For centuries philosophers had sought to interpret the world, he observed in a famous passage, and concluded, ‘The point is to change it.’
The way to change it was the exact opposite of waiting to see if a scientific experiment would work out. It was for human beings to involve themselves in the struggle on the side of the oppressed. Marx’s life was a model of that involvement. In his youth, in quick succession, he was thrown out of Germany, Belgium and France, because he threw himself into the struggles of workers in all three countries. In France he associated closely with the fighting elements in the working class, and never forgot his admiration for them. Finally in 1849, aged 31, he came to England (where there was no immigration control) and settled here for the rest of his life. He spent a lot of that time as an investigative journalist of the highest quality. He buried himself in the information the reactionary governments of the time published about their activities. His aim was to find out relevant information and publish it to assist workers’ struggles.
The period from 1849 to 1883 when he died was a period of low class struggle. The Chartists, who had brought the country to the brink of revolution, had been defeated and the working class movement was, for the moment, cowed. Marx’s tiny organisation, the Socialist League, split and split again. In the end, when there were really only two members left, Marx and Engels, Marx decided to concentrate on his journalism and on expanding the ideas that he and Engels had set out in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. In 20 years he wrote the three great theoretical works that set out his communist theory – the Critique of Political Economy, the Grundrisse and the greatest of them, Capital. There may be some of you, like me, who find these works difficult, and so they are. But Capital in particular is well worth persevering with. It is illustrated throughout with examples of human struggle, from the British workers fighting for the ten-hour day to black Americans fighting against slavery.
Yet even when he was composing these huge works, even though all the time he was trying to fend off abject poverty and considerable pain from skin disease, again and again he involved himself in the working class struggles of the time. I pick out three examples.
The First International
The first was the formation of the First International – the International Working Men’s Association – in 1864. The idea for the International came from trade union leaders who were fed up with the constant importation of scab labour to break strikes and weaken trade unionism. The International needed a written introduction to set out its aims. None of the trade union leaders could write anything comprehensible. When the various factions from foreign countries had a go, they made an even greater mess of it. Marx was asked for help. He suggested a subcommittee of one, and elected himself to it. The resulting articles of the International, clear and concise, start with the ringing dedication that the self emancipation of the working class is ‘the act of the working class themselves’. The articles went on all the membership cards of the International.
The second issue was universal male suffrage. This had been the demand of the Chartists, but since their defeat it had faded into the background. In 1866 a new organisation called the Reform League was formed to resurrect the demand. Marx organised a small group of socialists to try to take control of the Reform League and commit it to universal suffrage. He was so pleased with his efforts that he described the league as ‘all our work’. This claim was an example of another characteristic of Marx that often gets him criticised – his impatient optimism. He was inclined to put the best spin on any socialist initiative. The Reform League quickly deteriorated. It was not ‘all our work’ or anything like it. It attracted all sorts of reactionaries and compromisers who eventually won the day. Marx had got it wrong, but only in his intense enthusiasm to push the struggle forward – a sin, incidentally, that we ourselves commit more often than not, and are none the worse for.
The final example of his involvement that I’ve picked out is undoubtedly the greatest.
People sometimes ask me what work of Marx they should read first, and the obvious answer is the Communist Manifesto. Second to that in my opinion is a pamphlet he wrote in 1871 called The Civil War in France. This was about the Paris Commune, formed by the working people of Paris in revolutionary circumstances in March 1871. It lasted for two months until it was suppressed by murderous military terror of the most revolting proportions. Marx followed the commune through almost every hour of its existence, demanding from friends, family and acquaintances any fragment of information from Paris. When the commune was suppressed, he sat down, boiling with rage, and in five days wrote his pamphlet which he read out loud to the council of the International. As a description of the commune, it has never been bettered before or since. It sets out, above all, the democratic nature of the commune; how it not only made laws but carried them out, how it replaced the machinery of the capitalist state with an entirely new democracy that could never be tolerated by capitalism and its armies, and, incidentally, has nothing whatever to do with the societies presided over by Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. The Civil War in France magnificently combines Marx’s terse journalism and his fighting spirit:
‘When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their “natural superiors”, and under circumstances of unexampled difficulty performed their work modestly, conscientiously and efficiently – performed it at salaries the highest of which barely amounted to one fifth of what, according to high scientific authority, is the minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school board – the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labour, floating over the Hotel de Ville.’
That passage (and indeed the whole pamphlet) takes us closer to the reason why Marx has been hated and calumnied for so long. It is not his ideas alone which important people detest – it is the drive to put them into practice. It is not simply that his ideas have not lost their relevance over all this time – there is still a class society after all, that is every bit as foully exploitative as it ever was – it is the fact that there are people inspired by Marx who still want to change the world in the direction to which he pointed. So people are still ridiculed and abused by the professors of the profiteers because we want to fight, as he did, to rid the world of riches altogether and to get rid of poverty at the same time. Such people, such Marxists, are prepared moreover to organise to do so.
This is an edited version of a talk given at a Karl Marx day school on 10 January 2004, held to mark the republication of Alex Callinicos’s The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Why Labour lost</h1>
<h3>(May 1992)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.153, May 1992, pp-9-11.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><em>Last month’s Tory election victory marked a further sharp defeat for Labour. Now, argues <strong>Paul Foot</strong>, we have to look beyond electoral politics to the prospects for real change in society.</em></p>
<p class="fst">After the gloom, the reckoning. Just how many sacrifices have been made for this miserable election result? When the votes for Mid-Staffs came in at about 3 a.m., I noticed that Sylvia Heal had lost the seat for Labour. She had triumphed there only two years earlier in one of die most amazing by-elections this century. A safe Tory seat seemed to have been turned into a safe Labour one. Sylvia’s triumph then seemed to vindicate her remarkable speech at the 1988 Labour Party conference in which she confessed that she was dropping her lifelong commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.</p>
<p>The reason, she explained, was simple. Someone had calculated that Labour could not win with a policy of unilateral disarmament, which apparently lost it the elections of 1983 and 1987. Drop the commitment, then, she argued, and the chances of a Labour government would immeasurably increase. Thus Labour was left with a policy of support for nuclear weapons at precisely the time when the ‘enemy’ whom those nuclear weapons were meant to deter had disappeared.</p>
<p>Lots of other radical policies were chucked into the bin on the same basis. Commitments to get rid of most of the Tory trade union laws were watered down. So were the promises to take back into public ownership all those utilities and public services which the Tories had privatised. In a Gadarene stampede to appease floating voters in the middle of the road, anything which smacked of socialist anger against the Stock Exchange or any other citadel of modern capitalism was wiped out of Labour’s language.</p>
<p>Bryan Gould declared in 1987 how he loved to see workers buying and selling shares. John Smith. Margaret Beckett and Co entered a long dialogue with charming hosts in the City of London, in a ceaseless effort to persuade them that Labour’s policies were good for business. In one sense, they succeeded. On polling day the <strong>Financial Times</strong> agreed with Labour that its readers agreed can be measured by the fantastic celebrations which went on throughout election night and the whole of the following day across die length and breadth of the Ciry of London.</p>
<p>We lost socialist policies by the score. We also lost countless opportunities to organise and fight even for the policies which were left. The miners’ great struggle in 1984-5 was left high and dry by the Labour and trade union leaders. Why? Because, it was argued, ‘this was not the way to get Labour returned.’ Exactly the same argument was used when hospital workers exploded in rage in early 1988, or when the ambulance workers went on strike soon afterwards, or indeed in every dispute since the last general election. ‘Don’t rock the boat’, was the cry. ‘Labour will make things better for everyone.’ How does that argument look now? We went to bed in those early hours of 10 April reflecting that the boat had hardly been rocked at all. There’d been hardly a strike or a major demonstration for more than a year. Yet the unrocked boat was lying in ruins at the bottom of the sea.</p>
<p>Some have taken comfort from Labour’s 40 gains, and pretended that the new Tory government, with a much smaller majority than its predecessor, will be comparatively tame. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Major and Co never expected anything like the luxury of an overall majority of 21. Their supporters among the wealthy are beside themselves with joy. They are confident they can hang on to the enormous gains made under Thatcher, the booming private hospitals and private schools, the whole disgusting paraphernalia of a greedy and confident ruling class.</p>
<p>For all his tinny rhetoric about ‘a nation at ease with itself’ Major’s new cabinet shows exactly where he is going. Peter Lilley, a man who has devoted his whole life to picking the pockets of the poor and the disadvantaged, is in charge of social security. Poll Tax Portillo, who hates all government spending, is Chief Secretary at the Treasury in charge of public spending. The only Orangeman to sit for an English seat in the House of Commons is the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the new Solicitor General is a neanderthal from Brighton who can’t contain his enthusiasm for the hangman’s rope. These men are completely at case with themselves about another five years of squeezing still more wealth from the working people and passing it across to their friends and paymasters.</p>
<p>What is to be done? At once, in the wake of defeat, a great howl of misery goes up on all sides of the official left. The argument is that, because all this surrender has achieved precisely nothing, we should surrender more. Trade unions (who were completely silent through the entire election campaign) are told that they are to blame and that they must cut links with the Labour Party. The very name ‘Labour’, apparently, is a hindrance. The Liberal Party, a deeply right wing organisation which fought more than half its campaign against Labour’s central proposals for taxing the rich and restoring some freedom to trade unions, is named as the saviour of the future.</p>
<p>Like a Greek Chorus renting their clothes, the psephologists and former Social Democrats, the <strong>New Statesman</strong> and the <strong>Guardian</strong>, almost anyone who can be found who was once a member of the Communist Party, shout for constitutional reform, electoral reform, Lib-Lab election pacts, and, if such a person can possibly be found, an even more right wing leader for the Labour Party than Neil Kinnock. Forget for a moment that none of these things (except a new leader who is being catapulted into office before anyone can catch their breath) can be achieved while the Tories have a majority in parliament. The point about all of them is that they seek to shift Labour still further down the road which has taken it so inexorably to its fourth defeat in a row.</p>
<p>There is another common feature to all these demands – passivity. People are told that the priority is to change the voting system or to rely on backroom deals between the leaders of the trade unions, the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. No one outside these backrooms, the argument concludes, can do anything much except, as before, wait and see how well their leaders perform. The prospect held out by all these ‘new realist’ reformers is one of utter despondency, amounting to total surrender to the Tories.</p>
<p>It is time to restate a few simple facts about the world we live in. Its fundamental characteristic is that it is divided by class. The means whereby the people at the top of society grow rich and powerful by exploiting the majority is much more obvious now than it was a decade ago. The contradictions and horrors of such a society – unemployment, mass starvation, disease for thousands of millions of people while a small group wallow in unimaginable luxury – are more striking and more devastating. The cry for change is as loud and anguished as it has ever been.</p>
<p>So where does change come from? The central point about a society dominated by the struggle between the exploiters and the exploited is that it relies for its success on passivity from below. The engine of change is the activity and confidence of the people who are being exploited, most effectively where they are exploited directly, at the point of production. These sound like slogans. But they explain the changes which have taken place in modern Britain.</p>
<p>Looking back over the last quarter of a century I pick out three decisive changes to the left which profoundly improved the living standards of working people and decisively changed the balance of confidence in the struggle between the classes. The first was in 1969, when the Labour government proposed drastic new laws to control the trade unions. A few months later the proposals were withdrawn – not because the government had changed its mind or because civil servants at the Department of Employment were suddenly sympathetic to trade unions – but because of a short sharp campaign in the trade union movement which included unofficial strikes.</p>
<p>Much more remarkable was the change which came over the Tory government in 1972. At the beginning of that year it looked rather like the Tory government now: confident, aggressive, privatising, anti-union and anti-poor. At the end of the year it was pumping public money into industry and building up the public services more energetically than any government before or since. Its whole strategy and philosophy had changed. There had been no general election, no constitutional reform, no Lib-Lab pacts, pretty well no change in parliament at all. But there had been a victorious miners’ strike, a building workers’ strike, a hospital workers’ strike, a dockers’ strike and even a threatened general strike which not only smashed the Tories’ anti-union laws but also changed the whole face of politics.</p>
<p>Thirdly, in 1987 the Tories were re-elected on a manifesto based on their ‘flagship’ – the poll tax. Four years later the same government, which made no new pacts and still had a parliamentary majority of nearly 100, withdrew the poll tax. Had they been terrified by the parliamentary opposition? Not at all – they were contemptuous of it. What changed their minds and abolished the poll tax was a mass campaign of civil disobedience, whose climax was probably the biggest demonstration since the war, which turned into a full scale riot. These huge political shifts in our direction were all set in motion from below. They were almost unaffected by what was going on in parliament, or even by which government was in office. The pace of events was determined by the ebb and flow of the struggle between the classes – when they win, we lose, and vice versa.</p>
<p>The same test – who is winning between the classes – can be applied to elections. Elections are the most passive of all political activities, but they do concentrate people’s minds on politics. A common cliché from pundits and pollsters after the election was that Labour should have won because Britain was in recession. In fact, Labour has never won an election in a recession. Even in 1929, when Labour was elected as the largest party, the real depth of recession did not come for two years (and parliamentary Labour was reduced to a rump). The big Labour victories of 1945 and 1966 were won when the unions were strong, when nobody was out of work and when the workers were full of confidence and hope. The same point comes from a comparison of the recent election with that of February 1974. In 1974 a Tory government seeking re-election was buoyed throughout the campaign by polls which gave it big leads. Then, as the crunch came, floating voters were suddenly worried that a Tory government would lead to instability and chaos. So the Tories lost the election. In 1992 the polls showed people veering to Labour. But when it came to the crunch, the floaters shied away. This time it was Labour which seemed to hold out the prospect of chaos.</p>
<p>What was the real difference? In 1974 the miners were on strike, less than a million people were out of work, and the unions still felt strong and confident from their victories in 1972. In 1992 no one was on strike, nor had been for years. The balance of class confidence favoured Labour in 1974 and the Tories in 1992.</p>
<p>Marx argued that the prevailing ideas will always be those of the ruling class. Labour has to challenge these ideas to win elections, and is far more likely to do so when its supporters are strong, confident, acting together, than weak, uncertain, fragmented and left to think things out on their own, at the mercy of these prevailing ideas.</p>
<p>But this is not a hard and fast rule, an ‘objective circumstance’ which condemns us to Tory victories whenever they can engineer a recession. People make their own history, and their anger and discontent can be reflected in elections. However, especially in times of recession, that anger needs to be awakened, prodded, inflamed in ceaseless agitation. After the election, though not before it, the former heroes of the SDP (RIP) Peter Jenkins (<strong>Independent</strong>) and Malcolm Dean (<strong>Guardian</strong>) suddenly discovered that Labour was ‘unelectable.’ There was not a word of this before polling day when all the signs pointed in the opposite direction. Opinion polls are not conspiracies. They are measurements. The near unanimity of all the polls before the election that Labour was in the lead, often handsomely, was probably accurate. The tide of hatred against the government was so strong that it looked as though it would carry the floaters with it.</p>
<p>The crucial task for Labour was to sustain the anger against the government until the last moment. Class anger had played a large part in the early stages of the campaign. Even John Smith, one of the least angry men ever to grace a front bench, introduced his alternative budget with the claim that the ‘1 percent at the top has had its way for 12 years – now it’s the turn of the rest of us.’ The broadcast about Jennifer’s ear operation struck a chord of rage. This was not just moaning about a bad health service. It was comparing the bad (for the poor and the workers) with the good (for those who can pay). There wasn’t a street in the land where some such story had not been told, and people were indignant about it. Kinnock’s speech at Sheffield comparing Major’s soapbox with the cardboard boxes of the homeless touched an angry nerve.</p>
<p>But then suddenly the campaign faltered. The second NHS broadcast was cancelled. Suddenly the talk was not of private health care and snob schools, but of consensual and responsible government. Major clung onto his soapbox, but Kinnock was always in limousines, or on battleships releasing balloons. Edwina Currie said that Kinnock looked more like a prime minister than Major, and that was suddenly a problem. The Tories organised their fear and hate campaign to coincide with polling day. On the eve of poll the <strong>Sun</strong> had nine pages on ‘The Nightmare on Kinnock Street.’ The City staged a run on the pound and announced that Labour would bring higher interest rates. The Labour leaders, as though worn down by endless City lunches, did not respond. There was no attack on the undemocratic power of financial barons seeking to influence the election.</p>
<p>Labour was <em>not</em> unelectable. The results themselves prove it. It required only two or three extra people in every hundred to vote Labour (as they were probably intending to do until the last moment) for the Tories to have been kicked out. It was these vital floaters who, at the last moment, as the Tories pounced and Labour dithered, swung round from their anger to their fear.</p>
<p>Like all the guesses about why the election was lost, this may just be speculation. What is not speculation is that the Labour leadership now has absolutely nothing to offer us. Before we have time to catch our breath, the Tory government will be on the attack again, hacking away at the schools and hospitals they promised were safe, raising the taxes they promised to cut. Labour can do nothing to stop them. Schools, hospitals and jobs can only be protected by action outside parliament, by demonstrations, petitions and strikes. All these will be a thousand times more successful if they are sustained and led by socialists, people who make no concessions to capitalist society because they want to replace it, root and branch, with an entirely different society: a socialist society which can plan its production to fit people’s needs, and distribute its wealth on the principle that human beings, whatever their different abilities, have the same right to benefit from what is commonly produced.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of socialists have held their breath and bitten their lips rather than speak out in protest as the Labour leaders continued on their promised march to parliamentary power. After Black Friday, 10 April, every one of them is disappointed and indignant. Their disappointment is useless. But their indignation can still stop the Tories – if it is channelled into real resistance, and into a socialist organisation which bases itself on that resistance, and can therefore hold out the prospect of real change.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Why Labour lost
(May 1992)
From Socialist Review, No.153, May 1992, pp-9-11.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Last month’s Tory election victory marked a further sharp defeat for Labour. Now, argues Paul Foot, we have to look beyond electoral politics to the prospects for real change in society.
After the gloom, the reckoning. Just how many sacrifices have been made for this miserable election result? When the votes for Mid-Staffs came in at about 3 a.m., I noticed that Sylvia Heal had lost the seat for Labour. She had triumphed there only two years earlier in one of die most amazing by-elections this century. A safe Tory seat seemed to have been turned into a safe Labour one. Sylvia’s triumph then seemed to vindicate her remarkable speech at the 1988 Labour Party conference in which she confessed that she was dropping her lifelong commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.
The reason, she explained, was simple. Someone had calculated that Labour could not win with a policy of unilateral disarmament, which apparently lost it the elections of 1983 and 1987. Drop the commitment, then, she argued, and the chances of a Labour government would immeasurably increase. Thus Labour was left with a policy of support for nuclear weapons at precisely the time when the ‘enemy’ whom those nuclear weapons were meant to deter had disappeared.
Lots of other radical policies were chucked into the bin on the same basis. Commitments to get rid of most of the Tory trade union laws were watered down. So were the promises to take back into public ownership all those utilities and public services which the Tories had privatised. In a Gadarene stampede to appease floating voters in the middle of the road, anything which smacked of socialist anger against the Stock Exchange or any other citadel of modern capitalism was wiped out of Labour’s language.
Bryan Gould declared in 1987 how he loved to see workers buying and selling shares. John Smith. Margaret Beckett and Co entered a long dialogue with charming hosts in the City of London, in a ceaseless effort to persuade them that Labour’s policies were good for business. In one sense, they succeeded. On polling day the Financial Times agreed with Labour that its readers agreed can be measured by the fantastic celebrations which went on throughout election night and the whole of the following day across die length and breadth of the Ciry of London.
We lost socialist policies by the score. We also lost countless opportunities to organise and fight even for the policies which were left. The miners’ great struggle in 1984-5 was left high and dry by the Labour and trade union leaders. Why? Because, it was argued, ‘this was not the way to get Labour returned.’ Exactly the same argument was used when hospital workers exploded in rage in early 1988, or when the ambulance workers went on strike soon afterwards, or indeed in every dispute since the last general election. ‘Don’t rock the boat’, was the cry. ‘Labour will make things better for everyone.’ How does that argument look now? We went to bed in those early hours of 10 April reflecting that the boat had hardly been rocked at all. There’d been hardly a strike or a major demonstration for more than a year. Yet the unrocked boat was lying in ruins at the bottom of the sea.
Some have taken comfort from Labour’s 40 gains, and pretended that the new Tory government, with a much smaller majority than its predecessor, will be comparatively tame. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Major and Co never expected anything like the luxury of an overall majority of 21. Their supporters among the wealthy are beside themselves with joy. They are confident they can hang on to the enormous gains made under Thatcher, the booming private hospitals and private schools, the whole disgusting paraphernalia of a greedy and confident ruling class.
For all his tinny rhetoric about ‘a nation at ease with itself’ Major’s new cabinet shows exactly where he is going. Peter Lilley, a man who has devoted his whole life to picking the pockets of the poor and the disadvantaged, is in charge of social security. Poll Tax Portillo, who hates all government spending, is Chief Secretary at the Treasury in charge of public spending. The only Orangeman to sit for an English seat in the House of Commons is the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the new Solicitor General is a neanderthal from Brighton who can’t contain his enthusiasm for the hangman’s rope. These men are completely at case with themselves about another five years of squeezing still more wealth from the working people and passing it across to their friends and paymasters.
What is to be done? At once, in the wake of defeat, a great howl of misery goes up on all sides of the official left. The argument is that, because all this surrender has achieved precisely nothing, we should surrender more. Trade unions (who were completely silent through the entire election campaign) are told that they are to blame and that they must cut links with the Labour Party. The very name ‘Labour’, apparently, is a hindrance. The Liberal Party, a deeply right wing organisation which fought more than half its campaign against Labour’s central proposals for taxing the rich and restoring some freedom to trade unions, is named as the saviour of the future.
Like a Greek Chorus renting their clothes, the psephologists and former Social Democrats, the New Statesman and the Guardian, almost anyone who can be found who was once a member of the Communist Party, shout for constitutional reform, electoral reform, Lib-Lab election pacts, and, if such a person can possibly be found, an even more right wing leader for the Labour Party than Neil Kinnock. Forget for a moment that none of these things (except a new leader who is being catapulted into office before anyone can catch their breath) can be achieved while the Tories have a majority in parliament. The point about all of them is that they seek to shift Labour still further down the road which has taken it so inexorably to its fourth defeat in a row.
There is another common feature to all these demands – passivity. People are told that the priority is to change the voting system or to rely on backroom deals between the leaders of the trade unions, the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. No one outside these backrooms, the argument concludes, can do anything much except, as before, wait and see how well their leaders perform. The prospect held out by all these ‘new realist’ reformers is one of utter despondency, amounting to total surrender to the Tories.
It is time to restate a few simple facts about the world we live in. Its fundamental characteristic is that it is divided by class. The means whereby the people at the top of society grow rich and powerful by exploiting the majority is much more obvious now than it was a decade ago. The contradictions and horrors of such a society – unemployment, mass starvation, disease for thousands of millions of people while a small group wallow in unimaginable luxury – are more striking and more devastating. The cry for change is as loud and anguished as it has ever been.
So where does change come from? The central point about a society dominated by the struggle between the exploiters and the exploited is that it relies for its success on passivity from below. The engine of change is the activity and confidence of the people who are being exploited, most effectively where they are exploited directly, at the point of production. These sound like slogans. But they explain the changes which have taken place in modern Britain.
Looking back over the last quarter of a century I pick out three decisive changes to the left which profoundly improved the living standards of working people and decisively changed the balance of confidence in the struggle between the classes. The first was in 1969, when the Labour government proposed drastic new laws to control the trade unions. A few months later the proposals were withdrawn – not because the government had changed its mind or because civil servants at the Department of Employment were suddenly sympathetic to trade unions – but because of a short sharp campaign in the trade union movement which included unofficial strikes.
Much more remarkable was the change which came over the Tory government in 1972. At the beginning of that year it looked rather like the Tory government now: confident, aggressive, privatising, anti-union and anti-poor. At the end of the year it was pumping public money into industry and building up the public services more energetically than any government before or since. Its whole strategy and philosophy had changed. There had been no general election, no constitutional reform, no Lib-Lab pacts, pretty well no change in parliament at all. But there had been a victorious miners’ strike, a building workers’ strike, a hospital workers’ strike, a dockers’ strike and even a threatened general strike which not only smashed the Tories’ anti-union laws but also changed the whole face of politics.
Thirdly, in 1987 the Tories were re-elected on a manifesto based on their ‘flagship’ – the poll tax. Four years later the same government, which made no new pacts and still had a parliamentary majority of nearly 100, withdrew the poll tax. Had they been terrified by the parliamentary opposition? Not at all – they were contemptuous of it. What changed their minds and abolished the poll tax was a mass campaign of civil disobedience, whose climax was probably the biggest demonstration since the war, which turned into a full scale riot. These huge political shifts in our direction were all set in motion from below. They were almost unaffected by what was going on in parliament, or even by which government was in office. The pace of events was determined by the ebb and flow of the struggle between the classes – when they win, we lose, and vice versa.
The same test – who is winning between the classes – can be applied to elections. Elections are the most passive of all political activities, but they do concentrate people’s minds on politics. A common cliché from pundits and pollsters after the election was that Labour should have won because Britain was in recession. In fact, Labour has never won an election in a recession. Even in 1929, when Labour was elected as the largest party, the real depth of recession did not come for two years (and parliamentary Labour was reduced to a rump). The big Labour victories of 1945 and 1966 were won when the unions were strong, when nobody was out of work and when the workers were full of confidence and hope. The same point comes from a comparison of the recent election with that of February 1974. In 1974 a Tory government seeking re-election was buoyed throughout the campaign by polls which gave it big leads. Then, as the crunch came, floating voters were suddenly worried that a Tory government would lead to instability and chaos. So the Tories lost the election. In 1992 the polls showed people veering to Labour. But when it came to the crunch, the floaters shied away. This time it was Labour which seemed to hold out the prospect of chaos.
What was the real difference? In 1974 the miners were on strike, less than a million people were out of work, and the unions still felt strong and confident from their victories in 1972. In 1992 no one was on strike, nor had been for years. The balance of class confidence favoured Labour in 1974 and the Tories in 1992.
Marx argued that the prevailing ideas will always be those of the ruling class. Labour has to challenge these ideas to win elections, and is far more likely to do so when its supporters are strong, confident, acting together, than weak, uncertain, fragmented and left to think things out on their own, at the mercy of these prevailing ideas.
But this is not a hard and fast rule, an ‘objective circumstance’ which condemns us to Tory victories whenever they can engineer a recession. People make their own history, and their anger and discontent can be reflected in elections. However, especially in times of recession, that anger needs to be awakened, prodded, inflamed in ceaseless agitation. After the election, though not before it, the former heroes of the SDP (RIP) Peter Jenkins (Independent) and Malcolm Dean (Guardian) suddenly discovered that Labour was ‘unelectable.’ There was not a word of this before polling day when all the signs pointed in the opposite direction. Opinion polls are not conspiracies. They are measurements. The near unanimity of all the polls before the election that Labour was in the lead, often handsomely, was probably accurate. The tide of hatred against the government was so strong that it looked as though it would carry the floaters with it.
The crucial task for Labour was to sustain the anger against the government until the last moment. Class anger had played a large part in the early stages of the campaign. Even John Smith, one of the least angry men ever to grace a front bench, introduced his alternative budget with the claim that the ‘1 percent at the top has had its way for 12 years – now it’s the turn of the rest of us.’ The broadcast about Jennifer’s ear operation struck a chord of rage. This was not just moaning about a bad health service. It was comparing the bad (for the poor and the workers) with the good (for those who can pay). There wasn’t a street in the land where some such story had not been told, and people were indignant about it. Kinnock’s speech at Sheffield comparing Major’s soapbox with the cardboard boxes of the homeless touched an angry nerve.
But then suddenly the campaign faltered. The second NHS broadcast was cancelled. Suddenly the talk was not of private health care and snob schools, but of consensual and responsible government. Major clung onto his soapbox, but Kinnock was always in limousines, or on battleships releasing balloons. Edwina Currie said that Kinnock looked more like a prime minister than Major, and that was suddenly a problem. The Tories organised their fear and hate campaign to coincide with polling day. On the eve of poll the Sun had nine pages on ‘The Nightmare on Kinnock Street.’ The City staged a run on the pound and announced that Labour would bring higher interest rates. The Labour leaders, as though worn down by endless City lunches, did not respond. There was no attack on the undemocratic power of financial barons seeking to influence the election.
Labour was not unelectable. The results themselves prove it. It required only two or three extra people in every hundred to vote Labour (as they were probably intending to do until the last moment) for the Tories to have been kicked out. It was these vital floaters who, at the last moment, as the Tories pounced and Labour dithered, swung round from their anger to their fear.
Like all the guesses about why the election was lost, this may just be speculation. What is not speculation is that the Labour leadership now has absolutely nothing to offer us. Before we have time to catch our breath, the Tory government will be on the attack again, hacking away at the schools and hospitals they promised were safe, raising the taxes they promised to cut. Labour can do nothing to stop them. Schools, hospitals and jobs can only be protected by action outside parliament, by demonstrations, petitions and strikes. All these will be a thousand times more successful if they are sustained and led by socialists, people who make no concessions to capitalist society because they want to replace it, root and branch, with an entirely different society: a socialist society which can plan its production to fit people’s needs, and distribute its wealth on the principle that human beings, whatever their different abilities, have the same right to benefit from what is commonly produced.
Tens of thousands of socialists have held their breath and bitten their lips rather than speak out in protest as the Labour leaders continued on their promised march to parliamentary power. After Black Friday, 10 April, every one of them is disappointed and indignant. Their disappointment is useless. But their indignation can still stop the Tories – if it is channelled into real resistance, and into a socialist organisation which bases itself on that resistance, and can therefore hold out the prospect of real change.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>‘Argies’ with British guns</h1>
<h3>(7 November 1996)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 7 November 1996.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000), pp. 168–169.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Remember the Scott inquiry? It may seem like a long time ago, but the report of the Lord Justice (now promoted to Vice-Chancellor) was published only seven months ago.</p>
<p>Many curious facts emerged from the Scott hearings about the way we are governed. But perhaps the strangest of all was that armaments which were ostensibly made to protect Britain and to defeat Britain’s enemies were being sold hand over fist to a country which became Britain’s enemy.</p>
<p>The contradiction was brilliantly exposed in the role of a single person: a Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Glazebrook. Glazebrook’s job at the Ministry of Defence was to make sure that weapons and machinery were not sold to anyone who might use them against Britain.</p>
<p>Glazebrook constantly found himself in a minority of one in the Ministry of Defence committees which decided what should be sold. These committees were entirely dominated by representatives of the arms companies ‘regional marketing directors’, as they were called – which used their majorities to call the tune.</p>
<p>Scott’s recommendations were intended to make absolutely sure that this sort of thing never happened again.</p>
<p>Well, here we are, seven months later, and what is happening? A couple of excellent Channel 4 <em>Despatches</em> programmes reveal the astonishing fact that Argentinian warships are powered by British made engines whose spare parts have recently been made readily available.</p>
<p>Can this possibly be right? Is Britain equipping the hated navy or the ‘Argies’ – the same navy which surrounded the Falkland Islands in 1982, and whose <em>General Belgrano</em> was so heroically sunk with 300 dead more than 200 miles outside the ‘exclusion zone’?<br>
</p>
<h4>Total ban</h4>
<p class="fst">Margaret Thatcher regarded her victory over Argentina as the high peak of her time in Downing Street. Immediately afterwards she slapped a total ban on every export to Argentina which could be regarded as military.</p>
<p>For years their ships had been bought from and powered by British shipbuilding and engineering. The nastier the Argentinian dictatorship, the more readily the British government, including the Labour government of 1974–79, sold it warships, equipped them and repaired them.</p>
<p>Desperately, the Argentinian naval command set up factories across the Western hemisphere to make the spare parts required for the British engines – parts which were denied them by the patriotic fury of Mrs Thatcher and her acolytes.</p>
<p>Then, suddenly, the picture changed. In 1995, Rolls Royce, whose engines still power many Argentinian warships, approached the British department of trade. The Argentinian navy, they whined, was begging for vital spare parts to keep the ancient engines going. Please, please could they break the rules and sell the parts?</p>
<p>The DTI agreed almost at once.</p>
<p>This was happening at the very time that Ian Lang, the President of the Board of Trade, was defending the government’s record during the Scott inquiry and, in the process, jeering at the last Labour government for selling arms to Argentina!</p>
<p>As we sit back and enjoy what will certainly be another government embarrassment about this, we can reflect upon the real lesson: the extent of corporate power.</p>
<p>From time to time, capitalist greed for profit will be reined back in the interests of ‘the country’ or ‘the military’ or even by parliament.</p>
<p>But, in the end, the representatives of capitalism are more powerful than parliamentary democracy or patriotism, and will find a way to shrug off both so they can make profits.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
‘Argies’ with British guns
(7 November 1996)
From Socialist Worker, 7 November 1996.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000), pp. 168–169.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Remember the Scott inquiry? It may seem like a long time ago, but the report of the Lord Justice (now promoted to Vice-Chancellor) was published only seven months ago.
Many curious facts emerged from the Scott hearings about the way we are governed. But perhaps the strangest of all was that armaments which were ostensibly made to protect Britain and to defeat Britain’s enemies were being sold hand over fist to a country which became Britain’s enemy.
The contradiction was brilliantly exposed in the role of a single person: a Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Glazebrook. Glazebrook’s job at the Ministry of Defence was to make sure that weapons and machinery were not sold to anyone who might use them against Britain.
Glazebrook constantly found himself in a minority of one in the Ministry of Defence committees which decided what should be sold. These committees were entirely dominated by representatives of the arms companies ‘regional marketing directors’, as they were called – which used their majorities to call the tune.
Scott’s recommendations were intended to make absolutely sure that this sort of thing never happened again.
Well, here we are, seven months later, and what is happening? A couple of excellent Channel 4 Despatches programmes reveal the astonishing fact that Argentinian warships are powered by British made engines whose spare parts have recently been made readily available.
Can this possibly be right? Is Britain equipping the hated navy or the ‘Argies’ – the same navy which surrounded the Falkland Islands in 1982, and whose General Belgrano was so heroically sunk with 300 dead more than 200 miles outside the ‘exclusion zone’?
Total ban
Margaret Thatcher regarded her victory over Argentina as the high peak of her time in Downing Street. Immediately afterwards she slapped a total ban on every export to Argentina which could be regarded as military.
For years their ships had been bought from and powered by British shipbuilding and engineering. The nastier the Argentinian dictatorship, the more readily the British government, including the Labour government of 1974–79, sold it warships, equipped them and repaired them.
Desperately, the Argentinian naval command set up factories across the Western hemisphere to make the spare parts required for the British engines – parts which were denied them by the patriotic fury of Mrs Thatcher and her acolytes.
Then, suddenly, the picture changed. In 1995, Rolls Royce, whose engines still power many Argentinian warships, approached the British department of trade. The Argentinian navy, they whined, was begging for vital spare parts to keep the ancient engines going. Please, please could they break the rules and sell the parts?
The DTI agreed almost at once.
This was happening at the very time that Ian Lang, the President of the Board of Trade, was defending the government’s record during the Scott inquiry and, in the process, jeering at the last Labour government for selling arms to Argentina!
As we sit back and enjoy what will certainly be another government embarrassment about this, we can reflect upon the real lesson: the extent of corporate power.
From time to time, capitalist greed for profit will be reined back in the interests of ‘the country’ or ‘the military’ or even by parliament.
But, in the end, the representatives of capitalism are more powerful than parliamentary democracy or patriotism, and will find a way to shrug off both so they can make profits.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Orwell and the proles</h1>
<h3>(January 1984)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, January 1984.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990</strong> (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 272–273.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Everyone else seems to be doing it, so I did it too. I re-read <strong>1984</strong> by Geroge Orwell, and I marked this passage:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The future belonged to the proles. And could he be sure that when the time came the world they constructed would not be just as alien as the world of the Party? Yes, because at the least it would be a world of sanity. Where there is equality, there can be sanity.</p>
<p class="quote">Sooner or later it would happen, strength would turn into consciousness. The proles were immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that valiant figure in the yard.</p>
<p class="quote">In the end their awakening would come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand years, they would stay alive against all the odds, like birds passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill.</p>
<p class="quote">All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan – everywhere stood the same solid, unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing.</p>
<p class="quote">Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead; theirs was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body and passed on the secret doctrine that two and two make four.</p>
<p class="fst">Poor George Orwell (and <strong>1984</strong> in particular) have been ground down almost to nothing in the awful mill of the Cold War. In the West, he has had to put up with the most revolting flattery from those who say that <strong>1984</strong> is <em>all</em> about Russia: that it is Russian horror alone which he had brilliantly exposed.</p>
<p>From the East (and from official Communists everywhere) Orwell has had even worse service. He has been denounced as pessimistic, nihilistic and even anti-working class. He has been ridiculed as a Hampstead intellectual who sold out to the CIA.</p>
<p>The Western flatterers forget that <em>all three</em> warring super-continents in <strong>1984</strong> have developed the same system, not through conquest, but through the choice of their rulers.</p>
<p>Orwell’s prediction was that <em>all</em> the power blocs would grow increasingly similar in style and character – a prediction which every minute is being brilliantly fulfilled.</p>
<p>The Eastern critics forget passages like the one above (and many others) when Orwell’s perennial optimism and good humour break out from behind his gloomy descriptions of what he saw as an extremely gloomy society.</p>
<p>Both sets of critics forget, above all, the working class, which as this passage shows, Orwell did not forget, even at the end. Of course he did not know or care much about working-class organization, about the relationship between party or class.</p>
<p>Of course, he <em>was</em> a loner, with all sorts of weird and often quite horrible ideas about nationalism and people’s instinctive ‘love of country’. Of course he was a male chauvinist of the most patronizing and often vulgar variety.</p>
<p>But for all that you’ve really got to hand it to him. He was among the very first to see through Stalin’s Russia for the bureaucratic tyranny which it was: and to detect how such a tyranny necessarily took the path of counter-revolution when a revolution broke out anywhere, as in Spain in 1936 and 1937.</p>
<p>While much ‘better trained’ and ‘conscious’ socialists were looking to Stalin’s Russia for salvation, Orwell was denouncing it and exposing it, not as a Cold War diatribe, but as part of a life’s devotion to the common people. He exposed Russia precisely because he saw things from the point of view of the proles.</p>
<p>He and his books will survive attacks from Moscow and praise from Washington, because his basic message is stronger than either of them: A plague on both your houses. The future belongs to the proles.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Orwell and the proles
(January 1984)
From Socialist Worker, January 1984.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Words as Weapons: Selected Writings 1980–1990 (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 272–273.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Everyone else seems to be doing it, so I did it too. I re-read 1984 by Geroge Orwell, and I marked this passage:
The future belonged to the proles. And could he be sure that when the time came the world they constructed would not be just as alien as the world of the Party? Yes, because at the least it would be a world of sanity. Where there is equality, there can be sanity.
Sooner or later it would happen, strength would turn into consciousness. The proles were immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that valiant figure in the yard.
In the end their awakening would come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand years, they would stay alive against all the odds, like birds passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill.
All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan – everywhere stood the same solid, unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing.
Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead; theirs was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body and passed on the secret doctrine that two and two make four.
Poor George Orwell (and 1984 in particular) have been ground down almost to nothing in the awful mill of the Cold War. In the West, he has had to put up with the most revolting flattery from those who say that 1984 is all about Russia: that it is Russian horror alone which he had brilliantly exposed.
From the East (and from official Communists everywhere) Orwell has had even worse service. He has been denounced as pessimistic, nihilistic and even anti-working class. He has been ridiculed as a Hampstead intellectual who sold out to the CIA.
The Western flatterers forget that all three warring super-continents in 1984 have developed the same system, not through conquest, but through the choice of their rulers.
Orwell’s prediction was that all the power blocs would grow increasingly similar in style and character – a prediction which every minute is being brilliantly fulfilled.
The Eastern critics forget passages like the one above (and many others) when Orwell’s perennial optimism and good humour break out from behind his gloomy descriptions of what he saw as an extremely gloomy society.
Both sets of critics forget, above all, the working class, which as this passage shows, Orwell did not forget, even at the end. Of course he did not know or care much about working-class organization, about the relationship between party or class.
Of course, he was a loner, with all sorts of weird and often quite horrible ideas about nationalism and people’s instinctive ‘love of country’. Of course he was a male chauvinist of the most patronizing and often vulgar variety.
But for all that you’ve really got to hand it to him. He was among the very first to see through Stalin’s Russia for the bureaucratic tyranny which it was: and to detect how such a tyranny necessarily took the path of counter-revolution when a revolution broke out anywhere, as in Spain in 1936 and 1937.
While much ‘better trained’ and ‘conscious’ socialists were looking to Stalin’s Russia for salvation, Orwell was denouncing it and exposing it, not as a Cold War diatribe, but as part of a life’s devotion to the common people. He exposed Russia precisely because he saw things from the point of view of the proles.
He and his books will survive attacks from Moscow and praise from Washington, because his basic message is stronger than either of them: A plague on both your houses. The future belongs to the proles.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Old Firm</h1>
<h3>(July 1972)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Reviews</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj052" target="new">No.52</a>, July-September 1972, pp.41-2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Competition and the Corporate Society. British Conservatives, the State and Industry: 1945-1964</strong><br>
by Nigel Harris<br>
<em>Methuen, £3.75</em></p>
<p class="fst">On the day this review is written (May 18) the front page of the <strong>Times</strong> reports ‘deep restiveness here and there inside the Cabinet and on the Conservative back benches about the Government’s <em>volte face</em> on industrial intervention policies.’ According to the report, the estate agents, stockbrokers, supermarket proprietors and used car salesmen on the Tory back benches are not a little perplexed about the Government’s Industry Bill, which contemplates even wider state powers over and subsidies for private industry than even the previous Labour Government had contemplated. Questions are being asked, in the polite way in which these things are done on Tory back bench committees, about the total somersault which the Government has turned on almost all its economic policies.</p>
<p>Quotations from leading Tories in the run-up to the last general election about ‘the efficiency of private enterprise’ about ‘standing on your own two feet’, about ‘disengagement from the State’ are nostalgically recited at meetings of the 1922 Committee. The Upper Clyde Shipyards, the Government is reminded, was to be dosed because the Government would not pay an estimated £6m to keep it solvent, but a few months later the same Government shelled out £35m in state aid to the same firm. Harland and Wolff in Belfast have been paid by the Tory Government in state aid some four times what the whole company is worth at current stock exchange prices. Sir Keith Joseph, chief shouter of pre-election ‘abrasive’, neo-Liberal slogans, has been kept well away from industry, and Mr Nicholas Ridley, one of the few Government Ministers who tried to practise what he preached, has been unceremoniously sacked.</p>
<p>No sooner are ‘abrasive Bills’ passed than the Government must try to retreat from them. In the week that the Industrial Relations Court looked like sending a Hull dockers’ leader to jail. Heath, the CBI and the TUC talk about ‘new conciliation procedures’. At the eleventh hour of the Housing Finance Bill, the Government watered down its most penal provision. Even the Government’s original determination to come to terms at any price with white racist Rhodesia seems to be wavering.</p>
<p>Back-bench Tories need principles to sustain them through the long Parliamentary winters. It is difficult to believe in profits and minority wealth, and the importance of both has to be explained in terms of principle. Chopping and changing from neo-Liberalism’ to ‘corporatism’ can, argue the backwoodsmen, do the Party and the class nothing but harm.</p>
<p>In fact, as Nigel Harris argues in this fine book, the party has survived and expanded because it has changed tack and emphasis to suit the changing needs of national capitalism. Disraeli’s strength was that he heaved the party into line with the demands of the new industrial bourgeoisie; Baldwin’s that he convinced the Tories of the 1930s that they had always been protectionists; Macmillan’s that he isolated his Suez backwoodsmen, avoided confrontation with the trade unions, instituted ‘planning’, and steered a wayward course to the corporate state.</p>
<p>There is no symmetry, no logic, no pattern to the capitalist system. Its logicians and its prophets are almost always wrong. ‘It is a contradiction in terms’ said Enoch Powell, prophet backbencher in 1955, (not to be confused with Enoch Powell, realist Minister 1960-1963) ‘to say that the railways cannot pay in an economy which is paying. It is a contradiction in terms to say that we can produce a profit, that we can export at a profit, but that we cannot, at a profit, transport the factors of production or the finished goods.’</p>
<p>Seventeen years previously, Harold Macmillan, who was better at Greek than Enoch Powell, but better also at preserving the interests of his class, had written in <strong>The Middle Way</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The coal industry ought now to be absorbed into the sphere of socialised concerns conducted in the light of wider national considerations-not making its first objective the securing of a profit on its own operations but seeking to serve other industries and assist them to become profitable.’</p>
<p class="fst">Macmillan saw what Powell, except in his brief period of high office, has never seen: that the only law of any importance in capitalism is the law of class preservation. The delicate private enterprise mechanism imagined by Powell (and, in less intelligible terms, by Winston Churchill), are fine for opposition or for the hustings, but useless for Tories in power. The best statement ever on Tory attitudes towards the State was made by Major Gwillim Lloyd George in 1946.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘My idea is that when things are not going so well, the State should come in, but when things are going well, the State should keep out. In other words, it is a policy determined by the state of trade in the country.’</p>
<p class="fst">Who better to tell the Tories whether ‘things’ were going well or not than Paul Chambers when he was chairman of ICI? In 1958, when ‘things’ were going well and a pre-election boom was in the offing, Sir Paul wrote a pamphlet for the Conservative Party attacking the Government’s controls over business, which, he wrote, ‘are inconsistent with a free society’. ‘There are many ways in which the spirit of enterprise can be killed’, he went on, ‘One is the continuation of controls by a Conservative Government.’</p>
<p>Four years later, after the Selwyn Lloyd pay pause, when ‘things’ were going badly, Sir Paul told a lunch for the American Chamber of Commerce that legislation against concentration of economic power was out of date. What was needed, he said, was ‘industrial planning to eliminate surplus capacity.’</p>
<p>This class pragmatism determined the Conservatives’ approach to their greatest permanent problem: organised labour. Here is Iain Macleod, then Minister of Labour, speaking to Tory backwoodsmen at the 1956 Party Conference who were demanding a compulsory ballot before a national strike:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The idea, of course, is that the workers are less militant than the leaders. All I can tell you, speaking quite frankly, is that this is not my experience, nor is it the experience of any Minister of Labour.’</p>
<p class="fst">Macleod’s policy, and Monkton’s, was to co-operate with trade union leaders, to coax them into the corridors of power in exchange for worker apathy. The policy served the Tories well until 1964, and drew from TUC General Secretary Woodcock the famous remark that his movement had left Trafalgar Square for the committee rooms.</p>
<p>But the policy, like the corporatist approach to industry, did not and could not provide a solution to the problems of capitalism. It did not create the post-war boom; it served only to carve for British capitalism the best possible proceeds from it. As the boom inevitably faded, neither neo-Liberalism nor corporatism could extract the ruling class from the chaos of their international system, nor from the struggle with the workers in which they were permanently and inevitably engaged. The bulk of Nigel Harris’ book deals with the postwar period from 1945 to 1964, and only once, briefly, does he hazard the guess that ‘the British establishment is girding its loins for war’, and that the Industrial Relations Act ‘proclaimed its ... return to open class warfare in order to secure the survival of British business’. That is probably right. For the moment, at any rate, the workers are back in Trafalgar Square. But no one should underestimate the ability of the British ruling class, perhaps with the help of Labour leaders rather than Tory ones, to shy away from drastic confrontation whenever the remotest possibility presents itself.</p>
<p>Throughout these 288 pages of text (and another hundred of notes and references) Nigel Harris has stuck firmly (sometimes rather grimly) to exposing the myth that there is ideal, principle or consistency in the history of the British Conservative Party. In his final chapter, which has the same name as the book, and in which the slightly cramped style of earlier chapters seems to lift, he ridicules Tory ‘justifications’ of a class society as savagely as he chides social democrat leaders for assuming that the new corporatism has been brought around by the pressure of their workers’ armies. The central thesis, overlapping through all the chapters, is remorselessly proven.</p>
<p>What is missing from the book is the stench of property. A neutral reader could conceivably find himself sympathising with the bumbling Tory corporatists as they try to stave off the demands of their ‘principled’ madmen and ‘keep society going’. The lunacy and savagery of the class system is implicit not explicit in Nigel Harris’ book. The enemy’s cynicism, his demagoguery and his ability to shift his principles are there for all to see. But there is no call to arms to rout him.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Old Firm
(July 1972)
From Reviews, International Socialism (1st series), No.52, July-September 1972, pp.41-2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Competition and the Corporate Society. British Conservatives, the State and Industry: 1945-1964
by Nigel Harris
Methuen, £3.75
On the day this review is written (May 18) the front page of the Times reports ‘deep restiveness here and there inside the Cabinet and on the Conservative back benches about the Government’s volte face on industrial intervention policies.’ According to the report, the estate agents, stockbrokers, supermarket proprietors and used car salesmen on the Tory back benches are not a little perplexed about the Government’s Industry Bill, which contemplates even wider state powers over and subsidies for private industry than even the previous Labour Government had contemplated. Questions are being asked, in the polite way in which these things are done on Tory back bench committees, about the total somersault which the Government has turned on almost all its economic policies.
Quotations from leading Tories in the run-up to the last general election about ‘the efficiency of private enterprise’ about ‘standing on your own two feet’, about ‘disengagement from the State’ are nostalgically recited at meetings of the 1922 Committee. The Upper Clyde Shipyards, the Government is reminded, was to be dosed because the Government would not pay an estimated £6m to keep it solvent, but a few months later the same Government shelled out £35m in state aid to the same firm. Harland and Wolff in Belfast have been paid by the Tory Government in state aid some four times what the whole company is worth at current stock exchange prices. Sir Keith Joseph, chief shouter of pre-election ‘abrasive’, neo-Liberal slogans, has been kept well away from industry, and Mr Nicholas Ridley, one of the few Government Ministers who tried to practise what he preached, has been unceremoniously sacked.
No sooner are ‘abrasive Bills’ passed than the Government must try to retreat from them. In the week that the Industrial Relations Court looked like sending a Hull dockers’ leader to jail. Heath, the CBI and the TUC talk about ‘new conciliation procedures’. At the eleventh hour of the Housing Finance Bill, the Government watered down its most penal provision. Even the Government’s original determination to come to terms at any price with white racist Rhodesia seems to be wavering.
Back-bench Tories need principles to sustain them through the long Parliamentary winters. It is difficult to believe in profits and minority wealth, and the importance of both has to be explained in terms of principle. Chopping and changing from neo-Liberalism’ to ‘corporatism’ can, argue the backwoodsmen, do the Party and the class nothing but harm.
In fact, as Nigel Harris argues in this fine book, the party has survived and expanded because it has changed tack and emphasis to suit the changing needs of national capitalism. Disraeli’s strength was that he heaved the party into line with the demands of the new industrial bourgeoisie; Baldwin’s that he convinced the Tories of the 1930s that they had always been protectionists; Macmillan’s that he isolated his Suez backwoodsmen, avoided confrontation with the trade unions, instituted ‘planning’, and steered a wayward course to the corporate state.
There is no symmetry, no logic, no pattern to the capitalist system. Its logicians and its prophets are almost always wrong. ‘It is a contradiction in terms’ said Enoch Powell, prophet backbencher in 1955, (not to be confused with Enoch Powell, realist Minister 1960-1963) ‘to say that the railways cannot pay in an economy which is paying. It is a contradiction in terms to say that we can produce a profit, that we can export at a profit, but that we cannot, at a profit, transport the factors of production or the finished goods.’
Seventeen years previously, Harold Macmillan, who was better at Greek than Enoch Powell, but better also at preserving the interests of his class, had written in The Middle Way:
‘The coal industry ought now to be absorbed into the sphere of socialised concerns conducted in the light of wider national considerations-not making its first objective the securing of a profit on its own operations but seeking to serve other industries and assist them to become profitable.’
Macmillan saw what Powell, except in his brief period of high office, has never seen: that the only law of any importance in capitalism is the law of class preservation. The delicate private enterprise mechanism imagined by Powell (and, in less intelligible terms, by Winston Churchill), are fine for opposition or for the hustings, but useless for Tories in power. The best statement ever on Tory attitudes towards the State was made by Major Gwillim Lloyd George in 1946.
‘My idea is that when things are not going so well, the State should come in, but when things are going well, the State should keep out. In other words, it is a policy determined by the state of trade in the country.’
Who better to tell the Tories whether ‘things’ were going well or not than Paul Chambers when he was chairman of ICI? In 1958, when ‘things’ were going well and a pre-election boom was in the offing, Sir Paul wrote a pamphlet for the Conservative Party attacking the Government’s controls over business, which, he wrote, ‘are inconsistent with a free society’. ‘There are many ways in which the spirit of enterprise can be killed’, he went on, ‘One is the continuation of controls by a Conservative Government.’
Four years later, after the Selwyn Lloyd pay pause, when ‘things’ were going badly, Sir Paul told a lunch for the American Chamber of Commerce that legislation against concentration of economic power was out of date. What was needed, he said, was ‘industrial planning to eliminate surplus capacity.’
This class pragmatism determined the Conservatives’ approach to their greatest permanent problem: organised labour. Here is Iain Macleod, then Minister of Labour, speaking to Tory backwoodsmen at the 1956 Party Conference who were demanding a compulsory ballot before a national strike:
‘The idea, of course, is that the workers are less militant than the leaders. All I can tell you, speaking quite frankly, is that this is not my experience, nor is it the experience of any Minister of Labour.’
Macleod’s policy, and Monkton’s, was to co-operate with trade union leaders, to coax them into the corridors of power in exchange for worker apathy. The policy served the Tories well until 1964, and drew from TUC General Secretary Woodcock the famous remark that his movement had left Trafalgar Square for the committee rooms.
But the policy, like the corporatist approach to industry, did not and could not provide a solution to the problems of capitalism. It did not create the post-war boom; it served only to carve for British capitalism the best possible proceeds from it. As the boom inevitably faded, neither neo-Liberalism nor corporatism could extract the ruling class from the chaos of their international system, nor from the struggle with the workers in which they were permanently and inevitably engaged. The bulk of Nigel Harris’ book deals with the postwar period from 1945 to 1964, and only once, briefly, does he hazard the guess that ‘the British establishment is girding its loins for war’, and that the Industrial Relations Act ‘proclaimed its ... return to open class warfare in order to secure the survival of British business’. That is probably right. For the moment, at any rate, the workers are back in Trafalgar Square. But no one should underestimate the ability of the British ruling class, perhaps with the help of Labour leaders rather than Tory ones, to shy away from drastic confrontation whenever the remotest possibility presents itself.
Throughout these 288 pages of text (and another hundred of notes and references) Nigel Harris has stuck firmly (sometimes rather grimly) to exposing the myth that there is ideal, principle or consistency in the history of the British Conservative Party. In his final chapter, which has the same name as the book, and in which the slightly cramped style of earlier chapters seems to lift, he ridicules Tory ‘justifications’ of a class society as savagely as he chides social democrat leaders for assuming that the new corporatism has been brought around by the pressure of their workers’ armies. The central thesis, overlapping through all the chapters, is remorselessly proven.
What is missing from the book is the stench of property. A neutral reader could conceivably find himself sympathising with the bumbling Tory corporatists as they try to stave off the demands of their ‘principled’ madmen and ‘keep society going’. The lunacy and savagery of the class system is implicit not explicit in Nigel Harris’ book. The enemy’s cynicism, his demagoguery and his ability to shift his principles are there for all to see. But there is no call to arms to rout him.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Harold Wilson and the Labour Left</h1>
<h3>(Summer 1968)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">FFrom <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj033" target="new">No. 33</a>, Summer 1968, pp.&nbsdp;18–26.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Bevanite fury at the Rightward drift of official Party policy after the 1955 election did not last. The Suez crisis of late 1956 and the economic recession which followed exposed the fallibility of Tory economic policy and forged the Labour Party into a new unity. Even Aneurin Bevan agreed to co-operate with a leadership with which he fundamentally disagreed. Bevan’s public disavowal of the ‘unilateralists’ at the Brighton Conference of 1957 and his acceptance of the post of Shadow Foreign Secretary encouraged his followers grudgingly to fall into line with Party policy for the 1959 election. At the Scarborough Conference of 1958, controversy was sacrificed to unity. Only the public schools provoked a genuine revolt against the leadership. ‘Unilateralist’ motions on defence were defeated by votes of 6 to 1 and the Executive statement on economic policy, <strong>Plan for Progress</strong>, moved by Wilson, summed up by Gaitskell and supported by Frank Cousins was carried unanimously. It was only after the election had been lost that the Left wing re-grouped and fought again.</p>
<p>By now, Aneurin Bevan was dying and it was by no means certain who should take his place as the Left’s candidate for the Party leadership. Harold Wilson was still an enigma. His association with Bevan in the early 1950s had not been forgotten and most of the Left-wing still regarded him as their man in the Shadow Cabinet. Others remembered his sponsorship of <strong>Industry and Society</strong> and his tacit support for the Executive on nuclear weapons. In 1958, Wilson came fourth in the elections for the constituency section of the Executive – the lowest place he had occupied since 1955.</p>
<p>His decision to stand against Gaitskell for the leadership in 1960, and against Brown for the deputy leadership in 1962 rallied the Left to him. He received the declared support of all Parliamentary Left-wingers and from <strong>Tribune</strong>, around which the Parliamentary Left rallied. Other journals of the Labour Left, however, were not so enthusiastic. The <strong>New Left Review</strong>, for instance, whose circulation had risen sharply with the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament attacked him sharply: ‘If the Labour Party ends this week facing two directions’ it declared before the 1960 Party Conference, ‘it is certain that the figure of Mr Wilson will be there – at the end of both of them.’</p>
<p>On Gaitskell’s death in 1963, the Left rallied without hesitation to Wilson’s candidature for the leadership. After his election as leader, they abandoned their accustomed role as critics of the leadership, and became instead its most enthusiastic supporters. Michael Foot, who, with four other MPs, had had the Labour Whip withdrawn for opposing the Tory defence estimates in 1961, wrote a long article on <strong>Tribune</strong>’s front page, listing Wilson’s qualifications for the job:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... (He has) not only qualities of political acumen, political skill and survival power which no one denies him. Other considerable qualities too for a Labour leader – a coherence of ideas, a readiness to follow unorthodox courses, a respect for democracy ... above all a deep and genuine love of the Labour movement.</p>
<p class="quote">‘We are told he is tricky, untrustworthy, an addict of political in-fighting. Of course he is canny, ambitious, often cautious, always cool, usually calculating. And why not? They say that he does not make up his mind, that he sits on the fence. It was not true when he resigned in 1951. It was not true when he opposed German re-armament.’ <a href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Walter Padley, the ‘centre-Left’ general secretary of the shopworkers’ union (USDAW), and MP for Glamorganshire, Ogmore, told his union conference: ‘In Harold Wilson we have a leader fully worthy of the tradition of Clem Attlee and Keir Hardie.’ This sentiment commended itself to Frank Allaun, a hardy warrior of the Left, who wrote an article for the Labour Press Service which was circulated to all trade-union journals. ‘Harold Wilson,’ the article started in what was intended to be a compliment, ‘is the best Labour leader since Keir Hardie.’ Shortly before the Scarborough Conference of 1963, Frank Cousins called a Press Conference to assure the nation that any suggestion of a quarrel between himself and Wilson was totally unfounded. ‘There is’ he said ‘no difference, nor can anyone manufacture a difference between us.’ <strong>The New Statesman</strong>, which had assaulted Gaitskell in the most decisive language during the 1960 controversies, stated in their leader of 10 March 1964:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Mr Wilson has set his party a fine example. Like Gladstone he believes in appealing to the highest instincts of the public, and his speeches have a cogency and authority unrivalled in recent years.’</p>
<p class="fst">Even James Cameron, the idealist journalist, who had bitterly opposed the Gaitskell leadership, exclaimed in the <strong>Daily Herald</strong> after Wilson’s speech at the 1963 Scarborough Conference:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Harold Wilson will not be just a good Prime Minister. He will be a great one... Harold Wilson’s startling essay into political science-fiction may well be held by experts to be the most vital speech he has ever made. Here at least was the 20th century.’ <a href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In the following months Tribune confined itself to praising Wilson and publishing his speeches. Anxiously it assured its readers that despite outward appearances, Wilson’s intentions were all for the good:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Mr Harold Wilson’s remarks to the T&GWU conference have been widely misinterpreted. He did not, as the Daily Worker headline suggested, advocate a wage freeze. “When we say incomes” he said “we mean all incomes – not only wages and salaries but profits, especially monopoly profits, distributed dividends and, yes, rents.”’ <a href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a></p>
<p class="fst">And Mr Clive Jenkins, militant general secretary of ASSET, wrote after the 1963 Trades Union Congress: ‘Mr Harold Wilson is opposed to wage restraint.’ After the 1963 Labour Conference, Jenkins complained</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘A circumstantial story that a Wilson Cabinet will hold back wages for the first 18 months of his Government is, incredibly, being peddled. It is a lie. The Scarborough decision is a real gain over the re-drafted paragraph on wages finally approved by the TUC.’ <a href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Jenkins’ support increased during 1964. On Wilson’s speech to the TUC in Blackpool the following year, he wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Harold Wilson’s well-keyed and emphatic speech on Monday was brilliantly expressive of the taut, yet flexible pregnant relationship between the unions and the Labour Party.’ <a href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a></p>
<p class="fst">And, after Labour’s election,</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Everything in the Queen’s speech is first-rate and demands, firstly, our support and our appreciation of the firm leadership being shown. The task of transforming our country has been very well begun indeed.’ <a href="#n6" name="f6">[6]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Plaudits for Harold Wilson in <strong>Tribune</strong> throughout those months can be found even from such devoted militants as Ian Mikardo and Fenner Brockway. In the nineteen months of Wilson’s Leadership of the Opposition, <strong>Tribune</strong> devoted only a few random sentences to criticism of Harold Wilson or his policies. When, for instance, Wilson called for more helicopters to assist the British troops fighting against nationalists in South Arabia and Aden, <strong>Tribune</strong> complained: ‘Hasty statements like Mr Wilson’s this week will not help.’</p>
<p>The compliments heaped on Harold Wilson by the Labour Left were not always returned. During the election campaign for the Labour leadership after Gaitskell’s death, the editor of <strong>Tribune</strong>, Richard Clements, decided to publish Commons speeches on defence policy by the two principal contenders, Harold Wilson and George Brown, to demonstrate the differences between them. Accordingly, Clements sent them both proofs of the edited versions of their speeches, and telephoned them to check that the editing met with their approval. Brown agreed instantly, as did Harold Wilson who was full of praise for the standard of the editing. As Clements was about to hang up, Wilson asked urgently,</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘You’re not supporting me, are you, by any chance?’</p>
<p class="fst">Not at all, replied Clements. The speeches would be published without editorial comment. In some relief, and with further effusive praise and thanks, the conversation ended. By the time Wilson became Prime Minister in October 1964 he had contrived to unite the Labour Party and its affiliates as it had never been united since 1945. Even before the 1945 and 1929 elections a substantial minority of critics continued to attack central aspects of official Labour Party policy, and the Labour leaders. Before the 1964 election the silence of the consensus was broken only by the thin wails of ‘satirists and sectarians.’</p>
<p>In normal circumstances such unanimous approval and praise from the Left would almost certainly provoke an opposite reaction from the Right. Yet during the same period the Labour Right was equally uncritical. This was not merely because an election approached and most of the Right-wing leaders were guaranteed a place in a Labour Cabinet. It was also because in the twenty months of Tory Government following Gaitskell’s death, Labour Party policy did not change in detail or in emphasis.</p>
<p>The few policy changes which did take place, notably over immigration, Cyprus and Aden were clear moves to the Right. The Right-wing leaders may have disliked Wilson and distrusted him. But they could hardly forbear to support him when he contrived to unite the Party behind a policy which was slightly to the Right of that approved by Hugh Gaitskell. The Left, in the meantime, concocted a myth which was to sustain them for several years:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘By the early 1960s the Labour Party had decided that revisionism was not on the agenda and the slow struggle back to power began. Under a new leadership and with a programme which made a clear challenge to the “You’ve never had it so good” society which had been created by the Tories, the party won the election of 1964.’ <a href="#n7" name="f7">[7]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In fact, of course, revisionism had in no sense, and not for a single moment, left the agenda. Gaitskell’s policy on the Bomb had triumphed and the parry’s policy on economic affairs was still based on the ultra-revisionist Industry and Society. In more ways than one the policy of the Party, as opposed to the electoral rhetoric of its leaders, had swung, if anything, Rightwards since 1959. The magical transformation in Party policy which accompanied the election of Harold Wilson to the leadership took place only in the minds of the Labour Left. The enthusiasm for this mythical revolution swept the Labour ranks even further Left than <strong>Tribune</strong>. Mr Tom Nairn, a prominent writer in the <strong>New Left Review</strong> wrote in the symposium <strong>Towards Socialism</strong>, written before the Labour victory of 1964, but coming out shortly after it:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘There is no doubt that, relatively, with regard to the past annals of the Labour leadership, Wilson represents a kind of progress. Wilson constantly professes the habitual Labour contempt for theory – “theology” as he calls it – but has far more theoretical grasp than any previous leader. Unlike so many former Left-wing figures who have moved towards power, he has never actually renounced or broken with his past: he is likely to be much more open to Left-wing ideas and pressures than his predecessors. In contrast to Gaitskell and Attlee, Wilson seems singularly free from the bigoted anti-Communism which has been a surrogate for thought and action in many social-democratic movements.’</p>
<p class="fst">The almost unanimous inclination of the Labour Left to turn their attention from the written policy to abstract rhetoric about ‘commanding heights’ and ‘nationalisation of urban land’ enabled Harold Wilson during his twenty months as leader of the Opposition to fulfil his promise of remaining loyal to the policy of Hugh Gaitskell while at the same time convincing Gaitskell’s enemies that Gaitskellite revisionism ‘was not on the agenda.’ His ambition, as expressed to John Junor, to hold high the banner of nationalisation while leading the Labour Party away from it had been fulfilled.</p>
<p>This achievement was sustained in the immediate afterglow of the 1964 election victory. Only a few Labour MPs complained about the delay of six months in paying the proposed pensions increase, and even fewer objected to the decision to send Buccaneer aircraft to South Africa. Throughout November, <strong>Tribune</strong> re-published Harold Wilson’s main speeches, explaining that the differences between the paper and the leader were ‘of emphasis rather than of principle.’ <a href="#n8" name="f8">[8]</a> The paper’s clerical correspondent, Dr Donald Soper, who was shortly to receive a peerage from the Prime Minister, declared his New Year’s resolution on 1 January 1965: ‘to support the Government more fervently.’ And when George Brown had enticed the leaders of the trade unions and of industry to sign a declaration of intent to formulate an incomes policy, he received uncritical support from <strong>Tribune</strong>’s two economic correspondents from Sheffield, Mr Michael Barratt Brown and Mr Royden Harrison, who were not ashamed to cloak Mr Brown and his advisers in the mantle of Marxist orthodoxy: ‘The scene,’ they wrote, ‘is once again set for a decisive victory for the political economy of Labour.’ <a href="#n9" name="f9">[9]</a></p>
<p>Summarising Labour’s first hundred days, <strong>Tribune</strong>’s editor concluded: ‘It would be grossly unfair to turn upon the Government now and rend it.’ Any minor errors, he was sure, would soon be put right. After all,</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Given the spirit which Harold Wilson has most notably displayed on many previous occasions, there is no reason why the Government could not and cannot recover all the ground lost in the past weeks, and capture much more territory in the months ahead.’ <a href="#n10" name="f10">[10]</a></p>
<p class="fst">And so it seemed, for a few months at any rate. The publication of ‘Dick Crossman’s brilliant housing Bill,’ the ‘welcome Race Relations Bill,’ the plans for steel nationalisation, the Budget, and the long Commons battle with Tory stockbrokers, all put heart into the Labour Left. <strong>Tribune</strong> proudly published interviews with leading Ministers, notably one with Anthony Greenwood, the new Colonial Secretary, who astonished the paper’s readers in British Guiana by his enthusiasm for the Duncan Sandys’ Guianese Constitution (described by Harold Wilson at the time of its publication as ‘fiddled’) and his description of the Guianese Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, as ‘a socialist.’</p>
<p>More important matters, however, soon arose to ruffle the solidarity of the Labour Left. First was the Government’s immediate and unequivocal support for the Americans in their war in Vietnam, particularly their support for the American bombing of North Vietnam, which started in February. Second was the Immigration White Paper in August. Third was the series of nibbling deflations, culminating in the big £100m bite at the end of July. Fourth was the Government’s decision, in the light of the abstention of Desmond Donnelly and Woodrow Wyatt in the House of Commons, to shelve the nationalisation of steel. And fifth, perhaps worst of all, was the National Plan, published in September. All these, in one form or another, were attacked by the Labour Left, though none of these attacks took the form of Parliamentary votes or abstentions. The National Plan particularly irritated those who had hoped for a genuine economic programme based on social justice, welfare and equality. The Plan, complained <strong>Tribune</strong>, ‘is a non-plan with its priorities badly wrong. George Brown should go away and think again.’ As for deflation, the Left’s alternatives did not (yet) include devaluation. John Mendelson, Left wing MP for Penistone argued both in Parliament and outside for import controls and overseas investment checks. On the issue of the incomes policy, the Left was split. Clive Jenkins, who had argued so furiously a year earlier that Harold Wilson was opposed to wage restraint, found that George Brown’s plan for an Incomes Bill was ‘fundamentally authoritarian and anti-trade union. It should be spurned as a hobble for free men – a device which perpetuates inequality in British society.’ <a href="#n11" name="f11">[11]</a> The academics of the Left, however, still believed that the Government would produce a ‘socialist incomes policy.’ The extent of the Left’s reaction to these measures differed sharply. Some were so shocked and horrified that they cried halt to all support for Labour. Malcolm Caldwell, a dedicated Labour campaigner, voiced the most extreme disillusionment in a letter to <strong>Tribune</strong> on 20 August:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Socialist principles have been tossed aside with almost indecent cynicism and casualness. Racial discrimination in Britain has been condoned and strengthened. American butchery in Vietnam has been actively supported and encouraged. Social welfare and economic development in Britain have been sacrificed to carry out a reactionary economic programme at the behest of international finance capital. What of the Left leaders in Parliament? Tell them off on your fingers, comrades, and think of their words and deeds in recent months while the Labour movement has been sold down the river. It is a sad picture and I can personally neither see nor offer any excuses. Are we finished, we of the Labour Left?’</p>
<p class="fst">And, the following month, Alan Dawe, <strong>Tribune</strong>’s education correspondent, announced his resignation from the Labour Party:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We are not right,’ he wrote ‘to view the Labour Party and its latter day works as having anything to do with socialism. They don’t, they won’t and it is time we faced up to it.’ <a href="#n12" name="f12">[12]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Such voices were, at the time, isolated heralds of the massive disillusionment that was to follow. The editor of <strong>Tribune</strong> received a great many more letters complaining about his attacks on the Labour Government and was forced to write an editorial explaining the need for dissent. And, even in that unhappy summer, the Left-wing Labour MPs could take solace in the wizardry of their leader:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘He (Wilson) commands more widespread support within the Parliamentary Labour Party and in the country than any other leader the Labour Party has had. He fights the Tories and enjoys it ... The atmosphere (at the PLP meeting at the end of the summer Parliamentary session) was euphoric. Miraculously the gloom was banished ... Everything in the garden seemed to be looking, well, if not exactly lovely, at least a good deal greener than when Callaghan was wielding his axe six days before.’ <a href="#n13" name="f13">[13]</a></p>
<p class="fst">As the economic crisis was temporarily dispelled, and, as Parliament met again in the autumn, the atmosphere of euphoria drugged the Labour Left. The total disarray of the Tories, under a new and indecisive leader; Harold Wilson’s two vast speeches at Party Conference and his apparently tough line on Rhodesia; the promotion of Barbara Castle and Anthony Greenwood; and a number of important welfare reforms, notably rating relief and local authority interest rate subsidy, combined to convince the Left that the Government was on the right road. When Richard Gott decided to stand as Radical Alliance candidate in the by-election in North Hull, he was severely rebuked by the Labour Left. ‘Do not destroy the Government!’ bellowed <strong>Tribune</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Every socialist has the right to criticise the design and performance of the Labour automobile – so long as he also helps to put some petrol in the tank.’ <a href="#n14" name="f14">[14]</a></p>
<p>Two months later, with the decision to hold another General Election, all criticism was thrown to the winds in a stampede to get as much petrol into the tank as possible. Even Clive Jenkins’ carping about the Incomes Policy was stayed. For the new Labour Manifesto, <strong>Time for Decision</strong>, <strong>Tribune</strong> had nothing but praise:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The Labour manifesto is not only an interesting and stimulating document. It is also, in essence, a socialist one. The answers are inescapably egalitarian. There is some self-congratulation, but is it not justified?’ <a href="#n15" name="f15">[15]</a></p>
<p class="fst">As election day approached the enthusiasm became feverish: ‘March 31st,’ wrote Michael Foot, ‘will mark one of the essential dates in the forward march. It is an opportunity which only incorrigible sectarians and nihilists, the best allies of the forces of reaction, will not wish to seize.’ <a href="#n16" name="f16">[16]</a></p>
<p>It is hard even for an incorrigible sectarian to read <strong>Tribune</strong> before and after the March 1966 General Election without a lump rising in his throat. On the day of the election, Tribune brought out a special front and back page which shouted in savage exultation at the impending destruction of the Left’s enemies:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... Who doesn’t want a landslide? We see you, Desmond Donnelly, with your <strong>Spectator</strong> pals – well, here it comes and you’ll be buried in steel ...</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Pensions up, Rent Act Security, Unemployment Down, Prescription Charges off, who cares! We do ... and so do millions ... now, for bigger advances, VOTE LABOUR!’</p>
<p class="fst">It was the triumphant, almost incredulous shout of thousands of men and women in the Labour movement who had worked all their lives without compensation for the return of a Labour Government in prosperous peacetime. The quarrels, the arguments, the strikes and lock-outs, the bitter theoretical wrangles of the last thirteen years had been smoothed over and bypassed with the injunction: ‘Get the Tories Out.’ In the past 17 months of miniscule majorities, the injunction had been reiterated even more earnestly. For the 50,000 or so readers of <strong>Tribune</strong>, the hard core of Labour’s rank and file, a Parliamentary majority for Labour <em>was</em> the first solution and <em>did</em> promise a more libertarian, more egalitarian society. No wonder in the hour of victory, that <strong>Tribune</strong> bellowed: ‘SOCIALISM IS RIGHT BACK ON THE AGENDA,’ and that their columnist Francis Flavius could argue that the election results marked ‘a significant watershed in British politics.’ <a href="#n17" name="f17">[17]</a> The Labour Left and <strong>Tribune</strong> took the 1966 election result more seriously than anyone else in the land. The Press, who had whipped up a violent campaign against Labour in 1964, the industrialists, (even the steel masters who knew that a big majority would bring steel nationalisation) were silent. The flow of big money into Tory Party funds, even from the steel masters all but dried up. Political commentators reported ‘a boring election’ and predicted ‘no change.’ And, in the event, nothing changed. The course of British politics was not altered in the slightest degree by Labour’s landslide victory of 1966. After a brief moment of euphoria, Harold Wilson and his henchmen continued their propaganda about restrictive practises on both sides of industry, their paranoiac defence of the pound sterling and their attacks on the trade unions.</p>
<p>Once the axe started to fall, it fell quickly. In May, the seamen went on strike to be met with fierce resistance, smears and abuse from the Labour Government. In early July, Frank Cousins, hero of the Labour Left, resigned from the Government over the publication of the Prices and Incomes Bill. In mid-July another sterling crisis pushed the Labour Government into a wage freeze and the most ruthless deflationary measures since the war.</p>
<p>The Left reacted to all this in shocked astonishment. ‘There has been,’ complained <strong>Tribune</strong> in June, ‘no glimmer of a changed strategy, no enlarged vision since the General Election of March 1966.’ John Morgan, a devoted socialist with a strong Left-wing bias, greeted the July measures with a melancholy cry which must have touched the hearts of the Labour Left throughout the land:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘It isn’t just emotion that moves the socialist to rage and sadness now – not that there would be anything wrong with emotion. Dismay springs from the knowledge that a good, coherent programme for modernisation existed, even exists, which has been abandoned without even being tried. When Harold Wilson began speaking on the stage of the Brangwen Hall, Swansea, on the afternoon of 25 January 1964, he was not only establishing himself as a national leader, he was winning the people to sensible ideas. It was an important moment in British politics ... The speech became the basis of the National Plan. It demonstrated how the recurring difficulties of the balance of payments could be defeated, how increased production could be the basis of a new society.’ <a href="#n18" name="f18">[18]</a></p>
<p class="fst">John Morgan represented the Labour Party members who had been won over to what he called ‘that series of great speeches in the early months of 1964.’ The dreary semi-Keynesian technocracy of Harold Wilson had inspired men like John Morgan just as John Kennedy’s preposterous New Frontier had inspired the soft American Left four years previously. Now with the Government’s collapse into Conservative remedies and Conservative reactions the Labour Left was utterly disillusioned without anything to offer as an half credible alternative.</p>
<p>In his <strong>Sunday Times</strong> article, in fact, John Morgan argued that the pound should have been devalued in 1964. Along with many others on the Left and Right who argued along the same lines, Morgan had advanced no such argument hi 1964. Tribune opposed devaluation in 1964, 1965 and in July 1966; only in 1967 did the majority of the paper’s economic correspondents support a floating rate for the pound. And even then the Labour Left argued, quite dishonestly, that devaluation need not involve deflation. <a href="#n19" name="f19">[19]</a></p>
<p>The July measures of 1966 forced the hard core Labour Left into almost permanent opposition to their Government. The Prices and Incomes Act (on which some 30 Labour MPs abstained in August and October), the Vietnam war, the Common Market (for entry to which the Government applied in November), rising unemployment and a continuing squeeze on the social services all provoked more and more protest. Fortunately for the Left-wing MPs, the policy of the Whips, laid down by Richard Grossman and John Silkin, was to run the Parliamentary party on a light reign, and abstentions were permitted against angry protests from the more ‘loyalist’ backbenchers and from the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Emmanuel Shinwell, who eventually resigned. All the Left assumed that Harold Wilson strongly approved this ‘liberal’ policy. In May 1966, for instance, Hugh Jenkins, the MP for Putney, had argued:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Years of hostility and repression have bred in the old Parliamentarians (who are still the most courageous and resolute of the lot of us) conspiratorial habits which are no longer necessary under the tolerant regime of Harold Wilson.’ <a href="#n20" name="f20">[20]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Yet in March 1967, after 60 MPs had abstained after the defence debate, in protest against the refusal to make further defence cuts, Wilson rounded on the Left at a Parliamentary Party meeting, warning them that ‘a dog is only allowed one bite’ and threatening them with a General Election unless they came to heel. Though the discipline issue faded for several months after this outburst, it arose even more seriously in early 1968 as the hard core of the Parliamentary Left voted against every one of the Government proposals for cuts in social services announced in January, and against the Immigration Act, 1968. Once again, the Parliamentary Party, with Wilson’s approval, turned the discipline screw.</p>
<p>Yet throughout the entire period of disillusionment and near-despair, there was one threat which never failed to ensure the loyalty of the Labour Left: a threat to the personal leadership of Harold Wilson. In the aftermath of the 1966 July deflation, a rumour gained ground in Labour circles, which was substantially true, that a meeting of back-benchers and some Ministers had been held to discuss the possibility and the means of replacing Harold Wilson with James Callaghan. As soon as <strong>Tribune</strong> caught hold of this rumour, it exploded with rage.</p>
<p>Similarly, after the 1967 devaluation, during the controversy on arms for South Africa, when a bid was made to replace Wilson with Callaghan, the Left rallied to Wilson. Three months later, when further moves were made to promote Roy Jenkins or Anthony Crosland to the Treasury, a group of 91 MPs wrote a letter to <strong>The Times</strong>.</p>
<p>The letter was headed ‘Comfort for Mr Wilson’ and it took issue with <strong>The Times</strong> political correspondent, David Wood, who had reported the previous day that ‘his (Wilson’s) own rank and file have no confidence in him.’</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We do not know,’ ran the letter, ‘how Mr Wood came to this conclusion, but it certainly was not in speaking to any of the undersigned, proof enough that his sweeping generalisation has no basis in fact.’ <a href="#n21" name="f21">[21]</a></p>
<p class="fst">The signatures had, reported the letter, been ‘gathered in a very short time,’ and they included familiar loyalists and former ‘young eagles.’ Yet they also included such bastions of the Parliamentary Labour Left as Russell Kerr, John Mendel-son, James Dickens, Eric Heffer, Peter Jackson, Norman Atkinson, Michael Foot, Andrew Faulds, and Ben Whitaker. The official argument for the letter was that the Left’s quarrel with the Government was about policies, not personalities, and that any attempt to introduce personalities into the argument should be immediately scotched.</p>
<p>The Left however had not scrupled in the past to attack personalities responsible for reactionary policies, and to call for their removal if only as a gesture of disapproval of those policies. In 1959 and 1960, <strong>Tribune</strong> and its followers had consistently attacked Gaitskell and had called again and again for his removal from the leadership. Again, on 6 January 1967 <strong>Tribune</strong> had demanded, in a front page headline: ‘CALLAGHAN MUST GO!’ and had claimed that although the removal of the Chancellor would not of itself right the wrongs of his policies, it was necessary as an indication that policy changes were intended.</p>
<p>The obsession of political correspondents with personalities is infuriating for all politicians who seek to discuss the policy issues. Yet the MPs’ letters to <strong>The Times</strong> of 12 March 1968, did not diminish the personality aspect; it increased it. If the Left-wing MPs who signed the letter had genuinely not cared about personalities, they would have written to <strong>The Times</strong> not to declare their confidence in their leader but to disavow all interest in the leadership issue. The truth was, as it had been for several years, that, deep down, the Labour Left felt that Harold Wilson was ‘one of them.’ This myth had outlived the apparently endless list of anti-socialist measures enacted by Harold Wilson’s administration.</p>
<p>Old ghosts still jibbered in the theoretical graveyard. ‘Gaitskellism,’ wrote Michael Foot in March 1967, ‘like Stalinism, cannot easily be restored.’ Yet what, in the reality of March 1967, did Gaitskellism mean? What further horrors could it wreak? Would Gaitskell, perhaps, have introduced a wage freeze for a year or permanently brought wage negotiations under the control of the law courts? Would he have imposed prescription charges, postponed raising the school leaving age, cancelled free school milk in secondary schools? Would he have based his industrial policy on mergers and monopolies supported by Government finance and Government orders? Would he have supported the Vietnam war? No doubt, Gaitskell would have pursued all these courses, as would Callaghan, Jenkins or Crosland. But Wilson had done all these things – and more. Where was the evidence – save only in the quarrel on South African arms – that ‘the Gaitskellites’ would have proved better Tories than Harold Wilson? Essentially, their policies would have been the same. The direction of the Labour Government, under Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Jenkins or Crosland or any of the other alternatives would have been equally disastrous. The leadership issue, in short, compared with the political issues in which the Government was involved was almost if not completely irrelevant.</p>
<p>The tenacious hold which Harold Wilson exercised on his former friends and supporters in the Left had a deeper, more political root than the fear of a mythical Gaitskellism. The reaction of <strong>Tribune</strong> and the Parliamentary Left to Wilson’s Government was based throughout on the political theory of another era. Where the Government took action which offended against the old traditions and the old theory of the Labour Left, the Left responded immediately and courageously with clear and untrammeled opposition. The reaction to the seaman’s strike of 1966 in <strong>Tribune</strong> was unconditional ‘SUPPORT THE SEAMEN!’ When unemployment was created, the Government was sharply censured. When the health charges were reimposed, <strong>Tribune</strong> shouted ‘THE SHAME OF IT ALL!’ Certainly no one could blame the Labour Left for a lack of resolution, courage and determination in their efforts to swing the Government away from these old evils. Yet at the same time, the Wilson Government was pursuing policies of a more subtle and sinister nature which seem to have escaped the attention and the criticism of the Labour Left.</p>
<p>These policies can be listed under the heading of Corporatism. The encouragement of vast mergers and monopolies under the aegis of the Government-financed Industrial Reorganisation Corporation; the complex planning machinery of the little Neddies and of the geographic planning councils; the incorporation of the trade-union leadership into the network of planning on the bogus pretext of ‘Incomes Policy;’ the interference of the State with almost every major wage dispute through the Prices and Incomes Board – these new, drastically dangerous corporatist developments were not identified by the Labour Left – and therefore not opposed. When Alan Dawe had resigned from the Labour Party in 1965 he had complained in Tribune about that paper’s obsession with State ownership and State control:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘There is nothing socialist about the commanding heights now. For this Government is trying to create a power elite, more cohesive and omnipotent than any we have seen in recent British history ... this is the ultimate significance of the attempt to forge a consensus of opinion and action between the leaders of Government, industry and the unions ...’</p>
<p class="fst">Yet the Left around <strong>Tribune</strong> overlooked this problem. They rejoiced when, in the autumn of 1967, the Queen’s Speech included references to an Industrial Expansion Bill, whereby the State would take minority shareholdings in crucial industries and appoint minority directors to the Boards .The measure was marginally less drastic than the proposals in <strong>Industry and Society</strong> which the Left had so violently opposed ten years previously. Nevertheless, at the suggestion that the Industrial Expansion Bill should be dropped or postponed, <strong>Tribune</strong> frothed with fury. Harold Wilson’s knowledge of ‘public ownership’ rhetoric, gleaned with such care during his period as a Bevanite, served him in good stead as Prime Minister, and continued to bamboozle many of his former Left-wing colleagues into the belief that the vast, undemocratic corporatist machinery which he was setting up was in some sense a move towards socialism. In fact, of course, the ‘planning’ of Selwyn Lloyd and Maudling was taken over and speeded up by Harold Wilson – even to the extent of nationalising the steel industry and appointing the steel bosses to run a new, dynamic, streamlined single unit called the National Steel Corporation. The Government’s decision to include provisions in the steel legislation for the election of trade unionists and rank-and-file workers to the local steel boards was hailed by the Labour Left as a victory. <a href="#n22" name="f22">[22]</a> In fact, it was nothing of the kind. As became clear at once, the ‘concession’ served merely to incorporate some of the more politically conscious workers into the labyrinthine apparatus of the Corporation machine. The steel corporation rapidly became the most transparently corporatist, or State capitalist industrial unit in the country.</p>
<p>The grand illusions which, both before and after 1964, rallied the Labour Left to the Wilsonian recipes of State ownership and automation were not entirely due to the skill of the illusionist. Rhetorical sleight-of-hand, however brilliant, could never of its own have brought about so great a conversion. The truth was that Harold Wilson’s pragmatism burst on the Labour movement at a moment of theoretical impasse. The violent changes in capitalism, in the relationship between the State and private industry, had thrown the Labour Movement into theoretical disarray. The Labour Right had responded by abandoning ‘the means’ of public ownership and fixing their sights on a more humane capitalism, prodded and pushed by a Labour Government. The Left, in fury, responded by re-stating ‘the end’ – socialism – while becoming increasingly vague as to what it meant, and increasingly unable, therefore, to propose any comprehensible means. The argument, symbolised by two 1960 Fabian pamphlets, <strong>Socialism in the Affluent Society</strong>, by Richard Crossman, and <strong>Can Labour Win?</strong> by Anthony Crosland, dragged on for several years, with both sides hopelessly missing the mark. In the event, both sides were exhausted by irrelevance, and Harold Wilson’s ‘dynamic,’ essentially capitalist terminology filled the vacuum. <a href="#n23" name="f23">[23]</a></p>
<p>The new corporatism which Wilson had consistently proclaimed for so many years led to a development which was even more significant for the Labour Left: a decline in the power and importance of Parliament. Classical capitalism of the Adam Smith variety, with its warring factions and devotion to competition between individual firms, allowed considerable scope for debate, discussion and even power in Parliament. Similarly in the early days of universal suffrage, and, particularly in the post-1945 era when private, pre-war capitalism was in jeopardy, the power of Parliament was, relatively, considerable. With the closing of the capitalist ranks in national, corporate monopoly, and, more importantly, with the increasing power and confidence of the monopolies, the power of Parliament declined. The big decisions left to Government became increasingly secret, increasingly the preserve of the Executive which did not always mean the Cabinet. The big decisions were taken by Cabinet committees, sometimes even by individuals, and, even then, many of these decisions depended on expert advice from the men who wielded economic power. The decision to devalue the pound in 1949 was taken by four or five men, and the Cabinet were not told until six weeks after the decision had been taken. The choice open to Cabinet members at that stage was to accept a <em>fait accompli</em> or to resign. Similarly, in 1967, the devaluation decision was taken several weeks before the Cabinet knew anything about it. In 1965, the National Plan, which was intended to shape the nation’s economic future for five years, was released in the Parliamentary recess, without recourse to Parliament or even to the Parliamentary Labour Party (still less to the Labour Conference). These were all decisions which were still formally the province of Parliament. In the meantime, the big decisions in the nation’s economic and industrial life moved away even from the Executive. The almost laughable antics of the Monopolies Commission indicated, if proof were needed, the full extent of the impotence of Parliament over the nation’s industrial affairs. The more the mergers, the bigger the monopolies, the greater the power of industrial and economic bureaucracies. The absorption of trade-union leaders and the official trade-union machinery into these bureaucracies shifted the centres of resistance into small pockets of revolt: into isolated unofficial strikes, tenants’ committees, students’ demonstrations. Even inside the Party, however, the real shift to the Left was to be seen not in Parliament but in the trade unions. The election of Hugh Scanlon as President of the AEU in 1967, the growth in membership and militancy of the small white-collar unions, notably the Draughtsmen and Allied Technicians’ Union and the Association of Scientific and Managerial Staffs, indicated a sharp shift away from the Labour establishment in the area in which thereto it had been most firmly entrenched; the trade-union leadership.</p>
<p>In the meantime the Parliamentary Left and <strong>Tribune</strong> seemed to focus even more closely and intently on traditional, Parliamentary forms of political activity. There was no attempt to reform the <em>Victory for Socialism Group</em> or the <em>Appeal for Unity</em> which had been formed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in an effort (which was not very successful) to organise the rank and file for a campaign against the Labour Right. In 1967, an effort was made to re-start the <em><strong>Tribune</strong> Brains Trusts</em> of the early 1950s. By April 1968, about twenty of these <em>Brains Trusts</em> had been held, their success depending on the strength and militancy of the sponsoring constituency parties. The Left-wing MPs were forced by the logic of their position, to concentrate on Parliamentary tactics. In August 1966, John Horner, Left-wing MP for Oldbury and Halesowen, wrote an article in <strong>Tribune</strong> attacking the new wage freeze and incomes policy and calling for rejection of the policy at the forthcoming Trades Union Congress. When Francis Flavius, <strong>Tribune</strong>’s columnist referred the following week to Horner’s ‘campaign,’ John Horner replied with some urgency:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I should hate Francis Flavius to give anyone the idea that I am now calling for mass action from the trade union movement against it (the incomes policy).’ <a href="#n24" name="f24">[24]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Moreover, as Ralph Miliband has shown in his comprehensive analysis, <strong>Parliamentary Socialism</strong>, the Parliamentary road to socialism is fraught with dangers – not least the danger of personal absorption into the machinery of Government. From the very beginning of the Labour Government in 1964 the Left was split between on the one hand the resolute older Parliamentarians and the new trade-union MPs who were prepared to fight decisions with which they disagreed through the established Parliamentary machinery, and on the other, a group of younger men who hoped, in some unspecific way, to find ‘new ways’ of proclaiming their opposition. One idea was to establish a ‘Parliamentary Forum,’ a permanent debating chamber at which the Left could thrash out a new strategy and a new theory. <a href="#n25" name="f25">[25]</a> Allegations were made by these younger men of ‘pussyfooting’ – a disparaging reference to Mr Michael Foot and the older Parliamentarians.</p>
<p>Harold Wilson, who had so much experience of such splits and divisions, watched with considerable interest, and, as soon as an able young Left MP fell out with his colleagues, he was duly swept into the Government. As early as 19 February 1965 a group of young back-benchers joined with two Labour veterans, Philip Noel-Baker and Arthur Henderson in writing a letter to <strong>The Times</strong> urging the Government ‘to take an immediate initiative to achieve a cease-fire (in Vietnam) and a conference in which the principled participants can search for a political solution.’ They were Peter Shore, David Ennals, Shirley Williams and Dr Jeremy Bray. The following August, the latter three of the four signed a letter from back-bench MPs calling on the Government to ‘scrap the immigration white paper.’ Jeremy Bray spoke at the 1965 Labour Party Conference on behalf of his union, the Transport and General Workers, whose million votes he pledged against the White Paper. The most anxious and dedicated opponent of the immigration White Paper was Reginald Freeson, MP for Willesden East, whose constituency housed one of the largest immigrant populations in the country (and who subsequently tripled his majority in the 1966 election). Another signature on the letter was that of the young barrister MP for Lincoln, Mr Dick Taverne. The immigration policy was also attacked in a brilliant and bitter speech late at night in the House of Commons by the MP for Renfrew West, Mr Norman Buchan, perhaps the ablest of all the Left-wing intake in 1964.</p>
<p>Two years later, Shore (Minister of Economic Affairs), Bray (Technology), Mrs Williams (Education), Freeson (Power), Taverne (Home Office), Ennals (Home Office) and Buchan (Scottish Office) had been absorbed into the Government. Mr Neil Carmichael and Mr Ioan Evans who had associated themselves with the Left, notably on Vietnam and defence, had also accepted jobs in the Ministries of Transport and the Whips Office respectively. The ‘pussy-footers’ had been left to carry on the fight against their accusers.</p>
<p>The offer of such a job places a Left-wing MP in an intolerable dilemma. In the first place, the logic of his place in Parliament tells him that he must accept a place in the Government. How, he argues, can he press for more left-wing policies from a Government, and then refuse to join the Government when offered a place in it? Moreover, particularly in offices like the Scottish Office and the Ministry of Transport the political complexion of an Under Secretary can make a difference to a host of administrative decisions. As against that, the Minister is silenced on the broad issues. He has no voice in the Government, which never meets. And, whenever necessary, he can be hauled out to vote for the Cabinet’s policy. The spectacle, for instance, of Norman Buchan and Reginald Freeson failing to oppose the frankly racialist Immigration Act of 1968 was as nauseating for their supporters as it must have been galling for themselves. Yet only once, in the case of Eric Heffer, who was offered a Government post in 1967, was the offer of such a job turned down by a Left-wing MP. Yet, in the final analysis, the central criticism of the Labour Left under Harold Wilson’s leadership does not concern their Parliamentary tactics nor the difficult decisions as to whether or not to vote against the Government, or to accept a post within it. In the 1930s Sir Stafford Cripps had posed to his followers in the Socialist League, many of whom were prominent in the Labour Left in the 1950s and 1960s, central questions about power in modern capitalist society, based on his view that the ‘idea that the wielders of economic power will co-operate with a Labour Government is quite fantastic.’</p>
<p>‘Can socialism come by constitutional means?’ he had asked, and had replied in the affirmative, only on the condition that the most dramatic measures to control private economic interests were undertaken immediately by a Labour Government. The power of Parliament, argued Cripps, had to be exerted to the full against private economic and industrial interests if that power was to survive. The slightest wavering in the face of those economic interests would mean the inevitable bondage of Parliament.</p>
<p>Had Cripps’ case been eroded by the thirty years between 1933 and 1963? Had capitalism become less powerful, more subservient to the whims of Parliament than in the 1930s? Were the great corporations of the 1960s more democratic and more easily controlled than the demoralised industries of the 1930s? Had the conflict between economic interests and socialist aims diminished, so that the powers necessary to fulfil the latter and control the former were in some sense less crucial? These questions had been raised to some extent, though in less specific and more diluted language, in the big arguments of the late 1950s. At the 1958 Labour Party Conference, for instance, Mr Trevor Park, the delegate from Darwen, later MP for South East Derbyshire, had declared:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I am not interested merely in a better organised society; I am not interested merely in working capitalism more efficiently than the capitalists themselves. I am interested in a society which is based upon co-operation and not upon competition ...</p>
<p class="quote">‘There is a fundamental conflict here.</p>
<p class="quote">‘The aims of those who evolve the plans – Government and the public authorities – are very different from the aims of the private capitalists who control industry. No matter how many social controls and regulations we create, there will still be attempts to evade them and discover ways and means by which the instruments of social interest can be evaded ...</p>
<p class="quote">‘Sooner or later we shall be brought back to this fundamental issue: are we interested only in making capitalism more efficient; are we trying to out-do the Tory Party in what is their own territory; or are we preparing for the next stage in the march forward to socialism?’ <a href="#n26" name="f26">[26]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Under the leadership of Harold Wilson, these questions, despite their increasing relevance, were not asked. Instead the Left concentrated on the mechanics of Parliamentary victory rather than the policies by which the ‘fundamental conflict’ between Labour’s aims and private economic interests could be resolved. The hysteria about the importance of electoral victories reached a climax at the General Election in 1966, which quickly emerged as the unhappiest paper victory in Labour history. Under the hypnosis of Wilsonian rhetoric about public ownership, peace and technology, in the vacuum created by the irrelevance of old slogans and old analyses, and in the Gadarenian Stampede to Party Unity at election time, the Labour Left forgot about or ignored the ’fundamental conflict’ and were therefore theoretically and practically unprepared for defeat in it.</p>
<p>Harold Wilson’s uncanny knowledge of the Labour Party and its Left wing, most of it gained from his association with the Bevanites in the early 1950s was consistently applied to obtaining the support of Left-wing MPs, though his policies only very rarely leant Leftwards. Ruthlessly he played on the Left’s most fatal weakness: its sentimentality. Wilson knows that the Labour Left responds more enthusiastically than the Right to calls for party unity at times of crisis (especially at elections), to vague phrases about public ownership and moral crusades and helping the starving millions. In the generalised sloganising of the Labour Left Harold Wilson has always been an expert, and he never scrupled to wrap it in the shroud of Aneurin Bevan. Both before and after his accession, Wilson deployed a familiar, but highly successful rhetorical technique, attaching the name of Aneurin Bevan to the most banal cliches.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Why, Aneurin Bevan asked, look into the crystal ball when you can read the book.’ <a href="#n27" name="f27">[27]</a></p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We know, as Nye Bevan said, that politics are about power.’ <a href="#n28" name="f28">[28]</a></p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Nye had a word for it, as always: why look in the crystal ball when you can read the book?’ <a href="#n29" name="f29">[29]</a></p>
<p class="quoteb">‘If I may quote Nye again, we are not gigolos.’ <a href="#n30" name="f30">[30]</a></p>
<p class="quoteb">‘As Nye Bevan reminded us in the last speech to the House of Commons, one of the defects of our postwar democracy has been that it has not yet proved that it can voluntarily save itself from drift, decline and disaster by imposing the necessary discipline in time.’ <a href="#n31" name="f31">[31]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Howard and West tell us that after the first ballot for the Labour leadership election in January 1963, in which Wilson had fallen only eight votes short of an overall majority over his two rivals, Callaghan and Brown, he repaired with his two campaign managers, Richard Crossman and George Wigg, to Crossman’s house in Vincent Square. There Wigg assured them that at least twelve of Callaghan’s votes were committed to Wilson, who had, in effect, won the election. At this, Wilson ‘raised his glass and proposed a toast to Nye Bevan’s memory.’ <a href="#n32" name="f32">[32]</a></p>
<p>Wilson, supported by Crossman, had taken Bevan’s place on the Shadow Cabinet in 1954, when the latter had resigned on a principle held by both of them. Wilson had actively supported Gaitskell for the Party leadership against Bevan in 1955 and 1956. Wigg had resigned from the <em>Keep Left Group</em> in 1951 out of loyalty to Emmanuel Shinwell and the latter’s defence budget, which Bevan opposed. Yet, in a sense, the toast was justified. For without the mantle of Nye, and the deep attachment to Bevan’s memory (and to those who had supported him in the past) among the Labour Left, Harold Wilson would never have been able to appeal to the Left as one of their own. The appeal to the sentimentality of the Left was to serve Harold Wilson even more handsomely in the future. At the 1966 Labour Party Conference, for instance, at which he tried to explain away the collapse of all his policies, Wilson turned, at the end of a long, pedantic speech to a quote from a living hero, from Lord, formerly the Rev Donald Soper, personally ennobled by the Prime Minister himself as a mark of Wilson’s respect for the ‘non-conformist conscience’ of the Labour Left. At a ‘service of dedication’ in the crypt chapel of St Stephen’s Church, Mary Undercroft, in the Palace of Westminster, Wilson recalled Soper pronouncing a prayer:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Oh, God, grant us a vision of our land, fair as it might be:<br>
A land of righteousness where none shall wrong his neighbour;<br>
A land of plenty where evil and poverty shall be done away;<br>
A land of brotherhood where all success shall be founded on service, and honour shall be given to excellence alone;<br>
A land of peace where order shall not rest on force, but on the love of all for the common life and weal;<br>
Bless our efforts to make the vision a living reality;<br>
Inspire and strengthen each one of us that we may give time, thought and sacrifice to speed the day of its coming.’</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘When the time comes,’ Wilson went on, ‘I would want this Government, this Movement, to be judged by not only the British Nation, but by history, by our success or failure in turning this prayer into a reality.’</p>
<p class="fst">No one was sick.</p>
<p>The Conference, whose Left-wing element had been distinctly restive throughout Wilson’s speech (one incorrigible sectarian had even been moved to heckle) was silenced. And, to a man, the delegates rose for the solemn ritual of the standing ovation.</p>
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<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 22 February 1963.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> <strong>Daily Herald</strong>, 2 October 1963.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 12 June 1963.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 11 October 1963.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 11 September 1964.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f6" name="n6">6.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 6 November 1964.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f7" name="n7">7.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong> editorial after the 1966 election, 8 April 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f8" name="n8">8.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 20 November 1964.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f9" name="n9">9.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 8 January 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f10" name="n10">10.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 29 January 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f11" name="n11">11.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 17 September 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f12" name="n12">12.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 24 September 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f13" name="n13">13.</a> Michael Foot in <strong>Tribune</strong>, 6 August 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f14" name="n14">14.</a> 7 January 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f15" name="n15">15.</a> 11 March 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f16" name="n16">16.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 25 March 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f17" name="n17">17.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, 8 April 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f18" name="n18">18.</a> <strong>The Sunday Times</strong>, 24 July 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f19" name="n19">19.</a> See <strong>Tribune</strong> pamphlet, <strong>Never Again</strong>, published in July 1967.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f20" name="n20">20.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 29 May 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f21" name="n21">21.</a> <strong>The Times</strong>, 12 March 1968.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f22" name="n22">22.</a> See Ian Mikardo, <em>The Left in 1967</em>, <strong>Tribune</strong>, 23 December 1966</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f23" name="n23">23.</a> Needless to say, the few socialists who recognised the real situation were ‘incorrigible sectarians.’ Alasdair MacIntyre, for instance, had written, in the aftermath of Wilson’s Scarborough speech, an article which was vindicated by subsequent events in every particular:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘From Togliatti to Wilson the cry goes up across Western Europe that socialism is now State-sponsored planning plus automation. It is sad that neither Wilson nor Togliatti is a keen student of Hegel’s dialectic, for it would have been a great comfort to those who believe that opposites become one in a higher synthesis to realise that oddly enough capitalism is now State-sponsored planning plus automation.</p>
<p class="quote">‘To accept Wilsonism is to have moved over to the Right at least for the moment, no matter what other professions of socialism are made ...’ <em>Labour Policy and Capitalist Planning</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong>, Winter 1963, pp. 5 9.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f24" name="n24">24.</a> <strong>Tribune</strong>, 2 September 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f25" name="n25">25.</a> One Labour wag named the proposed organisation the Parliamentary Institute for Socialist Studies, PISS.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f26" name="n26">26.</a> Labour Party Conference <strong>Report</strong>, 1958, pp. 163–4.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f27" name="n27">27.</a> Swansea, 25 January 1964.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f28" name="n28">28.</a> London, Speech to Society of Labour Lawyers, 20 April 1964.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f29" name="n29">29.</a> Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 29 September 1965.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f30" name="n30">30.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f31" name="n31">31.</a> TUC, 5 September 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f32" name="n32">32.</a> Anthony Howard and Richard West, <strong>The Making of the Prime Mlnliter</strong>, Cape, 1965, p. 30.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Harold Wilson and the Labour Left
(Summer 1968)
FFrom International Socialism (1st series), No. 33, Summer 1968, pp.&nbsdp;18–26.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Bevanite fury at the Rightward drift of official Party policy after the 1955 election did not last. The Suez crisis of late 1956 and the economic recession which followed exposed the fallibility of Tory economic policy and forged the Labour Party into a new unity. Even Aneurin Bevan agreed to co-operate with a leadership with which he fundamentally disagreed. Bevan’s public disavowal of the ‘unilateralists’ at the Brighton Conference of 1957 and his acceptance of the post of Shadow Foreign Secretary encouraged his followers grudgingly to fall into line with Party policy for the 1959 election. At the Scarborough Conference of 1958, controversy was sacrificed to unity. Only the public schools provoked a genuine revolt against the leadership. ‘Unilateralist’ motions on defence were defeated by votes of 6 to 1 and the Executive statement on economic policy, Plan for Progress, moved by Wilson, summed up by Gaitskell and supported by Frank Cousins was carried unanimously. It was only after the election had been lost that the Left wing re-grouped and fought again.
By now, Aneurin Bevan was dying and it was by no means certain who should take his place as the Left’s candidate for the Party leadership. Harold Wilson was still an enigma. His association with Bevan in the early 1950s had not been forgotten and most of the Left-wing still regarded him as their man in the Shadow Cabinet. Others remembered his sponsorship of Industry and Society and his tacit support for the Executive on nuclear weapons. In 1958, Wilson came fourth in the elections for the constituency section of the Executive – the lowest place he had occupied since 1955.
His decision to stand against Gaitskell for the leadership in 1960, and against Brown for the deputy leadership in 1962 rallied the Left to him. He received the declared support of all Parliamentary Left-wingers and from Tribune, around which the Parliamentary Left rallied. Other journals of the Labour Left, however, were not so enthusiastic. The New Left Review, for instance, whose circulation had risen sharply with the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament attacked him sharply: ‘If the Labour Party ends this week facing two directions’ it declared before the 1960 Party Conference, ‘it is certain that the figure of Mr Wilson will be there – at the end of both of them.’
On Gaitskell’s death in 1963, the Left rallied without hesitation to Wilson’s candidature for the leadership. After his election as leader, they abandoned their accustomed role as critics of the leadership, and became instead its most enthusiastic supporters. Michael Foot, who, with four other MPs, had had the Labour Whip withdrawn for opposing the Tory defence estimates in 1961, wrote a long article on Tribune’s front page, listing Wilson’s qualifications for the job:
‘... (He has) not only qualities of political acumen, political skill and survival power which no one denies him. Other considerable qualities too for a Labour leader – a coherence of ideas, a readiness to follow unorthodox courses, a respect for democracy ... above all a deep and genuine love of the Labour movement.
‘We are told he is tricky, untrustworthy, an addict of political in-fighting. Of course he is canny, ambitious, often cautious, always cool, usually calculating. And why not? They say that he does not make up his mind, that he sits on the fence. It was not true when he resigned in 1951. It was not true when he opposed German re-armament.’ [1]
Walter Padley, the ‘centre-Left’ general secretary of the shopworkers’ union (USDAW), and MP for Glamorganshire, Ogmore, told his union conference: ‘In Harold Wilson we have a leader fully worthy of the tradition of Clem Attlee and Keir Hardie.’ This sentiment commended itself to Frank Allaun, a hardy warrior of the Left, who wrote an article for the Labour Press Service which was circulated to all trade-union journals. ‘Harold Wilson,’ the article started in what was intended to be a compliment, ‘is the best Labour leader since Keir Hardie.’ Shortly before the Scarborough Conference of 1963, Frank Cousins called a Press Conference to assure the nation that any suggestion of a quarrel between himself and Wilson was totally unfounded. ‘There is’ he said ‘no difference, nor can anyone manufacture a difference between us.’ The New Statesman, which had assaulted Gaitskell in the most decisive language during the 1960 controversies, stated in their leader of 10 March 1964:
‘Mr Wilson has set his party a fine example. Like Gladstone he believes in appealing to the highest instincts of the public, and his speeches have a cogency and authority unrivalled in recent years.’
Even James Cameron, the idealist journalist, who had bitterly opposed the Gaitskell leadership, exclaimed in the Daily Herald after Wilson’s speech at the 1963 Scarborough Conference:
‘Harold Wilson will not be just a good Prime Minister. He will be a great one... Harold Wilson’s startling essay into political science-fiction may well be held by experts to be the most vital speech he has ever made. Here at least was the 20th century.’ [2]
In the following months Tribune confined itself to praising Wilson and publishing his speeches. Anxiously it assured its readers that despite outward appearances, Wilson’s intentions were all for the good:
‘Mr Harold Wilson’s remarks to the T&GWU conference have been widely misinterpreted. He did not, as the Daily Worker headline suggested, advocate a wage freeze. “When we say incomes” he said “we mean all incomes – not only wages and salaries but profits, especially monopoly profits, distributed dividends and, yes, rents.”’ [3]
And Mr Clive Jenkins, militant general secretary of ASSET, wrote after the 1963 Trades Union Congress: ‘Mr Harold Wilson is opposed to wage restraint.’ After the 1963 Labour Conference, Jenkins complained
‘A circumstantial story that a Wilson Cabinet will hold back wages for the first 18 months of his Government is, incredibly, being peddled. It is a lie. The Scarborough decision is a real gain over the re-drafted paragraph on wages finally approved by the TUC.’ [4]
Jenkins’ support increased during 1964. On Wilson’s speech to the TUC in Blackpool the following year, he wrote:
‘Harold Wilson’s well-keyed and emphatic speech on Monday was brilliantly expressive of the taut, yet flexible pregnant relationship between the unions and the Labour Party.’ [5]
And, after Labour’s election,
‘Everything in the Queen’s speech is first-rate and demands, firstly, our support and our appreciation of the firm leadership being shown. The task of transforming our country has been very well begun indeed.’ [6]
Plaudits for Harold Wilson in Tribune throughout those months can be found even from such devoted militants as Ian Mikardo and Fenner Brockway. In the nineteen months of Wilson’s Leadership of the Opposition, Tribune devoted only a few random sentences to criticism of Harold Wilson or his policies. When, for instance, Wilson called for more helicopters to assist the British troops fighting against nationalists in South Arabia and Aden, Tribune complained: ‘Hasty statements like Mr Wilson’s this week will not help.’
The compliments heaped on Harold Wilson by the Labour Left were not always returned. During the election campaign for the Labour leadership after Gaitskell’s death, the editor of Tribune, Richard Clements, decided to publish Commons speeches on defence policy by the two principal contenders, Harold Wilson and George Brown, to demonstrate the differences between them. Accordingly, Clements sent them both proofs of the edited versions of their speeches, and telephoned them to check that the editing met with their approval. Brown agreed instantly, as did Harold Wilson who was full of praise for the standard of the editing. As Clements was about to hang up, Wilson asked urgently,
‘You’re not supporting me, are you, by any chance?’
Not at all, replied Clements. The speeches would be published without editorial comment. In some relief, and with further effusive praise and thanks, the conversation ended. By the time Wilson became Prime Minister in October 1964 he had contrived to unite the Labour Party and its affiliates as it had never been united since 1945. Even before the 1945 and 1929 elections a substantial minority of critics continued to attack central aspects of official Labour Party policy, and the Labour leaders. Before the 1964 election the silence of the consensus was broken only by the thin wails of ‘satirists and sectarians.’
In normal circumstances such unanimous approval and praise from the Left would almost certainly provoke an opposite reaction from the Right. Yet during the same period the Labour Right was equally uncritical. This was not merely because an election approached and most of the Right-wing leaders were guaranteed a place in a Labour Cabinet. It was also because in the twenty months of Tory Government following Gaitskell’s death, Labour Party policy did not change in detail or in emphasis.
The few policy changes which did take place, notably over immigration, Cyprus and Aden were clear moves to the Right. The Right-wing leaders may have disliked Wilson and distrusted him. But they could hardly forbear to support him when he contrived to unite the Party behind a policy which was slightly to the Right of that approved by Hugh Gaitskell. The Left, in the meantime, concocted a myth which was to sustain them for several years:
‘By the early 1960s the Labour Party had decided that revisionism was not on the agenda and the slow struggle back to power began. Under a new leadership and with a programme which made a clear challenge to the “You’ve never had it so good” society which had been created by the Tories, the party won the election of 1964.’ [7]
In fact, of course, revisionism had in no sense, and not for a single moment, left the agenda. Gaitskell’s policy on the Bomb had triumphed and the parry’s policy on economic affairs was still based on the ultra-revisionist Industry and Society. In more ways than one the policy of the Party, as opposed to the electoral rhetoric of its leaders, had swung, if anything, Rightwards since 1959. The magical transformation in Party policy which accompanied the election of Harold Wilson to the leadership took place only in the minds of the Labour Left. The enthusiasm for this mythical revolution swept the Labour ranks even further Left than Tribune. Mr Tom Nairn, a prominent writer in the New Left Review wrote in the symposium Towards Socialism, written before the Labour victory of 1964, but coming out shortly after it:
‘There is no doubt that, relatively, with regard to the past annals of the Labour leadership, Wilson represents a kind of progress. Wilson constantly professes the habitual Labour contempt for theory – “theology” as he calls it – but has far more theoretical grasp than any previous leader. Unlike so many former Left-wing figures who have moved towards power, he has never actually renounced or broken with his past: he is likely to be much more open to Left-wing ideas and pressures than his predecessors. In contrast to Gaitskell and Attlee, Wilson seems singularly free from the bigoted anti-Communism which has been a surrogate for thought and action in many social-democratic movements.’
The almost unanimous inclination of the Labour Left to turn their attention from the written policy to abstract rhetoric about ‘commanding heights’ and ‘nationalisation of urban land’ enabled Harold Wilson during his twenty months as leader of the Opposition to fulfil his promise of remaining loyal to the policy of Hugh Gaitskell while at the same time convincing Gaitskell’s enemies that Gaitskellite revisionism ‘was not on the agenda.’ His ambition, as expressed to John Junor, to hold high the banner of nationalisation while leading the Labour Party away from it had been fulfilled.
This achievement was sustained in the immediate afterglow of the 1964 election victory. Only a few Labour MPs complained about the delay of six months in paying the proposed pensions increase, and even fewer objected to the decision to send Buccaneer aircraft to South Africa. Throughout November, Tribune re-published Harold Wilson’s main speeches, explaining that the differences between the paper and the leader were ‘of emphasis rather than of principle.’ [8] The paper’s clerical correspondent, Dr Donald Soper, who was shortly to receive a peerage from the Prime Minister, declared his New Year’s resolution on 1 January 1965: ‘to support the Government more fervently.’ And when George Brown had enticed the leaders of the trade unions and of industry to sign a declaration of intent to formulate an incomes policy, he received uncritical support from Tribune’s two economic correspondents from Sheffield, Mr Michael Barratt Brown and Mr Royden Harrison, who were not ashamed to cloak Mr Brown and his advisers in the mantle of Marxist orthodoxy: ‘The scene,’ they wrote, ‘is once again set for a decisive victory for the political economy of Labour.’ [9]
Summarising Labour’s first hundred days, Tribune’s editor concluded: ‘It would be grossly unfair to turn upon the Government now and rend it.’ Any minor errors, he was sure, would soon be put right. After all,
‘Given the spirit which Harold Wilson has most notably displayed on many previous occasions, there is no reason why the Government could not and cannot recover all the ground lost in the past weeks, and capture much more territory in the months ahead.’ [10]
And so it seemed, for a few months at any rate. The publication of ‘Dick Crossman’s brilliant housing Bill,’ the ‘welcome Race Relations Bill,’ the plans for steel nationalisation, the Budget, and the long Commons battle with Tory stockbrokers, all put heart into the Labour Left. Tribune proudly published interviews with leading Ministers, notably one with Anthony Greenwood, the new Colonial Secretary, who astonished the paper’s readers in British Guiana by his enthusiasm for the Duncan Sandys’ Guianese Constitution (described by Harold Wilson at the time of its publication as ‘fiddled’) and his description of the Guianese Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, as ‘a socialist.’
More important matters, however, soon arose to ruffle the solidarity of the Labour Left. First was the Government’s immediate and unequivocal support for the Americans in their war in Vietnam, particularly their support for the American bombing of North Vietnam, which started in February. Second was the Immigration White Paper in August. Third was the series of nibbling deflations, culminating in the big £100m bite at the end of July. Fourth was the Government’s decision, in the light of the abstention of Desmond Donnelly and Woodrow Wyatt in the House of Commons, to shelve the nationalisation of steel. And fifth, perhaps worst of all, was the National Plan, published in September. All these, in one form or another, were attacked by the Labour Left, though none of these attacks took the form of Parliamentary votes or abstentions. The National Plan particularly irritated those who had hoped for a genuine economic programme based on social justice, welfare and equality. The Plan, complained Tribune, ‘is a non-plan with its priorities badly wrong. George Brown should go away and think again.’ As for deflation, the Left’s alternatives did not (yet) include devaluation. John Mendelson, Left wing MP for Penistone argued both in Parliament and outside for import controls and overseas investment checks. On the issue of the incomes policy, the Left was split. Clive Jenkins, who had argued so furiously a year earlier that Harold Wilson was opposed to wage restraint, found that George Brown’s plan for an Incomes Bill was ‘fundamentally authoritarian and anti-trade union. It should be spurned as a hobble for free men – a device which perpetuates inequality in British society.’ [11] The academics of the Left, however, still believed that the Government would produce a ‘socialist incomes policy.’ The extent of the Left’s reaction to these measures differed sharply. Some were so shocked and horrified that they cried halt to all support for Labour. Malcolm Caldwell, a dedicated Labour campaigner, voiced the most extreme disillusionment in a letter to Tribune on 20 August:
‘Socialist principles have been tossed aside with almost indecent cynicism and casualness. Racial discrimination in Britain has been condoned and strengthened. American butchery in Vietnam has been actively supported and encouraged. Social welfare and economic development in Britain have been sacrificed to carry out a reactionary economic programme at the behest of international finance capital. What of the Left leaders in Parliament? Tell them off on your fingers, comrades, and think of their words and deeds in recent months while the Labour movement has been sold down the river. It is a sad picture and I can personally neither see nor offer any excuses. Are we finished, we of the Labour Left?’
And, the following month, Alan Dawe, Tribune’s education correspondent, announced his resignation from the Labour Party:
‘We are not right,’ he wrote ‘to view the Labour Party and its latter day works as having anything to do with socialism. They don’t, they won’t and it is time we faced up to it.’ [12]
Such voices were, at the time, isolated heralds of the massive disillusionment that was to follow. The editor of Tribune received a great many more letters complaining about his attacks on the Labour Government and was forced to write an editorial explaining the need for dissent. And, even in that unhappy summer, the Left-wing Labour MPs could take solace in the wizardry of their leader:
‘He (Wilson) commands more widespread support within the Parliamentary Labour Party and in the country than any other leader the Labour Party has had. He fights the Tories and enjoys it ... The atmosphere (at the PLP meeting at the end of the summer Parliamentary session) was euphoric. Miraculously the gloom was banished ... Everything in the garden seemed to be looking, well, if not exactly lovely, at least a good deal greener than when Callaghan was wielding his axe six days before.’ [13]
As the economic crisis was temporarily dispelled, and, as Parliament met again in the autumn, the atmosphere of euphoria drugged the Labour Left. The total disarray of the Tories, under a new and indecisive leader; Harold Wilson’s two vast speeches at Party Conference and his apparently tough line on Rhodesia; the promotion of Barbara Castle and Anthony Greenwood; and a number of important welfare reforms, notably rating relief and local authority interest rate subsidy, combined to convince the Left that the Government was on the right road. When Richard Gott decided to stand as Radical Alliance candidate in the by-election in North Hull, he was severely rebuked by the Labour Left. ‘Do not destroy the Government!’ bellowed Tribune:
‘Every socialist has the right to criticise the design and performance of the Labour automobile – so long as he also helps to put some petrol in the tank.’ [14]
Two months later, with the decision to hold another General Election, all criticism was thrown to the winds in a stampede to get as much petrol into the tank as possible. Even Clive Jenkins’ carping about the Incomes Policy was stayed. For the new Labour Manifesto, Time for Decision, Tribune had nothing but praise:
‘The Labour manifesto is not only an interesting and stimulating document. It is also, in essence, a socialist one. The answers are inescapably egalitarian. There is some self-congratulation, but is it not justified?’ [15]
As election day approached the enthusiasm became feverish: ‘March 31st,’ wrote Michael Foot, ‘will mark one of the essential dates in the forward march. It is an opportunity which only incorrigible sectarians and nihilists, the best allies of the forces of reaction, will not wish to seize.’ [16]
It is hard even for an incorrigible sectarian to read Tribune before and after the March 1966 General Election without a lump rising in his throat. On the day of the election, Tribune brought out a special front and back page which shouted in savage exultation at the impending destruction of the Left’s enemies:
‘... Who doesn’t want a landslide? We see you, Desmond Donnelly, with your Spectator pals – well, here it comes and you’ll be buried in steel ...
‘Pensions up, Rent Act Security, Unemployment Down, Prescription Charges off, who cares! We do ... and so do millions ... now, for bigger advances, VOTE LABOUR!’
It was the triumphant, almost incredulous shout of thousands of men and women in the Labour movement who had worked all their lives without compensation for the return of a Labour Government in prosperous peacetime. The quarrels, the arguments, the strikes and lock-outs, the bitter theoretical wrangles of the last thirteen years had been smoothed over and bypassed with the injunction: ‘Get the Tories Out.’ In the past 17 months of miniscule majorities, the injunction had been reiterated even more earnestly. For the 50,000 or so readers of Tribune, the hard core of Labour’s rank and file, a Parliamentary majority for Labour was the first solution and did promise a more libertarian, more egalitarian society. No wonder in the hour of victory, that Tribune bellowed: ‘SOCIALISM IS RIGHT BACK ON THE AGENDA,’ and that their columnist Francis Flavius could argue that the election results marked ‘a significant watershed in British politics.’ [17] The Labour Left and Tribune took the 1966 election result more seriously than anyone else in the land. The Press, who had whipped up a violent campaign against Labour in 1964, the industrialists, (even the steel masters who knew that a big majority would bring steel nationalisation) were silent. The flow of big money into Tory Party funds, even from the steel masters all but dried up. Political commentators reported ‘a boring election’ and predicted ‘no change.’ And, in the event, nothing changed. The course of British politics was not altered in the slightest degree by Labour’s landslide victory of 1966. After a brief moment of euphoria, Harold Wilson and his henchmen continued their propaganda about restrictive practises on both sides of industry, their paranoiac defence of the pound sterling and their attacks on the trade unions.
Once the axe started to fall, it fell quickly. In May, the seamen went on strike to be met with fierce resistance, smears and abuse from the Labour Government. In early July, Frank Cousins, hero of the Labour Left, resigned from the Government over the publication of the Prices and Incomes Bill. In mid-July another sterling crisis pushed the Labour Government into a wage freeze and the most ruthless deflationary measures since the war.
The Left reacted to all this in shocked astonishment. ‘There has been,’ complained Tribune in June, ‘no glimmer of a changed strategy, no enlarged vision since the General Election of March 1966.’ John Morgan, a devoted socialist with a strong Left-wing bias, greeted the July measures with a melancholy cry which must have touched the hearts of the Labour Left throughout the land:
‘It isn’t just emotion that moves the socialist to rage and sadness now – not that there would be anything wrong with emotion. Dismay springs from the knowledge that a good, coherent programme for modernisation existed, even exists, which has been abandoned without even being tried. When Harold Wilson began speaking on the stage of the Brangwen Hall, Swansea, on the afternoon of 25 January 1964, he was not only establishing himself as a national leader, he was winning the people to sensible ideas. It was an important moment in British politics ... The speech became the basis of the National Plan. It demonstrated how the recurring difficulties of the balance of payments could be defeated, how increased production could be the basis of a new society.’ [18]
John Morgan represented the Labour Party members who had been won over to what he called ‘that series of great speeches in the early months of 1964.’ The dreary semi-Keynesian technocracy of Harold Wilson had inspired men like John Morgan just as John Kennedy’s preposterous New Frontier had inspired the soft American Left four years previously. Now with the Government’s collapse into Conservative remedies and Conservative reactions the Labour Left was utterly disillusioned without anything to offer as an half credible alternative.
In his Sunday Times article, in fact, John Morgan argued that the pound should have been devalued in 1964. Along with many others on the Left and Right who argued along the same lines, Morgan had advanced no such argument hi 1964. Tribune opposed devaluation in 1964, 1965 and in July 1966; only in 1967 did the majority of the paper’s economic correspondents support a floating rate for the pound. And even then the Labour Left argued, quite dishonestly, that devaluation need not involve deflation. [19]
The July measures of 1966 forced the hard core Labour Left into almost permanent opposition to their Government. The Prices and Incomes Act (on which some 30 Labour MPs abstained in August and October), the Vietnam war, the Common Market (for entry to which the Government applied in November), rising unemployment and a continuing squeeze on the social services all provoked more and more protest. Fortunately for the Left-wing MPs, the policy of the Whips, laid down by Richard Grossman and John Silkin, was to run the Parliamentary party on a light reign, and abstentions were permitted against angry protests from the more ‘loyalist’ backbenchers and from the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Emmanuel Shinwell, who eventually resigned. All the Left assumed that Harold Wilson strongly approved this ‘liberal’ policy. In May 1966, for instance, Hugh Jenkins, the MP for Putney, had argued:
‘Years of hostility and repression have bred in the old Parliamentarians (who are still the most courageous and resolute of the lot of us) conspiratorial habits which are no longer necessary under the tolerant regime of Harold Wilson.’ [20]
Yet in March 1967, after 60 MPs had abstained after the defence debate, in protest against the refusal to make further defence cuts, Wilson rounded on the Left at a Parliamentary Party meeting, warning them that ‘a dog is only allowed one bite’ and threatening them with a General Election unless they came to heel. Though the discipline issue faded for several months after this outburst, it arose even more seriously in early 1968 as the hard core of the Parliamentary Left voted against every one of the Government proposals for cuts in social services announced in January, and against the Immigration Act, 1968. Once again, the Parliamentary Party, with Wilson’s approval, turned the discipline screw.
Yet throughout the entire period of disillusionment and near-despair, there was one threat which never failed to ensure the loyalty of the Labour Left: a threat to the personal leadership of Harold Wilson. In the aftermath of the 1966 July deflation, a rumour gained ground in Labour circles, which was substantially true, that a meeting of back-benchers and some Ministers had been held to discuss the possibility and the means of replacing Harold Wilson with James Callaghan. As soon as Tribune caught hold of this rumour, it exploded with rage.
Similarly, after the 1967 devaluation, during the controversy on arms for South Africa, when a bid was made to replace Wilson with Callaghan, the Left rallied to Wilson. Three months later, when further moves were made to promote Roy Jenkins or Anthony Crosland to the Treasury, a group of 91 MPs wrote a letter to The Times.
The letter was headed ‘Comfort for Mr Wilson’ and it took issue with The Times political correspondent, David Wood, who had reported the previous day that ‘his (Wilson’s) own rank and file have no confidence in him.’
‘We do not know,’ ran the letter, ‘how Mr Wood came to this conclusion, but it certainly was not in speaking to any of the undersigned, proof enough that his sweeping generalisation has no basis in fact.’ [21]
The signatures had, reported the letter, been ‘gathered in a very short time,’ and they included familiar loyalists and former ‘young eagles.’ Yet they also included such bastions of the Parliamentary Labour Left as Russell Kerr, John Mendel-son, James Dickens, Eric Heffer, Peter Jackson, Norman Atkinson, Michael Foot, Andrew Faulds, and Ben Whitaker. The official argument for the letter was that the Left’s quarrel with the Government was about policies, not personalities, and that any attempt to introduce personalities into the argument should be immediately scotched.
The Left however had not scrupled in the past to attack personalities responsible for reactionary policies, and to call for their removal if only as a gesture of disapproval of those policies. In 1959 and 1960, Tribune and its followers had consistently attacked Gaitskell and had called again and again for his removal from the leadership. Again, on 6 January 1967 Tribune had demanded, in a front page headline: ‘CALLAGHAN MUST GO!’ and had claimed that although the removal of the Chancellor would not of itself right the wrongs of his policies, it was necessary as an indication that policy changes were intended.
The obsession of political correspondents with personalities is infuriating for all politicians who seek to discuss the policy issues. Yet the MPs’ letters to The Times of 12 March 1968, did not diminish the personality aspect; it increased it. If the Left-wing MPs who signed the letter had genuinely not cared about personalities, they would have written to The Times not to declare their confidence in their leader but to disavow all interest in the leadership issue. The truth was, as it had been for several years, that, deep down, the Labour Left felt that Harold Wilson was ‘one of them.’ This myth had outlived the apparently endless list of anti-socialist measures enacted by Harold Wilson’s administration.
Old ghosts still jibbered in the theoretical graveyard. ‘Gaitskellism,’ wrote Michael Foot in March 1967, ‘like Stalinism, cannot easily be restored.’ Yet what, in the reality of March 1967, did Gaitskellism mean? What further horrors could it wreak? Would Gaitskell, perhaps, have introduced a wage freeze for a year or permanently brought wage negotiations under the control of the law courts? Would he have imposed prescription charges, postponed raising the school leaving age, cancelled free school milk in secondary schools? Would he have based his industrial policy on mergers and monopolies supported by Government finance and Government orders? Would he have supported the Vietnam war? No doubt, Gaitskell would have pursued all these courses, as would Callaghan, Jenkins or Crosland. But Wilson had done all these things – and more. Where was the evidence – save only in the quarrel on South African arms – that ‘the Gaitskellites’ would have proved better Tories than Harold Wilson? Essentially, their policies would have been the same. The direction of the Labour Government, under Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Jenkins or Crosland or any of the other alternatives would have been equally disastrous. The leadership issue, in short, compared with the political issues in which the Government was involved was almost if not completely irrelevant.
The tenacious hold which Harold Wilson exercised on his former friends and supporters in the Left had a deeper, more political root than the fear of a mythical Gaitskellism. The reaction of Tribune and the Parliamentary Left to Wilson’s Government was based throughout on the political theory of another era. Where the Government took action which offended against the old traditions and the old theory of the Labour Left, the Left responded immediately and courageously with clear and untrammeled opposition. The reaction to the seaman’s strike of 1966 in Tribune was unconditional ‘SUPPORT THE SEAMEN!’ When unemployment was created, the Government was sharply censured. When the health charges were reimposed, Tribune shouted ‘THE SHAME OF IT ALL!’ Certainly no one could blame the Labour Left for a lack of resolution, courage and determination in their efforts to swing the Government away from these old evils. Yet at the same time, the Wilson Government was pursuing policies of a more subtle and sinister nature which seem to have escaped the attention and the criticism of the Labour Left.
These policies can be listed under the heading of Corporatism. The encouragement of vast mergers and monopolies under the aegis of the Government-financed Industrial Reorganisation Corporation; the complex planning machinery of the little Neddies and of the geographic planning councils; the incorporation of the trade-union leadership into the network of planning on the bogus pretext of ‘Incomes Policy;’ the interference of the State with almost every major wage dispute through the Prices and Incomes Board – these new, drastically dangerous corporatist developments were not identified by the Labour Left – and therefore not opposed. When Alan Dawe had resigned from the Labour Party in 1965 he had complained in Tribune about that paper’s obsession with State ownership and State control:
‘There is nothing socialist about the commanding heights now. For this Government is trying to create a power elite, more cohesive and omnipotent than any we have seen in recent British history ... this is the ultimate significance of the attempt to forge a consensus of opinion and action between the leaders of Government, industry and the unions ...’
Yet the Left around Tribune overlooked this problem. They rejoiced when, in the autumn of 1967, the Queen’s Speech included references to an Industrial Expansion Bill, whereby the State would take minority shareholdings in crucial industries and appoint minority directors to the Boards .The measure was marginally less drastic than the proposals in Industry and Society which the Left had so violently opposed ten years previously. Nevertheless, at the suggestion that the Industrial Expansion Bill should be dropped or postponed, Tribune frothed with fury. Harold Wilson’s knowledge of ‘public ownership’ rhetoric, gleaned with such care during his period as a Bevanite, served him in good stead as Prime Minister, and continued to bamboozle many of his former Left-wing colleagues into the belief that the vast, undemocratic corporatist machinery which he was setting up was in some sense a move towards socialism. In fact, of course, the ‘planning’ of Selwyn Lloyd and Maudling was taken over and speeded up by Harold Wilson – even to the extent of nationalising the steel industry and appointing the steel bosses to run a new, dynamic, streamlined single unit called the National Steel Corporation. The Government’s decision to include provisions in the steel legislation for the election of trade unionists and rank-and-file workers to the local steel boards was hailed by the Labour Left as a victory. [22] In fact, it was nothing of the kind. As became clear at once, the ‘concession’ served merely to incorporate some of the more politically conscious workers into the labyrinthine apparatus of the Corporation machine. The steel corporation rapidly became the most transparently corporatist, or State capitalist industrial unit in the country.
The grand illusions which, both before and after 1964, rallied the Labour Left to the Wilsonian recipes of State ownership and automation were not entirely due to the skill of the illusionist. Rhetorical sleight-of-hand, however brilliant, could never of its own have brought about so great a conversion. The truth was that Harold Wilson’s pragmatism burst on the Labour movement at a moment of theoretical impasse. The violent changes in capitalism, in the relationship between the State and private industry, had thrown the Labour Movement into theoretical disarray. The Labour Right had responded by abandoning ‘the means’ of public ownership and fixing their sights on a more humane capitalism, prodded and pushed by a Labour Government. The Left, in fury, responded by re-stating ‘the end’ – socialism – while becoming increasingly vague as to what it meant, and increasingly unable, therefore, to propose any comprehensible means. The argument, symbolised by two 1960 Fabian pamphlets, Socialism in the Affluent Society, by Richard Crossman, and Can Labour Win? by Anthony Crosland, dragged on for several years, with both sides hopelessly missing the mark. In the event, both sides were exhausted by irrelevance, and Harold Wilson’s ‘dynamic,’ essentially capitalist terminology filled the vacuum. [23]
The new corporatism which Wilson had consistently proclaimed for so many years led to a development which was even more significant for the Labour Left: a decline in the power and importance of Parliament. Classical capitalism of the Adam Smith variety, with its warring factions and devotion to competition between individual firms, allowed considerable scope for debate, discussion and even power in Parliament. Similarly in the early days of universal suffrage, and, particularly in the post-1945 era when private, pre-war capitalism was in jeopardy, the power of Parliament was, relatively, considerable. With the closing of the capitalist ranks in national, corporate monopoly, and, more importantly, with the increasing power and confidence of the monopolies, the power of Parliament declined. The big decisions left to Government became increasingly secret, increasingly the preserve of the Executive which did not always mean the Cabinet. The big decisions were taken by Cabinet committees, sometimes even by individuals, and, even then, many of these decisions depended on expert advice from the men who wielded economic power. The decision to devalue the pound in 1949 was taken by four or five men, and the Cabinet were not told until six weeks after the decision had been taken. The choice open to Cabinet members at that stage was to accept a fait accompli or to resign. Similarly, in 1967, the devaluation decision was taken several weeks before the Cabinet knew anything about it. In 1965, the National Plan, which was intended to shape the nation’s economic future for five years, was released in the Parliamentary recess, without recourse to Parliament or even to the Parliamentary Labour Party (still less to the Labour Conference). These were all decisions which were still formally the province of Parliament. In the meantime, the big decisions in the nation’s economic and industrial life moved away even from the Executive. The almost laughable antics of the Monopolies Commission indicated, if proof were needed, the full extent of the impotence of Parliament over the nation’s industrial affairs. The more the mergers, the bigger the monopolies, the greater the power of industrial and economic bureaucracies. The absorption of trade-union leaders and the official trade-union machinery into these bureaucracies shifted the centres of resistance into small pockets of revolt: into isolated unofficial strikes, tenants’ committees, students’ demonstrations. Even inside the Party, however, the real shift to the Left was to be seen not in Parliament but in the trade unions. The election of Hugh Scanlon as President of the AEU in 1967, the growth in membership and militancy of the small white-collar unions, notably the Draughtsmen and Allied Technicians’ Union and the Association of Scientific and Managerial Staffs, indicated a sharp shift away from the Labour establishment in the area in which thereto it had been most firmly entrenched; the trade-union leadership.
In the meantime the Parliamentary Left and Tribune seemed to focus even more closely and intently on traditional, Parliamentary forms of political activity. There was no attempt to reform the Victory for Socialism Group or the Appeal for Unity which had been formed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in an effort (which was not very successful) to organise the rank and file for a campaign against the Labour Right. In 1967, an effort was made to re-start the Tribune Brains Trusts of the early 1950s. By April 1968, about twenty of these Brains Trusts had been held, their success depending on the strength and militancy of the sponsoring constituency parties. The Left-wing MPs were forced by the logic of their position, to concentrate on Parliamentary tactics. In August 1966, John Horner, Left-wing MP for Oldbury and Halesowen, wrote an article in Tribune attacking the new wage freeze and incomes policy and calling for rejection of the policy at the forthcoming Trades Union Congress. When Francis Flavius, Tribune’s columnist referred the following week to Horner’s ‘campaign,’ John Horner replied with some urgency:
‘I should hate Francis Flavius to give anyone the idea that I am now calling for mass action from the trade union movement against it (the incomes policy).’ [24]
Moreover, as Ralph Miliband has shown in his comprehensive analysis, Parliamentary Socialism, the Parliamentary road to socialism is fraught with dangers – not least the danger of personal absorption into the machinery of Government. From the very beginning of the Labour Government in 1964 the Left was split between on the one hand the resolute older Parliamentarians and the new trade-union MPs who were prepared to fight decisions with which they disagreed through the established Parliamentary machinery, and on the other, a group of younger men who hoped, in some unspecific way, to find ‘new ways’ of proclaiming their opposition. One idea was to establish a ‘Parliamentary Forum,’ a permanent debating chamber at which the Left could thrash out a new strategy and a new theory. [25] Allegations were made by these younger men of ‘pussyfooting’ – a disparaging reference to Mr Michael Foot and the older Parliamentarians.
Harold Wilson, who had so much experience of such splits and divisions, watched with considerable interest, and, as soon as an able young Left MP fell out with his colleagues, he was duly swept into the Government. As early as 19 February 1965 a group of young back-benchers joined with two Labour veterans, Philip Noel-Baker and Arthur Henderson in writing a letter to The Times urging the Government ‘to take an immediate initiative to achieve a cease-fire (in Vietnam) and a conference in which the principled participants can search for a political solution.’ They were Peter Shore, David Ennals, Shirley Williams and Dr Jeremy Bray. The following August, the latter three of the four signed a letter from back-bench MPs calling on the Government to ‘scrap the immigration white paper.’ Jeremy Bray spoke at the 1965 Labour Party Conference on behalf of his union, the Transport and General Workers, whose million votes he pledged against the White Paper. The most anxious and dedicated opponent of the immigration White Paper was Reginald Freeson, MP for Willesden East, whose constituency housed one of the largest immigrant populations in the country (and who subsequently tripled his majority in the 1966 election). Another signature on the letter was that of the young barrister MP for Lincoln, Mr Dick Taverne. The immigration policy was also attacked in a brilliant and bitter speech late at night in the House of Commons by the MP for Renfrew West, Mr Norman Buchan, perhaps the ablest of all the Left-wing intake in 1964.
Two years later, Shore (Minister of Economic Affairs), Bray (Technology), Mrs Williams (Education), Freeson (Power), Taverne (Home Office), Ennals (Home Office) and Buchan (Scottish Office) had been absorbed into the Government. Mr Neil Carmichael and Mr Ioan Evans who had associated themselves with the Left, notably on Vietnam and defence, had also accepted jobs in the Ministries of Transport and the Whips Office respectively. The ‘pussy-footers’ had been left to carry on the fight against their accusers.
The offer of such a job places a Left-wing MP in an intolerable dilemma. In the first place, the logic of his place in Parliament tells him that he must accept a place in the Government. How, he argues, can he press for more left-wing policies from a Government, and then refuse to join the Government when offered a place in it? Moreover, particularly in offices like the Scottish Office and the Ministry of Transport the political complexion of an Under Secretary can make a difference to a host of administrative decisions. As against that, the Minister is silenced on the broad issues. He has no voice in the Government, which never meets. And, whenever necessary, he can be hauled out to vote for the Cabinet’s policy. The spectacle, for instance, of Norman Buchan and Reginald Freeson failing to oppose the frankly racialist Immigration Act of 1968 was as nauseating for their supporters as it must have been galling for themselves. Yet only once, in the case of Eric Heffer, who was offered a Government post in 1967, was the offer of such a job turned down by a Left-wing MP. Yet, in the final analysis, the central criticism of the Labour Left under Harold Wilson’s leadership does not concern their Parliamentary tactics nor the difficult decisions as to whether or not to vote against the Government, or to accept a post within it. In the 1930s Sir Stafford Cripps had posed to his followers in the Socialist League, many of whom were prominent in the Labour Left in the 1950s and 1960s, central questions about power in modern capitalist society, based on his view that the ‘idea that the wielders of economic power will co-operate with a Labour Government is quite fantastic.’
‘Can socialism come by constitutional means?’ he had asked, and had replied in the affirmative, only on the condition that the most dramatic measures to control private economic interests were undertaken immediately by a Labour Government. The power of Parliament, argued Cripps, had to be exerted to the full against private economic and industrial interests if that power was to survive. The slightest wavering in the face of those economic interests would mean the inevitable bondage of Parliament.
Had Cripps’ case been eroded by the thirty years between 1933 and 1963? Had capitalism become less powerful, more subservient to the whims of Parliament than in the 1930s? Were the great corporations of the 1960s more democratic and more easily controlled than the demoralised industries of the 1930s? Had the conflict between economic interests and socialist aims diminished, so that the powers necessary to fulfil the latter and control the former were in some sense less crucial? These questions had been raised to some extent, though in less specific and more diluted language, in the big arguments of the late 1950s. At the 1958 Labour Party Conference, for instance, Mr Trevor Park, the delegate from Darwen, later MP for South East Derbyshire, had declared:
‘I am not interested merely in a better organised society; I am not interested merely in working capitalism more efficiently than the capitalists themselves. I am interested in a society which is based upon co-operation and not upon competition ...
‘There is a fundamental conflict here.
‘The aims of those who evolve the plans – Government and the public authorities – are very different from the aims of the private capitalists who control industry. No matter how many social controls and regulations we create, there will still be attempts to evade them and discover ways and means by which the instruments of social interest can be evaded ...
‘Sooner or later we shall be brought back to this fundamental issue: are we interested only in making capitalism more efficient; are we trying to out-do the Tory Party in what is their own territory; or are we preparing for the next stage in the march forward to socialism?’ [26]
Under the leadership of Harold Wilson, these questions, despite their increasing relevance, were not asked. Instead the Left concentrated on the mechanics of Parliamentary victory rather than the policies by which the ‘fundamental conflict’ between Labour’s aims and private economic interests could be resolved. The hysteria about the importance of electoral victories reached a climax at the General Election in 1966, which quickly emerged as the unhappiest paper victory in Labour history. Under the hypnosis of Wilsonian rhetoric about public ownership, peace and technology, in the vacuum created by the irrelevance of old slogans and old analyses, and in the Gadarenian Stampede to Party Unity at election time, the Labour Left forgot about or ignored the ’fundamental conflict’ and were therefore theoretically and practically unprepared for defeat in it.
Harold Wilson’s uncanny knowledge of the Labour Party and its Left wing, most of it gained from his association with the Bevanites in the early 1950s was consistently applied to obtaining the support of Left-wing MPs, though his policies only very rarely leant Leftwards. Ruthlessly he played on the Left’s most fatal weakness: its sentimentality. Wilson knows that the Labour Left responds more enthusiastically than the Right to calls for party unity at times of crisis (especially at elections), to vague phrases about public ownership and moral crusades and helping the starving millions. In the generalised sloganising of the Labour Left Harold Wilson has always been an expert, and he never scrupled to wrap it in the shroud of Aneurin Bevan. Both before and after his accession, Wilson deployed a familiar, but highly successful rhetorical technique, attaching the name of Aneurin Bevan to the most banal cliches.
‘Why, Aneurin Bevan asked, look into the crystal ball when you can read the book.’ [27]
‘We know, as Nye Bevan said, that politics are about power.’ [28]
‘Nye had a word for it, as always: why look in the crystal ball when you can read the book?’ [29]
‘If I may quote Nye again, we are not gigolos.’ [30]
‘As Nye Bevan reminded us in the last speech to the House of Commons, one of the defects of our postwar democracy has been that it has not yet proved that it can voluntarily save itself from drift, decline and disaster by imposing the necessary discipline in time.’ [31]
Howard and West tell us that after the first ballot for the Labour leadership election in January 1963, in which Wilson had fallen only eight votes short of an overall majority over his two rivals, Callaghan and Brown, he repaired with his two campaign managers, Richard Crossman and George Wigg, to Crossman’s house in Vincent Square. There Wigg assured them that at least twelve of Callaghan’s votes were committed to Wilson, who had, in effect, won the election. At this, Wilson ‘raised his glass and proposed a toast to Nye Bevan’s memory.’ [32]
Wilson, supported by Crossman, had taken Bevan’s place on the Shadow Cabinet in 1954, when the latter had resigned on a principle held by both of them. Wilson had actively supported Gaitskell for the Party leadership against Bevan in 1955 and 1956. Wigg had resigned from the Keep Left Group in 1951 out of loyalty to Emmanuel Shinwell and the latter’s defence budget, which Bevan opposed. Yet, in a sense, the toast was justified. For without the mantle of Nye, and the deep attachment to Bevan’s memory (and to those who had supported him in the past) among the Labour Left, Harold Wilson would never have been able to appeal to the Left as one of their own. The appeal to the sentimentality of the Left was to serve Harold Wilson even more handsomely in the future. At the 1966 Labour Party Conference, for instance, at which he tried to explain away the collapse of all his policies, Wilson turned, at the end of a long, pedantic speech to a quote from a living hero, from Lord, formerly the Rev Donald Soper, personally ennobled by the Prime Minister himself as a mark of Wilson’s respect for the ‘non-conformist conscience’ of the Labour Left. At a ‘service of dedication’ in the crypt chapel of St Stephen’s Church, Mary Undercroft, in the Palace of Westminster, Wilson recalled Soper pronouncing a prayer:
‘Oh, God, grant us a vision of our land, fair as it might be:
A land of righteousness where none shall wrong his neighbour;
A land of plenty where evil and poverty shall be done away;
A land of brotherhood where all success shall be founded on service, and honour shall be given to excellence alone;
A land of peace where order shall not rest on force, but on the love of all for the common life and weal;
Bless our efforts to make the vision a living reality;
Inspire and strengthen each one of us that we may give time, thought and sacrifice to speed the day of its coming.’
‘When the time comes,’ Wilson went on, ‘I would want this Government, this Movement, to be judged by not only the British Nation, but by history, by our success or failure in turning this prayer into a reality.’
No one was sick.
The Conference, whose Left-wing element had been distinctly restive throughout Wilson’s speech (one incorrigible sectarian had even been moved to heckle) was silenced. And, to a man, the delegates rose for the solemn ritual of the standing ovation.
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Footnotes
1. Tribune, 22 February 1963.
2. Daily Herald, 2 October 1963.
3. Tribune, 12 June 1963.
4. Tribune, 11 October 1963.
5. Ibid., 11 September 1964.
6. Ibid., 6 November 1964.
7. Tribune editorial after the 1966 election, 8 April 1966.
8. Tribune, 20 November 1964.
9. Ibid., 8 January 1965.
10. Ibid., 29 January 1965.
11. Ibid., 17 September 1965.
12. Ibid., 24 September 1965.
13. Michael Foot in Tribune, 6 August 1965.
14. 7 January 1966.
15. 11 March 1966.
16. Tribune, 25 March 1966.
17. Ibid., 8 April 1966.
18. The Sunday Times, 24 July 1966.
19. See Tribune pamphlet, Never Again, published in July 1967.
20. Tribune, 29 May 1966.
21. The Times, 12 March 1968.
22. See Ian Mikardo, The Left in 1967, Tribune, 23 December 1966
23. Needless to say, the few socialists who recognised the real situation were ‘incorrigible sectarians.’ Alasdair MacIntyre, for instance, had written, in the aftermath of Wilson’s Scarborough speech, an article which was vindicated by subsequent events in every particular:
‘From Togliatti to Wilson the cry goes up across Western Europe that socialism is now State-sponsored planning plus automation. It is sad that neither Wilson nor Togliatti is a keen student of Hegel’s dialectic, for it would have been a great comfort to those who believe that opposites become one in a higher synthesis to realise that oddly enough capitalism is now State-sponsored planning plus automation.
‘To accept Wilsonism is to have moved over to the Right at least for the moment, no matter what other professions of socialism are made ...’ Labour Policy and Capitalist Planning, International Socialism, Winter 1963, pp. 5 9.
24. Tribune, 2 September 1966.
25. One Labour wag named the proposed organisation the Parliamentary Institute for Socialist Studies, PISS.
26. Labour Party Conference Report, 1958, pp. 163–4.
27. Swansea, 25 January 1964.
28. London, Speech to Society of Labour Lawyers, 20 April 1964.
29. Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 29 September 1965.
30. Ibid.
31. TUC, 5 September 1966.
32. Anthony Howard and Richard West, The Making of the Prime Mlnliter, Cape, 1965, p. 30.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Woman who Built Barricades:<br>
Louise Michel and the Paris Commune</h1>
<h3>(1979)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <b>Socialist Worker</b>, No. 2670, 9 October 2004.<br>
This is an edited version of Paul Foot’s speech in 1979 on <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/2670/The+woman+who+built+barricades">Louise Michel and the Paris Commune</a>.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">ONE OF the greatest dates in our history was 18 March 1871. The
story starts at the heights of Montemartre, Paris, at about 3 a.m.
The whole square is dominated by 250 cannon. The guns had just been
used in a war between France and Germany in which Paris had been
besieged for the whole winter.</p>
<p>The war ended in what most Parisians saw as a total sell out.
Immediately after the armistice was signed an election in Paris
returned a hard right government. It was headed by Adolphe Thiers,
described by Karl Marx as a “monstrous gnome”.</p>
<p>Thiers’s immediate problem was Paris. Most of the people of
Paris were workers, and they were angry – angry at the government,
angry at the backdating of rents suspended during the siege, and
angry at their working conditions.</p>
<p>And Thiers was very worried about the cannon on Montemartre. The
cannon had got to Montemartre by a very simple process – the
working men, women and children of Paris had seized them and taken
them there.</p>
<p>The orders for this tricky operation had been given by the
National Guard, the force of volunteers set up in Paris to fight the
Prussians. The central committee of the National Guard was a genuine
democracy.</p>
<p>Government soldiers were sent to seize the cannon back, and were
left guarding them. Rows broke out in the streets around Montemarte
as the people gathered to defend the cannon.</p>
<p>Then up the road to Montemartre a woman came running. Her name was
Louise Michel. She was 41 years old. She was a member of a committee
set up to look after the guns.</p>
<p>While she tended a wounded man, she overheard a general say the
French army was now in charge of Paris, “and the filthy, disgusting
rabble that had taken his guns out of the place where they should
have been were going to get taught a lesson.”</p>
<p>Louise Michel understood what was said extremely well. She was the
daughter of a serving maid. She became a teacher, but was kicked out
of several schools because she insisted on teaching her way. She
became very active in the radical movement in Paris, quickly becoming
a prominent speaker.</p>
<p>There was a tremendous hostility toward any woman who had
independent ideas. Louise Michel had to put up with the silly
sniggering and banter which greeted any intervention by a woman, yet
she managed to establish credibility in the movement.</p>
<p>She joined the International Working Men’s Association, which
was set up by Karl Marx and others. It was very difficult for a woman
to join, as the name implies.</p>
<p>Louise Michel also managed to join the National Guard, which was
pretty remarkable because the National Guard was entirely composed of
men.</p>
<p>Anyway, she heard the general’s comments and ran off down the
hill shouting that treachery was afoot, that their place was being
taken over by the army, that their guns were being taken back, that
they had to come out and stop this thing happening. She ordered that
all the church bells be rung.</p>
<p>The wretched soldiers were still guarding the cannon. People
gathered and the generals tried to keep control.</p>
<p>Then suddenly they saw a crowd of people coming, led by Louise
Michel. She had collected about 200 women, most of them with rifles,
and came charging up the hill towards 3,000 armed soldiers.</p>
<p>Later she wrote, “We ran up at the double, knowing that at the
top was an army in battle formation. We expected to die for liberty.
All womankind was at our side – I don’t know how.”</p>
<p>Three times the general told his troops to fire. Three times they
refused. Suddenly a sergeant shouted, “We’ll have to mutiny.”
It was a glorious scene as the crowd embraced the soldiers and
bottles of wine were shared.</p>
<p>But Adolph Thiers was not at all happy. He took the entire
machinery of the government to Versailles, 40 or 50 miles down the
road. And Thiers swore that there would be revenge for what had been
done in Paris.</p>
<p>On the evening of 18 March the central committee of the National
Guard was declared the government of Paris.</p>
<p>Immediately there was an argument in the central committee. Some
wanted to march immediately on the army at Versailles. They said, “If
we go now to Versailles, by smashing the government there we can
raise the workers in all French cities.”</p>
<p>And Louise Michel, who was not on the committee, was outside,
grabbing anyone she knew and insisting, “We have to march upon
Versailles – now is the time.”</p>
<p>But the majority on the committee went for the legal option. They
decided to hand over to an elected body who would then be able to
govern properly.</p>
<p>The elections were held on 26 March. The National Guard issued
this proclamation:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Do not lose sight of the fact that the men who will
serve you best are those you choose from among yourselves, living
your life, suffering your ills. Distrust the ambitious as much as the
upstart. Distrust also talkers, who are incapable of translating
words into action. Avoid those fortune has too highly favoured, for
only rarely is he who possesses fortune disposed to see the working
man as his brother.”</p>
<p class="fst">The elections were greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. And the
people elected by and large represented what one writer called the
Red Republicans.</p>
<p>The elections were different from all other elections. The
decision makers weren’t just workers in government. They were
workers carrying out the decisions of government. When have we seen
workers at the head of the police forces, worker judges, worker
newspaper proprietors? The Paris Commune achieved this.</p>
<p>The Paris Commune was only allowed to exist for two months, during
most of which it was under constant siege from the Versailles army.
Two months is the time it takes between a bill in parliament going
between its first and second reading today.</p>
<p>But the Commune managed to revoke the backdated rents and ban
evictions. Pawn shops were ordered to hand back all the goods they
had had from workers. Night work in bakeries was banned. The Commune
started a process of accident insurance for workers, the first such
scheme in France.</p>
<p>Education in Paris was taken out of the hands of the nuns and the
monks and put into the hands of people, who were instructed in a
wonderful decree from the Commune to concentrate on facts rather than
fantasies, and to apply themselves to putting right “the greatest
malady of children – boredom”.</p>
<p>The cultural atmosphere was absolutely fantastic – all the
churches were taken over for debates.</p>
<p>But the Commune was not perfect. Unlike the National Guard, the
Commune was elected by geography. The people who were elected were
inclined to be isolated from the people who elected them.</p>
<p>One result of this weakness was seen in how the Commune conducted
the war. Thiers launched his counter-attack from Versailles.</p>
<p>Bombardment after bombardment came right to the gates of Paris.
But the conduct of the war was handed over to former army officers.
They had no idea how to tap into the democracy the Commune
represented.</p>
<p>The Versailles army got into the city because nobody was guarding
the gates. The cannon at Montemartre, the symbol of the social
revolution, was left untended, and at the crucial point couldn’t be
used.</p>
<p>Marx wrote that the Paris Commune was elected by universal
suffrage but women didn’t have the vote. Despite this, the action
taken by the women during the Commune was magnificent.</p>
<p>Women fought for the Commune from a sense that their class had
taken power, and must be defended. Louise Michel led a battalion of
120 women in defence of the Commune.</p>
<p>Now you come to the end of this story. In the whole period of the
war, from 2 April to 25 May, 887 men from the Versailles army were
killed in combat. In the ten days following 25 May, after the
Versailles army took complete control of Paris, 25,000 people were
taken out of the city and shot.</p>
<p>Anyone in any way associated with the National Guard – men,
women, children – were put to death. Louise Michel escaped these
deaths, but she was not lucky to escape them. She was transported to
the colonies and later imprisoned again when she returned to France.</p>
<p>She never lost her defiant spirit. As she lay dying she was told
of the Russian Revolution of 1905. She got out of bed, danced around
the room, then lay back and said, “Right – now I am ready to
die.”</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Woman who Built Barricades:
Louise Michel and the Paris Commune
(1979)
From Socialist Worker, No. 2670, 9 October 2004.
This is an edited version of Paul Foot’s speech in 1979 on Louise Michel and the Paris Commune.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
ONE OF the greatest dates in our history was 18 March 1871. The
story starts at the heights of Montemartre, Paris, at about 3 a.m.
The whole square is dominated by 250 cannon. The guns had just been
used in a war between France and Germany in which Paris had been
besieged for the whole winter.
The war ended in what most Parisians saw as a total sell out.
Immediately after the armistice was signed an election in Paris
returned a hard right government. It was headed by Adolphe Thiers,
described by Karl Marx as a “monstrous gnome”.
Thiers’s immediate problem was Paris. Most of the people of
Paris were workers, and they were angry – angry at the government,
angry at the backdating of rents suspended during the siege, and
angry at their working conditions.
And Thiers was very worried about the cannon on Montemartre. The
cannon had got to Montemartre by a very simple process – the
working men, women and children of Paris had seized them and taken
them there.
The orders for this tricky operation had been given by the
National Guard, the force of volunteers set up in Paris to fight the
Prussians. The central committee of the National Guard was a genuine
democracy.
Government soldiers were sent to seize the cannon back, and were
left guarding them. Rows broke out in the streets around Montemarte
as the people gathered to defend the cannon.
Then up the road to Montemartre a woman came running. Her name was
Louise Michel. She was 41 years old. She was a member of a committee
set up to look after the guns.
While she tended a wounded man, she overheard a general say the
French army was now in charge of Paris, “and the filthy, disgusting
rabble that had taken his guns out of the place where they should
have been were going to get taught a lesson.”
Louise Michel understood what was said extremely well. She was the
daughter of a serving maid. She became a teacher, but was kicked out
of several schools because she insisted on teaching her way. She
became very active in the radical movement in Paris, quickly becoming
a prominent speaker.
There was a tremendous hostility toward any woman who had
independent ideas. Louise Michel had to put up with the silly
sniggering and banter which greeted any intervention by a woman, yet
she managed to establish credibility in the movement.
She joined the International Working Men’s Association, which
was set up by Karl Marx and others. It was very difficult for a woman
to join, as the name implies.
Louise Michel also managed to join the National Guard, which was
pretty remarkable because the National Guard was entirely composed of
men.
Anyway, she heard the general’s comments and ran off down the
hill shouting that treachery was afoot, that their place was being
taken over by the army, that their guns were being taken back, that
they had to come out and stop this thing happening. She ordered that
all the church bells be rung.
The wretched soldiers were still guarding the cannon. People
gathered and the generals tried to keep control.
Then suddenly they saw a crowd of people coming, led by Louise
Michel. She had collected about 200 women, most of them with rifles,
and came charging up the hill towards 3,000 armed soldiers.
Later she wrote, “We ran up at the double, knowing that at the
top was an army in battle formation. We expected to die for liberty.
All womankind was at our side – I don’t know how.”
Three times the general told his troops to fire. Three times they
refused. Suddenly a sergeant shouted, “We’ll have to mutiny.”
It was a glorious scene as the crowd embraced the soldiers and
bottles of wine were shared.
But Adolph Thiers was not at all happy. He took the entire
machinery of the government to Versailles, 40 or 50 miles down the
road. And Thiers swore that there would be revenge for what had been
done in Paris.
On the evening of 18 March the central committee of the National
Guard was declared the government of Paris.
Immediately there was an argument in the central committee. Some
wanted to march immediately on the army at Versailles. They said, “If
we go now to Versailles, by smashing the government there we can
raise the workers in all French cities.”
And Louise Michel, who was not on the committee, was outside,
grabbing anyone she knew and insisting, “We have to march upon
Versailles – now is the time.”
But the majority on the committee went for the legal option. They
decided to hand over to an elected body who would then be able to
govern properly.
The elections were held on 26 March. The National Guard issued
this proclamation:
“Do not lose sight of the fact that the men who will
serve you best are those you choose from among yourselves, living
your life, suffering your ills. Distrust the ambitious as much as the
upstart. Distrust also talkers, who are incapable of translating
words into action. Avoid those fortune has too highly favoured, for
only rarely is he who possesses fortune disposed to see the working
man as his brother.”
The elections were greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. And the
people elected by and large represented what one writer called the
Red Republicans.
The elections were different from all other elections. The
decision makers weren’t just workers in government. They were
workers carrying out the decisions of government. When have we seen
workers at the head of the police forces, worker judges, worker
newspaper proprietors? The Paris Commune achieved this.
The Paris Commune was only allowed to exist for two months, during
most of which it was under constant siege from the Versailles army.
Two months is the time it takes between a bill in parliament going
between its first and second reading today.
But the Commune managed to revoke the backdated rents and ban
evictions. Pawn shops were ordered to hand back all the goods they
had had from workers. Night work in bakeries was banned. The Commune
started a process of accident insurance for workers, the first such
scheme in France.
Education in Paris was taken out of the hands of the nuns and the
monks and put into the hands of people, who were instructed in a
wonderful decree from the Commune to concentrate on facts rather than
fantasies, and to apply themselves to putting right “the greatest
malady of children – boredom”.
The cultural atmosphere was absolutely fantastic – all the
churches were taken over for debates.
But the Commune was not perfect. Unlike the National Guard, the
Commune was elected by geography. The people who were elected were
inclined to be isolated from the people who elected them.
One result of this weakness was seen in how the Commune conducted
the war. Thiers launched his counter-attack from Versailles.
Bombardment after bombardment came right to the gates of Paris.
But the conduct of the war was handed over to former army officers.
They had no idea how to tap into the democracy the Commune
represented.
The Versailles army got into the city because nobody was guarding
the gates. The cannon at Montemartre, the symbol of the social
revolution, was left untended, and at the crucial point couldn’t be
used.
Marx wrote that the Paris Commune was elected by universal
suffrage but women didn’t have the vote. Despite this, the action
taken by the women during the Commune was magnificent.
Women fought for the Commune from a sense that their class had
taken power, and must be defended. Louise Michel led a battalion of
120 women in defence of the Commune.
Now you come to the end of this story. In the whole period of the
war, from 2 April to 25 May, 887 men from the Versailles army were
killed in combat. In the ten days following 25 May, after the
Versailles army took complete control of Paris, 25,000 people were
taken out of the city and shot.
Anyone in any way associated with the National Guard – men,
women, children – were put to death. Louise Michel escaped these
deaths, but she was not lucky to escape them. She was transported to
the colonies and later imprisoned again when she returned to France.
She never lost her defiant spirit. As she lay dying she was told
of the Russian Revolution of 1905. She got out of bed, danced around
the room, then lay back and said, “Right – now I am ready to
die.”
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Postal Workers and the Tory Offensive</h1>
<h3>(1971)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">A <em>Socialist Worker</em> Pamphlet.<br>
First published 1971 by SW (Litho) Printers Ltd, 8 Cotton Gardens, London.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Derek Howl.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>Introduction</h4>
<p class="fst">The postal strike of 1971 was by a long way the biggest industrial
dispute in Britain since the war. It lasted exactly the same number
of days as the next biggest – the seamen’s strike of 1966 – but
there were more than four times as many workers on strike. In terms
of days lost and numbers of strikers, no other dispute can compare
with it.</p>
<p class="fst">The strike lasted for 44 days, during all of which more than 90%
of the members of the Union of Post Office Workers remained on strike
without strike pay. Yet, at the end, they went back to work without
even the promise that they would receive any greater pay increase
than they were offered at the outset. Despite desperate attempts to
cheer his members up, the union’s general secretary made it plain
that he would have preferred, if possible, to continue with the
strike. The Press, the employers and the employers’ Government
could scarcely contain their glee at the humiliation of 200,000
postal workers. Gutter cartoonists and gutter politicians joined in
the triumphal dance over what they imagined was the corpse of the
postal union.</p>
<p>This pamphlet is written within a fortnight of the end of the
strike. It is written for the tens of thousands of postal workers who
are still suffering from shock at the calling-off of the strike.</p>
<p>Why did the strike take place? Why did the union collapse? Above
all, how can workers everywhere who seek to improve their wages and
conditions insure against a similar disaster? These are the questions
which this pamphlet tries to answer.<br>
</p>
<h4>Part 1. The Post Office</h4>
<p class="fst">The Post Office is the oldest nationalised industry in the
country, and the biggest. It employs more than 400,000 people (more
than any other single concern), and ever since letters circulated has
been responsible to the Government for the “carriage of mails”.
From the outset, it developed a tradition of “public service”.
Every citizen has the statutory right to delivery at his address of
letters correctly addressed and posted to him, and in promptness,
regularity and efficiency the British postal service is the best in
the world. Similarly, the telephone service, which was incorporated
into the Post Office, is incomparably more efficient in Britain than
in countries like America where the telephones are in the hands of
private enterprise.</p>
<p>Yet the Post Office, like other alleged “public services”,
operates inside a society where the powerful men are the rich men.
The way in which the Post Office works, therefore, is biased in
favour of industry, commerce, banking and the civil service –
anywhere, that is, where the interests of rich and powerful men are
immediately identifiable.</p>
<p>Revenue from the postal services, for instance, comes to the Post
Office by way of stamps. Firms and industries which post large
quantities of letters do not buy stamps. They can buy franking
machines which are regulated by the Post Office. If they post more
than 5,000 units at a time, they can get the local post office to do
the franking for them <em>free of charge</em>. One Post Office union
secretary told me that four men out of 25 at his sorting office have
to be detailed off on overtime every day to deal with this job, for
which the customer does not pay a penny.</p>
<p>Even more interesting is the system whereby the Post Office offers
a rebate to firms which post in bulk.</p>
<p>The amount of the rebate, laid down in the <strong>Post Office Guide</strong>, is
as follows:</p>
<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<th>
<p class="smc">Units Posted</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="7">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">Rebate</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">4,501–4,999</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">all free over 4,500</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">5,000–22,222</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">10% rebate</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">22,223–24,999</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">all free over 20,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">25,000–234,375</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">20% rebate</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">234,376–249,999</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">all free over 187,500</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">250,000</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">25% rebate</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The <strong>Post Office Guide</strong> goes on to list conditions for the rebate.
The packets, it says, must be identical, and they must be sorted into
towns and counties “as required by the local Postmaster”.</p>
<p>The words “as required by the local Postmaster” are crucial,
for the collection and sorting of rebated post is settled in local
“deals” between local postmasters and firms. Most firms which do
big postal business will make sure that they get on excellent terms
with the local postmaster, and end up with handsome bargains on their
postal costs.</p>
<p>One UPW union official told me:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Not 1% of the rebated post is sorted, and even if it
is sorted it makes very little difference to our work. We still have
to break open the parcels of post and check every address. Sometimes
the sorting is <em>more</em> difficult when it is sorted by firms
beforehand.”</p>
<p class="fst">Before 1968, these rebates applied only to “printed paper and
samples”, which, of course, included a mass of business post. But
after 1968, when the two-tier post was introduced, the old “printed
paper and samples” category was dispensed with. The rebates then
applied to <em>all second class post sent in bulk.</em> This meant a
huge increase in the rebate (or subsidy, to use a better word) with
which the Post Office “helped out” the growing army of firms
which were posting in bulk. Many firms found it extremely fruitful to
save up their less urgent post for one day a week, and thus claim a
much larger rebate from the Post Office.</p>
<p>What is the extent of the rebate? Unhappily, but not surprisingly,
rebate statistics are “not available” to the public, even if they
are ever collated (which is doubtful). The long annual report and
accounts of the Post Office carries no facts or figures about the
extent to which industry and commerce are subsidised by the rebate
system. Similarly, the Prices and Incomes Board which looked at Post
Office charges in 1968 made no inquiry into how the Post Office gets
its revenue, or how it might increase its revenue by stopping a
gratuitous and unnecessary subsidy to firms. All the Post Office will
say is that “about a third” of its postal traffic is metered, and
that the bulk of the metered traffic is subsidised. From a big
sub-post office in North London, I got rather different figures for
deliveries in a typical week last year:</p>
<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td rowspan="4">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">Metered</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="4">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">Ordinary stamped</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Letters</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">194,111</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">188,819</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Packages</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 36,716</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 18,131</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Total</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 230,827
(53%)</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 206,950
(47%)</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">Thirty-five million letters are posted in Britain every day. Since
there are less than 35 million adults in Britain today, it is clear
that most letters are not sent by sweethearts, or soldiers on
overseas duty, or even by grannies on the kiddies’ birthday. They
are sent by Littlewoods, Barclays, the <strong>Daily Telegraph</strong>, ICI,
and so on.</p>
<p>The complete lack of official statistics forces us to guess at the
extent of the subsidy which the Post Office hands out to pools firms,
mail order firms and big business year by year. If a third of the
letters posted are subsidised to the tune of some 20%, the extent of
the subsidy is in the region of £18m a year – rather more in fact
than the Post Office estimate of the cost of the full Union of Post
Office Workers claim for its members on the postal side. If the
figure is even remotely right, it means that the “losses”
sustained by the postal side of the Post Office in any one of the
last 10 years could have been wiped out if the rich men’s subsidy
had been abolished. And this does not take into account the
tremendous losses to the Post Office from not charging so many firms
for franking their mail.</p>
<p>There is another area of subsidy which is also impossible to
measure because of the refusal of the Post Office authorities to
collate (or publish) statistics. When the Post Office was part of the
civil service, the civil service mail was heavily subsidised. This
subsidy was carried on after the Post Office Corporation was set up
outside the civil service! It is impossible to tell how great is the
subsidy on the millions of letters, cards and parcels sent out by the
civil service, but it would be enough to pay a few thousand postmen a
decent wage!</p>
<p>The change-over from a civil service department to a
“fully-fledged public Corporation” started soon after the
election of a Labour Government in 1966 and was completed in October
1969. During this period, “business standards” were applied to
the Post Office, and this meant, inevitably, a fantastic increase in
bosses and bosses’ underlings.</p>
<p>In 1966, 11,300 million letters were handled by the Post Office.
In 1969 the figure was almost exactly the same. In a series of
vicious productivity agreements, the number of postmen had been cut
from 101,063 to 100,991, postmen higher grade from 21,250 to 20,809
and counter-men in the post offices from 22,183 to 21,584.</p>
<p>In 1966 there had been 9,889 Post Office administrators. In 1969
there were 12,300. Supervisors increased in the same period from
9,974 to 11,295. The richer the gravy, the more people there were to
lap it up. There were 31 Post Office directors in 1966 – and 51 in
1969. All of them are getting a minimum of £6,600 a year. As a
branch secretary wrote to his union magazine <strong>The Post</strong> (March
29, 1969):</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In my own area since Modified Postal Services we have
acquired a further two assistant district postmasters, two chief
inspectors, two assistant superintendents, and have lost one
superintendent. We have been concentrated, de-concentrated,
satellited, de-satellited. We have been two-tiered and
semi-two-tiered and all this time the top brass have been increasing
like sex-mad rabbits.”</p>
<p class="fst">Postal workers, and others who use the Post Office, were a little
bemused as to the value of this burgeoning of bosses. The bosses’
financial forecast in 1970 (after the union’s last wage increase}
resulted in a shortfall of £52m. Third-rate public relations and
managerial incompetence led to early failure both of the “two-
tier” postal system and of the Giro. As for “mechanisation”
(the main excuse given for the increase in management), there is
still only one fully mechanised office – at Croydon. Even at
Croydon, the new machines have led to dreadful difficulties, not
least the increase in damage to mail. “The machines tear up the
letters something terrible”, a Croydon postman told me. “We used
to have one man to repair damaged mail. Now, with the machines, there
are three, working overtime patching and sticking up ripped-up
letters and cheques.” Mechanisation elsewhere is being held up
because many of the special codes sent out to the public by the Post
Office contain seven digits, while the machines to deal with them are
made to deal with six digits. Fifty-one directors have since been
puzzling over an awkward dilemma. Should new codes be sent out or
should the machines be changed? Either expense, of course, will be
blamed on the postal workers. The directors don’t get £6,600 a
year for nothing!</p>
<p>Yet the postal side has long since ceased to interest the mass of
Post Office Board directors. They are increasingly fascinated with
the telecommunications division, where profits have been rising to
astonishing proportions:</p>
<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<td rowspan="2">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td rowspan="4">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th colspan="7">
<p class="smc">£m</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="smc">66/67</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="3">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">67/68</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="3">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">68/69</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="3">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">69/70</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Postal Service Profits (loss)</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 7</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 6</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">−12</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">−6</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Telecommunications profits</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">38</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">33</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 26</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 61</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The increasing army of bosses in the telecommunications division
are drawn almost exclusively from private enterprise. Jobs are
swapped year by year between the Division’s Equipment Department
and the boardroom of Plessey (which supplies most of the equipment).
When the Post Office left the civil service and became a Corporation,
there was some pressure from his supporters on Mr. John Stonehouse,
the Labour Government’s Postmaster-General, to sweep away the
“time-honoured” restrictions which prevented the Post Office
manufacturing its own equipment. Stonehouse withstood the pressure.
“Render unto Plessey the things that are Plessey’s” was his
argument. Although the Bill contained the “ultimate” power for
the Post Office to manufacture its own equipment, this would only be
used, Mr. Stonehouse explained, “where it became obvious that
supplies would not otherwise be available”.</p>
<p>The new big businessmen in the Post Office telecommunications
division and their friends in industry outside are goggling at the
fantastic increases in telephone profits. Unlike postal services, 74%
of whose costs are in paying wages and salaries, telephones need less
and less labour (only 47% of their costs are labour costs). What a
tragedy it is, moan the businessmen in the Post Office, that these
enormous profits are wasted in a Public Board – are ploughed back
into telephone machinery or used to prop up a loss-making postal
service. If only, oh, if only these highly profitable services could
be put in the hands of private enterprise!</p>
<p>These sentiments were voiced enthusiastically by the Conservative
Opposition during the passing of the Post Office Bill through
Parliament early in 1969. Mr. Kenneth Baker, one of the brightest
stars in the Conservative firmament and a personal protégé of Mr.
Edward Heath, moved an amendment to Clause 7 of the Bill:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“to give the Corporation authority to offer for sale to
the public either by way of equity shares or loan stock any part of
its telecommunications services.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Party of which I am a member”, said Mr. Baker,
“believes that the role of the public sector should be limited and
reduced wherever possible.”</p>
<p class="fst">What Mr. Baker meant, of course, was as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Party of which I am a member is run for the sake
of rich and greedy businessmen who are longing to get their fingers
on the telephone loot.”</p>
<p class="fst">Mr. Baker’s amendment was pressed to a division (and lost), but
when the Conservative Party was returned to office in June 1970 (Mr.
Baker was thrown out at Acton, but returned a few months later in
safe Marylebone) the robbers came out of their caves and demanded the
hand-over of the telephones. At the Conservative Party conference in
Blackpool in October 1970, Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg, new Tory MP for
Hampstead and a prominent member of the Telephone Users Consultative
Council (an organisation run almost entirely by and for businessmen),
made a rousing speech pointing out the “opportunities for
enterprise and initiative” in the telephone service. His speech was
greeted with a roar of applause, and Mr. Finsberg has since been
named as a possible chairman of the Post Office Board.</p>
<p>The Board, meanwhile, whose public relations staff, needless to
say, had increased by some 20% in four years, remained silent.
Nothing was said in defence of the “public interest” of the
Board’s operations against the “private interest” of Finsberg &
Co. Ltd. For the truth is that most of the men on the Board in charge
of telecommunications have no objection to the wholesale transfer of
the telephone service to private enterprise. They would be assured
plum jobs and substantial shareholdings in the new private telephone
companies. The attitude of the Post Office Board towards Tory demands
for private enterprise telephones had nothing to do with the “public
service” tradition of the Post Office. Public service to them meant
an unprofitable postal service, especially cheap for businessmen, run
by a nationalised industry, and profitable telephones run by
themselves. Such priorities, needless to say, ignored one rather
important group of people – the 400,000 who worked in both sectors
of the Post Office. These people had for more than 100 years been
treated by the Post Office with consistent cruelty and contempt.<br>
</p>
<h4>Part 2. The Union</h4>
<p class="fst">The UK Postmen’s Association was formed in the wake of the
legislation of 1871 and 1875 legalising trade unions, it was swiftly
pulverised by the “impartial” Post Office administration. The
leaders of the executive were arbitrarily sacked. Tom Dredge, the
most militant of the founding executive members, was only allowed
back to work on condition he apologised for past activities and
promised to do nothing so horrible in the future as to “incite”
his colleagues with evil talk about better wages and conditions.
Dredge finally agreed to the conditions, and the Association
collapsed.</p>
<p>The Postmen’s Union was then formed in 1889 under the militant
leadership of engineers and dockers drafted in from the “new
unionism” movement. At once, the union demanded a withdrawal of the
departmental rule that postmen were not allowed to meet outside
office hours to discuss their grievances. The department replied with
a direct negative, and prepared to fight. Union leaders were harassed
with petty charges of indiscipline, and a reserve force of unemployed
were carefully rehearsed as blacklegs. The department was also able
to split the postmen by carefully fostering and bribing members of
different, splinter associations, especially the Fawcett Association
of sorters. When blacklegs were forcibly removed by union members on
July 10 from Mount Pleasant, 100 unionists were instantly dismissed
by the Post Office and the attempt to get the rest of London postmen
to come out in their support was bungled. Most of the men publicly
washed their hands of the union, and the department consolidated its
victory with widespread victimisation.</p>
<p>It was not until after the First World War that the various
splinter unions in the Post Office were amalgamated into the Union of
Post Office Workers. In the militant atmosphere of their amalgamating
conference in 1919, the delegates to the new union declared their
faith in trade union principles and voted overwhelmingly for the
setting up of a strike fund. They were reckoning without the
deep-seated anti-trade union feelings among postmen, especially among
the better-paid grades. The strike fund was put to ballot, and was
carried by only 48,157 to 35,411 (with 23,400 abstentions).</p>
<p>The Post Office administration responded by cherishing the
federations of smaller unions which had refused to join the UPW.
Hysterical anti-trade union propaganda was openly circulated among
their workers by the Post Office management. The strike fund was held
up as proof of the evil intentions of “anarchist agitators” who
were intent on destroying the “impartial” traditions of the Post
Office.</p>
<p>The campaign was successful. By 1921, the 100,000 membership at
the amalgamation conference had shrunk to 72,000. In September 1921
the union executive decided to suspend the strike levy fund
indefinitely. As a result, there was no strike fund in the union for
more than 40 years. And then it was too late.</p>
<p>Throughout, the union was plagued by the ambiguous status of its
members. Many members still regarded themselves as uniformed civil
servants – “a cut above” the proletariat. The Post Office
bosses did everything they could to foster this image. In 1927, the
Conservative Government passed a <em>Trades Dispute Act</em> which
banned the postmen’s union from affiliation to the Labour Party or
to the Trades Union Congress. The union was therefore forced into
isolation for 20 years until the Act was repealed by the post-war
Labour Government (the 1929–31 Labour Government left the Act on
the statute book). In the same year, the bosses arbitrarily increased
the staff side of the Whitley Council covering the industry by two –
both members representing tiny “secessionist” associations. As a
result, the UPW walked out of the Whitley Council, only to return
five years later on the Post Office terms.</p>
<p>Despite consistent growth, consistent absorption of smaller
organisations and acceptance back into the TUC and Labour Party after
the war, the union continued to be dogged by the myth of
“respectability”. Many of its older members had been recruited
from the Services and had been taught to obey commands. In rural
areas, district postmasters liked to play soldiers with their troops
and in many places postmen had actually to parade for morning
inspection!</p>
<p>As a result, the union leadership remained firmly committed to
“moderation”. Ron Smith, its general secretary for most of the
post-war period, could always be relied upon to cast his union’s
votes in favour of Labour’s “safe” right-wing leadership. The
branch rules and structure, many of which were written in the
post-war period, paid scant regard to the rights of the members to
participate in the union affairs. The Croydon branch rules, for
instance, allow for only two meetings a year! Although the structure
of the union was formally democratic (the executive is dominated by
lay members elected every year, though about a third of it consists
of full-time officials: all officials are elected on a branch
block-vote system, but, once elected, they are there for life). The
activity in the union was left in the main to a few local activists,
who often ended up in the union leadership.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, wages and conditions were gently discussed, and as
gently agreed under the paternalist aegis of the Civil Service Pay
Research Unit.</p>
<p>The cosy atmosphere was abruptly broken by the Selwyn Lloyd pay
pause of 1961. The Tory Government, desperate to control their own
pre-election boom, decided to wield the hatchet on their own workers.
Meetings were delayed, established negotiation procedures altered and
promises broken. For 18 months, postmen watched in despair as the
wages of industrial workers and white-collar workers in private
industry soared above theirs, and the official machinery which had
given them pittances year by year was ignored by the Government. By
the summer of 1964, Ron Smith had lost control of his union. In
protest against the Government’s refusal to allow them substantial
increases, the Post Office workers started an unofficial work-to-rule
and guerrilla strikes up and down the country.</p>
<p>Ron Smith and his executive were forced to call a one-day official
strike. A mass rally was held in Trafalgar Square, and, on July 26,
the Government caved in. A wage increase reckoned much later by the
Prices and Incomes Board as 15% was granted.</p>
<p>The postmen had learned a simple lesson. Their biggest increase in
post-war history had been won because some of them took the
initiative and hit the Post Office and its customers where it hurt
most – in the pocket.</p>
<p>Soon afterwards a Labour Government, trumpeting slogans about
“fairness for the workers” and “Incomes Policy”, was elected.
The Post Office workers loyally responded to the Government’s
appeals for “voluntary restraint”. Pay awards for postal and
telephonist grades in 1965 and 1966 were held strictly below the
required norms. In both years the UPW “won” 3.5% increases (<strong>PIB
Report</strong>, p. 20). Their award in 1967 had to be delayed due to
the 1966 wage freeze, and when it was paid it was much lower than the
workers had expected – 7%., The situation was little less than
drastic, as even the Post Office recognised. The Prices and Incomes
Board Report on postal charges, published in March 1968, had this to
say:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In the view of the Post Office, the pattern of
settlements has inhibited its efforts to recruit and retain labour on
the postal side by ensuring that Post Office wages have always lagged
behind those in other occupations.”</p>
<p class="fst">With the cheek which characterised so many PIB reports, the Board
then recommended annual increases of 3.5%!</p>
<p>This must have been a joke, for even on the Board’s skimpy
information the Post Office workers were having it very rough indeed.
The Board found severe labour shortages in London and the Midlands
brought on by the disgracefully low wages and poor conditions.
“During the last three years”, it reported (p. 23), “overtime
has accounted for about 20% of the Post Office’s expenditure on pay
for main postal grades. The Post Office estimate that about one-sixth
of the overtime is worked at double rates. To qualify for double
rates, postmen have to work more than 60 hours a week, indicating
that considerable numbers are working this amount”. (Sixty hours is
eight and a half hours a day <em>every day in the week</em>.) The PIB’S
remedy for this appalling situation was to increase the hiring of
part-time women workers!</p>
<p>Added to all this, and not apparently noticed by the PIB or the
Government, was the system of” incremental scales” whereby young
telephonists and postmen joining “the service” were used as
little more than cheap labour. At that time the rates of pay under
these scales were as follows:</p>
<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<th colspan="5">
<p class="smc">Basic Pay for a 43 hour week</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="smc">Age</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="10">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">Postmen</p>
</th>
<td rowspan="10">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc">Telephonists</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc"> £ s. d.</p>
</th>
<th>
<p class="smc"> £ s. d.</p>
</th>
</tr><tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">15</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 6 10 0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 5 16 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">16</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 6 17 0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 6 5 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">17</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 7 11 6</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 7 0 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">18</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 9 15 0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 9 1 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">19</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">10 11 6</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 9 17 6</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">20</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">12 4 0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">10 15 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">21</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">14 14 6</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">12 4 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">22</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">15 17 0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">12 14 6</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The Union of Post Office Workers’ leadership, meanwhile, had
taken a turn to the left with the election of Tom Jackson to the
general secretaryship in place of Ron Smith, who had inevitably
joined the Board of the British Steel Corporation as labour director.
Jackson and his executive hoped to push on with much bigger increases
for their members than had been suggested by the PIB, but very
quickly they were entangled in the “voluntary incomes policy”
which was being enforced by the Labour Government in a far from
voluntary manner. Jackson’s annual report to his union’s Jubilee
Annual Conference at Bournemouth apologised gloomily:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“To say that the year under review [ending December 31,
1968] has been a difficult one would be an understatement, either in
relation to members’ difficulties, or in relation to those of
obtaining increases against the background of Government criteria
which provide substantially less than a modicum of flexibility.”</p>
<p class="fst">A claim for postmen had been lodged in the late summer of 1968 and
deliberately delayed at Ministerial level until late in November.
Eventually, the UPW accepted a 4% increase, 1% of which was “in
respect of measures already introduced”.</p>
<p>Tough productivity strings were bound around this unwelcome
package, which, as Jackson admitted in his report, “occasioned some
resentment and dissatisfaction”. Telephonists, still lagging even
behind postmen in pay, had been forced to accept a miserable 5.5%
plus heavy productivity concessions.</p>
<p>Neither was the following year, ended December 31, 1969, as
Jackson wrote for the union’s 1970 Conference, “one of
spectacular increases”. Under the Central Pay Claim, covering most
grades in the union, telephonists had picked up a further 7.75% in
separate negotiations, but the postmen (representing half the union)
were kept to the minimum 3.5%. Jackson and his negotiators had
accepted this further humiliation only on condition that they would
return and ask for more as soon as the Post Office became a
Corporation in October.</p>
<p>With the constitution of the Corporation, the last semblance of
civil service “paternalism” and “respectability” vanished
from the Post Office. The Board was a tough, bureaucratic business
management. The new chairman was a former merchant seaman, miner,
doctor, steelmaster and tycoon called Viscount Hall. Other Board
members included a deputy chairman of Rolls-Royce and, inevitably, a
former general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers (duly)
knighted. The union found Lord Hall susceptible to demands for a
substantial increase to make up the ground lost over previous years.
Hall was warned that the workers were in militant mood, and demands
for industrial action to back the claim were pouring in from branches
all over the country. “Viscount Hall”, reported the <strong>Daily Mail</strong>
on December 23, 1969, “wants to avoid a strike at all costs.”
Hall duly told the Government that he had no intention of outfacing
his workers so early in the life of the Board.</p>
<p>The Labour Government, by the time they came to adjudicate on the
UPW claim in February 1970, were in a more friendly mood than they
had been for four years. The struggle against the unions, highlighted
by the White Paper <em>In Place of Strife</em> the previous summer, had
been dropped in favour of conciliation. A General Election was in the
offing. Workers’ votes had to be ensured. On February 12, the
Cabinet approved the entire UPW claim, which averaged increases of
some 12%. “We got all we asked for”, said Jackson, triumphant.
(<strong>Guardian</strong>, February 13, 1970)</p>
<p>He was, however, in for a shock. On the ballot vote of the union’s
branches, acceptance of the offer was approved by the slenderest of
majorities. Among postmen, there was probably a majority for
rejection. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the union
leadership about the militancy of their members, it was now laid to
rest: The postmen, after nearly 50 years of apathy, were spoiling for
a fight to improve their wages and conditions. The increases of early
1970 had, they made it clear, compensated only marginally for the
losses in 1968 and 1969. The basic pay of the postmen was still
little more than £16 a week. Overtime was still monstrously
demanding. The incremental scales were still a scandal. A 21-year-old
telephonist outside London was still working a 41-hour, six-day week
for £10 10s. For 20 years or more postal workers had trod
water. Now they were determined to surge forward.<br>
</p>
<h4>Part 3. The Strike</h4>
<p class="fst">On October 29, 1970, the Union of Post Office Workers, under
instructions from their annual conference the previous spring, lodged
a claim for a wage increase of 15% or £3 a week, whichever was the
greater. The claim was only one of a number of substantial claims
submitted by unions still smarting from the long years of squeeze and
freeze, and from several months of runaway inflation which had pushed
prices up at an annual rate of 8%. Very soon, the claim was shown to
be in line with what other workers were getting. A Committee of
Inquiry under the “hard-line” negotiator Sir Jack Scamp
recommended straight increases of 15% for local government employees
who had been on strike for several weeks. The local government
workers had conducted a skilful campaign of guerrilla strikes, and
the Scamp Committee considered their claim sympathetically. Soon
afterwards, the miners, under some protest, and after only marginally
failing to give a two-thirds majority to sanction a national strike,
accepted a “no strings” offer of 12%.</p>
<p>These two increases in the public sector infuriated the
Conservative Government, not one member of whose Cabinet had less
than two former directorships or less than two houses to live in. The
Government determined to fight their own workers if necessary to the
death to bring down the general level of wage increases. To this end,
they found a useful ally in the joint-deputy chairman of the Post
Office Board, Mr. A.W.C. Ryland.</p>
<p>Ryland had worked his way up through the Post Office bureaucracy
with assiduous zeal. By 1953, he had risen to the heights of Deputy
Public Relations Officer. For 10 years he had worked exclusively on
the telecommunications side, and had learned a lot about the
profitability of telephones. In 1963, for instance, he headed the
Post Office study team to the profitable Bell Telephone System of
Canada. Ryland knew more than any other member of the Board that the
success of the Board would be assessed by one criterion:
profitability.</p>
<p>Ryland started to prepare for a possible strike in the Post Office
long before Lord Hall, or even the UPW leaders, had given it serious
consideration. In the summer of 1970, for instance, he addressed a
conference of telephone managers in Windermere in the Lake District.</p>
<p>He announced that the Prices and Incomes Board target for “return
on capital” in the telecommunications division of 84% had not been
reached. He had, he said, without explaining in detail why,
arbitrarily raised this target to 104%. There was, he went on, a need
for a thoroughgoing “drive to profitability”, and, accordingly,
there was “very little left in the kitty for wages.”</p>
<p>Soon afterwards, the attention of Post Office managers and
supervisors was drawn by Head Office to a thereto unheard-of document
entitled: <strong>Post Office Civil Emergency Manual</strong>. The document set
out detailed proposals as to how the Post Office should work in
conditions of flood, famine, pestilence ... and industrial action.
Instructions were issued that the “drill” laid down in the
document, involving the setting up of “control centres” and “
emergency stations”, should be followed to the letter during the
power workers’ work-to-rule which started on December 8 – not
because that action disrupted postal services, but “as a rehearsal
for later on”.</p>
<p>All this met with some opposition, notably from Viscount Hall.
Hall, who was enjoying himself hugely travelling round the world on
expensive “surveys” of telecommunications and postal problems,
was not at all happy about a confrontation with his workers. He took
the old-fashioned view that well-paid workers provided the best
service, and he was bold enough to tell his Minister, Mr. Christopher
Chataway, what he thought.</p>
<p>Lord Hall was intensely unpopular with the Government. Public
boards, they considered, should be chaired by obsequious Tory toadies
like Mr. Ryland. On November 24, after some intense argument about
the Board’s attitude to the UPW claim, Hall was summarily sacked by
the Government, and Ryland became “acting chairman”.</p>
<p>The sacking of Lord Hall was not lost on the postal workers. They
had no brief for Labour tycoons, but they realised the real reason
for this dismissal. To the astonishment of the Government and the
union, lightning protest strikes broke out in many large post
offices, especially in London.</p>
<p>The power workers started their work-to-rule on December 8. The
action caused instant chaos. A week later, the power men’s unions
called off the action after a promise from the Government that their
claim would be investigated by an independent court of inquiry. The
unions insisted, and the Government agreed, that the workers need not
be bound by the inquiry’s findings.</p>
<p>Watching the situation, Ryland decided to delay his reply to the
UPW claim as long as possible. If he could hold things until the
Wilberforce Commission reported on the power workers’ claim, public
opinion, he reckoned, would swing towards him. But the UPW, wise to
this ruse, insisted on a reply. On January 8, the Board offered 7% –
less than half the claim. The offer was rejected with contempt. On
January 14, the offer was increased by a wretched 1%. Once again, the
union rejected it. On January 20, the entire membership was called
out on strike.</p>
<p>Everyone, including the union leaders, was astonished at the
enthusiasm of the workers’ response to the strike call. There was
no question of strike pay. The union had started a small strike fund
only three years previously. At the beginning of the strike, the fund
totalled £334,000. The most this money could finance was a “hardship
fund” for those strikers (such as single men) who had no income
while on strike. Even so, the fund could only last for a maximum of
three weeks. Yet the response among postmen was almost unanimous. The
Press, notably the <strong>Daily Express</strong> and <strong>Daily Mail</strong>,
immediately ordered all its reporters to “Hunt the Blackleg”, but
were hard put to it to find a chink in the strike. Of 100,000
postmen, less than 700 reported for work. Among telephonists, the
response was less enthusiastic. In big industrial areas, they came
out. In rural areas, where many of them were the part-time “pin
money” workers advocated by the Prices and Incomes Board, they
tended to stay at work. The <strong>Daily Bulletin</strong> run by the UPW
Headquarters reported that in cities like Dundee and Newcastle all
telephonists were on strike. The Post Office claimed from the outset
that more than a third of the total number stayed at work throughout
the strike.</p>
<p>On Day 4 of the strike, the <strong>UPW Strike Bulletin</strong> warned:
“Monday may be a crucial day in our campaign”, and urged their
members to stay out on strike. The warning was unnecessary.
Astonishingly, as the days and then the weeks went by, the strikers
became more determined and more solid. The mass meetings and rallies
throughout the country, led by a rally in Hyde Park every Thursday,
became progressively better attended and more militant.</p>
<p>On Day 9 (January 28), the <strong>Strike Bulletin</strong> sent a message from the
executive: “WE ARE PRIVILEGED TO BE YOUR ELECTED LEADERS. YOU ARE
MAGNIFICENT! KEEP IT UP! ” Each bulletin recorded hundreds of
donations, most of them tiny. At this stage, the only donations from
trade unions were from individual branches. It was not until the 21st
day of the strike that the bulletin could record a donation front the
Transport and General Workers Union headquarters – of a puny £7,500
– to the hardship fund, and not until the 31st day that SOGAT
Division “A” coughed up £10,000. Many other unions affiliated to
the TUC did not contribute at all.</p>
<p>There were other even more serious signs that the solidarity of
the leaderships of other unions was not all it was made out to be. On
Friday, February 12 (the 24th day of the strike), Mr. Johnny Nuttall,
a member of the Transport and General Workers Union in Clay Cross,
Derbyshire, reported as usual for work as a lorry-driver for a small
firm of Sheffield road hauliers called J.A. Flendersons. He was
detailed for a run to Hull and to Beverley, and he noticed that
attached to the delivery notes were two envelopes, addressed to the
firms he was to visit.</p>
<p>Such envelopes had never been part of his load before, and Mr.
Nuttall complained to the management, explaining that he could not
possibly be expected to carry letters for anyone while the postmen
were on strike. He was instantly suspended, pending negotiations. He
then contacted Mr. Ray Thorpe, the T&GWU area organiser in
Nottingham. Mr. Thorpe listened to his case, spoke to the employers
and was very sympathetic to Mr. Nuttall. He was, he explained, not
convinced that this delivery was not genuinely connected with the
job. Nuttall replied that never in two and a half years had he had to
deliver such an envelope, but still Brother Thorpe was not convinced.
From his vantage point in his Nottingham office, he decided that he
was unwilling to instruct the other drivers not to work while the
employers insisted on their carrying mail. He intended, he explained,
to do nothing about it.</p>
<p>Then Tom Swain, MP, intervened. Nuttall was reinstated. Returning
to work, he found three more letters attached to the delivery notes.
Once more he refused to drive. At least nine of the 15 drivers
indicated their willingness, if instructed by the union, not to work
under such blackleg conditions. But Thorpe refused to move. Nuttall
was sacked, and the other drivers carried the mail.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I rang our regional organiser, Brother Mather, in
Birmingham”, Johnny Nuttall told me. “He took the same lukewarm
attitude as Thorpe. He kept saying that our union cared most for our
members, and that our members would be in trouble if they all did
what I did.”</p>
<p class="fst">Johnny Nuttall has been out of work for five weeks since the
episode and his opinion of his union leadership, including Jack Jones
(his general secretary), who knew all about the incident, is not
printable.</p>
<p>What happened to Johnny Nuttall happened all over the country,
although in most places were were few lorry-drivers (or railway
workers) with Johnny Nuttall’s courage. BRS drivers carried mail
all over the country without any real effort by the T&GWU to stop
the practice, in spite of all sorts of commitments by brave union
leaders at meetings in central London.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the solidarity of the postmen caused no little
consternation at the Post Office Headquarters at St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, where Ryland and his henchmen had imagined that
the trickle of postmen returning to work would rapidly turn into a
flood. Not that the Post Office itself was suffering. On the
contrary, despite the daily reports of massive Post Office losses in
the Press, the Post Office was minting huge profits during the
strike. The loss-making postal services were closed down. Only a tiny
amount was being paid out in wages. At the same time, there was a
huge increase in the highly profitable use of automatic telephones
(86% of the telephone system is on STD, which uses very little
labour). The Minister for Posts pooh-poohed suggestions that the Post
Office was making profits during the strike, but when the strike was
over the figures proved him wrong. The Post Office had lost £24.8m
in revenue, and had saved £26m in unpaid wages (<strong>Daily Telegraph</strong>,
March 5, 1971).</p>
<p>Encouraged by such figures, Ryland decided on the 18th day of the
strike to announce his plans for even bigger profits in the future.
He issued a Press statement (on February 6) indicating that, as a
result of the strike, future Post Office services would have to be
pruned. The parcel post, he warned, would have to be abolished. So
would many rural deliveries. So would the practice of delivering mail
twice a day.</p>
<p>Five months previously, Mr. Ryland had opened a new parcel sorting
office at Peterborough. He spoke in glowing terms about two new
parcel centres at Cardiff and Southampton. “We are building,” he
trumpeted, “Britain’s parcel network of the future”.</p>
<p>Now, however, he was using a strike into which he had provoked his
workers as an excuse for cutting out the parcel service altogether!
Needless to say, the bitter and devastating UPW reply to Ryland’s
announcement released to the Press the next day was totally ignored
by the “objective ” national newspapers.</p>
<p>Yet, for all Mr. Rvland’s dreams of still more profits (and less
service) to come, by late February the strike began to bite deep into
the pockets of industry and commerce. As the <strong>UPW Strike Bulletin</strong>
complained day by day, the real effects of the strike were blanketed
by a “conspiracy of silence”.</p>
<p>The damage was not only to banks, newspapers and mail order firms
(whose turnover had doubled in 10 years to £560m a year, and had
expanded by 10% a year compared with 3% for the rest of the retail
trade). Industry itself, and particularly industry with connections
overseas, was hard hit by the strike, and worse hit as chances of a
settlement receded. For the first two weeks, correspondence could be
put off, on the understanding that some day it would move again. But
as the strike was increasingly solid, industry became increasingly
disturbed. The Association for Small Businessmen reported that “the
strike has become a major threat to thousands of small businessmen.
Many of them are being propped up by lenient bank managers who have
extended credit to cover the strike” (<strong>Financial Times</strong>, March
3, 1971).</p>
<p>Not only small businesses but some of the bigger ones started to
warn the Government that the losses caused by the strike could not be
sustained for ever.</p>
<p>None of this appeared in the Press or on television. The myth was
bruited around that the strike was having “little effect” on
industry. The internal bulletins of the City of London (the <strong>Business
News</strong> supplements and the <strong>Financial Times</strong>) announced
blandly:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“No Problem.”</p>
<p class="fst">The reason was that the men who run big industries and banks have
been properly brought up. One major principle has been drummed into
their heads from early childhood: <em>Never discuss</em> <em>family
problems in front of the servants.</em></p>
<p>In this instance a group of cheeky servants (Post Office workers)
were refusing to work. They had to learn that such insubordination
would do them no good, and that no one cared. Total silence about
real problems had to be scrupulously observed.</p>
<p>The union, however, was not concerned by these tricks of the
capitalist trade. The solidarity of their members was ensured. The
damage caused by the strike was indisputable. Contemptible offers
from the Post Office (such as Ryland’s suggestion that an extra 1%
in “productivity” money could be added to the 8%) could be
rejected summarily.</p>
<p>The real problem was the survival of those strikers who had no
money at all. Members covered by social security payments were likely
to stay out as long as necessary. The rent was paid, and there was
something to eat. For the others, however, the hardship fund was
crucial. And the hardship fund was running out. The hundreds of small
donations made little or no difference. The union’s own money, by
the third week in February (the fifth of the strike), had long since
been spent, as had the bankers’ overdraft. The hardship fund (about
£100,000 a week) had to be sustained, or the strike would begin to
crumble. This was the union’s Achilles heel, which was promptly
pierced not by the employers or by blacklegs but by the Trades Union
Congress General Council.<br>
</p>
<h4>Part 4. The Sell-out</h4>
<p class="fst">On Day 30 of the strike (Thursday, February 18), the union’s
<strong>Strike Bulletin</strong> reported:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“FLASH! Tom Jackson and his team have gone to the TUC
to speak to the TUC’s Finance and General Purposes Committee."</p>
<p class="fst">The result of the meeting was reported in <strong>The Times</strong> the
following day:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The UPW, in deep financial difficulties as its strike
enters the fifth week, yesterday collected £250,000 in loans from
other unions. <em>It has been promised a similar sum</em> by the TUC
next week to keep the strike alive.”</p>
<p class="fst">And the <strong>Guardian</strong> of February 20 carried a huge headline:</p>
<h5>TUC WILL NOT LET POSTAL UNION BE CRUSHED</h5>
<p class="quoteb">“The Government is deeply concerned about the
apparently growing support among trade unions for the Post Office
workers.</p>
<p class="quote">“... TUC leaders, who met Mr. Carr for talks about the
dispute, took a courteous but firm line and left him in no doubt that
they were not going to abandon the postal workers.</p>
<p class="quote">“They are understood to have emphasised that they would
not stand by and see the Union of Post Office Workers crushed by
financial pressures and reminded the Minister of the loans which the
TUC was gathering from other unions on behalf of the UPW.</p>
<p class="quote">“The amounts have totalled £250,000 this week, <em>and
the same amount is likely to be forthcoming next week</em>.”</p>
<p class="fst">The following day, Sunday, February 21, 140,000 trade unionists
rallied to the call of the TUC to demonstrate against the Industrial
Relations Bill. Eight years previously, TUC general secretary George
Woodcock had told the Congress proudly that they had “long ago left
Trafalgar Square” for the committee rooms in the corridors of
power. Now the movement was back in Trafalgar Square fighting for its
very life.</p>
<p>The most popular man on the demonstration was Tom Jackson, the
most popular delegation that of the UPW. TUC general secretary Vic
Feather sought out Jackson and pulled him to the front of the plinth
to shake him by the hand. Chairman Sid Greene, the best-dressed man
in the movement, told the crowd:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The whole trade union movement is backing the UPW.”</p>
<p class="fst">When Jackson spoke, however, there was an element of scepticism in
his response:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If we are defeated, it will not be for lack of
resolve. It will not be for lack of guts and determination. It will
be for lack of funds.</p>
<p class="quote">“Sympathy we can get by the bucketful. We have the
generous wholehearted support of the public. What we need now is
money – and fast!</p>
<p class="quote">“The TUC has supported the idea of workshop
collections. This is your fight. Our defeat will be your defeat. Our
victory, your victory.</p>
<p class="quote">“We have been forced by circumstances into the van of
the trade union movement. We did not ask for this honour, but we will
not let you down. Don’t let us down.”</p>
<p class="fst">This was the first sign that the TUC had supported the idea of
workshop collections. There was no sign, however, that the
collections were being enthusiastically organised by the leadership.
At any rate, such collections could not be substituted for the big
grants the union needed to keep its hardship fund going. Workshop
collections could never provide enough money fast enough.</p>
<p>A further problem dogged the UPW executive. The money collected by
the TUC the previous week had been paid in interest-free loans.</p>
<p>To some extent, this was a fiction. Many unions have rules
restraining them from making large payments outside the union. And in
many instances (though by no means in all) repayment would not in
practice be demanded. Formally, however, the money was on loan, and
the UPW’s bankers, already demanding the title deeds of the union’s
headquarters as security for its huge overdraft, were beginning to
complain about further commitments.</p>
<p>The crucial meeting of the strike was that of the General Council
of the TUC on Wednesday, February 24. All that week, the newspapers
had been full of the TUC support for Jackson and the TUC’s
determination not to allow a defeat of the postmen.</p>
<p>At the meeting, Tom Jackson spelt out his dilemma. The TUC must
back their pledges of support and their rhetoric with cash, or the
strike would crumble. There were, he said, hopeful signs. Employment
Secretary Robert Carr had been visited by the mail order firms, the
Association of Small Businesses and by the Confederation of British
Industry, all of whom were pressing for an end to the strike, which
was rapidly becoming intolerable.</p>
<p>To Jackson’s horror and astonishment, his colleagues on the
General Council started to mumble about “problems and
difficulties”. There was, they said, no money available by way of
grant. They might be able to rustle up another £100,000 in
interest-free loans. Jackson told them again that further loans would
not be allowed by his bankers, and reminded them again of their
commitment the previous week to a further £250,000. Even £100,000
grant could keep him going another crucial week. The heroes of
Trafalgar Square the previous Sunday fell silent. The mighty
militants had turned into mice. A hundred thousand pounds in loans
out of the millions of union funds and tens of millions in union
investments was all they could afford.</p>
<p>When Jackson left the TUC that morning, he must have known that
the game was up. He could not continue the hardship fund the
following week without selling his union headquarters. The following
day, the UPW rally in Hyde Park was the biggest yet, swelled by tens
of thousands of Post Office Engineering Workers who had staged a
token strike in solidarity with the UPW. Jackson kept a brave face,
as though nothing serious had happened. And the demonstrators went
home confident that their struggle would continue.</p>
<p>The axe, however, fell fast. On Monday, as news of the end of the
hardship money filtered through, the numbers returning to work
increased sharply (though still only a tiny minority of the total).</p>
<p>By Tuesday, Jackson was outlining his line of retreat to the
executive. On Wednesday (March 3) the entire executive, having agreed
to surrender by 27 votes to four (with the Communists on the
executive supporting Jackson), travelled to the Department of
Employment and concocted a formula for calling off the strike. A
“committee of inquiry”, they agreed, would look into the Post
Office claims. The three-man committee would consist of one nominee
from the union, one from the management and a chairman agreeable to
both. The chairman would have the right, in the event of
disagreement, to impose a settlement. In sharp contrast to the
setting up of the Scamp Committee of Inquiry into the “dirty jobs”
strike, the union would recommend an immediate return to work before
the committee was even constituted. Unlike those of the Wilberforce
Committee, this committee’s findings would be binding. This was
marginally different from the arbitration which Jackson had been
refusing for 10 weeks. But no one had any doubt that the Post Office
would have settled for such an inquiry in the first week of the
strike.</p>
<p>The rally on Thursday, March 4, was a very different affair from
its predecessors. Many postal workers could not believe their ears,
and shouted their disillusionment at their leaders. As the executive
recommendations went to the ballot, branch after branch recorded the
dismay and militancy of the rank and file. In almost every urban
branch, there was a substantial vote against the executive proposals,
and in some branches the majority voted to stay out. A mass meeting
of more than 2,500 UPW members in Liverpool, for instance, voted two
to one against going back to work.</p>
<p>The real blame for the collapse of the strike must be placed on
the TUC General Council, first for not providing the funds when they
were needed, and secondly for not organising the other unions in
dispute with the Government to co-ordinate their efforts with the
postmen. The railwaymen’s and the teachers’ union leaders knew
well enough that the defeat of the postmen would lead to
substantially smaller settlements for their members. Why then did
they not hasten their negotiations, and join the fray? Why at least
did they not press for the necessary funds to be made available? Why
did not the more militant trade union leaders, notably Jack Jones of
the T&GWU or Hugh Scanlon of the AUEW, openly break from the
General Council line and make available the funds which they could so
well afford?</p>
<p>Above all, why did the General Council retreat from a position
which it seemed to have occupied in some strength?</p>
<p>The answer was half-available to readers of the South Wales
morning paper, the <strong>Western Mail</strong>, on Friday, March 5,
headed:</p>
<h5>POST PACT KEY FOR TORY UNIONS DEAL</h5>
<p class="quoteb">“The virtual collapse of the postmen’s strike”,
wrote George Gardiner, that paper’s Lobby Correspondent, “has
opened the way for a new deal between the Government and the unions.</p>
<p class="quote">“If the TUC is willing to support the principle that in
future all unions in dispute should go to arbitration, before
considering strike action, I understand the Government is prepared to
amend its Industrial Relations Bill when it comes back to the Commons
on Monday week.”</p>
<p class="fst">The parts of the Industrial Relations Bill which most offended the
bureaucrats on the General Council were not those which penalised
unofficial strikers, nor those which outlawed sympathy strikes, but
those which restricted the closed shop. These restrictions, the
leaders feared, would cut off important funds to the unions. The
weaker unions like USDAW and the G&MWU would lose tens of
thousands of members presently kept in union membership by closed
shop provisions, often with the agreement of employers. At all costs,
the General Council wanted Clause 5 (about closed shops) altered. The
Government had made it plain that they might make concessions on
Clause 5 if the TUC would restrain its members from going on strike.</p>
<p>For some time, Vic Feather had been seeking a meeting with the
Prime Minister to discuss such a deal as well as other matters like
unemployment. The <strong>Daily Mirror</strong> on March 2 ran a front-page
article entitled <em>End This Angry Silence</em>, in which it attacked
the Prime Minister and the unions for not “getting together”.</p>
<p>The Tory Government was dangling possible changes in the
Industrial Relations Bill as a carrot to prompt the TUC to immediate
action on the postal workers’ strike. What was the point, Heath’s
representatives asked Feather, in talking about the TUC restraining
strikes at a time when one of the biggest unions in the country was
“paralysing the nation” by refusing arbitration? Only if the post
strike was stopped on terms of arbitration would the Government talk
to the TUC.</p>
<p>These arguments carried much weight with the “committee room”
bureaucrats in the TUC who had resented not being asked to Downing
Street since the Tory Government was elected. Here at last was a
chance to get into a committee room with the Government again. With
such a prize, who cared about Tom Jackson and his Post Office
workers?</p>
<p>Indeed, the more crusted of the General Council reactionaries
welcomed an excuse to sell the postmen down the river. They were
terrified by the prospect not of the postmen’s defeat, but of their
victory. For if the postmen’s strike had forced the Government to
concede substantial wage claims, what fantastic class forces would be
unleashed in all the other unions? How would the diehards in the
General Council hope in such circumstances to exert the “control”
over their members to which they had become accustomed? How would
they be able to stop them from engaging in open conflict with the
Government, the employers – who knows, the whole structure of
society? Such thoughts struck terror into the kind hearts and
coronets who make up the TUC General Council. And when the Government
issued its ultimatum: <em>No talks while the postal strike is on,</em>
the mind of the General Council was rapidly made up. Tom Jackson and
his 200,000 postal workers would have to go to the wall.</p>
<p>They could rely on Jackson not to expose their double-dealing. At
no time after the fateful meeting on February 24 did Jackson openly
attack the General Council or any member of it for knifing his union
in the back. An open appeal to the rank and file of the unions, with
the real facts of the sell-out thoroughly exposed, would have won for
Jackson, if not the necessary funds, at any rate the continued
support of his rank and file. Yet Jackson chose to keep mum, to take
the blame for the decision, and to retain his seat and his friends on
the General Council. The despair and disillusionment of his members
is so much the worse for his failure properly to explain to them the
real reasons for the strike’s collapse.</p>
<p>On the evening of March 3, several hours after the UPW executive
had gone to the Department of Employment to lick the boots of Mr.
Ryland and Mr. Carr, Mr. Victor Feather blandly called a press
conference at Congress House. He had, he said, sent a letter for
delivery to 10 Downing Street asking Mr. Heath for “early talks
between the Government and the TUC on the worsening economic
situation”.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Previously”, wrote the <strong>Daily Telegraph</strong>
Industrial Correspondent the next day (March 4), “the TUC has
offered to discuss wage restraint if the Government would first
undertake to drop the <em>Industrial Relations Bill</em>. Now, although
killing the Bill remains the TUC’s hope, it is no longer adopting
such a rigid approach which would make fruitful discussions virtually
impossible.”</p>
<p class="fst">The reply from Downing Street was almost instantaneous. Mr. Heath
paused only to discover from his Minister of Employment that the post
strike was all but over. He then picked up the telephone, got through
to Congress House and courteously assured Mr. Feather that he was
only too willing to talk to the General Council.</p>
<p>The following morning the front page of the <strong>Daily Mirror</strong>
carried two headlines. “POST STRIKE IS OVER”, it shouted, and
then, next door, in smaller type: “HEATH BREAKS THE ANGRY SILENCE”.</p>
<p>Peter Jenkins of the <strong>Guardian</strong> is by no stretch of the
imagination a revolutionary socialist. He is, however, in close touch
with Tom Jackson, and he knew what had gone on at the General
Council.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The trade union movement”, he wrote on March 4,
“made warlike noises. It edged towards a confrontation with the
Government; but when it came to the point, it at once thought better
of it and quickly drew back. The trade union movement was shown to be
lacking not only in will but also totally in strategic sense. The
lessons of that unedifying spectacle will not be lost on other trade
unions, on public opinion or on the Government.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Part 5. The Lessons</h4>
<p class="fst">The immediate effects of the collapse of the post strike will be
felt by other workers in the public sector, such as railwaymen and
teachers. Union leaders who allowed the Government to take on the
postal workers in an isolated struggle are now using the defeat as an
excuse to lumber their own members with wage increases that will not
keep up with rises in the cost of living. The rank and file in these
unions must make sure that the postal workers’ strike is the last
in which the Government divides and rules in this way. They should
demand the building up of a “Public Sector Alliance” of different
unions to wage a unified fight back.</p>
<p>For postmen, the immediate results of the collapse will be even
more serious. Whatever is gained or lost at the committee of inquiry,
Ryland (who must surely be promoted as Post Office chairman) will
seek to use the strike’s aftermath to cut down on postal services
(and workers). His eyes are fixed on Sweden, allegedly the home of
“progress” and the “Welfare State”, where postal services
have been progressively slashed over the past decade. There is only
one postal delivery outside the commercial centre of Stockholm. Rural
deliveries and collections have been cut back to almost nothing. No
parcels are delivered. Meanwhile, the telephone service is expanding
at a rapid rate and making huge profits for the firms which feed off
it.</p>
<p>All Ryland’s statement’s during and after the strike commit
him to a Swedish policy which could mean massive redundancies among
postmen, quite apart from the slashing of the “public service”,
especially to those (the majority) who cannot afford telephones.</p>
<p>For the trade union movement in general, the Post Office dispute
is a major setback. An arrogant and offensive Government, composed
entirely of wealthy businessmen, will now attempt to ride roughshod
over the demands of workers elsewhere.</p>
<p>They will not find it easy. The TUC General Council sell-out of
the postmen can be compared in its cynicism to their sell-out of the
miners in 1926, but the General Strike of that year was the last gasp
of a working class locked out and bullied for half a decade. Today,
the strength of the workers’ anger is much more powerful. The
refusal among workers to be pushed around by the wealthy is stronger
now than ever before in history. The Government, in spite of its
victory over the Post Office workers, will not find the workers
submissive to a class assault of the type which they are
contemplating. The spirit of postmen, and of workers everywhere, is
far from broken.</p>
<p>How can that spirit be preserved, and expanded? Certainly not, as
the post strike shows, by “leaving it to the executive” or, even
less, “leaving it to the General Council”. Rank-and-file postmen
have learned the hard way how trade union leaders, when it comes to
the crunch, are prepared to make squalid deals even with reactionary
Governments in order to “pacify” their own members. The Union of
Post Office Workers’ Conference at Bournemouth this spring will be
a lively affair, and already branch rules throughout the country are
being re-written to allow more participation and control by the rank
and file.</p>
<p>There is a more attractive doctrine, however, which has also been
exposed by the post strike. In the four years from 1966 – 70 during
which a Labour Government carried out policies of which any Tory
Government would have been proud, many workers lost hope in politics,
or political solutions. They have imagined since that militancy and
solidarity in their unions will be enough to win their battles. Any
attempt to link their strike with the struggles of workers elsewhere,
in Britain or in the world, has been suspected as politics, which has
become in many workers’ minds another word for opportunism or
careerism.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, however, the assault on the workers, as the post
strike so clearly proves, is becoming more and more political. The
tiny group of rich and powerful men who control industry and property
are determined to defend their class superiority from incessant
demands by the workers. <em>They</em> have organised politically,
through their representatives in the Conservative Party, to pick off
each group of workers, isolate them, humiliate them and break their
spirit. <em>Their</em> struggle is not isolated in individual
industries or factories. <em>They</em> operate as a tightly-knit group
of politically motivated men. And the fight against their operations
cannot be won by isolated acts of militancy, however prolonged and
however heroic.</p>
<p>The reaction from workers, if it is ever to succeed, must also be
political. That does not mean voting every five years for a Labour
candidate. It means linking different struggles, and pointing out the
common enemy in each of them. It means binding the fight in this
country with similar fights abroad. It means mobilising people into a
permanent political counter-offensive against the Tories and the
class they represent.</p>
<p>For more than 25 years workers have been told by their political
representatives that the capitalist system works and that all that
matters is to work it efficiently. Now, after 25 years of full
employment and capitalist expansion, the system is as decadent, as
corrupt, as unfair, as violent, as ridiculous and contemptible as it
ever was. The humiliation of the postmen and the part played in it by
the TUC General Council is only a start. Things will get worse for
the workers unless they can build for themselves a new political
instrument capable of breaking through the thin crust of contemporary
capitalism and creating a society where the wealth which workers
produce is used for them, not against them.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Postal Workers and the Tory Offensive
(1971)
A Socialist Worker Pamphlet.
First published 1971 by SW (Litho) Printers Ltd, 8 Cotton Gardens, London.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Derek Howl.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Introduction
The postal strike of 1971 was by a long way the biggest industrial
dispute in Britain since the war. It lasted exactly the same number
of days as the next biggest – the seamen’s strike of 1966 – but
there were more than four times as many workers on strike. In terms
of days lost and numbers of strikers, no other dispute can compare
with it.
The strike lasted for 44 days, during all of which more than 90%
of the members of the Union of Post Office Workers remained on strike
without strike pay. Yet, at the end, they went back to work without
even the promise that they would receive any greater pay increase
than they were offered at the outset. Despite desperate attempts to
cheer his members up, the union’s general secretary made it plain
that he would have preferred, if possible, to continue with the
strike. The Press, the employers and the employers’ Government
could scarcely contain their glee at the humiliation of 200,000
postal workers. Gutter cartoonists and gutter politicians joined in
the triumphal dance over what they imagined was the corpse of the
postal union.
This pamphlet is written within a fortnight of the end of the
strike. It is written for the tens of thousands of postal workers who
are still suffering from shock at the calling-off of the strike.
Why did the strike take place? Why did the union collapse? Above
all, how can workers everywhere who seek to improve their wages and
conditions insure against a similar disaster? These are the questions
which this pamphlet tries to answer.
Part 1. The Post Office
The Post Office is the oldest nationalised industry in the
country, and the biggest. It employs more than 400,000 people (more
than any other single concern), and ever since letters circulated has
been responsible to the Government for the “carriage of mails”.
From the outset, it developed a tradition of “public service”.
Every citizen has the statutory right to delivery at his address of
letters correctly addressed and posted to him, and in promptness,
regularity and efficiency the British postal service is the best in
the world. Similarly, the telephone service, which was incorporated
into the Post Office, is incomparably more efficient in Britain than
in countries like America where the telephones are in the hands of
private enterprise.
Yet the Post Office, like other alleged “public services”,
operates inside a society where the powerful men are the rich men.
The way in which the Post Office works, therefore, is biased in
favour of industry, commerce, banking and the civil service –
anywhere, that is, where the interests of rich and powerful men are
immediately identifiable.
Revenue from the postal services, for instance, comes to the Post
Office by way of stamps. Firms and industries which post large
quantities of letters do not buy stamps. They can buy franking
machines which are regulated by the Post Office. If they post more
than 5,000 units at a time, they can get the local post office to do
the franking for them free of charge. One Post Office union
secretary told me that four men out of 25 at his sorting office have
to be detailed off on overtime every day to deal with this job, for
which the customer does not pay a penny.
Even more interesting is the system whereby the Post Office offers
a rebate to firms which post in bulk.
The amount of the rebate, laid down in the Post Office Guide, is
as follows:
Units Posted
Rebate
4,501–4,999
all free over 4,500
5,000–22,222
10% rebate
22,223–24,999
all free over 20,000
25,000–234,375
20% rebate
234,376–249,999
all free over 187,500
250,000
25% rebate
The Post Office Guide goes on to list conditions for the rebate.
The packets, it says, must be identical, and they must be sorted into
towns and counties “as required by the local Postmaster”.
The words “as required by the local Postmaster” are crucial,
for the collection and sorting of rebated post is settled in local
“deals” between local postmasters and firms. Most firms which do
big postal business will make sure that they get on excellent terms
with the local postmaster, and end up with handsome bargains on their
postal costs.
One UPW union official told me:
“Not 1% of the rebated post is sorted, and even if it
is sorted it makes very little difference to our work. We still have
to break open the parcels of post and check every address. Sometimes
the sorting is more difficult when it is sorted by firms
beforehand.”
Before 1968, these rebates applied only to “printed paper and
samples”, which, of course, included a mass of business post. But
after 1968, when the two-tier post was introduced, the old “printed
paper and samples” category was dispensed with. The rebates then
applied to all second class post sent in bulk. This meant a
huge increase in the rebate (or subsidy, to use a better word) with
which the Post Office “helped out” the growing army of firms
which were posting in bulk. Many firms found it extremely fruitful to
save up their less urgent post for one day a week, and thus claim a
much larger rebate from the Post Office.
What is the extent of the rebate? Unhappily, but not surprisingly,
rebate statistics are “not available” to the public, even if they
are ever collated (which is doubtful). The long annual report and
accounts of the Post Office carries no facts or figures about the
extent to which industry and commerce are subsidised by the rebate
system. Similarly, the Prices and Incomes Board which looked at Post
Office charges in 1968 made no inquiry into how the Post Office gets
its revenue, or how it might increase its revenue by stopping a
gratuitous and unnecessary subsidy to firms. All the Post Office will
say is that “about a third” of its postal traffic is metered, and
that the bulk of the metered traffic is subsidised. From a big
sub-post office in North London, I got rather different figures for
deliveries in a typical week last year:
Metered
Ordinary stamped
Letters
194,111
188,819
Packages
36,716
18,131
Total
230,827
(53%)
206,950
(47%)
Thirty-five million letters are posted in Britain every day. Since
there are less than 35 million adults in Britain today, it is clear
that most letters are not sent by sweethearts, or soldiers on
overseas duty, or even by grannies on the kiddies’ birthday. They
are sent by Littlewoods, Barclays, the Daily Telegraph, ICI,
and so on.
The complete lack of official statistics forces us to guess at the
extent of the subsidy which the Post Office hands out to pools firms,
mail order firms and big business year by year. If a third of the
letters posted are subsidised to the tune of some 20%, the extent of
the subsidy is in the region of £18m a year – rather more in fact
than the Post Office estimate of the cost of the full Union of Post
Office Workers claim for its members on the postal side. If the
figure is even remotely right, it means that the “losses”
sustained by the postal side of the Post Office in any one of the
last 10 years could have been wiped out if the rich men’s subsidy
had been abolished. And this does not take into account the
tremendous losses to the Post Office from not charging so many firms
for franking their mail.
There is another area of subsidy which is also impossible to
measure because of the refusal of the Post Office authorities to
collate (or publish) statistics. When the Post Office was part of the
civil service, the civil service mail was heavily subsidised. This
subsidy was carried on after the Post Office Corporation was set up
outside the civil service! It is impossible to tell how great is the
subsidy on the millions of letters, cards and parcels sent out by the
civil service, but it would be enough to pay a few thousand postmen a
decent wage!
The change-over from a civil service department to a
“fully-fledged public Corporation” started soon after the
election of a Labour Government in 1966 and was completed in October
1969. During this period, “business standards” were applied to
the Post Office, and this meant, inevitably, a fantastic increase in
bosses and bosses’ underlings.
In 1966, 11,300 million letters were handled by the Post Office.
In 1969 the figure was almost exactly the same. In a series of
vicious productivity agreements, the number of postmen had been cut
from 101,063 to 100,991, postmen higher grade from 21,250 to 20,809
and counter-men in the post offices from 22,183 to 21,584.
In 1966 there had been 9,889 Post Office administrators. In 1969
there were 12,300. Supervisors increased in the same period from
9,974 to 11,295. The richer the gravy, the more people there were to
lap it up. There were 31 Post Office directors in 1966 – and 51 in
1969. All of them are getting a minimum of £6,600 a year. As a
branch secretary wrote to his union magazine The Post (March
29, 1969):
“In my own area since Modified Postal Services we have
acquired a further two assistant district postmasters, two chief
inspectors, two assistant superintendents, and have lost one
superintendent. We have been concentrated, de-concentrated,
satellited, de-satellited. We have been two-tiered and
semi-two-tiered and all this time the top brass have been increasing
like sex-mad rabbits.”
Postal workers, and others who use the Post Office, were a little
bemused as to the value of this burgeoning of bosses. The bosses’
financial forecast in 1970 (after the union’s last wage increase}
resulted in a shortfall of £52m. Third-rate public relations and
managerial incompetence led to early failure both of the “two-
tier” postal system and of the Giro. As for “mechanisation”
(the main excuse given for the increase in management), there is
still only one fully mechanised office – at Croydon. Even at
Croydon, the new machines have led to dreadful difficulties, not
least the increase in damage to mail. “The machines tear up the
letters something terrible”, a Croydon postman told me. “We used
to have one man to repair damaged mail. Now, with the machines, there
are three, working overtime patching and sticking up ripped-up
letters and cheques.” Mechanisation elsewhere is being held up
because many of the special codes sent out to the public by the Post
Office contain seven digits, while the machines to deal with them are
made to deal with six digits. Fifty-one directors have since been
puzzling over an awkward dilemma. Should new codes be sent out or
should the machines be changed? Either expense, of course, will be
blamed on the postal workers. The directors don’t get £6,600 a
year for nothing!
Yet the postal side has long since ceased to interest the mass of
Post Office Board directors. They are increasingly fascinated with
the telecommunications division, where profits have been rising to
astonishing proportions:
£m
66/67
67/68
68/69
69/70
Postal Service Profits (loss)
7
6
−12
−6
Telecommunications profits
38
33
26
61
The increasing army of bosses in the telecommunications division
are drawn almost exclusively from private enterprise. Jobs are
swapped year by year between the Division’s Equipment Department
and the boardroom of Plessey (which supplies most of the equipment).
When the Post Office left the civil service and became a Corporation,
there was some pressure from his supporters on Mr. John Stonehouse,
the Labour Government’s Postmaster-General, to sweep away the
“time-honoured” restrictions which prevented the Post Office
manufacturing its own equipment. Stonehouse withstood the pressure.
“Render unto Plessey the things that are Plessey’s” was his
argument. Although the Bill contained the “ultimate” power for
the Post Office to manufacture its own equipment, this would only be
used, Mr. Stonehouse explained, “where it became obvious that
supplies would not otherwise be available”.
The new big businessmen in the Post Office telecommunications
division and their friends in industry outside are goggling at the
fantastic increases in telephone profits. Unlike postal services, 74%
of whose costs are in paying wages and salaries, telephones need less
and less labour (only 47% of their costs are labour costs). What a
tragedy it is, moan the businessmen in the Post Office, that these
enormous profits are wasted in a Public Board – are ploughed back
into telephone machinery or used to prop up a loss-making postal
service. If only, oh, if only these highly profitable services could
be put in the hands of private enterprise!
These sentiments were voiced enthusiastically by the Conservative
Opposition during the passing of the Post Office Bill through
Parliament early in 1969. Mr. Kenneth Baker, one of the brightest
stars in the Conservative firmament and a personal protégé of Mr.
Edward Heath, moved an amendment to Clause 7 of the Bill:
“to give the Corporation authority to offer for sale to
the public either by way of equity shares or loan stock any part of
its telecommunications services.”
“The Party of which I am a member”, said Mr. Baker,
“believes that the role of the public sector should be limited and
reduced wherever possible.”
What Mr. Baker meant, of course, was as follows:
“The Party of which I am a member is run for the sake
of rich and greedy businessmen who are longing to get their fingers
on the telephone loot.”
Mr. Baker’s amendment was pressed to a division (and lost), but
when the Conservative Party was returned to office in June 1970 (Mr.
Baker was thrown out at Acton, but returned a few months later in
safe Marylebone) the robbers came out of their caves and demanded the
hand-over of the telephones. At the Conservative Party conference in
Blackpool in October 1970, Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg, new Tory MP for
Hampstead and a prominent member of the Telephone Users Consultative
Council (an organisation run almost entirely by and for businessmen),
made a rousing speech pointing out the “opportunities for
enterprise and initiative” in the telephone service. His speech was
greeted with a roar of applause, and Mr. Finsberg has since been
named as a possible chairman of the Post Office Board.
The Board, meanwhile, whose public relations staff, needless to
say, had increased by some 20% in four years, remained silent.
Nothing was said in defence of the “public interest” of the
Board’s operations against the “private interest” of Finsberg &
Co. Ltd. For the truth is that most of the men on the Board in charge
of telecommunications have no objection to the wholesale transfer of
the telephone service to private enterprise. They would be assured
plum jobs and substantial shareholdings in the new private telephone
companies. The attitude of the Post Office Board towards Tory demands
for private enterprise telephones had nothing to do with the “public
service” tradition of the Post Office. Public service to them meant
an unprofitable postal service, especially cheap for businessmen, run
by a nationalised industry, and profitable telephones run by
themselves. Such priorities, needless to say, ignored one rather
important group of people – the 400,000 who worked in both sectors
of the Post Office. These people had for more than 100 years been
treated by the Post Office with consistent cruelty and contempt.
Part 2. The Union
The UK Postmen’s Association was formed in the wake of the
legislation of 1871 and 1875 legalising trade unions, it was swiftly
pulverised by the “impartial” Post Office administration. The
leaders of the executive were arbitrarily sacked. Tom Dredge, the
most militant of the founding executive members, was only allowed
back to work on condition he apologised for past activities and
promised to do nothing so horrible in the future as to “incite”
his colleagues with evil talk about better wages and conditions.
Dredge finally agreed to the conditions, and the Association
collapsed.
The Postmen’s Union was then formed in 1889 under the militant
leadership of engineers and dockers drafted in from the “new
unionism” movement. At once, the union demanded a withdrawal of the
departmental rule that postmen were not allowed to meet outside
office hours to discuss their grievances. The department replied with
a direct negative, and prepared to fight. Union leaders were harassed
with petty charges of indiscipline, and a reserve force of unemployed
were carefully rehearsed as blacklegs. The department was also able
to split the postmen by carefully fostering and bribing members of
different, splinter associations, especially the Fawcett Association
of sorters. When blacklegs were forcibly removed by union members on
July 10 from Mount Pleasant, 100 unionists were instantly dismissed
by the Post Office and the attempt to get the rest of London postmen
to come out in their support was bungled. Most of the men publicly
washed their hands of the union, and the department consolidated its
victory with widespread victimisation.
It was not until after the First World War that the various
splinter unions in the Post Office were amalgamated into the Union of
Post Office Workers. In the militant atmosphere of their amalgamating
conference in 1919, the delegates to the new union declared their
faith in trade union principles and voted overwhelmingly for the
setting up of a strike fund. They were reckoning without the
deep-seated anti-trade union feelings among postmen, especially among
the better-paid grades. The strike fund was put to ballot, and was
carried by only 48,157 to 35,411 (with 23,400 abstentions).
The Post Office administration responded by cherishing the
federations of smaller unions which had refused to join the UPW.
Hysterical anti-trade union propaganda was openly circulated among
their workers by the Post Office management. The strike fund was held
up as proof of the evil intentions of “anarchist agitators” who
were intent on destroying the “impartial” traditions of the Post
Office.
The campaign was successful. By 1921, the 100,000 membership at
the amalgamation conference had shrunk to 72,000. In September 1921
the union executive decided to suspend the strike levy fund
indefinitely. As a result, there was no strike fund in the union for
more than 40 years. And then it was too late.
Throughout, the union was plagued by the ambiguous status of its
members. Many members still regarded themselves as uniformed civil
servants – “a cut above” the proletariat. The Post Office
bosses did everything they could to foster this image. In 1927, the
Conservative Government passed a Trades Dispute Act which
banned the postmen’s union from affiliation to the Labour Party or
to the Trades Union Congress. The union was therefore forced into
isolation for 20 years until the Act was repealed by the post-war
Labour Government (the 1929–31 Labour Government left the Act on
the statute book). In the same year, the bosses arbitrarily increased
the staff side of the Whitley Council covering the industry by two –
both members representing tiny “secessionist” associations. As a
result, the UPW walked out of the Whitley Council, only to return
five years later on the Post Office terms.
Despite consistent growth, consistent absorption of smaller
organisations and acceptance back into the TUC and Labour Party after
the war, the union continued to be dogged by the myth of
“respectability”. Many of its older members had been recruited
from the Services and had been taught to obey commands. In rural
areas, district postmasters liked to play soldiers with their troops
and in many places postmen had actually to parade for morning
inspection!
As a result, the union leadership remained firmly committed to
“moderation”. Ron Smith, its general secretary for most of the
post-war period, could always be relied upon to cast his union’s
votes in favour of Labour’s “safe” right-wing leadership. The
branch rules and structure, many of which were written in the
post-war period, paid scant regard to the rights of the members to
participate in the union affairs. The Croydon branch rules, for
instance, allow for only two meetings a year! Although the structure
of the union was formally democratic (the executive is dominated by
lay members elected every year, though about a third of it consists
of full-time officials: all officials are elected on a branch
block-vote system, but, once elected, they are there for life). The
activity in the union was left in the main to a few local activists,
who often ended up in the union leadership.
Meanwhile, wages and conditions were gently discussed, and as
gently agreed under the paternalist aegis of the Civil Service Pay
Research Unit.
The cosy atmosphere was abruptly broken by the Selwyn Lloyd pay
pause of 1961. The Tory Government, desperate to control their own
pre-election boom, decided to wield the hatchet on their own workers.
Meetings were delayed, established negotiation procedures altered and
promises broken. For 18 months, postmen watched in despair as the
wages of industrial workers and white-collar workers in private
industry soared above theirs, and the official machinery which had
given them pittances year by year was ignored by the Government. By
the summer of 1964, Ron Smith had lost control of his union. In
protest against the Government’s refusal to allow them substantial
increases, the Post Office workers started an unofficial work-to-rule
and guerrilla strikes up and down the country.
Ron Smith and his executive were forced to call a one-day official
strike. A mass rally was held in Trafalgar Square, and, on July 26,
the Government caved in. A wage increase reckoned much later by the
Prices and Incomes Board as 15% was granted.
The postmen had learned a simple lesson. Their biggest increase in
post-war history had been won because some of them took the
initiative and hit the Post Office and its customers where it hurt
most – in the pocket.
Soon afterwards a Labour Government, trumpeting slogans about
“fairness for the workers” and “Incomes Policy”, was elected.
The Post Office workers loyally responded to the Government’s
appeals for “voluntary restraint”. Pay awards for postal and
telephonist grades in 1965 and 1966 were held strictly below the
required norms. In both years the UPW “won” 3.5% increases (PIB
Report, p. 20). Their award in 1967 had to be delayed due to
the 1966 wage freeze, and when it was paid it was much lower than the
workers had expected – 7%., The situation was little less than
drastic, as even the Post Office recognised. The Prices and Incomes
Board Report on postal charges, published in March 1968, had this to
say:
“In the view of the Post Office, the pattern of
settlements has inhibited its efforts to recruit and retain labour on
the postal side by ensuring that Post Office wages have always lagged
behind those in other occupations.”
With the cheek which characterised so many PIB reports, the Board
then recommended annual increases of 3.5%!
This must have been a joke, for even on the Board’s skimpy
information the Post Office workers were having it very rough indeed.
The Board found severe labour shortages in London and the Midlands
brought on by the disgracefully low wages and poor conditions.
“During the last three years”, it reported (p. 23), “overtime
has accounted for about 20% of the Post Office’s expenditure on pay
for main postal grades. The Post Office estimate that about one-sixth
of the overtime is worked at double rates. To qualify for double
rates, postmen have to work more than 60 hours a week, indicating
that considerable numbers are working this amount”. (Sixty hours is
eight and a half hours a day every day in the week.) The PIB’S
remedy for this appalling situation was to increase the hiring of
part-time women workers!
Added to all this, and not apparently noticed by the PIB or the
Government, was the system of” incremental scales” whereby young
telephonists and postmen joining “the service” were used as
little more than cheap labour. At that time the rates of pay under
these scales were as follows:
Basic Pay for a 43 hour week
Age
Postmen
Telephonists
£ s. d.
£ s. d.
15
6 10 0
5 16 0
16
6 17 0
6 5 0
17
7 11 6
7 0 0
18
9 15 0
9 1 0
19
10 11 6
9 17 6
20
12 4 0
10 15 0
21
14 14 6
12 4 0
22
15 17 0
12 14 6
The Union of Post Office Workers’ leadership, meanwhile, had
taken a turn to the left with the election of Tom Jackson to the
general secretaryship in place of Ron Smith, who had inevitably
joined the Board of the British Steel Corporation as labour director.
Jackson and his executive hoped to push on with much bigger increases
for their members than had been suggested by the PIB, but very
quickly they were entangled in the “voluntary incomes policy”
which was being enforced by the Labour Government in a far from
voluntary manner. Jackson’s annual report to his union’s Jubilee
Annual Conference at Bournemouth apologised gloomily:
“To say that the year under review [ending December 31,
1968] has been a difficult one would be an understatement, either in
relation to members’ difficulties, or in relation to those of
obtaining increases against the background of Government criteria
which provide substantially less than a modicum of flexibility.”
A claim for postmen had been lodged in the late summer of 1968 and
deliberately delayed at Ministerial level until late in November.
Eventually, the UPW accepted a 4% increase, 1% of which was “in
respect of measures already introduced”.
Tough productivity strings were bound around this unwelcome
package, which, as Jackson admitted in his report, “occasioned some
resentment and dissatisfaction”. Telephonists, still lagging even
behind postmen in pay, had been forced to accept a miserable 5.5%
plus heavy productivity concessions.
Neither was the following year, ended December 31, 1969, as
Jackson wrote for the union’s 1970 Conference, “one of
spectacular increases”. Under the Central Pay Claim, covering most
grades in the union, telephonists had picked up a further 7.75% in
separate negotiations, but the postmen (representing half the union)
were kept to the minimum 3.5%. Jackson and his negotiators had
accepted this further humiliation only on condition that they would
return and ask for more as soon as the Post Office became a
Corporation in October.
With the constitution of the Corporation, the last semblance of
civil service “paternalism” and “respectability” vanished
from the Post Office. The Board was a tough, bureaucratic business
management. The new chairman was a former merchant seaman, miner,
doctor, steelmaster and tycoon called Viscount Hall. Other Board
members included a deputy chairman of Rolls-Royce and, inevitably, a
former general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers (duly)
knighted. The union found Lord Hall susceptible to demands for a
substantial increase to make up the ground lost over previous years.
Hall was warned that the workers were in militant mood, and demands
for industrial action to back the claim were pouring in from branches
all over the country. “Viscount Hall”, reported the Daily Mail
on December 23, 1969, “wants to avoid a strike at all costs.”
Hall duly told the Government that he had no intention of outfacing
his workers so early in the life of the Board.
The Labour Government, by the time they came to adjudicate on the
UPW claim in February 1970, were in a more friendly mood than they
had been for four years. The struggle against the unions, highlighted
by the White Paper In Place of Strife the previous summer, had
been dropped in favour of conciliation. A General Election was in the
offing. Workers’ votes had to be ensured. On February 12, the
Cabinet approved the entire UPW claim, which averaged increases of
some 12%. “We got all we asked for”, said Jackson, triumphant.
(Guardian, February 13, 1970)
He was, however, in for a shock. On the ballot vote of the union’s
branches, acceptance of the offer was approved by the slenderest of
majorities. Among postmen, there was probably a majority for
rejection. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the union
leadership about the militancy of their members, it was now laid to
rest: The postmen, after nearly 50 years of apathy, were spoiling for
a fight to improve their wages and conditions. The increases of early
1970 had, they made it clear, compensated only marginally for the
losses in 1968 and 1969. The basic pay of the postmen was still
little more than £16 a week. Overtime was still monstrously
demanding. The incremental scales were still a scandal. A 21-year-old
telephonist outside London was still working a 41-hour, six-day week
for £10 10s. For 20 years or more postal workers had trod
water. Now they were determined to surge forward.
Part 3. The Strike
On October 29, 1970, the Union of Post Office Workers, under
instructions from their annual conference the previous spring, lodged
a claim for a wage increase of 15% or £3 a week, whichever was the
greater. The claim was only one of a number of substantial claims
submitted by unions still smarting from the long years of squeeze and
freeze, and from several months of runaway inflation which had pushed
prices up at an annual rate of 8%. Very soon, the claim was shown to
be in line with what other workers were getting. A Committee of
Inquiry under the “hard-line” negotiator Sir Jack Scamp
recommended straight increases of 15% for local government employees
who had been on strike for several weeks. The local government
workers had conducted a skilful campaign of guerrilla strikes, and
the Scamp Committee considered their claim sympathetically. Soon
afterwards, the miners, under some protest, and after only marginally
failing to give a two-thirds majority to sanction a national strike,
accepted a “no strings” offer of 12%.
These two increases in the public sector infuriated the
Conservative Government, not one member of whose Cabinet had less
than two former directorships or less than two houses to live in. The
Government determined to fight their own workers if necessary to the
death to bring down the general level of wage increases. To this end,
they found a useful ally in the joint-deputy chairman of the Post
Office Board, Mr. A.W.C. Ryland.
Ryland had worked his way up through the Post Office bureaucracy
with assiduous zeal. By 1953, he had risen to the heights of Deputy
Public Relations Officer. For 10 years he had worked exclusively on
the telecommunications side, and had learned a lot about the
profitability of telephones. In 1963, for instance, he headed the
Post Office study team to the profitable Bell Telephone System of
Canada. Ryland knew more than any other member of the Board that the
success of the Board would be assessed by one criterion:
profitability.
Ryland started to prepare for a possible strike in the Post Office
long before Lord Hall, or even the UPW leaders, had given it serious
consideration. In the summer of 1970, for instance, he addressed a
conference of telephone managers in Windermere in the Lake District.
He announced that the Prices and Incomes Board target for “return
on capital” in the telecommunications division of 84% had not been
reached. He had, he said, without explaining in detail why,
arbitrarily raised this target to 104%. There was, he went on, a need
for a thoroughgoing “drive to profitability”, and, accordingly,
there was “very little left in the kitty for wages.”
Soon afterwards, the attention of Post Office managers and
supervisors was drawn by Head Office to a thereto unheard-of document
entitled: Post Office Civil Emergency Manual. The document set
out detailed proposals as to how the Post Office should work in
conditions of flood, famine, pestilence ... and industrial action.
Instructions were issued that the “drill” laid down in the
document, involving the setting up of “control centres” and “
emergency stations”, should be followed to the letter during the
power workers’ work-to-rule which started on December 8 – not
because that action disrupted postal services, but “as a rehearsal
for later on”.
All this met with some opposition, notably from Viscount Hall.
Hall, who was enjoying himself hugely travelling round the world on
expensive “surveys” of telecommunications and postal problems,
was not at all happy about a confrontation with his workers. He took
the old-fashioned view that well-paid workers provided the best
service, and he was bold enough to tell his Minister, Mr. Christopher
Chataway, what he thought.
Lord Hall was intensely unpopular with the Government. Public
boards, they considered, should be chaired by obsequious Tory toadies
like Mr. Ryland. On November 24, after some intense argument about
the Board’s attitude to the UPW claim, Hall was summarily sacked by
the Government, and Ryland became “acting chairman”.
The sacking of Lord Hall was not lost on the postal workers. They
had no brief for Labour tycoons, but they realised the real reason
for this dismissal. To the astonishment of the Government and the
union, lightning protest strikes broke out in many large post
offices, especially in London.
The power workers started their work-to-rule on December 8. The
action caused instant chaos. A week later, the power men’s unions
called off the action after a promise from the Government that their
claim would be investigated by an independent court of inquiry. The
unions insisted, and the Government agreed, that the workers need not
be bound by the inquiry’s findings.
Watching the situation, Ryland decided to delay his reply to the
UPW claim as long as possible. If he could hold things until the
Wilberforce Commission reported on the power workers’ claim, public
opinion, he reckoned, would swing towards him. But the UPW, wise to
this ruse, insisted on a reply. On January 8, the Board offered 7% –
less than half the claim. The offer was rejected with contempt. On
January 14, the offer was increased by a wretched 1%. Once again, the
union rejected it. On January 20, the entire membership was called
out on strike.
Everyone, including the union leaders, was astonished at the
enthusiasm of the workers’ response to the strike call. There was
no question of strike pay. The union had started a small strike fund
only three years previously. At the beginning of the strike, the fund
totalled £334,000. The most this money could finance was a “hardship
fund” for those strikers (such as single men) who had no income
while on strike. Even so, the fund could only last for a maximum of
three weeks. Yet the response among postmen was almost unanimous. The
Press, notably the Daily Express and Daily Mail,
immediately ordered all its reporters to “Hunt the Blackleg”, but
were hard put to it to find a chink in the strike. Of 100,000
postmen, less than 700 reported for work. Among telephonists, the
response was less enthusiastic. In big industrial areas, they came
out. In rural areas, where many of them were the part-time “pin
money” workers advocated by the Prices and Incomes Board, they
tended to stay at work. The Daily Bulletin run by the UPW
Headquarters reported that in cities like Dundee and Newcastle all
telephonists were on strike. The Post Office claimed from the outset
that more than a third of the total number stayed at work throughout
the strike.
On Day 4 of the strike, the UPW Strike Bulletin warned:
“Monday may be a crucial day in our campaign”, and urged their
members to stay out on strike. The warning was unnecessary.
Astonishingly, as the days and then the weeks went by, the strikers
became more determined and more solid. The mass meetings and rallies
throughout the country, led by a rally in Hyde Park every Thursday,
became progressively better attended and more militant.
On Day 9 (January 28), the Strike Bulletin sent a message from the
executive: “WE ARE PRIVILEGED TO BE YOUR ELECTED LEADERS. YOU ARE
MAGNIFICENT! KEEP IT UP! ” Each bulletin recorded hundreds of
donations, most of them tiny. At this stage, the only donations from
trade unions were from individual branches. It was not until the 21st
day of the strike that the bulletin could record a donation front the
Transport and General Workers Union headquarters – of a puny £7,500
– to the hardship fund, and not until the 31st day that SOGAT
Division “A” coughed up £10,000. Many other unions affiliated to
the TUC did not contribute at all.
There were other even more serious signs that the solidarity of
the leaderships of other unions was not all it was made out to be. On
Friday, February 12 (the 24th day of the strike), Mr. Johnny Nuttall,
a member of the Transport and General Workers Union in Clay Cross,
Derbyshire, reported as usual for work as a lorry-driver for a small
firm of Sheffield road hauliers called J.A. Flendersons. He was
detailed for a run to Hull and to Beverley, and he noticed that
attached to the delivery notes were two envelopes, addressed to the
firms he was to visit.
Such envelopes had never been part of his load before, and Mr.
Nuttall complained to the management, explaining that he could not
possibly be expected to carry letters for anyone while the postmen
were on strike. He was instantly suspended, pending negotiations. He
then contacted Mr. Ray Thorpe, the T&GWU area organiser in
Nottingham. Mr. Thorpe listened to his case, spoke to the employers
and was very sympathetic to Mr. Nuttall. He was, he explained, not
convinced that this delivery was not genuinely connected with the
job. Nuttall replied that never in two and a half years had he had to
deliver such an envelope, but still Brother Thorpe was not convinced.
From his vantage point in his Nottingham office, he decided that he
was unwilling to instruct the other drivers not to work while the
employers insisted on their carrying mail. He intended, he explained,
to do nothing about it.
Then Tom Swain, MP, intervened. Nuttall was reinstated. Returning
to work, he found three more letters attached to the delivery notes.
Once more he refused to drive. At least nine of the 15 drivers
indicated their willingness, if instructed by the union, not to work
under such blackleg conditions. But Thorpe refused to move. Nuttall
was sacked, and the other drivers carried the mail.
“I rang our regional organiser, Brother Mather, in
Birmingham”, Johnny Nuttall told me. “He took the same lukewarm
attitude as Thorpe. He kept saying that our union cared most for our
members, and that our members would be in trouble if they all did
what I did.”
Johnny Nuttall has been out of work for five weeks since the
episode and his opinion of his union leadership, including Jack Jones
(his general secretary), who knew all about the incident, is not
printable.
What happened to Johnny Nuttall happened all over the country,
although in most places were were few lorry-drivers (or railway
workers) with Johnny Nuttall’s courage. BRS drivers carried mail
all over the country without any real effort by the T&GWU to stop
the practice, in spite of all sorts of commitments by brave union
leaders at meetings in central London.
Nevertheless, the solidarity of the postmen caused no little
consternation at the Post Office Headquarters at St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, where Ryland and his henchmen had imagined that
the trickle of postmen returning to work would rapidly turn into a
flood. Not that the Post Office itself was suffering. On the
contrary, despite the daily reports of massive Post Office losses in
the Press, the Post Office was minting huge profits during the
strike. The loss-making postal services were closed down. Only a tiny
amount was being paid out in wages. At the same time, there was a
huge increase in the highly profitable use of automatic telephones
(86% of the telephone system is on STD, which uses very little
labour). The Minister for Posts pooh-poohed suggestions that the Post
Office was making profits during the strike, but when the strike was
over the figures proved him wrong. The Post Office had lost £24.8m
in revenue, and had saved £26m in unpaid wages (Daily Telegraph,
March 5, 1971).
Encouraged by such figures, Ryland decided on the 18th day of the
strike to announce his plans for even bigger profits in the future.
He issued a Press statement (on February 6) indicating that, as a
result of the strike, future Post Office services would have to be
pruned. The parcel post, he warned, would have to be abolished. So
would many rural deliveries. So would the practice of delivering mail
twice a day.
Five months previously, Mr. Ryland had opened a new parcel sorting
office at Peterborough. He spoke in glowing terms about two new
parcel centres at Cardiff and Southampton. “We are building,” he
trumpeted, “Britain’s parcel network of the future”.
Now, however, he was using a strike into which he had provoked his
workers as an excuse for cutting out the parcel service altogether!
Needless to say, the bitter and devastating UPW reply to Ryland’s
announcement released to the Press the next day was totally ignored
by the “objective ” national newspapers.
Yet, for all Mr. Rvland’s dreams of still more profits (and less
service) to come, by late February the strike began to bite deep into
the pockets of industry and commerce. As the UPW Strike Bulletin
complained day by day, the real effects of the strike were blanketed
by a “conspiracy of silence”.
The damage was not only to banks, newspapers and mail order firms
(whose turnover had doubled in 10 years to £560m a year, and had
expanded by 10% a year compared with 3% for the rest of the retail
trade). Industry itself, and particularly industry with connections
overseas, was hard hit by the strike, and worse hit as chances of a
settlement receded. For the first two weeks, correspondence could be
put off, on the understanding that some day it would move again. But
as the strike was increasingly solid, industry became increasingly
disturbed. The Association for Small Businessmen reported that “the
strike has become a major threat to thousands of small businessmen.
Many of them are being propped up by lenient bank managers who have
extended credit to cover the strike” (Financial Times, March
3, 1971).
Not only small businesses but some of the bigger ones started to
warn the Government that the losses caused by the strike could not be
sustained for ever.
None of this appeared in the Press or on television. The myth was
bruited around that the strike was having “little effect” on
industry. The internal bulletins of the City of London (the Business
News supplements and the Financial Times) announced
blandly:
“No Problem.”
The reason was that the men who run big industries and banks have
been properly brought up. One major principle has been drummed into
their heads from early childhood: Never discuss family
problems in front of the servants.
In this instance a group of cheeky servants (Post Office workers)
were refusing to work. They had to learn that such insubordination
would do them no good, and that no one cared. Total silence about
real problems had to be scrupulously observed.
The union, however, was not concerned by these tricks of the
capitalist trade. The solidarity of their members was ensured. The
damage caused by the strike was indisputable. Contemptible offers
from the Post Office (such as Ryland’s suggestion that an extra 1%
in “productivity” money could be added to the 8%) could be
rejected summarily.
The real problem was the survival of those strikers who had no
money at all. Members covered by social security payments were likely
to stay out as long as necessary. The rent was paid, and there was
something to eat. For the others, however, the hardship fund was
crucial. And the hardship fund was running out. The hundreds of small
donations made little or no difference. The union’s own money, by
the third week in February (the fifth of the strike), had long since
been spent, as had the bankers’ overdraft. The hardship fund (about
£100,000 a week) had to be sustained, or the strike would begin to
crumble. This was the union’s Achilles heel, which was promptly
pierced not by the employers or by blacklegs but by the Trades Union
Congress General Council.
Part 4. The Sell-out
On Day 30 of the strike (Thursday, February 18), the union’s
Strike Bulletin reported:
“FLASH! Tom Jackson and his team have gone to the TUC
to speak to the TUC’s Finance and General Purposes Committee."
The result of the meeting was reported in The Times the
following day:
“The UPW, in deep financial difficulties as its strike
enters the fifth week, yesterday collected £250,000 in loans from
other unions. It has been promised a similar sum by the TUC
next week to keep the strike alive.”
And the Guardian of February 20 carried a huge headline:
TUC WILL NOT LET POSTAL UNION BE CRUSHED
“The Government is deeply concerned about the
apparently growing support among trade unions for the Post Office
workers.
“... TUC leaders, who met Mr. Carr for talks about the
dispute, took a courteous but firm line and left him in no doubt that
they were not going to abandon the postal workers.
“They are understood to have emphasised that they would
not stand by and see the Union of Post Office Workers crushed by
financial pressures and reminded the Minister of the loans which the
TUC was gathering from other unions on behalf of the UPW.
“The amounts have totalled £250,000 this week, and
the same amount is likely to be forthcoming next week.”
The following day, Sunday, February 21, 140,000 trade unionists
rallied to the call of the TUC to demonstrate against the Industrial
Relations Bill. Eight years previously, TUC general secretary George
Woodcock had told the Congress proudly that they had “long ago left
Trafalgar Square” for the committee rooms in the corridors of
power. Now the movement was back in Trafalgar Square fighting for its
very life.
The most popular man on the demonstration was Tom Jackson, the
most popular delegation that of the UPW. TUC general secretary Vic
Feather sought out Jackson and pulled him to the front of the plinth
to shake him by the hand. Chairman Sid Greene, the best-dressed man
in the movement, told the crowd:
“The whole trade union movement is backing the UPW.”
When Jackson spoke, however, there was an element of scepticism in
his response:
“If we are defeated, it will not be for lack of
resolve. It will not be for lack of guts and determination. It will
be for lack of funds.
“Sympathy we can get by the bucketful. We have the
generous wholehearted support of the public. What we need now is
money – and fast!
“The TUC has supported the idea of workshop
collections. This is your fight. Our defeat will be your defeat. Our
victory, your victory.
“We have been forced by circumstances into the van of
the trade union movement. We did not ask for this honour, but we will
not let you down. Don’t let us down.”
This was the first sign that the TUC had supported the idea of
workshop collections. There was no sign, however, that the
collections were being enthusiastically organised by the leadership.
At any rate, such collections could not be substituted for the big
grants the union needed to keep its hardship fund going. Workshop
collections could never provide enough money fast enough.
A further problem dogged the UPW executive. The money collected by
the TUC the previous week had been paid in interest-free loans.
To some extent, this was a fiction. Many unions have rules
restraining them from making large payments outside the union. And in
many instances (though by no means in all) repayment would not in
practice be demanded. Formally, however, the money was on loan, and
the UPW’s bankers, already demanding the title deeds of the union’s
headquarters as security for its huge overdraft, were beginning to
complain about further commitments.
The crucial meeting of the strike was that of the General Council
of the TUC on Wednesday, February 24. All that week, the newspapers
had been full of the TUC support for Jackson and the TUC’s
determination not to allow a defeat of the postmen.
At the meeting, Tom Jackson spelt out his dilemma. The TUC must
back their pledges of support and their rhetoric with cash, or the
strike would crumble. There were, he said, hopeful signs. Employment
Secretary Robert Carr had been visited by the mail order firms, the
Association of Small Businesses and by the Confederation of British
Industry, all of whom were pressing for an end to the strike, which
was rapidly becoming intolerable.
To Jackson’s horror and astonishment, his colleagues on the
General Council started to mumble about “problems and
difficulties”. There was, they said, no money available by way of
grant. They might be able to rustle up another £100,000 in
interest-free loans. Jackson told them again that further loans would
not be allowed by his bankers, and reminded them again of their
commitment the previous week to a further £250,000. Even £100,000
grant could keep him going another crucial week. The heroes of
Trafalgar Square the previous Sunday fell silent. The mighty
militants had turned into mice. A hundred thousand pounds in loans
out of the millions of union funds and tens of millions in union
investments was all they could afford.
When Jackson left the TUC that morning, he must have known that
the game was up. He could not continue the hardship fund the
following week without selling his union headquarters. The following
day, the UPW rally in Hyde Park was the biggest yet, swelled by tens
of thousands of Post Office Engineering Workers who had staged a
token strike in solidarity with the UPW. Jackson kept a brave face,
as though nothing serious had happened. And the demonstrators went
home confident that their struggle would continue.
The axe, however, fell fast. On Monday, as news of the end of the
hardship money filtered through, the numbers returning to work
increased sharply (though still only a tiny minority of the total).
By Tuesday, Jackson was outlining his line of retreat to the
executive. On Wednesday (March 3) the entire executive, having agreed
to surrender by 27 votes to four (with the Communists on the
executive supporting Jackson), travelled to the Department of
Employment and concocted a formula for calling off the strike. A
“committee of inquiry”, they agreed, would look into the Post
Office claims. The three-man committee would consist of one nominee
from the union, one from the management and a chairman agreeable to
both. The chairman would have the right, in the event of
disagreement, to impose a settlement. In sharp contrast to the
setting up of the Scamp Committee of Inquiry into the “dirty jobs”
strike, the union would recommend an immediate return to work before
the committee was even constituted. Unlike those of the Wilberforce
Committee, this committee’s findings would be binding. This was
marginally different from the arbitration which Jackson had been
refusing for 10 weeks. But no one had any doubt that the Post Office
would have settled for such an inquiry in the first week of the
strike.
The rally on Thursday, March 4, was a very different affair from
its predecessors. Many postal workers could not believe their ears,
and shouted their disillusionment at their leaders. As the executive
recommendations went to the ballot, branch after branch recorded the
dismay and militancy of the rank and file. In almost every urban
branch, there was a substantial vote against the executive proposals,
and in some branches the majority voted to stay out. A mass meeting
of more than 2,500 UPW members in Liverpool, for instance, voted two
to one against going back to work.
The real blame for the collapse of the strike must be placed on
the TUC General Council, first for not providing the funds when they
were needed, and secondly for not organising the other unions in
dispute with the Government to co-ordinate their efforts with the
postmen. The railwaymen’s and the teachers’ union leaders knew
well enough that the defeat of the postmen would lead to
substantially smaller settlements for their members. Why then did
they not hasten their negotiations, and join the fray? Why at least
did they not press for the necessary funds to be made available? Why
did not the more militant trade union leaders, notably Jack Jones of
the T&GWU or Hugh Scanlon of the AUEW, openly break from the
General Council line and make available the funds which they could so
well afford?
Above all, why did the General Council retreat from a position
which it seemed to have occupied in some strength?
The answer was half-available to readers of the South Wales
morning paper, the Western Mail, on Friday, March 5,
headed:
POST PACT KEY FOR TORY UNIONS DEAL
“The virtual collapse of the postmen’s strike”,
wrote George Gardiner, that paper’s Lobby Correspondent, “has
opened the way for a new deal between the Government and the unions.
“If the TUC is willing to support the principle that in
future all unions in dispute should go to arbitration, before
considering strike action, I understand the Government is prepared to
amend its Industrial Relations Bill when it comes back to the Commons
on Monday week.”
The parts of the Industrial Relations Bill which most offended the
bureaucrats on the General Council were not those which penalised
unofficial strikers, nor those which outlawed sympathy strikes, but
those which restricted the closed shop. These restrictions, the
leaders feared, would cut off important funds to the unions. The
weaker unions like USDAW and the G&MWU would lose tens of
thousands of members presently kept in union membership by closed
shop provisions, often with the agreement of employers. At all costs,
the General Council wanted Clause 5 (about closed shops) altered. The
Government had made it plain that they might make concessions on
Clause 5 if the TUC would restrain its members from going on strike.
For some time, Vic Feather had been seeking a meeting with the
Prime Minister to discuss such a deal as well as other matters like
unemployment. The Daily Mirror on March 2 ran a front-page
article entitled End This Angry Silence, in which it attacked
the Prime Minister and the unions for not “getting together”.
The Tory Government was dangling possible changes in the
Industrial Relations Bill as a carrot to prompt the TUC to immediate
action on the postal workers’ strike. What was the point, Heath’s
representatives asked Feather, in talking about the TUC restraining
strikes at a time when one of the biggest unions in the country was
“paralysing the nation” by refusing arbitration? Only if the post
strike was stopped on terms of arbitration would the Government talk
to the TUC.
These arguments carried much weight with the “committee room”
bureaucrats in the TUC who had resented not being asked to Downing
Street since the Tory Government was elected. Here at last was a
chance to get into a committee room with the Government again. With
such a prize, who cared about Tom Jackson and his Post Office
workers?
Indeed, the more crusted of the General Council reactionaries
welcomed an excuse to sell the postmen down the river. They were
terrified by the prospect not of the postmen’s defeat, but of their
victory. For if the postmen’s strike had forced the Government to
concede substantial wage claims, what fantastic class forces would be
unleashed in all the other unions? How would the diehards in the
General Council hope in such circumstances to exert the “control”
over their members to which they had become accustomed? How would
they be able to stop them from engaging in open conflict with the
Government, the employers – who knows, the whole structure of
society? Such thoughts struck terror into the kind hearts and
coronets who make up the TUC General Council. And when the Government
issued its ultimatum: No talks while the postal strike is on,
the mind of the General Council was rapidly made up. Tom Jackson and
his 200,000 postal workers would have to go to the wall.
They could rely on Jackson not to expose their double-dealing. At
no time after the fateful meeting on February 24 did Jackson openly
attack the General Council or any member of it for knifing his union
in the back. An open appeal to the rank and file of the unions, with
the real facts of the sell-out thoroughly exposed, would have won for
Jackson, if not the necessary funds, at any rate the continued
support of his rank and file. Yet Jackson chose to keep mum, to take
the blame for the decision, and to retain his seat and his friends on
the General Council. The despair and disillusionment of his members
is so much the worse for his failure properly to explain to them the
real reasons for the strike’s collapse.
On the evening of March 3, several hours after the UPW executive
had gone to the Department of Employment to lick the boots of Mr.
Ryland and Mr. Carr, Mr. Victor Feather blandly called a press
conference at Congress House. He had, he said, sent a letter for
delivery to 10 Downing Street asking Mr. Heath for “early talks
between the Government and the TUC on the worsening economic
situation”.
“Previously”, wrote the Daily Telegraph
Industrial Correspondent the next day (March 4), “the TUC has
offered to discuss wage restraint if the Government would first
undertake to drop the Industrial Relations Bill. Now, although
killing the Bill remains the TUC’s hope, it is no longer adopting
such a rigid approach which would make fruitful discussions virtually
impossible.”
The reply from Downing Street was almost instantaneous. Mr. Heath
paused only to discover from his Minister of Employment that the post
strike was all but over. He then picked up the telephone, got through
to Congress House and courteously assured Mr. Feather that he was
only too willing to talk to the General Council.
The following morning the front page of the Daily Mirror
carried two headlines. “POST STRIKE IS OVER”, it shouted, and
then, next door, in smaller type: “HEATH BREAKS THE ANGRY SILENCE”.
Peter Jenkins of the Guardian is by no stretch of the
imagination a revolutionary socialist. He is, however, in close touch
with Tom Jackson, and he knew what had gone on at the General
Council.
“The trade union movement”, he wrote on March 4,
“made warlike noises. It edged towards a confrontation with the
Government; but when it came to the point, it at once thought better
of it and quickly drew back. The trade union movement was shown to be
lacking not only in will but also totally in strategic sense. The
lessons of that unedifying spectacle will not be lost on other trade
unions, on public opinion or on the Government.”
Part 5. The Lessons
The immediate effects of the collapse of the post strike will be
felt by other workers in the public sector, such as railwaymen and
teachers. Union leaders who allowed the Government to take on the
postal workers in an isolated struggle are now using the defeat as an
excuse to lumber their own members with wage increases that will not
keep up with rises in the cost of living. The rank and file in these
unions must make sure that the postal workers’ strike is the last
in which the Government divides and rules in this way. They should
demand the building up of a “Public Sector Alliance” of different
unions to wage a unified fight back.
For postmen, the immediate results of the collapse will be even
more serious. Whatever is gained or lost at the committee of inquiry,
Ryland (who must surely be promoted as Post Office chairman) will
seek to use the strike’s aftermath to cut down on postal services
(and workers). His eyes are fixed on Sweden, allegedly the home of
“progress” and the “Welfare State”, where postal services
have been progressively slashed over the past decade. There is only
one postal delivery outside the commercial centre of Stockholm. Rural
deliveries and collections have been cut back to almost nothing. No
parcels are delivered. Meanwhile, the telephone service is expanding
at a rapid rate and making huge profits for the firms which feed off
it.
All Ryland’s statement’s during and after the strike commit
him to a Swedish policy which could mean massive redundancies among
postmen, quite apart from the slashing of the “public service”,
especially to those (the majority) who cannot afford telephones.
For the trade union movement in general, the Post Office dispute
is a major setback. An arrogant and offensive Government, composed
entirely of wealthy businessmen, will now attempt to ride roughshod
over the demands of workers elsewhere.
They will not find it easy. The TUC General Council sell-out of
the postmen can be compared in its cynicism to their sell-out of the
miners in 1926, but the General Strike of that year was the last gasp
of a working class locked out and bullied for half a decade. Today,
the strength of the workers’ anger is much more powerful. The
refusal among workers to be pushed around by the wealthy is stronger
now than ever before in history. The Government, in spite of its
victory over the Post Office workers, will not find the workers
submissive to a class assault of the type which they are
contemplating. The spirit of postmen, and of workers everywhere, is
far from broken.
How can that spirit be preserved, and expanded? Certainly not, as
the post strike shows, by “leaving it to the executive” or, even
less, “leaving it to the General Council”. Rank-and-file postmen
have learned the hard way how trade union leaders, when it comes to
the crunch, are prepared to make squalid deals even with reactionary
Governments in order to “pacify” their own members. The Union of
Post Office Workers’ Conference at Bournemouth this spring will be
a lively affair, and already branch rules throughout the country are
being re-written to allow more participation and control by the rank
and file.
There is a more attractive doctrine, however, which has also been
exposed by the post strike. In the four years from 1966 – 70 during
which a Labour Government carried out policies of which any Tory
Government would have been proud, many workers lost hope in politics,
or political solutions. They have imagined since that militancy and
solidarity in their unions will be enough to win their battles. Any
attempt to link their strike with the struggles of workers elsewhere,
in Britain or in the world, has been suspected as politics, which has
become in many workers’ minds another word for opportunism or
careerism.
Unfortunately, however, the assault on the workers, as the post
strike so clearly proves, is becoming more and more political. The
tiny group of rich and powerful men who control industry and property
are determined to defend their class superiority from incessant
demands by the workers. They have organised politically,
through their representatives in the Conservative Party, to pick off
each group of workers, isolate them, humiliate them and break their
spirit. Their struggle is not isolated in individual
industries or factories. They operate as a tightly-knit group
of politically motivated men. And the fight against their operations
cannot be won by isolated acts of militancy, however prolonged and
however heroic.
The reaction from workers, if it is ever to succeed, must also be
political. That does not mean voting every five years for a Labour
candidate. It means linking different struggles, and pointing out the
common enemy in each of them. It means binding the fight in this
country with similar fights abroad. It means mobilising people into a
permanent political counter-offensive against the Tories and the
class they represent.
For more than 25 years workers have been told by their political
representatives that the capitalist system works and that all that
matters is to work it efficiently. Now, after 25 years of full
employment and capitalist expansion, the system is as decadent, as
corrupt, as unfair, as violent, as ridiculous and contemptible as it
ever was. The humiliation of the postmen and the part played in it by
the TUC General Council is only a start. Things will get worse for
the workers unless they can build for themselves a new political
instrument capable of breaking through the thin crust of contemporary
capitalism and creating a society where the wealth which workers
produce is used for them, not against them.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Will Labour make a difference?</h1>
<h3>(November 1991)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.147, November 1991, pp.8-11.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>Electoral politics are set to dominate in the coming months. Labour’s fortunes once again seem to have revived since their dip in the summer. Here <strong>Paul Foot</strong> argues why a Labour vote is important but why we can expect very little from a Kinnock government</em></p>
<p class="fst">THE WHEEL of party politics is turning. The Tory government is in the most dreadful mess. Every bound for freedom seems to land its baffled ministers deeper in the mire. Each attempt since Thatcher’s sacking to rush to the polls – January, June, November – has been thwarted by a dramatic by-election reversal or a sudden shift to Labour in the opinion polls. At the Tory conference the only real cheers were for Lady Macbeth herself, gloating and whimpering at the distress she was inflicting on her former colleagues.</p>
<p>Labour had a good conference. Everyone agrees on that. Even the most reactionary political correspondents praised a ‘responsible’ speech from Neil Kinnock. Voices of dissent were effectively blurred by the architecture of the conference platform, specially designed to highlight the ‘new team,’ and the natural reluctance of delegates to rock this suddenly sturdy boat. Everywhere among socialists, there is a frisson of excitement that at last it looks as if the Tories are on the way out, and that for the first time in many peoples’ adult lives, the British people will elect a Labour government.</p>
<p>Almost everywhere, however, that excitement is muted by a feeling of unease at the price Labour has paid to achieve this winning position. This unease is not confined to the increasing band of socialists who have been flung out of the Labour Party; nor to the hundreds of Labour Party socialists who have signed the open letter denouncing Labour’s retreats. Almost any socialist must be worried by the grim, determined effort of the leadership to wipe every vestige of socialism from the party’s programme. A former commitment to get rid of nuclear weapons, which were ostensibly there to deter an enemy, has been replaced by an almost maniacal determination to keep those weapons when there is no enemy to deter. Former commitments to repeal all anti-trade union laws and to take back into public ownership the monopolies Thatcher privatised have been replaced by half-promises to restore some union privileges, and to buy 2 percent in British Telecom (provided the Tories don’t sell off another batch, as they plan to do).<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">AFTER RETREATS like this, isn’t it true, as one socialist said at a conference fringe meeting, ‘that there really isn’t any difference between Labour policies and Tory ones?’</p>
<p>The answer comes back at once: of course there is a difference. Just to take a handful at random from the Brighton conference: a pledge to introduce a Freedom of Information Act, a pledge to abolish the House of Lords, a pledge to wipe out the infamous NHS Hospital Trusts, a pledge to change the law which allows convictions on the basis of uncorroborated confessions. Nor is the difference only on specific policies. Anyone watching the two conferences can tell at once that one is pro-trade union, pro-poor, pro-reform while the other is reactionary to the core: anti-union, racialist, militaristic and sanctimonious.</p>
<p>The differences in the conferences reflect the fundamental difference between the two organisations. The Tory Party is financed by banks and big business. Its economic strategy is to protect profits and its ideology is based therefore on the most relentless legal and moral disciplines for those who do the work. The Labour Party came into being to represent trade unions in parliament. The unions still have the decisive vote on policy, on the National Executive and on finance. The difference between the parties is in the class base of their origins and their support. Employers vote Tory; workers vote Labour. Of course individuals from each section cross over to the other side, but the class differential between the parties is plain for all to see.</p>
<p>This is the background to the familiar cry which is raised at election times by principled socialists who are shocked at the betrayals of the Labour leadership. ‘There is no difference between them’ they cry. ‘Don’t Vote!’ The act of abstentionism, perhaps a little flurry of excitement as a ballot paper is spoiled or even burned, is held out as a grand gesture of principle.</p>
<p>To most of the ten million people who always vote Labour, though, it comes across as an act of betrayal. For of all the obvious differences between the two parties, the most obvious is that if the Tories win, reactionaries and employers throughout the land rejoice – and celebrate their rejoicing in more wretchedness for the dispossessed. If Labour wins, the workers feel more confident. So the abstainers cut themselves from any further argument or discussion. Their principles are reserved only for themselves.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">SO SOCIALISTS, quite rightly, vote Labour. They do so out of instinctive solidarity with the party which draws its support from the dispossessed, and is founded on the organised working class. But what then? Does it follow from a Labour vote that society will change for the better? Surely, at the very least, a different political atmosphere will be created, a collective, trade union sort of atmosphere which will contrast very pleasantly with Thatcher’s grim decade?</p>
<p>The answer to those questions have very little to do with who supports the Labour Party, who votes for it and what its leaders say to conferences. The answers go to the very root of the illusion which dominates politics in all the Western democracies. The illusion is that governments get elected on policies, which they are then at liberty to put into practice. The party writes the programme. The people vote for it. The party then forms a government which turns those policies into the law of the land.</p>
<p>This was the grand idea of the ‘representative democracy’ which first stirred in England in the revolution of the 17th century, and was taken up with much more force at the time of the French Revolution. Thomas Paine’s <strong>Rights of Man</strong> denounced all governments which were not chosen by the people. To the government of the day, which was chosen by a handful of brigands and courtiers, this was dangerous subversion, and Paine was sentenced to death for it. Similarly, when the Chartists in the late 1830s and 1840s demanded the vote as part of an organised working class movement of strikes and physical force, the rulers set their faces firmly against the proposal.</p>
<p>The idea of a representative democracy is essentially distasteful to a class of people who owe their wealth to the process of robbing the majority. Exploitation of the many by the few is the most hideously undemocratic process imaginable. How could the minority exploiters agree to a system where the majority can vote?</p>
<p>After the Chartists were beaten in open class warfare, the British ruling class, then the strongest and most cunning in the world, applied itself to this question. It was obviously impossible forever to resist the popular demand for the vote. Was it not possible, however, to concede the vote bit by bit, making sure that the concessions coincided with relative industrial peace, and above all making sure that as each new concession led to new governments, those governments could be constrained against any action which would threaten the wealth and power of the ruling class? So, for a hundred years (1867-1970) the vote was conceded piecemeal. Governments were elected of many different colours; but the real power, especially the economic power, stayed exactly where it was.</p>
<p>The result was that the representative system was deprived of the very essence of representation: the ability of the government to act in the interests of the people who voted for it. How was this done? By keeping tight in the clutches of the ruling class the areas in society where real decisions were made and acted upon. Industrialists who in a day could decide the real fate of thousands if not millions of workers were not affected by the elections. They remained in charge of their industries. So did the banks, which by a flick of the wrist could transfer billions of pounds and ‘bankrupt Britain.’ The media moguls were free after the election as well as before it to blabber on incessantly about the Red Menace. Judges and civil servants gloried in the fact that they were not elected. Army officers and police chiefs were rarely threatened by a change of government, even when they were openly hostile to that government. All these people came from the same class. They had real power, and were prepared to use it to protect their class against any elected government. Thus the parliaments (which were quickly set up all over the world as soon as the success of the British experiment became obvious to other rulers) became, in Lenin’s phrase, ‘mere talking shops.’</p>
<p>The British Labour Party is nearly a hundred years old. It has formed the government many times. The most consistent theme of all those governments has been their impotence to act on behalf of the people who elected them.</p>
<p>The most obvious example is the biggest issue of all: unemployment. Every Labour leader promised to end ‘the scourge of unemployment’, as Labour’s first Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald put it. Under MacDonald’s government, unemployment tripled in two years. Why was that? His ministers did not want to increase unemployment. But they had absolutely no control over it. It rose on the high tide of capitalist recession, whose vicious consequences were quite outside the control of governments.</p>
<p>Again, every Labour leader says he is a ‘peacemonger’, but a peacemonger Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee took the decision, without even consulting the Cabinet, to make the British atom bomb. Wars of all kinds – such as the US war in Vietnam – may be savaged by Labour in opposition, though recently, in the Falklands and the Gulf, even opposition Labour leaders have shown what good warmongers they can be. Without fail, the same wars are enthusiastically supported when the Labour peacemongers make it into Whitehall. Why? Not because they suddenly become vicious, but because the massed ranks of generals, civil servants, allies etc present the ministers with an option they can’t refuse.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">SO MUCH for the big issues – the ones which determine the course of governments. Most people nowadays don’t imagine any more that Labour can or will change things drastically. They hope instead for minor reforms, like the ones mentioned earlier – and for a ‘better political atmosphere.’ But if anything Labour’s record over minor reforms is even worse. In 1966, for instance, as soon as it took office for the second time, with a huge majority in peace-time full employment conditions, a Labour government under Harold Wilson abolished all prescription charges on National Health Service medicines. The charges they abolished were very low – only 15p each – and the amount of money ‘lost’ to the Exchequer by their abolition was a trifling £7 million. In 1967, Labour devalued the pound and negotiated a huge loan with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF insisted on replacing charges for health prescriptions. The amount of money, compared to the mega-millions at stake, was peanuts. But the IMF negotiators were not satisfied until they had crushed this last, tiny little egalitarian reform. The whole record of the two most recent Labour governments is littered with similar defeats.</p>
<p>Back then to that optimistic argument that Labour will do some small things to make things better. What small things? Will the civil servants, so influential in the past, suddenly throw up their hands and allow a Freedom of Information Act to pry into their affairs? Will the forces able to smash the 1966 Labour government’s abolition of health charges bend over backwards to help Robin Cook restore National Health Service control over hospitals? Will the police and judges tolerate still more reforming legislation curbing their powers to convict? The evidence of the past suggests that in all these matters, and in many more besides, the new Labour government will be more at the mercy of the real, unelected rulers than any other Labour government since the war. For unlike the last two governments, which came to office in conditions of relative economic stability, this one will be confronted by the gravest international economic crisis since the 1930s. The circumstances in which Neil Kinnock takes office will be more like those faced by Ramsay Macdonald in 1929 than by Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 1970s.</p>
<p class="fst">WILL THE ATMOSPHERE be ‘better’? Of course it may be for a short time. The very transfer of office gives rise to a certain euphoria, especially among the new ministers. But the lesson of 1976-1979 is that as Labour turned from one desperate ruling class remedy to another, the political atmosphere began to stink. Fascists became respectable, and won a lot of votes. My own sharpest memory of my parliamentary candidature for the newly-formed SWP in 1977 was canvassing a shop steward in a bus factory. He told me he was fed up with the government and had thought of voting for me. Instead, however, he said, rather shamefacedly he was voting for the fascists. I got 300 votes, the fascists got over 2000. This was the measure of the ‘better atmosphere’ created by a Labour government which is driven to a prolonged attack on the people who vote Labour.</p>
<p>The grim truth is the next Labour government will make no real difference to the fearful chaos to which the Tories have reduced so much of working class Britain. It is a grim message – but it is hopeless only if, like our principled abstentionist, everything begins and ends at the ballot box. The ruling class controls industry, banks, the state machine. But is not omnipotent. It is constantly bemused by the unpredictability of its own economic system, blundering around in darkness, not knowing when next it will be hit by a recession or a Stock Exchange crash.</p>
<p>Much worse than such bumps in the night is the constant threat from the organised workers: the nightmare of 1972, when the lights really did go out and the British ruling class trembled in terror of the new union power. When workers organise and fight, the rulers have to stand and fight as well. Often they lose, and concede, and then there is real change. The pattern of politics, the state of the political atmosphere, has very little connection with elections, or which government is in power. All these things are determined far more clearly by the rise and fall of class confidence. So the political atmosphere for Labour turned out to be ‘better’ under the Tory Prime Minister Heath when the organised workers were strong and confident than under his successor, the Labour Prime Minister Wilson, when the workers lost their fighting spirit.</p>
<p>For a hundred years the eyes of most socialists have been fixed on parliament as the source of change. That parliament has a rotten record, not because it is a representative institution but because it isn’t. Those who continue to put their political faith and devote their political activity to the Labour Party are condemning the whole movement to still further evidence of the old adage that political impotence corrupts. The worst result of this is passivity. ‘Wait for the next election’ means ‘do nothing now.’ Don’t argue, don’t agitate, don’t go on strike – just wait until you can vote. That way the parliamentary illusionists disarm our side of its only real ability to change things.</p>
<p>There is an overwhelming case for building a socialist organisation not where there isn’t any power, but where there is: a fighting organisation which organises all the time where people are prepared to hit back against the exploitation and degradation all around them. The nightmare of that shop steward, turning in wretchedness and disillusionment to the fascists after three years of Labour government, need never return. But its only antidote is a credible socialist organisation which holds out to such people a real alternative and a real hope.</p>
<p>We used to say: ‘Vote Labour Without Illusions’, but in a time when most people don’t have many illusions left that doesn’t seem quite right. A better slogan for the next few months might be: ‘Kick out the Tories, and keep kicking.’</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Will Labour make a difference?
(November 1991)
From Socialist Review, No.147, November 1991, pp.8-11.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Electoral politics are set to dominate in the coming months. Labour’s fortunes once again seem to have revived since their dip in the summer. Here Paul Foot argues why a Labour vote is important but why we can expect very little from a Kinnock government
THE WHEEL of party politics is turning. The Tory government is in the most dreadful mess. Every bound for freedom seems to land its baffled ministers deeper in the mire. Each attempt since Thatcher’s sacking to rush to the polls – January, June, November – has been thwarted by a dramatic by-election reversal or a sudden shift to Labour in the opinion polls. At the Tory conference the only real cheers were for Lady Macbeth herself, gloating and whimpering at the distress she was inflicting on her former colleagues.
Labour had a good conference. Everyone agrees on that. Even the most reactionary political correspondents praised a ‘responsible’ speech from Neil Kinnock. Voices of dissent were effectively blurred by the architecture of the conference platform, specially designed to highlight the ‘new team,’ and the natural reluctance of delegates to rock this suddenly sturdy boat. Everywhere among socialists, there is a frisson of excitement that at last it looks as if the Tories are on the way out, and that for the first time in many peoples’ adult lives, the British people will elect a Labour government.
Almost everywhere, however, that excitement is muted by a feeling of unease at the price Labour has paid to achieve this winning position. This unease is not confined to the increasing band of socialists who have been flung out of the Labour Party; nor to the hundreds of Labour Party socialists who have signed the open letter denouncing Labour’s retreats. Almost any socialist must be worried by the grim, determined effort of the leadership to wipe every vestige of socialism from the party’s programme. A former commitment to get rid of nuclear weapons, which were ostensibly there to deter an enemy, has been replaced by an almost maniacal determination to keep those weapons when there is no enemy to deter. Former commitments to repeal all anti-trade union laws and to take back into public ownership the monopolies Thatcher privatised have been replaced by half-promises to restore some union privileges, and to buy 2 percent in British Telecom (provided the Tories don’t sell off another batch, as they plan to do).
AFTER RETREATS like this, isn’t it true, as one socialist said at a conference fringe meeting, ‘that there really isn’t any difference between Labour policies and Tory ones?’
The answer comes back at once: of course there is a difference. Just to take a handful at random from the Brighton conference: a pledge to introduce a Freedom of Information Act, a pledge to abolish the House of Lords, a pledge to wipe out the infamous NHS Hospital Trusts, a pledge to change the law which allows convictions on the basis of uncorroborated confessions. Nor is the difference only on specific policies. Anyone watching the two conferences can tell at once that one is pro-trade union, pro-poor, pro-reform while the other is reactionary to the core: anti-union, racialist, militaristic and sanctimonious.
The differences in the conferences reflect the fundamental difference between the two organisations. The Tory Party is financed by banks and big business. Its economic strategy is to protect profits and its ideology is based therefore on the most relentless legal and moral disciplines for those who do the work. The Labour Party came into being to represent trade unions in parliament. The unions still have the decisive vote on policy, on the National Executive and on finance. The difference between the parties is in the class base of their origins and their support. Employers vote Tory; workers vote Labour. Of course individuals from each section cross over to the other side, but the class differential between the parties is plain for all to see.
This is the background to the familiar cry which is raised at election times by principled socialists who are shocked at the betrayals of the Labour leadership. ‘There is no difference between them’ they cry. ‘Don’t Vote!’ The act of abstentionism, perhaps a little flurry of excitement as a ballot paper is spoiled or even burned, is held out as a grand gesture of principle.
To most of the ten million people who always vote Labour, though, it comes across as an act of betrayal. For of all the obvious differences between the two parties, the most obvious is that if the Tories win, reactionaries and employers throughout the land rejoice – and celebrate their rejoicing in more wretchedness for the dispossessed. If Labour wins, the workers feel more confident. So the abstainers cut themselves from any further argument or discussion. Their principles are reserved only for themselves.
SO SOCIALISTS, quite rightly, vote Labour. They do so out of instinctive solidarity with the party which draws its support from the dispossessed, and is founded on the organised working class. But what then? Does it follow from a Labour vote that society will change for the better? Surely, at the very least, a different political atmosphere will be created, a collective, trade union sort of atmosphere which will contrast very pleasantly with Thatcher’s grim decade?
The answer to those questions have very little to do with who supports the Labour Party, who votes for it and what its leaders say to conferences. The answers go to the very root of the illusion which dominates politics in all the Western democracies. The illusion is that governments get elected on policies, which they are then at liberty to put into practice. The party writes the programme. The people vote for it. The party then forms a government which turns those policies into the law of the land.
This was the grand idea of the ‘representative democracy’ which first stirred in England in the revolution of the 17th century, and was taken up with much more force at the time of the French Revolution. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man denounced all governments which were not chosen by the people. To the government of the day, which was chosen by a handful of brigands and courtiers, this was dangerous subversion, and Paine was sentenced to death for it. Similarly, when the Chartists in the late 1830s and 1840s demanded the vote as part of an organised working class movement of strikes and physical force, the rulers set their faces firmly against the proposal.
The idea of a representative democracy is essentially distasteful to a class of people who owe their wealth to the process of robbing the majority. Exploitation of the many by the few is the most hideously undemocratic process imaginable. How could the minority exploiters agree to a system where the majority can vote?
After the Chartists were beaten in open class warfare, the British ruling class, then the strongest and most cunning in the world, applied itself to this question. It was obviously impossible forever to resist the popular demand for the vote. Was it not possible, however, to concede the vote bit by bit, making sure that the concessions coincided with relative industrial peace, and above all making sure that as each new concession led to new governments, those governments could be constrained against any action which would threaten the wealth and power of the ruling class? So, for a hundred years (1867-1970) the vote was conceded piecemeal. Governments were elected of many different colours; but the real power, especially the economic power, stayed exactly where it was.
The result was that the representative system was deprived of the very essence of representation: the ability of the government to act in the interests of the people who voted for it. How was this done? By keeping tight in the clutches of the ruling class the areas in society where real decisions were made and acted upon. Industrialists who in a day could decide the real fate of thousands if not millions of workers were not affected by the elections. They remained in charge of their industries. So did the banks, which by a flick of the wrist could transfer billions of pounds and ‘bankrupt Britain.’ The media moguls were free after the election as well as before it to blabber on incessantly about the Red Menace. Judges and civil servants gloried in the fact that they were not elected. Army officers and police chiefs were rarely threatened by a change of government, even when they were openly hostile to that government. All these people came from the same class. They had real power, and were prepared to use it to protect their class against any elected government. Thus the parliaments (which were quickly set up all over the world as soon as the success of the British experiment became obvious to other rulers) became, in Lenin’s phrase, ‘mere talking shops.’
The British Labour Party is nearly a hundred years old. It has formed the government many times. The most consistent theme of all those governments has been their impotence to act on behalf of the people who elected them.
The most obvious example is the biggest issue of all: unemployment. Every Labour leader promised to end ‘the scourge of unemployment’, as Labour’s first Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald put it. Under MacDonald’s government, unemployment tripled in two years. Why was that? His ministers did not want to increase unemployment. But they had absolutely no control over it. It rose on the high tide of capitalist recession, whose vicious consequences were quite outside the control of governments.
Again, every Labour leader says he is a ‘peacemonger’, but a peacemonger Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee took the decision, without even consulting the Cabinet, to make the British atom bomb. Wars of all kinds – such as the US war in Vietnam – may be savaged by Labour in opposition, though recently, in the Falklands and the Gulf, even opposition Labour leaders have shown what good warmongers they can be. Without fail, the same wars are enthusiastically supported when the Labour peacemongers make it into Whitehall. Why? Not because they suddenly become vicious, but because the massed ranks of generals, civil servants, allies etc present the ministers with an option they can’t refuse.
SO MUCH for the big issues – the ones which determine the course of governments. Most people nowadays don’t imagine any more that Labour can or will change things drastically. They hope instead for minor reforms, like the ones mentioned earlier – and for a ‘better political atmosphere.’ But if anything Labour’s record over minor reforms is even worse. In 1966, for instance, as soon as it took office for the second time, with a huge majority in peace-time full employment conditions, a Labour government under Harold Wilson abolished all prescription charges on National Health Service medicines. The charges they abolished were very low – only 15p each – and the amount of money ‘lost’ to the Exchequer by their abolition was a trifling £7 million. In 1967, Labour devalued the pound and negotiated a huge loan with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF insisted on replacing charges for health prescriptions. The amount of money, compared to the mega-millions at stake, was peanuts. But the IMF negotiators were not satisfied until they had crushed this last, tiny little egalitarian reform. The whole record of the two most recent Labour governments is littered with similar defeats.
Back then to that optimistic argument that Labour will do some small things to make things better. What small things? Will the civil servants, so influential in the past, suddenly throw up their hands and allow a Freedom of Information Act to pry into their affairs? Will the forces able to smash the 1966 Labour government’s abolition of health charges bend over backwards to help Robin Cook restore National Health Service control over hospitals? Will the police and judges tolerate still more reforming legislation curbing their powers to convict? The evidence of the past suggests that in all these matters, and in many more besides, the new Labour government will be more at the mercy of the real, unelected rulers than any other Labour government since the war. For unlike the last two governments, which came to office in conditions of relative economic stability, this one will be confronted by the gravest international economic crisis since the 1930s. The circumstances in which Neil Kinnock takes office will be more like those faced by Ramsay Macdonald in 1929 than by Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 1970s.
WILL THE ATMOSPHERE be ‘better’? Of course it may be for a short time. The very transfer of office gives rise to a certain euphoria, especially among the new ministers. But the lesson of 1976-1979 is that as Labour turned from one desperate ruling class remedy to another, the political atmosphere began to stink. Fascists became respectable, and won a lot of votes. My own sharpest memory of my parliamentary candidature for the newly-formed SWP in 1977 was canvassing a shop steward in a bus factory. He told me he was fed up with the government and had thought of voting for me. Instead, however, he said, rather shamefacedly he was voting for the fascists. I got 300 votes, the fascists got over 2000. This was the measure of the ‘better atmosphere’ created by a Labour government which is driven to a prolonged attack on the people who vote Labour.
The grim truth is the next Labour government will make no real difference to the fearful chaos to which the Tories have reduced so much of working class Britain. It is a grim message – but it is hopeless only if, like our principled abstentionist, everything begins and ends at the ballot box. The ruling class controls industry, banks, the state machine. But is not omnipotent. It is constantly bemused by the unpredictability of its own economic system, blundering around in darkness, not knowing when next it will be hit by a recession or a Stock Exchange crash.
Much worse than such bumps in the night is the constant threat from the organised workers: the nightmare of 1972, when the lights really did go out and the British ruling class trembled in terror of the new union power. When workers organise and fight, the rulers have to stand and fight as well. Often they lose, and concede, and then there is real change. The pattern of politics, the state of the political atmosphere, has very little connection with elections, or which government is in power. All these things are determined far more clearly by the rise and fall of class confidence. So the political atmosphere for Labour turned out to be ‘better’ under the Tory Prime Minister Heath when the organised workers were strong and confident than under his successor, the Labour Prime Minister Wilson, when the workers lost their fighting spirit.
For a hundred years the eyes of most socialists have been fixed on parliament as the source of change. That parliament has a rotten record, not because it is a representative institution but because it isn’t. Those who continue to put their political faith and devote their political activity to the Labour Party are condemning the whole movement to still further evidence of the old adage that political impotence corrupts. The worst result of this is passivity. ‘Wait for the next election’ means ‘do nothing now.’ Don’t argue, don’t agitate, don’t go on strike – just wait until you can vote. That way the parliamentary illusionists disarm our side of its only real ability to change things.
There is an overwhelming case for building a socialist organisation not where there isn’t any power, but where there is: a fighting organisation which organises all the time where people are prepared to hit back against the exploitation and degradation all around them. The nightmare of that shop steward, turning in wretchedness and disillusionment to the fascists after three years of Labour government, need never return. But its only antidote is a credible socialist organisation which holds out to such people a real alternative and a real hope.
We used to say: ‘Vote Labour Without Illusions’, but in a time when most people don’t have many illusions left that doesn’t seem quite right. A better slogan for the next few months might be: ‘Kick out the Tories, and keep kicking.’
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The great society</h1>
<h3>(22 July 1989)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 22 July 1989.<br>
Reprinted in Paul Foot, <strong>Articles of Resistance</strong>, London 2000, pp. 271–273.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The main point about the building societies when they started out was that no one should make a profit from them. They were ‘mutual societies’ into which people who wanted to save money to buy a house or on the security of a house they already owned could do so in the certain knowledge that no one would rip them off.</p>
<p>The societies were patronised in the early years by better-off working class people (or worse-off middle class people, which is pretty well the same thing). They developed most strongly in northern cities like Halifax, Leeds, Bradford and Bingley, from which they took their names.</p>
<p>Most of their patrons subscribed to what could be called the ‘liberal tradition’ of the last 25 years of the last century, the sort of ‘decent, sturdy’ folk much patronised by bourgeois social historians. The societies had nothing to do with socialism. On the contrary, the money they collected was assiduously invested in capitalist industry and services.</p>
<p>As time went on, and more and more people built houses, so more and more people deposited their money in building societies. By the end of the 1960s, when the balance of surplus value from housing tipped away from rent (council housing) to interest (so called ‘home ownership’), the building societies’ vast funds were an important marker on the capitalist landscape.<br>
</p>
<h4>Hunger</h4>
<p class="fst">As the Thatcher administration released more and more of society to the unfettered control of capitalists, gentlemen at the top of society turned their eyes with ever increasing hunger on the building societies.</p>
<p>If only the outdated restrictions which made it impossible to profit from the societies were removed! What endless riches this opened up! It wasn’t just a question of owning shares. Nor was it even a matter of raising top peoples’ salaries, though that of course was a crucial factor. The real treasure would be the release of the societies’ funds from the strict legal controls which had existed when the societies were mutual.</p>
<p>It was, in short, a treasure hunt of unfathomable wonders for the ruling class. Slowly, surreptitiously, they started to woo the investors whose vote was required if the change was to be accomplished.</p>
<p>The investors were bribed. They were promised the vast sum of £100 in free shares which they could convert, if they were lucky, into about £116 if they sold them on the first day.</p>
<p>Sweetened by this bribe, the investors in the Abbey National voted by a huge majority in favour of the change. So now it is legal to make profits out of the Abbey National. All the old, decent, ‘sturdy’ restrictions have been swept away, and the free market reigns.</p>
<p>It is hard in the whole grim history of Thatcherism to imagine a more cynical or foul development than this one, which was of course enthusiastically applauded all over the newspapers, including the sturdy liberal ones.<br>
</p>
<h4>Hitches</h4>
<p>There were, however, some hitches in the flotation. Because they had to send out millions of bribes, the managers boobed. Tens of thousands of people got two lots of bribes. Many more thousands didn’t get their bribes on time, and so couldn’t cash them in on the stock exchange casino. Such people were convulsed by fury.</p>
<p>They felt they had ‘right’ to their little bribe. None of them even for a moment thought where their little bit ‘extra’ was coming from.</p>
<p>Did privatisation suddenly open up a pot of money that wasn’t there before? Or wouldn’t it come, as it always does, from a worse service, a cut in office workers’ pay, an attack on the unions and all the rest of the reality of Thatcher’s dream?</p>
<p>The managers were shocked by the stampede which their own bribes and bungling had caused. Sitting as they are on a fortune, they scoffed at the investors they had fooled as the latter rang up (burning out the switchboard), and shouted or swore their indignation.</p>
<p>Mr John Fry, general manager of the Abbey National, told the press haughtily:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘There is an enormous greed factor out there.’</p>
<p class="fst">I like the phrase ‘out there’. The ‘greed factor’ in the building societies is not ‘out there’ at all, but right ‘in there’, with Mr Fry and his shortly to be enriched colleagues.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The great society
(22 July 1989)
From Socialist Worker, 22 July 1989.
Reprinted in Paul Foot, Articles of Resistance, London 2000, pp. 271–273.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The main point about the building societies when they started out was that no one should make a profit from them. They were ‘mutual societies’ into which people who wanted to save money to buy a house or on the security of a house they already owned could do so in the certain knowledge that no one would rip them off.
The societies were patronised in the early years by better-off working class people (or worse-off middle class people, which is pretty well the same thing). They developed most strongly in northern cities like Halifax, Leeds, Bradford and Bingley, from which they took their names.
Most of their patrons subscribed to what could be called the ‘liberal tradition’ of the last 25 years of the last century, the sort of ‘decent, sturdy’ folk much patronised by bourgeois social historians. The societies had nothing to do with socialism. On the contrary, the money they collected was assiduously invested in capitalist industry and services.
As time went on, and more and more people built houses, so more and more people deposited their money in building societies. By the end of the 1960s, when the balance of surplus value from housing tipped away from rent (council housing) to interest (so called ‘home ownership’), the building societies’ vast funds were an important marker on the capitalist landscape.
Hunger
As the Thatcher administration released more and more of society to the unfettered control of capitalists, gentlemen at the top of society turned their eyes with ever increasing hunger on the building societies.
If only the outdated restrictions which made it impossible to profit from the societies were removed! What endless riches this opened up! It wasn’t just a question of owning shares. Nor was it even a matter of raising top peoples’ salaries, though that of course was a crucial factor. The real treasure would be the release of the societies’ funds from the strict legal controls which had existed when the societies were mutual.
It was, in short, a treasure hunt of unfathomable wonders for the ruling class. Slowly, surreptitiously, they started to woo the investors whose vote was required if the change was to be accomplished.
The investors were bribed. They were promised the vast sum of £100 in free shares which they could convert, if they were lucky, into about £116 if they sold them on the first day.
Sweetened by this bribe, the investors in the Abbey National voted by a huge majority in favour of the change. So now it is legal to make profits out of the Abbey National. All the old, decent, ‘sturdy’ restrictions have been swept away, and the free market reigns.
It is hard in the whole grim history of Thatcherism to imagine a more cynical or foul development than this one, which was of course enthusiastically applauded all over the newspapers, including the sturdy liberal ones.
Hitches
There were, however, some hitches in the flotation. Because they had to send out millions of bribes, the managers boobed. Tens of thousands of people got two lots of bribes. Many more thousands didn’t get their bribes on time, and so couldn’t cash them in on the stock exchange casino. Such people were convulsed by fury.
They felt they had ‘right’ to their little bribe. None of them even for a moment thought where their little bit ‘extra’ was coming from.
Did privatisation suddenly open up a pot of money that wasn’t there before? Or wouldn’t it come, as it always does, from a worse service, a cut in office workers’ pay, an attack on the unions and all the rest of the reality of Thatcher’s dream?
The managers were shocked by the stampede which their own bribes and bungling had caused. Sitting as they are on a fortune, they scoffed at the investors they had fooled as the latter rang up (burning out the switchboard), and shouted or swore their indignation.
Mr John Fry, general manager of the Abbey National, told the press haughtily:
‘There is an enormous greed factor out there.’
I like the phrase ‘out there’. The ‘greed factor’ in the building societies is not ‘out there’ at all, but right ‘in there’, with Mr Fry and his shortly to be enriched colleagues.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>Corruption</small><br>
Dirty Business</h1>
<h3>(March 2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.261, March 2002, p.16-17.<br>
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><em>With New Labour facing yet another cash for favours scandal it’s little wonder, says <strong>Paul Foot</strong>, that the public consider them even more sleazy than the Tories</em></p>
<p class="fst">Oh dear, oh dear. The old Tory governments of Thatcher and Major, New Labour assured us, were ‘drowned in sleaze’. Corruption was their undoing, and the constant pledges of Labour’s new, young, clean politicians, led by Blair, Brown and Mandelson, were going to clean up the whole mess. Now New Labour is back for a second term with an impregnable majority, and what is this? An opinion poll finds that the public consider New Labour even more sleazy than the Tories ever were! Blair and Co regularly mock and contradict that finding. The high peak of their argument appears to be that two Tories, Aitken and Archer, went to prison for corruption, while New Labour champions are all out of jail. The public are unimpressed.</p>
<p>Aitken and Archer went to prison not for corruption, but for perjury, to clear their name of allegations that were perfectly true. Long after he was known to be a corrupt liar, Archer was favoured and ennobled by Tory prime ministers and befriended by Labour leaders. Aitken was entirely cleared of corruption in his arms dealing by a unanimous vote of an all-party House of Commons select committee. On the other hand, almost the first act of the New Labour government was to erase from its programme one of the few outright commitments in it – to ban tobacco advertising. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One motor racing billionaire, objected to the ban for the very good reason that by far the biggest beneficiary of tobacco advertising was Formula One motor racing. Ecclestone was a Tory. Why should such a brash tycoon have any influence on a Labour government? Answer – he had given £1 million to the Labour Party. A meeting was held in Downing Street and the outcome was obvious. It was plainly grotesque to continue with a policy that would damage so bountiful a benefactor. The policy was ‘revised’. Tobacco advertising on Formula One cars was permitted. Then someone accused the prime minister of corruption, so the Labour Party gave the money back to the millionaire. Its policy had changed for nothing.</p>
<p>Now here come another trio of millionaires, called Hinduja. They were worried about their security because they were wanted in their home country, India, on corruption charges connected with the sale to the Indian government of guns from the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors. They gave extravagant parties in London, at which a perennial honoured guest was Peter Mandelson. Mandelson was worried about the Dome, a ludicrous white elephant on which his and New Labour’s reputation depended. The Dome was running out of money. The Hindujas sprang forward with another £1 million. Almost at once they got the precious British passports they wanted. Mandelson rang the Home Office to ensure their applications were treated with proper respect – and, would you believe it, they were.<br>
</p>
<h4>Mandelson forced to resign</h4>
<p class="fst">Meanwhile Mandelson himself was in a spot of bother. He had borrowed nearly half a million pounds from his cabinet colleague, Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson, in order to buy himself a luxury home in Notting Hill. He didn’t declare the loan, and when it was finally exposed Mandelson resigned. Quick as a flash, he was back in the cabinet, in good time for him to ring the Home Office about the Hindujas, and when that phone call was exposed he was sacked again. Now he is getting ready for a ‘comeback’.</p>
<p>This is more than can be said for Geoffrey Robinson, Blair’s first Paymaster General, who has now been found to have been a beneficiary of the generous crook Robert Maxwell – to the tune of £200,000, no less, the cheque which Robinson just cannot find. Robinson’s connections with the accountants Arthur Andersen, which raised funds for New Labour, have been exposed in a recent book by Tom Bower, just in time for the Enron scandal. Enron went bust last year in a spectacular bankruptcy caused by various imaginative accounting devices dreamed up by Andersen. From 1994 to 1996 Andersen’s sister company employed Patricia Hewitt, a rising star in New Labour, and cooperated generously with New Labour before and after the 1997 election. Its main aim in life – to remove the ban on it imposed by the former Tory government because of its dishonesty over the DeLorean scandal – was achieved within seven months of New Labour coming to office.</p>
<p>Now Blair is in trouble for writing a letter to the prime minister of Romania begging him to hand over his privatised steel industry to yet another Indian millionaire. This one gave £125,000 to the Labour Party, though Blair insists he never even knew it. So straight is he that he doesn’t even know who gives money to Labour – until he reads it in the <strong>Sunday Telegraph</strong> or gets denounced for it in the Commons by Iain Duncan Smith.</p>
<p>This lot are drowning in sleaze, and their excuses are pathetic. It is easy to write off each allegation and each disaster as a sign of personal weakness or greed. The reason, however, is much less delicate. Corruption is not a by – product of capitalism-it is an integral part of it. A system that divides the people of the world into rich and poor, and then hands over all political, economic and military power to the rich, depends constantly on the ability of the rich to buy influence and power.</p>
<p>In his 1987 book <strong>Corruption in British Politics 1895-1930</strong>, G.R. Searle notices how the natural tendency to corruption of the British political system in the 19th century, under Liberals and Tories, began to wane after 1918 with the advent of the labour movement and universal suffrage. This was because the power and thrust of Labour came not from above, from the big corporations or mega-rich individuals, but from below, from individuals hostile to great wealth, and from trade unions. The more democratic the trade unions, the less vulnerable they were to corruption. As long as Labour relied for its finance on its own constituent organisations, notably the unions, corruption was held at bay. It was the removal of that ballast by Blair, Mandelson and Co in the New Labour offensive of the 1990s that floated Labour so dramatically into the same sort of corruption that had swamped the Tories – and even worse. The challenge thrown out to British labour by the great wave of sleaze that now swamps its leaders is not to seek to wriggle out of the allegations by lies and prevarication, but to return to the democratic principles and organisations that brought the party into being in the first place, to public ownership and public accountability. Capitalism will always be corrupt, but socialism and its modern champions need not be.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Corruption
Dirty Business
(March 2002)
From Socialist Review, No.261, March 2002, p.16-17.
Copyright © 2002 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
With New Labour facing yet another cash for favours scandal it’s little wonder, says Paul Foot, that the public consider them even more sleazy than the Tories
Oh dear, oh dear. The old Tory governments of Thatcher and Major, New Labour assured us, were ‘drowned in sleaze’. Corruption was their undoing, and the constant pledges of Labour’s new, young, clean politicians, led by Blair, Brown and Mandelson, were going to clean up the whole mess. Now New Labour is back for a second term with an impregnable majority, and what is this? An opinion poll finds that the public consider New Labour even more sleazy than the Tories ever were! Blair and Co regularly mock and contradict that finding. The high peak of their argument appears to be that two Tories, Aitken and Archer, went to prison for corruption, while New Labour champions are all out of jail. The public are unimpressed.
Aitken and Archer went to prison not for corruption, but for perjury, to clear their name of allegations that were perfectly true. Long after he was known to be a corrupt liar, Archer was favoured and ennobled by Tory prime ministers and befriended by Labour leaders. Aitken was entirely cleared of corruption in his arms dealing by a unanimous vote of an all-party House of Commons select committee. On the other hand, almost the first act of the New Labour government was to erase from its programme one of the few outright commitments in it – to ban tobacco advertising. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One motor racing billionaire, objected to the ban for the very good reason that by far the biggest beneficiary of tobacco advertising was Formula One motor racing. Ecclestone was a Tory. Why should such a brash tycoon have any influence on a Labour government? Answer – he had given £1 million to the Labour Party. A meeting was held in Downing Street and the outcome was obvious. It was plainly grotesque to continue with a policy that would damage so bountiful a benefactor. The policy was ‘revised’. Tobacco advertising on Formula One cars was permitted. Then someone accused the prime minister of corruption, so the Labour Party gave the money back to the millionaire. Its policy had changed for nothing.
Now here come another trio of millionaires, called Hinduja. They were worried about their security because they were wanted in their home country, India, on corruption charges connected with the sale to the Indian government of guns from the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors. They gave extravagant parties in London, at which a perennial honoured guest was Peter Mandelson. Mandelson was worried about the Dome, a ludicrous white elephant on which his and New Labour’s reputation depended. The Dome was running out of money. The Hindujas sprang forward with another £1 million. Almost at once they got the precious British passports they wanted. Mandelson rang the Home Office to ensure their applications were treated with proper respect – and, would you believe it, they were.
Mandelson forced to resign
Meanwhile Mandelson himself was in a spot of bother. He had borrowed nearly half a million pounds from his cabinet colleague, Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson, in order to buy himself a luxury home in Notting Hill. He didn’t declare the loan, and when it was finally exposed Mandelson resigned. Quick as a flash, he was back in the cabinet, in good time for him to ring the Home Office about the Hindujas, and when that phone call was exposed he was sacked again. Now he is getting ready for a ‘comeback’.
This is more than can be said for Geoffrey Robinson, Blair’s first Paymaster General, who has now been found to have been a beneficiary of the generous crook Robert Maxwell – to the tune of £200,000, no less, the cheque which Robinson just cannot find. Robinson’s connections with the accountants Arthur Andersen, which raised funds for New Labour, have been exposed in a recent book by Tom Bower, just in time for the Enron scandal. Enron went bust last year in a spectacular bankruptcy caused by various imaginative accounting devices dreamed up by Andersen. From 1994 to 1996 Andersen’s sister company employed Patricia Hewitt, a rising star in New Labour, and cooperated generously with New Labour before and after the 1997 election. Its main aim in life – to remove the ban on it imposed by the former Tory government because of its dishonesty over the DeLorean scandal – was achieved within seven months of New Labour coming to office.
Now Blair is in trouble for writing a letter to the prime minister of Romania begging him to hand over his privatised steel industry to yet another Indian millionaire. This one gave £125,000 to the Labour Party, though Blair insists he never even knew it. So straight is he that he doesn’t even know who gives money to Labour – until he reads it in the Sunday Telegraph or gets denounced for it in the Commons by Iain Duncan Smith.
This lot are drowning in sleaze, and their excuses are pathetic. It is easy to write off each allegation and each disaster as a sign of personal weakness or greed. The reason, however, is much less delicate. Corruption is not a by – product of capitalism-it is an integral part of it. A system that divides the people of the world into rich and poor, and then hands over all political, economic and military power to the rich, depends constantly on the ability of the rich to buy influence and power.
In his 1987 book Corruption in British Politics 1895-1930, G.R. Searle notices how the natural tendency to corruption of the British political system in the 19th century, under Liberals and Tories, began to wane after 1918 with the advent of the labour movement and universal suffrage. This was because the power and thrust of Labour came not from above, from the big corporations or mega-rich individuals, but from below, from individuals hostile to great wealth, and from trade unions. The more democratic the trade unions, the less vulnerable they were to corruption. As long as Labour relied for its finance on its own constituent organisations, notably the unions, corruption was held at bay. It was the removal of that ballast by Blair, Mandelson and Co in the New Labour offensive of the 1990s that floated Labour so dramatically into the same sort of corruption that had swamped the Tories – and even worse. The challenge thrown out to British labour by the great wave of sleaze that now swamps its leaders is not to seek to wriggle out of the allegations by lies and prevarication, but to return to the democratic principles and organisations that brought the party into being in the first place, to public ownership and public accountability. Capitalism will always be corrupt, but socialism and its modern champions need not be.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h4>Life Under Labour 1</h4>
<h1>Law and Order</h1>
<h3>(April-May 1970)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Life Under Labour</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj043" target="new">No.43</a>, April-May 1970, pp.13-14.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">As the general election approaches the fundamental dilemma of the Conservative Party intensifies: how, within the framework of a fully-employed economy, to make Conservative propaganda against a Government which has consistently carried out Conservative policies with a great deal more effect than the Conservative Party could have done. To ‘knock the unions’ is as unattractive to a future Tory Minister of Labour as it is inconsistent with 13 years’ Conservative co-operation with union leaders and six years’ Conservative opposition to Labour’s incomes policy on grounds of the need for ‘free collective bargaining’. To raise the question of increased immigration control is to remind the electorate that Labour has operated immigration control far more stringently than did the Conservatives, and is anyway to pave the way for further progress for Enoch Powell. On all other major areas of home and foreign policy the two Front Benches are agreed.</p>
<p>‘Law and Order’ – the unoriginal slogan which emerged from the Shadow Cabinet meeting at Selsden Park in January was devised primarily to solve this propaganda problem. It enabled men like Quintin Hogg, who had demonstrated scrupulous ‘responsibility’ on racial matters, to ring his bells once more and announce that ‘Mr Wilson is presiding over the biggest crime wave this century’. The slogan produced a quiver of joy in every Conservative committee room. If the Tories could not satisfy their supporters on getting rid of the blacks or cracking down on the reds, they would at least make sure that ‘suitable punishment’ was meted out to ‘thugs and agitators’.</p>
<p>The new Tory slogans, of course, had nothing to do with the facts. An article in the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> (March 1) showed that in England and Wales, although the numbers of ‘indictable crimes known to the police’ is rising year by year, the percentage annual increase is a great deal lower now than it was in the years from 1957 to 1964. In 1967, for instance, the percentage increase was less than 1 per cent and in the two years since it has hovered at 6 per cent (compared with 13 per cent in 1957; nearly 15 per cent in 1958; 9.5 per cent in 1960; 8 per cent in 1961; 10 per cent in 1962). The figures themselves are also inaccurate as a gauge of the crime rate. Crimes known to the police tend to rise and fall according to the efficiency of police records, and the crash programme of merger and computerisation which has been carried out in the police force during the years of Labour Government has of itself given a boost to the reporting of crimes.</p>
<p>An even more striking example of the fantasy of the law and order propaganda comes from Scotland. Fantastic frenzy was whipped up in the Scottish newspapers, notably the Scottish <strong>Daily Express</strong> and the <strong>Sunday Post</strong>, over the murder in January of two policemen by a former policeman turned bank robber. When the murderer was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the newspapers frothed with fury at the inadequacy of the sentence. Leading Conservative spokesmen in Glasgow, notably Baillie James Anderson, convenor of the city’s police committee, indicated that without stiffer sentences, capital punishment, and the arming of the police, the city could not cope with its crime wave.</p>
<p>The wave, however, is ebbing fast. In 1969 all crime in Glasgow dropped by 4.3 per cent (it had dropped by 4.8 per cent in 1968). Violent crime dropped by 10 per cent. The figures for all Scotland showed an overall decrease of some 5 per cent. These figures were tucked away on inside pages while the frenzied campaign for stiffer sentences was continued.</p>
<p>The statistical absurdities of the ‘law and order’ propaganda are, however, only part of a much wider authoritarian fallacy: that there is a direct relationship between deterrence and crime, and that the stricter the sentences the less the ‘unruly minority’ will break society’s ‘rules’.</p>
<p>It is in underwriting this fallacy that the Labour Government has helped to pave the way for the Tories’ law and order campaign. Labour’s Criminal Justice Act, steered through Parliament by the liberal, reforming Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, contains a host of provisions which strengthen the power of the police and the courts. Police powers of search, for instance, are greatly increased under the Act. Majority verdicts considerably improve the . chances of conviction (Eamonn Smullen, former Federation steward, at the Shell Mex strike in 1956 and Gerry Docherty were convicted in Leeds in February on very dubious evidence of conspiring to obtain arms for Southern Ireland – by a 10 to 2 jury verdict). Most important of all, people accused of assault, or of assaulting a policeman can no longer opt for trial by jury, but must be tried by a magistrate. Since magistrates will always believe a policeman, this means certain conviction for assault – perhaps the most common of the variety of charges brought against demonstrators.</p>
<p>Labour’s policy in the prisons has been even worse. All the Fabian pamphlets about the necessity of penal reform were torn up as soon as Lord Mountbatten wrote his report on prison security following the rash of highly-publicised prison escapes in 1965. Mountbatten’s recommendations were followed to the letter. Many of the smaller privileges and comforts so much looked forward to in prisons were instantly abolished. Instead were introduced the horrors of the maximum security wings and increased pounding by warders. The Parole Board, presided over by the ubiquitous Lord Hunt (who has failed to solve so many of Labour’s problems from Biafra to the B Specials) is a fraud and a farce. Under Labour, even more than previously, the prisons have been regarded as institutions for turning recidivists into vegetables and vice versa.</p>
<p>The welcome reform abolishing capital punishment has been the exception, not the rule. Everywhere else the Labour Government has blandly accepted one of the first rules of capitalist society that where people offend against the laws of property, the solution is to punish them into submission. As a result, the police have been encouraged by the granting of more arbitrary powers to behave in an increasingly arbitrary way. The full force of their venom has been directed, not so much against hardened criminals as against people whom they regard as ideologically unsound: blacks in Brixton; long-hairs in Folkestone; hippies in Piccadilly; the underground Press; and, of course, demonstrators. Already in 1970 a whole string of police prosecutions have been launched against these ‘elements’, almost all of them resulting in severe prison sentences. And with Labour attempting to drown Tory cries for Law and Order the situation is likely to deteriorate further.</p>
<p>Persecution in the courts, as trade unionists, demonstrators and Leftish editors have discovered to their cost in recent months in Italy and in France, is one of the most difficult forms of persecution to combat. It isolates militants from the people they represent and wraps the process in a shroud of legal mumbo jumbo. The liberal Press, so full of ‘the rights of the individual’ and ‘equality before the law’ in the safe years of the last two decades, has scuttled for safer fields. It is up to the socialist organisations to mobilise the fight against the increasing authoritarianism in the police and in the courts, whether encouraged by Tories or Labour.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Life Under Labour 1
Law and Order
(April-May 1970)
From Life Under Labour, International Socialism (1st series), No.43, April-May 1970, pp.13-14.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
As the general election approaches the fundamental dilemma of the Conservative Party intensifies: how, within the framework of a fully-employed economy, to make Conservative propaganda against a Government which has consistently carried out Conservative policies with a great deal more effect than the Conservative Party could have done. To ‘knock the unions’ is as unattractive to a future Tory Minister of Labour as it is inconsistent with 13 years’ Conservative co-operation with union leaders and six years’ Conservative opposition to Labour’s incomes policy on grounds of the need for ‘free collective bargaining’. To raise the question of increased immigration control is to remind the electorate that Labour has operated immigration control far more stringently than did the Conservatives, and is anyway to pave the way for further progress for Enoch Powell. On all other major areas of home and foreign policy the two Front Benches are agreed.
‘Law and Order’ – the unoriginal slogan which emerged from the Shadow Cabinet meeting at Selsden Park in January was devised primarily to solve this propaganda problem. It enabled men like Quintin Hogg, who had demonstrated scrupulous ‘responsibility’ on racial matters, to ring his bells once more and announce that ‘Mr Wilson is presiding over the biggest crime wave this century’. The slogan produced a quiver of joy in every Conservative committee room. If the Tories could not satisfy their supporters on getting rid of the blacks or cracking down on the reds, they would at least make sure that ‘suitable punishment’ was meted out to ‘thugs and agitators’.
The new Tory slogans, of course, had nothing to do with the facts. An article in the Sunday Times (March 1) showed that in England and Wales, although the numbers of ‘indictable crimes known to the police’ is rising year by year, the percentage annual increase is a great deal lower now than it was in the years from 1957 to 1964. In 1967, for instance, the percentage increase was less than 1 per cent and in the two years since it has hovered at 6 per cent (compared with 13 per cent in 1957; nearly 15 per cent in 1958; 9.5 per cent in 1960; 8 per cent in 1961; 10 per cent in 1962). The figures themselves are also inaccurate as a gauge of the crime rate. Crimes known to the police tend to rise and fall according to the efficiency of police records, and the crash programme of merger and computerisation which has been carried out in the police force during the years of Labour Government has of itself given a boost to the reporting of crimes.
An even more striking example of the fantasy of the law and order propaganda comes from Scotland. Fantastic frenzy was whipped up in the Scottish newspapers, notably the Scottish Daily Express and the Sunday Post, over the murder in January of two policemen by a former policeman turned bank robber. When the murderer was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the newspapers frothed with fury at the inadequacy of the sentence. Leading Conservative spokesmen in Glasgow, notably Baillie James Anderson, convenor of the city’s police committee, indicated that without stiffer sentences, capital punishment, and the arming of the police, the city could not cope with its crime wave.
The wave, however, is ebbing fast. In 1969 all crime in Glasgow dropped by 4.3 per cent (it had dropped by 4.8 per cent in 1968). Violent crime dropped by 10 per cent. The figures for all Scotland showed an overall decrease of some 5 per cent. These figures were tucked away on inside pages while the frenzied campaign for stiffer sentences was continued.
The statistical absurdities of the ‘law and order’ propaganda are, however, only part of a much wider authoritarian fallacy: that there is a direct relationship between deterrence and crime, and that the stricter the sentences the less the ‘unruly minority’ will break society’s ‘rules’.
It is in underwriting this fallacy that the Labour Government has helped to pave the way for the Tories’ law and order campaign. Labour’s Criminal Justice Act, steered through Parliament by the liberal, reforming Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, contains a host of provisions which strengthen the power of the police and the courts. Police powers of search, for instance, are greatly increased under the Act. Majority verdicts considerably improve the . chances of conviction (Eamonn Smullen, former Federation steward, at the Shell Mex strike in 1956 and Gerry Docherty were convicted in Leeds in February on very dubious evidence of conspiring to obtain arms for Southern Ireland – by a 10 to 2 jury verdict). Most important of all, people accused of assault, or of assaulting a policeman can no longer opt for trial by jury, but must be tried by a magistrate. Since magistrates will always believe a policeman, this means certain conviction for assault – perhaps the most common of the variety of charges brought against demonstrators.
Labour’s policy in the prisons has been even worse. All the Fabian pamphlets about the necessity of penal reform were torn up as soon as Lord Mountbatten wrote his report on prison security following the rash of highly-publicised prison escapes in 1965. Mountbatten’s recommendations were followed to the letter. Many of the smaller privileges and comforts so much looked forward to in prisons were instantly abolished. Instead were introduced the horrors of the maximum security wings and increased pounding by warders. The Parole Board, presided over by the ubiquitous Lord Hunt (who has failed to solve so many of Labour’s problems from Biafra to the B Specials) is a fraud and a farce. Under Labour, even more than previously, the prisons have been regarded as institutions for turning recidivists into vegetables and vice versa.
The welcome reform abolishing capital punishment has been the exception, not the rule. Everywhere else the Labour Government has blandly accepted one of the first rules of capitalist society that where people offend against the laws of property, the solution is to punish them into submission. As a result, the police have been encouraged by the granting of more arbitrary powers to behave in an increasingly arbitrary way. The full force of their venom has been directed, not so much against hardened criminals as against people whom they regard as ideologically unsound: blacks in Brixton; long-hairs in Folkestone; hippies in Piccadilly; the underground Press; and, of course, demonstrators. Already in 1970 a whole string of police prosecutions have been launched against these ‘elements’, almost all of them resulting in severe prison sentences. And with Labour attempting to drown Tory cries for Law and Order the situation is likely to deteriorate further.
Persecution in the courts, as trade unionists, demonstrators and Leftish editors have discovered to their cost in recent months in Italy and in France, is one of the most difficult forms of persecution to combat. It isolates militants from the people they represent and wraps the process in a shroud of legal mumbo jumbo. The liberal Press, so full of ‘the rights of the individual’ and ‘equality before the law’ in the safe years of the last two decades, has scuttled for safer fields. It is up to the socialist organisations to mobilise the fight against the increasing authoritarianism in the police and in the courts, whether encouraged by Tories or Labour.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>Great Take-Over Plot</h1>
<h4>Reporter Paul Foot Becomes an ‘Interested Shareholder’<br>
to Crack <i>News of the World</i> Revolution ...</h4>
<h3>(16 November 1968)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/sw-gb/1968/index.html#n0097" target="new">No. 97</a>, 16 November 1968, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Two days ago, I set out to discover the faceless ones who threaten the British Press. I skulked for hours in the shady bars of Basle and Threadneedle Street, posing all the while as an ‘interested shareholder’,anxious to do business.</p>
<p>Ten minutes in the City of London was enough for me to uncover the first, grim threads of the <b>NEWS OF THE WORLD</b> REVOLUTION, which threatens the calm of British society.<br>
</p>
<h4>Ten days that shook <i>News of the World</i></h4>
<p class="fst"><b>I CAN NOW REVEAL ...</b></p>
<p class="fst">This Revolution is not just a myth or a pipe-dream concocted by harmless entrepreneurs. It is an extremist-indoctrinated FACT.</p>
<p>The men behind the plot are not out for fun or a few bob (as many shareholders are) but are high-powered fanatics, interested only in achieving financial power through the devious mechanism of the stock market.<br>
</p>
<h4>Rubbish</h4>
<p class="fst">The story starts in a plush hotel in <b>Geneva</b> where Mr. Derek Jackson meets Mr. Robert Maxwell, Labour MP for Buckingham. Mr. Jackson owns 25 per cent of the voting shares in the News of the World. And for all the world, this looked to the observer like a harmless meeting between two jovial businessmen.</p>
<p>The facts, as I discovered from behind my dark-glasses, is different. Despite his sweet-sounding name, Robert Maxwell is no Britisher.</p>
<p><i>He was born in Czechoslovakia, and, since his arrival in this country, he has committed himself ruthlessly to build up a huge publishing Empire.</i></p>
<p><i>His meeting with the gullible Jackson marks his first big bid for the <b>News of the World</b>.</i></p>
<p>Maxwell, oozing bonhomie, and continuing to use his false name, bamboozled Jackson into selling out his holding. The stage was set for his dramatic bid, which shook the world.</p>
<p>Working closely with his friend Mr. Kenneth Keith, executive director of the merchant bank, Hill Samuel, Maxwell launched his 35/- bid on a surprised and frightened stock market.<br>
</p>
<h4>Gibberish</h4>
<p class="fst">But he had not bargained for another gang of power-maniacs, lurking under the umbrella of the Carr family, owners of <b>NoW</b>. Maxwell’s bid gave them a chance to launch a counter-offensive.</p>
<p>The story then switches to another foreign country – this time <b>Australia</b>, where Press King Robin Murdoch of News Ltd. picked up his morning paper over breakfast of bacon and eggs and jumped almost immediately to the telephone. In a flash, he had fixed up a partnership with the sinister Carrs to fight Maxwell on his own ground.</p>
<p>In a moment, another party was on the scene – Mr. Jocelyn Hambro, who, for all his respectable connections, still bears a name, which, to say the least of it, is not noticeably British.</p>
<p><i>The Carrs and Hambro worked out an ingenious scheme. They met me in a back-street lounge near the Mansion House after I had rung Hambro with the false information that I owned a million voting shares in the <b>News of the World</b>.</i></p>
<p class="quoteb">‘You see,’ one of the Carrs muttered to me, after I had disguised myself in a pinstripe suit and bowler, ‘we plan to buy out the big shareholders at a massive) price in secret, while we tell all the little shareholders to sit tight and wait. Then we can spring a fast one on Koch (the City underworld always refer to Maxwell by his proper name) at the minimum possible price.’<br>
</p>
<h4>Nonsense</h4>
<p class="fst">In hundreds of similar meetings all over the City, Hambro’s men worked similar shady deals. Before long, they had a majority of voting shares and the wily Czech had been stymied.</p>
<p>A revolution planned in Switzerland had been thwarted by a similar effort from Sydney.</p>
<p>For the moment an uneasy peace hangs over the presses. The two factions lie deadlocked by their own fanatical conspiracies.</p>
<p>Yet the decent citizens of Britain, the folk who depend on their <b>News of the World</b> with their Sunday breakfasts, have no cause for complacency.</p>
<p><i>As long as Koch-Maxwell, Carr, Murdoch, Jackson, Hambro, Keith and their ilk are on the loose, no one can sleep easy in their beds.</i></p>
<p>As one of the Hambro henchmen told me:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><i>‘We will strike again.’</i></p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
Great Take-Over Plot
Reporter Paul Foot Becomes an ‘Interested Shareholder’
to Crack News of the World Revolution ...
(16 November 1968)
From Socialist Worker, No. 97, 16 November 1968, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Two days ago, I set out to discover the faceless ones who threaten the British Press. I skulked for hours in the shady bars of Basle and Threadneedle Street, posing all the while as an ‘interested shareholder’,anxious to do business.
Ten minutes in the City of London was enough for me to uncover the first, grim threads of the NEWS OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION, which threatens the calm of British society.
Ten days that shook News of the World
I CAN NOW REVEAL ...
This Revolution is not just a myth or a pipe-dream concocted by harmless entrepreneurs. It is an extremist-indoctrinated FACT.
The men behind the plot are not out for fun or a few bob (as many shareholders are) but are high-powered fanatics, interested only in achieving financial power through the devious mechanism of the stock market.
Rubbish
The story starts in a plush hotel in Geneva where Mr. Derek Jackson meets Mr. Robert Maxwell, Labour MP for Buckingham. Mr. Jackson owns 25 per cent of the voting shares in the News of the World. And for all the world, this looked to the observer like a harmless meeting between two jovial businessmen.
The facts, as I discovered from behind my dark-glasses, is different. Despite his sweet-sounding name, Robert Maxwell is no Britisher.
He was born in Czechoslovakia, and, since his arrival in this country, he has committed himself ruthlessly to build up a huge publishing Empire.
His meeting with the gullible Jackson marks his first big bid for the News of the World.
Maxwell, oozing bonhomie, and continuing to use his false name, bamboozled Jackson into selling out his holding. The stage was set for his dramatic bid, which shook the world.
Working closely with his friend Mr. Kenneth Keith, executive director of the merchant bank, Hill Samuel, Maxwell launched his 35/- bid on a surprised and frightened stock market.
Gibberish
But he had not bargained for another gang of power-maniacs, lurking under the umbrella of the Carr family, owners of NoW. Maxwell’s bid gave them a chance to launch a counter-offensive.
The story then switches to another foreign country – this time Australia, where Press King Robin Murdoch of News Ltd. picked up his morning paper over breakfast of bacon and eggs and jumped almost immediately to the telephone. In a flash, he had fixed up a partnership with the sinister Carrs to fight Maxwell on his own ground.
In a moment, another party was on the scene – Mr. Jocelyn Hambro, who, for all his respectable connections, still bears a name, which, to say the least of it, is not noticeably British.
The Carrs and Hambro worked out an ingenious scheme. They met me in a back-street lounge near the Mansion House after I had rung Hambro with the false information that I owned a million voting shares in the News of the World.
‘You see,’ one of the Carrs muttered to me, after I had disguised myself in a pinstripe suit and bowler, ‘we plan to buy out the big shareholders at a massive) price in secret, while we tell all the little shareholders to sit tight and wait. Then we can spring a fast one on Koch (the City underworld always refer to Maxwell by his proper name) at the minimum possible price.’
Nonsense
In hundreds of similar meetings all over the City, Hambro’s men worked similar shady deals. Before long, they had a majority of voting shares and the wily Czech had been stymied.
A revolution planned in Switzerland had been thwarted by a similar effort from Sydney.
For the moment an uneasy peace hangs over the presses. The two factions lie deadlocked by their own fanatical conspiracies.
Yet the decent citizens of Britain, the folk who depend on their News of the World with their Sunday breakfasts, have no cause for complacency.
As long as Koch-Maxwell, Carr, Murdoch, Jackson, Hambro, Keith and their ilk are on the loose, no one can sleep easy in their beds.
As one of the Hambro henchmen told me:
‘We will strike again.’
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>The Lessing legend</h1>
<h3>(February 1998</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, No.216, February 1998, pp.26-27.<br>
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.<br>
Downloaded with thanks from the <a href="http://www.lpi.org.uk/srindex.htm" target="new">Socialist Review Archive</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Walking In The Shade, Volume two of my autobiography 1949-1962</strong><br>
by Doris Lessing (Harper Collins £20)</p>
<p class="fst">When they are dead, heroes and heroines cannot let you down. When they are contemporary, still writing and thinking, they can cause the most frightful disillusionment. I still remember my indignation when, more than 20 years ago, I read the last chapter of E.P. Thompson’s book on the Black Acts of the 18th century, <strong>Whigs and Hunters</strong>. The chapter, which subscribed to the idea of an eternal and consistent rule of law independent of economic circumstances, seemed to me an appalling betrayal of the Marxist clarity of Thompson’s great history book, <strong>The Making of the English Working Class</strong>.</p>
<p>I recall something very similar much later when I started, but could not finish, Doris Lessing’s novel <strong>The Good Terrorist</strong>, published at the height of Thatcherism during the Great Miners’ Strike. This novel seemed to me nothing more nor less than reactionary propaganda. How could such a ferocious assault on left wing commitment have been mounted by such a committed left winger? Doris Lessing’s early Martha Quest novels are full of life and energy and a passion to change the world. She became a Communist in the most unlikely circumstances – in Rhodesia during the war – and, against all the odds, lived her life according to her principles.</p>
<p><strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>, which was started in the late 1950s and published in 1962, is one of the great novels of our time. Its central theme is the condescension of women, and the relationship of that condescension to the subordination of the majority of the human race. <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> is often described as a ‘women’s book’ and so of course it is. But it is a man’s book too. The novel hardly ever pontificates, but more than anything else I have ever read it grapples with a secular sexual morality which makes it compulsive and compulsory reading for men. After taking part in a debate with Islamicists not long ago at a London college, I was rebuked by one of the women in the audience (they sat separately from the men, and wore veils). ‘If there is no God,’ she asked, ‘how would we know what was right and wrong?’ I was tempted to reply (but didn’t) that for a bit of an answer to this impossible question, <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> is a million times better than any religious work.</p>
<p>The novel throbs with a passion for liberation: liberation from masculine patronising, from puritanical commandments and enforced stereotypical nuclear families, from baptisms and weddings and all other superstitious ceremonial. Her demand for women’s liberation had nothing of the feminine exclusivity of the separatist women’s liberationists of the 1980s. When she wrote <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> Doris Lessing’s socialist commitment, however damaged by the behaviour of male socialists or by Stalinism, was still strong. The point in exposing the absurd ways in which men, including socialist men, treated women was to move forward to a new society in which both sexes could freely take part.</p>
<p>The sections in the book entitled the <em>Red Notebook</em> cover the central character’s membership of and disillusionment with the Communist Party before and after the 20th Congress of 1956 in which Nikita Khruschev denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin, his predecessor as general secretary of the Russian Communist Party.</p>
<p>The Congress led to mass defection from Communist Parties all over the world. Among those who left the British CP were Edward Thompson and Doris Lessing who, at 37, was in her prime. Two passages from <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> stand out in my memory. The first is a report by a member of a British teachers’ delegation to Russia in the early 1950s when Stalin was still alive. At the end of his stay, the teacher reports, he was summoned to meet the general secretary, a plain simple man in a plain simple office smoking a pipe, asking plain simple questions about the state of affairs in Britain, and nodding wisely as the earnest teacher spilled out his plain simple opinions. The story was the most ludicrous fantasy. But the fantasy was shared, <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> argues, by almost every such delegate in those times. When I read the passage I remembered the great Clydeside revolutionary Harry McShane telling me in some embarrassment about his visit to Russia as part of a delegation in 1931. ‘I sat listening to the trams outside, and revelling in the fact that these were our trams, the people’s trams.’ It took Harry more than 20 years to discover that they had been ‘just trams after all, trams just like everywhere else’.</p>
<p>The point about the fantasy was not simply that iconoclastic socialists demeaned themselves by dreaming up such fantasy and pretending it was true. There was another side to it – the great yearning among socialists for a place and time where rulers have no airs or graces and are, because of the democratic nature of the society they represent, quite normal, secular people whose only aim in government is to run the society as fairly as they can. This yearning comes out more clearly in another remarkable passage when the writer of the <em>Red Notebook</em> recalls her stint as a literary adviser to a Communist newspaper. She publishes an advertisement asking readers to send in their own fictional work. She is astounded by the flood of original material which pours into the offices and the accompanying letters in which the authors, almost all working class people, give vent to their literary ambitions, some political, some romantic, some crude, but all throbbing with desire for a world where such expression is natural and free.</p>
<p>The shock of the revelations at the 20th Congress runs through the novel. The Communists in it are angry and disillusioned at the way they have been hoaxed. But the rational arguments which inspired these people is there too. I did not read <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong> until 25 years after it was written, and for a time could not believe that its author was also responsible for <strong>The Good Terrorist</strong>. The shock of the comparison sent me scurrying back to find a book by Doris Lessing which corresponded as a turning point, as Edward Thompson’s <strong>Whigs and Hunters</strong> had done. I think I found it, at least to some extent, in her 1973 novel <strong>The Summer Before the Dark</strong>, where a liberated woman starts to revel in the sentimental domesticity which Doris Lessing rejected and mocked in her early novels and lifestyle. After that, I was inclined to assume that hers was yet another dreary example of older people abandoning the ideas and zest of their youth and settling for the safe, comfortable and reactionary condescension they once exposed.</p>
<p>Such was the prejudice with which I embarked on her new autobiography, especially this second volume which covers the crucial period of her membership of the British Communist Party, the 20th Congress and the writing of <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘And now,’ she writes on page 52, ‘I have to record what was probably the most neurotic act of my life. I decided to join the Communist Party. And this at a time when my "doubts" had become something like a steady, private torment ... To spell out the paradox. All over Europe, and to a much lesser extent the United States, it was the most sensitive, compassionate, socially concerned people who became Communists ... These decent, kind people supported the worst, the most brutal tyranny of our time.’</p>
<p class="fst">Why? Her answer nowhere reflects that sympathy and concern for former Communists which is so central to <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>. Her only answer is ‘belief’. She explains:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘This (Communism) was a religious set of mind, identical with that of passionate religious True Believers ... we inherited the mental framework of Christianity.’</p>
<p class="fst">This is demonstrable drivel. Pretty well everyone who joined the Party at that time or any other were non-believers, secularists, humanists, people who rejected and argued passionately against religious superstition and a substitute for independent thought.</p>
<p>No one joined the Party from ‘belief’. They joined because they were disgusted with the state of capitalist society, because they believed that capitalism had led the world into two world wars and would probably lead to a third, because they hated inequality and improverishment, because they were convinced that the world economy could and should be run on egalitarian lines, and above all because they realised that they could only win a new world by combining their resources with others to fight against the old one. They joined, in short, for rational reasons.</p>
<p>The fact that they supported a regime every bit as murderous and tyrannous as anything thrown up by private capitalism must, therefore, be explicable in rational terms. Chief among these was the fact that Stalinist Russia pretended to be socialist, that its economy seemed to be based on planning, not free enterprise, and that its foreign policy appeared to be implacably opposed to that of the free market US.</p>
<p>The facts, now accepted by almost everyone, that Russia was not socialist, that its planning was bureaucratic in the interests of its own ruling class, and that its foreign policy was as imperialist as that of the US, were stubbornly resisted by the Stalinists. The refusal to accept these facts, and a party structure founded on Stalin’s Russia where all ideas and inspiration came from the top down and not in the other direction, led to an intellectual tyranny, an abject acceptance of everything which emerged from the Kremlin and its Communist Parties, and an atmosphere of collective lying which understandably still shocks Doris Lessing even though (or perhaps because) she was part of it.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘I have come to think,’ she concludes, ‘that there is something in the nature of Communism that breeds lies, makes people lie and twist facts.’</p>
<p class="fst">She does not, cannot even begin to, justify that sentence. Communism is about the democratic control of the economy, need before greed, public interest before private interest, the pooling and conserving rather than the atomisation and waste of human and natural resources. How can such a concept by its nature ‘make people lie’? It was not Communism nor socialism, but the betrayal of both, which led to people lying in and about Stalinist Russia. Once the essence of socialism, democratic control from below, was jettisoned, everything else, including straight talk and honest accounting, was jettisoned too.</p>
<p>The crushing disillusionment which overwhelmed so many Communists in the mid-50s sent them scurrying in many different directions. Perhaps the most interesting part of this book are the letters which Doris Lessing wrote to Edward Thompson in 1956 when he, with John Saville, started the <strong>New Reasoner</strong>, a journal for former Communists who wanted to stay active socialists. Dorothy Thompson sent the letters to Doris after Edward’s recent death, so we know what she said to him, but not what he said to her. We can only guess from her responses that he was trying to persuade her to stay a committed and campaigning socialist. ‘I know I am a socialist, and I believe in the necessity for revolution when the moment is opportune,’ she replied on 21 February 1957, and then at once argued the exact opposite:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘But I don’t want to make any more concepts. For myself, I mean. I want to let myself simmer into some sort of knowledge, but I don’t know what it is ... I haven’t got any moral fervour left. No one who feels responsible for the bloodbaths and cynicism of the last 30 years can feel morally indignant about the bloodymindedness of capitalism. I can’t anyway.’</p>
<p class="fst">Doris Lessing, of course, was not at all responsible for a single bloodbath. She had plenty of moral fervour left – she had not even started on <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>, after all. Her acceptance of the blame for Stalin’s crimes in such absurd terms is the measure not just of the depth of her disillusionment, but of the abandonment of the socialist zeal which started her off in the first place. The socialist baby was thrown out with the Stalinist bathwater. Like thousands of other former Communists she placed the blame not on the intellectual and political failures of the actual party they joined, but on the very idea of joining a socialist party at all. She identified the chief cause of the failure of the Stalinist parties as the most essential element of socialist commitment, cooperating with others to establish a cooperative world.</p>
<p>Once the principle of collective activity, discussion and thought is abandoned, there is nothing left but individual initiative and whim. These desperate letters in 1957 and 1958 contain more clues than anything else about the decline in the power of Doris Lessing’s writing. The abandonment of the ideas of her youth took a long time to complete. If anything, her initial doubts and disillusionment contributed to the wonders of <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>. The real decline followed later, taking her, ‘simmering’ on her own, into all sorts of absurdities, weird cult religons, extra-sensory perception, even a campaign to install nuclear shelters at the bottom of every garden. Again and again in this autobiography she reproaches herself for her Communist past, denounces all organised socialists as ‘bigots and fanatics’, lumps Trotsky in with Stalin and rejoices grotesquely (and quite inaccurately) that ‘by the time I had finished <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>, I had written my way out of the package’.</p>
<p>Can her autobiography then be chucked aside as yet another apology for the existing order from a former socialist who has grown into a petulant reactionary? No, it most certainly cannot. As I look back on the marks I made on this book I am surprised not at all by the number of ‘Oh Nos’ and other exclamations of irritation, but by continuous surprised delight at the flashes of the old Lessing intuition and fury. It is almost as though, as she forces herself to remember her socialist youth, as she summons up what kept her active and militant for so long, her former commitment comes back to inspire her.</p>
<p>I single out, just for tasters, a wonderful analysis of Brecht’s <em>Mother Courage</em>; a furious denunciation of the prevailing fashion for putting poor people in prison for not paying fines; a comparison of the mood at Thatcher’s Tory conference with the Nuremburg rallies; bitter and eloquent assaults on the McCarthyite witchhunts in the US, on means testing, on ‘academic polemical writing’; a warm memory of the camaraderie of CND’s Aldermaston marches; and even an expression that ‘somewhere out there is still an honesty and integrity – or so I believe – and a slight shift in our political fortunes would bring that (1945) face of Britain forward. At least, I hope so.’</p>
<p>She has been all round the houses but she has not gone down the drain. There is a lot of the old fire and passion left, and her story, as easy as ever to read, puts flesh and bones on the fictional characters in <strong>The Golden Notebook</strong>. We organised socialists may have a lot to say to her, but she has some advice for us too. In October 1956, at the height of the crisis of Stalinism, she wrote to Edward Thompson, ‘Unless a communist party is a body of individuals each jealously guarding his or her independence of judgement, it must degenerate into a body of yes men.’ And yes women too, of course, which Doris Lessing has never been.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
The Lessing legend
(February 1998
From Socialist Review, No.216, February 1998, pp.26-27.
Copyright © 1998 Socialist Review.
Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Walking In The Shade, Volume two of my autobiography 1949-1962
by Doris Lessing (Harper Collins £20)
When they are dead, heroes and heroines cannot let you down. When they are contemporary, still writing and thinking, they can cause the most frightful disillusionment. I still remember my indignation when, more than 20 years ago, I read the last chapter of E.P. Thompson’s book on the Black Acts of the 18th century, Whigs and Hunters. The chapter, which subscribed to the idea of an eternal and consistent rule of law independent of economic circumstances, seemed to me an appalling betrayal of the Marxist clarity of Thompson’s great history book, The Making of the English Working Class.
I recall something very similar much later when I started, but could not finish, Doris Lessing’s novel The Good Terrorist, published at the height of Thatcherism during the Great Miners’ Strike. This novel seemed to me nothing more nor less than reactionary propaganda. How could such a ferocious assault on left wing commitment have been mounted by such a committed left winger? Doris Lessing’s early Martha Quest novels are full of life and energy and a passion to change the world. She became a Communist in the most unlikely circumstances – in Rhodesia during the war – and, against all the odds, lived her life according to her principles.
The Golden Notebook, which was started in the late 1950s and published in 1962, is one of the great novels of our time. Its central theme is the condescension of women, and the relationship of that condescension to the subordination of the majority of the human race. The Golden Notebook is often described as a ‘women’s book’ and so of course it is. But it is a man’s book too. The novel hardly ever pontificates, but more than anything else I have ever read it grapples with a secular sexual morality which makes it compulsive and compulsory reading for men. After taking part in a debate with Islamicists not long ago at a London college, I was rebuked by one of the women in the audience (they sat separately from the men, and wore veils). ‘If there is no God,’ she asked, ‘how would we know what was right and wrong?’ I was tempted to reply (but didn’t) that for a bit of an answer to this impossible question, The Golden Notebook is a million times better than any religious work.
The novel throbs with a passion for liberation: liberation from masculine patronising, from puritanical commandments and enforced stereotypical nuclear families, from baptisms and weddings and all other superstitious ceremonial. Her demand for women’s liberation had nothing of the feminine exclusivity of the separatist women’s liberationists of the 1980s. When she wrote The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing’s socialist commitment, however damaged by the behaviour of male socialists or by Stalinism, was still strong. The point in exposing the absurd ways in which men, including socialist men, treated women was to move forward to a new society in which both sexes could freely take part.
The sections in the book entitled the Red Notebook cover the central character’s membership of and disillusionment with the Communist Party before and after the 20th Congress of 1956 in which Nikita Khruschev denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin, his predecessor as general secretary of the Russian Communist Party.
The Congress led to mass defection from Communist Parties all over the world. Among those who left the British CP were Edward Thompson and Doris Lessing who, at 37, was in her prime. Two passages from The Golden Notebook stand out in my memory. The first is a report by a member of a British teachers’ delegation to Russia in the early 1950s when Stalin was still alive. At the end of his stay, the teacher reports, he was summoned to meet the general secretary, a plain simple man in a plain simple office smoking a pipe, asking plain simple questions about the state of affairs in Britain, and nodding wisely as the earnest teacher spilled out his plain simple opinions. The story was the most ludicrous fantasy. But the fantasy was shared, The Golden Notebook argues, by almost every such delegate in those times. When I read the passage I remembered the great Clydeside revolutionary Harry McShane telling me in some embarrassment about his visit to Russia as part of a delegation in 1931. ‘I sat listening to the trams outside, and revelling in the fact that these were our trams, the people’s trams.’ It took Harry more than 20 years to discover that they had been ‘just trams after all, trams just like everywhere else’.
The point about the fantasy was not simply that iconoclastic socialists demeaned themselves by dreaming up such fantasy and pretending it was true. There was another side to it – the great yearning among socialists for a place and time where rulers have no airs or graces and are, because of the democratic nature of the society they represent, quite normal, secular people whose only aim in government is to run the society as fairly as they can. This yearning comes out more clearly in another remarkable passage when the writer of the Red Notebook recalls her stint as a literary adviser to a Communist newspaper. She publishes an advertisement asking readers to send in their own fictional work. She is astounded by the flood of original material which pours into the offices and the accompanying letters in which the authors, almost all working class people, give vent to their literary ambitions, some political, some romantic, some crude, but all throbbing with desire for a world where such expression is natural and free.
The shock of the revelations at the 20th Congress runs through the novel. The Communists in it are angry and disillusioned at the way they have been hoaxed. But the rational arguments which inspired these people is there too. I did not read The Golden Notebook until 25 years after it was written, and for a time could not believe that its author was also responsible for The Good Terrorist. The shock of the comparison sent me scurrying back to find a book by Doris Lessing which corresponded as a turning point, as Edward Thompson’s Whigs and Hunters had done. I think I found it, at least to some extent, in her 1973 novel The Summer Before the Dark, where a liberated woman starts to revel in the sentimental domesticity which Doris Lessing rejected and mocked in her early novels and lifestyle. After that, I was inclined to assume that hers was yet another dreary example of older people abandoning the ideas and zest of their youth and settling for the safe, comfortable and reactionary condescension they once exposed.
Such was the prejudice with which I embarked on her new autobiography, especially this second volume which covers the crucial period of her membership of the British Communist Party, the 20th Congress and the writing of The Golden Notebook.
‘And now,’ she writes on page 52, ‘I have to record what was probably the most neurotic act of my life. I decided to join the Communist Party. And this at a time when my "doubts" had become something like a steady, private torment ... To spell out the paradox. All over Europe, and to a much lesser extent the United States, it was the most sensitive, compassionate, socially concerned people who became Communists ... These decent, kind people supported the worst, the most brutal tyranny of our time.’
Why? Her answer nowhere reflects that sympathy and concern for former Communists which is so central to The Golden Notebook. Her only answer is ‘belief’. She explains:
‘This (Communism) was a religious set of mind, identical with that of passionate religious True Believers ... we inherited the mental framework of Christianity.’
This is demonstrable drivel. Pretty well everyone who joined the Party at that time or any other were non-believers, secularists, humanists, people who rejected and argued passionately against religious superstition and a substitute for independent thought.
No one joined the Party from ‘belief’. They joined because they were disgusted with the state of capitalist society, because they believed that capitalism had led the world into two world wars and would probably lead to a third, because they hated inequality and improverishment, because they were convinced that the world economy could and should be run on egalitarian lines, and above all because they realised that they could only win a new world by combining their resources with others to fight against the old one. They joined, in short, for rational reasons.
The fact that they supported a regime every bit as murderous and tyrannous as anything thrown up by private capitalism must, therefore, be explicable in rational terms. Chief among these was the fact that Stalinist Russia pretended to be socialist, that its economy seemed to be based on planning, not free enterprise, and that its foreign policy appeared to be implacably opposed to that of the free market US.
The facts, now accepted by almost everyone, that Russia was not socialist, that its planning was bureaucratic in the interests of its own ruling class, and that its foreign policy was as imperialist as that of the US, were stubbornly resisted by the Stalinists. The refusal to accept these facts, and a party structure founded on Stalin’s Russia where all ideas and inspiration came from the top down and not in the other direction, led to an intellectual tyranny, an abject acceptance of everything which emerged from the Kremlin and its Communist Parties, and an atmosphere of collective lying which understandably still shocks Doris Lessing even though (or perhaps because) she was part of it.
‘I have come to think,’ she concludes, ‘that there is something in the nature of Communism that breeds lies, makes people lie and twist facts.’
She does not, cannot even begin to, justify that sentence. Communism is about the democratic control of the economy, need before greed, public interest before private interest, the pooling and conserving rather than the atomisation and waste of human and natural resources. How can such a concept by its nature ‘make people lie’? It was not Communism nor socialism, but the betrayal of both, which led to people lying in and about Stalinist Russia. Once the essence of socialism, democratic control from below, was jettisoned, everything else, including straight talk and honest accounting, was jettisoned too.
The crushing disillusionment which overwhelmed so many Communists in the mid-50s sent them scurrying in many different directions. Perhaps the most interesting part of this book are the letters which Doris Lessing wrote to Edward Thompson in 1956 when he, with John Saville, started the New Reasoner, a journal for former Communists who wanted to stay active socialists. Dorothy Thompson sent the letters to Doris after Edward’s recent death, so we know what she said to him, but not what he said to her. We can only guess from her responses that he was trying to persuade her to stay a committed and campaigning socialist. ‘I know I am a socialist, and I believe in the necessity for revolution when the moment is opportune,’ she replied on 21 February 1957, and then at once argued the exact opposite:
‘But I don’t want to make any more concepts. For myself, I mean. I want to let myself simmer into some sort of knowledge, but I don’t know what it is ... I haven’t got any moral fervour left. No one who feels responsible for the bloodbaths and cynicism of the last 30 years can feel morally indignant about the bloodymindedness of capitalism. I can’t anyway.’
Doris Lessing, of course, was not at all responsible for a single bloodbath. She had plenty of moral fervour left – she had not even started on The Golden Notebook, after all. Her acceptance of the blame for Stalin’s crimes in such absurd terms is the measure not just of the depth of her disillusionment, but of the abandonment of the socialist zeal which started her off in the first place. The socialist baby was thrown out with the Stalinist bathwater. Like thousands of other former Communists she placed the blame not on the intellectual and political failures of the actual party they joined, but on the very idea of joining a socialist party at all. She identified the chief cause of the failure of the Stalinist parties as the most essential element of socialist commitment, cooperating with others to establish a cooperative world.
Once the principle of collective activity, discussion and thought is abandoned, there is nothing left but individual initiative and whim. These desperate letters in 1957 and 1958 contain more clues than anything else about the decline in the power of Doris Lessing’s writing. The abandonment of the ideas of her youth took a long time to complete. If anything, her initial doubts and disillusionment contributed to the wonders of The Golden Notebook. The real decline followed later, taking her, ‘simmering’ on her own, into all sorts of absurdities, weird cult religons, extra-sensory perception, even a campaign to install nuclear shelters at the bottom of every garden. Again and again in this autobiography she reproaches herself for her Communist past, denounces all organised socialists as ‘bigots and fanatics’, lumps Trotsky in with Stalin and rejoices grotesquely (and quite inaccurately) that ‘by the time I had finished The Golden Notebook, I had written my way out of the package’.
Can her autobiography then be chucked aside as yet another apology for the existing order from a former socialist who has grown into a petulant reactionary? No, it most certainly cannot. As I look back on the marks I made on this book I am surprised not at all by the number of ‘Oh Nos’ and other exclamations of irritation, but by continuous surprised delight at the flashes of the old Lessing intuition and fury. It is almost as though, as she forces herself to remember her socialist youth, as she summons up what kept her active and militant for so long, her former commitment comes back to inspire her.
I single out, just for tasters, a wonderful analysis of Brecht’s Mother Courage; a furious denunciation of the prevailing fashion for putting poor people in prison for not paying fines; a comparison of the mood at Thatcher’s Tory conference with the Nuremburg rallies; bitter and eloquent assaults on the McCarthyite witchhunts in the US, on means testing, on ‘academic polemical writing’; a warm memory of the camaraderie of CND’s Aldermaston marches; and even an expression that ‘somewhere out there is still an honesty and integrity – or so I believe – and a slight shift in our political fortunes would bring that (1945) face of Britain forward. At least, I hope so.’
She has been all round the houses but she has not gone down the drain. There is a lot of the old fire and passion left, and her story, as easy as ever to read, puts flesh and bones on the fictional characters in The Golden Notebook. We organised socialists may have a lot to say to her, but she has some advice for us too. In October 1956, at the height of the crisis of Stalinism, she wrote to Edward Thompson, ‘Unless a communist party is a body of individuals each jealously guarding his or her independence of judgement, it must degenerate into a body of yes men.’ And yes women too, of course, which Doris Lessing has never been.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1>[The Devlin Report]</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1966)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>The Notebook</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj024" target="new">No.24</a>, Spring 1966, pp.6-7.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The <strong>Devlin Report</strong> on ‘certain matters concerning the Port Transport Industry’, published last August brought few surprises for militants in the docks. Devlin has been called upon many times in the past to help the Government with ‘modernisation’ and ‘rationalisation.’ The Report proposed ‘decasualisation’ of Dock Labour. All dockers should be offered work with the employers. If work is not available the minimum wage rate will be paid by the Board. There was no stated condition for such decasualisation, but the report made it dear that the dockers would have to pay for their new scheme in the ‘ending of restrictive practices.’</p>
<p>It recommended that the National Association of Stevedores and Dockers – the ‘blue’ union – should be represented on the National Joint Council for wages and conditions and on a new subsidiary of the Council – a Modernisation Committee. This recommendation was the result not of any sympathy with the generally militant line of NASD, but with the desire to stamp out unofficial strikes. Devlin and his colleagues – none of whom had ever worked in the docks – felt that the officials even of the most militant union could be bribed into submission. The Committee of Inquiry, apparently, differed among themselves when they discussed the employers. The argument was a familiar one: between those inspired by an ideological faith in private ownership and those who realised that a single employer (if necessary the State) would be able to ‘rationalise’ and ‘modernise’ more easily. They ended up with a weak compromise whereby the 1,500 employers would be scaled down to about 16. This view has recently been severely criticisd by Mr Dudley Perkins, chairman of the Port of London Authority, who, not surprisingly, thinks that the PLA should be the sole employer in the London docks.</p>
<p>That such discussions had very little to do with the best interests of the dockers themselves is proved by the near-hysterical language employed in the report when referring to dockers who are not imbued with what the Report describes as ‘a deeper sense of responsibility.’</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘There is undoubtedly (says the <strong>Report</strong> in a poignant passage) a minority in the docks of men who are well aware of the damage that can be done to the national interest by disruption in the ports. The source of that power is the misconceived loyalty of the docker and that source must be removed ...’ (p.9)</p>
<p class="fst">Spread at random throughout the Report are references to ‘wreckers’ and the assertions that all attempts of the dockers to run their own industry should be ruthlessly subordinated to ‘the national interest.’ There are, to sweeten the pill, a number of suggestions, which could well be taken up without conditions, for improving working conditions in the docks. The publication of the Report was followed almost immediately by a series of meetings between Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, and the docks officials of the TGWU. Once again the dockers themselves were scrupulously barred from attendance. Late in August, following a description of ‘wreckers’ in the docks as ‘economic saboteurs’ from John Stonehouse, Ministry of Aviation Under-Secretary, a Modernisation Committee was set up to implement the main Devlin proposals. Lord Brown of Machrihanish – a Labour peer and former businessman who had done rather well in the export field – was appointed chairman.</p>
<p>The TGWU immediately showed an unaccustomed interest in its members, and started to distribute 65,000 leaflets boosting the Devlin Report. On 4 September the general secretary of the NASD, Richard Barratt, accepted the invitation to sit on the Modernisation Committee, as well as the condition attached that he ‘accepted his responsibilities under the <strong>Devlin Report</strong>.’ The extraordinary collapse of the official NASD leadership as well as the TGWU’s co-operation with the employers and the Government has led to a rapid increase in the influence and effect of the unofficial dockers’ committees. The NASD officials in the North refused to accept the demands of their London leaders that they should stop recruiting members from the TGWU. The ‘unofficial’ Port of London Liaison Committee was greeted with considerable support throughout the country in its demand for a rejection of the <strong>Devlin Report</strong> and a minimum wage of £18 10s, 50 per cent pensions and sick pay and three weeks holiday. In Bristol, where the dockers were out on unofficial strike for 27 days in a dispute over payment for the loading of packaged timber, the dockers decided to keep their unofficial committee – formed during the strike – and agreed with the demands of the London Committee. The signs are that these unofficial committees may link up; and that their militancy may well exceed by a considerable margin the somewhat characteristic moderation of Jack Dash. The dockers will prove tough obstacles to the Government’s emasculation plans. No group of workers in Britain is less easily pushed around. Further, the dockers know only too well that ‘nationalisation’ through the Dock Labour Boards is a bitter farce.</p>
<p>Nearly a third of all dock strikes in the last ten years have been prompted by the arbitrary decisions of the NDLB, which behaves in the tradition of classically arrogant employers. Despite the acceptance of a miserably small wage increase to ‘tide them over’ until Lord Brown’s committee comes forward with its proposals, the signs are that the dockers will respond with the same sort of contempt towards High Court Judges and Ministers of Labour.</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
[The Devlin Report]
(Spring 1966)
From The Notebook, International Socialism (1st series), No.24, Spring 1966, pp.6-7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Devlin Report on ‘certain matters concerning the Port Transport Industry’, published last August brought few surprises for militants in the docks. Devlin has been called upon many times in the past to help the Government with ‘modernisation’ and ‘rationalisation.’ The Report proposed ‘decasualisation’ of Dock Labour. All dockers should be offered work with the employers. If work is not available the minimum wage rate will be paid by the Board. There was no stated condition for such decasualisation, but the report made it dear that the dockers would have to pay for their new scheme in the ‘ending of restrictive practices.’
It recommended that the National Association of Stevedores and Dockers – the ‘blue’ union – should be represented on the National Joint Council for wages and conditions and on a new subsidiary of the Council – a Modernisation Committee. This recommendation was the result not of any sympathy with the generally militant line of NASD, but with the desire to stamp out unofficial strikes. Devlin and his colleagues – none of whom had ever worked in the docks – felt that the officials even of the most militant union could be bribed into submission. The Committee of Inquiry, apparently, differed among themselves when they discussed the employers. The argument was a familiar one: between those inspired by an ideological faith in private ownership and those who realised that a single employer (if necessary the State) would be able to ‘rationalise’ and ‘modernise’ more easily. They ended up with a weak compromise whereby the 1,500 employers would be scaled down to about 16. This view has recently been severely criticisd by Mr Dudley Perkins, chairman of the Port of London Authority, who, not surprisingly, thinks that the PLA should be the sole employer in the London docks.
That such discussions had very little to do with the best interests of the dockers themselves is proved by the near-hysterical language employed in the report when referring to dockers who are not imbued with what the Report describes as ‘a deeper sense of responsibility.’
‘There is undoubtedly (says the Report in a poignant passage) a minority in the docks of men who are well aware of the damage that can be done to the national interest by disruption in the ports. The source of that power is the misconceived loyalty of the docker and that source must be removed ...’ (p.9)
Spread at random throughout the Report are references to ‘wreckers’ and the assertions that all attempts of the dockers to run their own industry should be ruthlessly subordinated to ‘the national interest.’ There are, to sweeten the pill, a number of suggestions, which could well be taken up without conditions, for improving working conditions in the docks. The publication of the Report was followed almost immediately by a series of meetings between Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, and the docks officials of the TGWU. Once again the dockers themselves were scrupulously barred from attendance. Late in August, following a description of ‘wreckers’ in the docks as ‘economic saboteurs’ from John Stonehouse, Ministry of Aviation Under-Secretary, a Modernisation Committee was set up to implement the main Devlin proposals. Lord Brown of Machrihanish – a Labour peer and former businessman who had done rather well in the export field – was appointed chairman.
The TGWU immediately showed an unaccustomed interest in its members, and started to distribute 65,000 leaflets boosting the Devlin Report. On 4 September the general secretary of the NASD, Richard Barratt, accepted the invitation to sit on the Modernisation Committee, as well as the condition attached that he ‘accepted his responsibilities under the Devlin Report.’ The extraordinary collapse of the official NASD leadership as well as the TGWU’s co-operation with the employers and the Government has led to a rapid increase in the influence and effect of the unofficial dockers’ committees. The NASD officials in the North refused to accept the demands of their London leaders that they should stop recruiting members from the TGWU. The ‘unofficial’ Port of London Liaison Committee was greeted with considerable support throughout the country in its demand for a rejection of the Devlin Report and a minimum wage of £18 10s, 50 per cent pensions and sick pay and three weeks holiday. In Bristol, where the dockers were out on unofficial strike for 27 days in a dispute over payment for the loading of packaged timber, the dockers decided to keep their unofficial committee – formed during the strike – and agreed with the demands of the London Committee. The signs are that these unofficial committees may link up; and that their militancy may well exceed by a considerable margin the somewhat characteristic moderation of Jack Dash. The dockers will prove tough obstacles to the Government’s emasculation plans. No group of workers in Britain is less easily pushed around. Further, the dockers know only too well that ‘nationalisation’ through the Dock Labour Boards is a bitter farce.
Nearly a third of all dock strikes in the last ten years have been prompted by the arbitrary decisions of the NDLB, which behaves in the tradition of classically arrogant employers. Despite the acceptance of a miserably small wage increase to ‘tide them over’ until Lord Brown’s committee comes forward with its proposals, the signs are that the dockers will respond with the same sort of contempt towards High Court Judges and Ministers of Labour.
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<h2>Paul Foot</h2>
<h1><small>What Have They Got To Hide?</small><br>
Tories, arms and the Scott report</h1>
<h3>(19 August 1995)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No. 1456, 19 August 1995, p. 10.<br>
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.<br>
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>THE TORIES have again delayed publication of the investigation into politicians involvement in arms deals. The Scott report will now not be published until next year. What will it reveal and why are the Tories so anxious to keep its findings hidden from us?</strong></p>
<p><strong>We print extracts from PAUL FOOT’S recent speech at the Marxism 95 conference in London this summer on the scandals that have already emerged.</strong><br>
</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>PEOPLE ASK what is so important about the Scott report. Isn’t it a report by a high court judge who learnt law in white South Africa and helped to sequester the miners’ funds in the 1984–5 miners’ strike?</strong></p>
<p>I can sum up in the answer in a single word, “secrecy”.</p>
<p>One of the reasons the ruling class in this society survive is because they keep from us what they do in spite of parliamentary institutions. The ruling class have to protect themselves against democracy and that’s what this story is about.</p>
<p><em>The Scott inquiry is the most important public inquiry ever held in the history of British politics for this reason.</em></p>
<p>It was set up in a tremendous panic. The government had their backs to the wall, and in order to convince people that it wasn’t just another whitewash they insisted all the old rules about previous inquiries would be dispensed with.</p>
<p>There was a circular from Sir Robin Butler, the head of the civil service, saying the Scott inquiry is paramount. A large number of civil servants responded.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>THE STORY begins with Iraq declaring war on Iran in 1980.</strong></p>
<p>The foreign office immediately said it was absolutely opposed to war of every description. And in no circumstances should “lethal equipment” – that was the expression – be exported from Britain to either side in the conflict.</p>
<p>But at the same time British businesses were determined to make money.</p>
<p>So, while the foreign office was putting out that statement, John Nott, the secretary of state for defence, wrote to the Iraqi ambassador in London about a contract to build an entire munitions complex in Basra, Iraq, in which British firms played an enormous part. He said if anything goes wrong we will pay for it.</p>
<p>This difference between selling them arms and saying they were not selling lethal equipment went on until three politicians – Sir Richard Loose, Sir Adam Butler and Paul Channon – decided that something ought to be done about it. These three had all – by complete coincidence – been at university together and they were the ministers of state at the foreign office, the defence ministry and the department of trade.</p>
<p>They drew up a series of guidelines. The first was that we should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side. The second was that, subject to that overriding consideration, we will attempt to fulfil existing contracts and obligations. Huge sighs of relief went through all the big companies which sell arms equipment. The third added we should not in future approve orders for defence equipment which in our view would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong the conflict.</p>
<p><em>Then a curious thing happens. Having decided on these guidelines, the three decide they are not going to publish them. Why?</em></p>
<p>The guidelines went to the prime minister – Margaret Thatcher – and she said, “Hold on a minute. I am negotiating the biggest arms deal in the history of the world with Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia are friendly with Iraq.”</p>
<p>They didn’t publish the guidelines for a whole year until Thatcher and Michael Heseltine – who declares himself completely clean on all these matters – signed the £20 billion contract.</p>
<p>They set up a working group at the Ministry of Defence to interpret the guidelines. It was controlled by an organisation called the Defence Export Sales Organisation (DESO). DESO was set up by a Labour government and was a part of the Ministry of Defence whose sole purpose was to flog weapons abroad.</p>
<p>At one arms working group meeting – it has emerged in the Scott inquiry – there were seven people, of whom six were marketing directors for specific arms companies, deciding who gets an export licence.</p>
<p>So how much – in terms of arms – went to Iraq from 1985 until the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988? The government always say very little – only £226 million of military equipment. But they left out of their calculation what I call “the plucky little king” syndrome. Every time you hear the “plucky little king” it only ever applies to one person – the King of Jordan, their oldest ally.</p>
<p>Alan Clark – the nutter who lives in a castle – was a minister throughout all this period. Because he is mad he blurts out things. He told the inquiry half the stuff went through Jordan. All the trickier items – that was his expression. “Were they nuclear?” he was asked. But he didn’t know.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>AT THE end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 there was enthusiasm In the West because Saddam Hussein was building up a whole armoury in Iraq. There was a tremendous opportunity to make money.</strong></p>
<p>The problem was the guidelines. So in December 1988 three ministers of state – Waldegrave at the foreign office, Alan Clark at the Ministry of Defence and Trefgarne at the department of trade – held a secret meeting to devise new guidelines.</p>
<p>They changed the rules so it was alright to send arms for defence. As a result the amount of equipment that went to Iraq grew by ten times in the first year and by 100 times by the time the scandal came to light.</p>
<p>These three ministers decided not to publish the fact they had changed the guidelines.</p>
<p>When anyone in parliament asked, “Have you changed your policy because the fighting is over?” the answer was no. There was systematic lying to parliament all through 1989 and 1990. It would have gone on forever if it hadn’t been for two terrible events in 1990.</p>
<p>The first terrible event was encountered by Nicholas Ridley, then secretary for trade, when he was enjoying his Easter holiday. Someone told him that customs had seized some rather unpleasant goods – vast cases of what appeared to be the biggest gun ever built, for export to Iraq.</p>
<p><em>This was lethal equipment even by Ridley’s definition. It had been made in two of the biggest engineering factories in Britain, who were in constant contact with the department of trade.</em></p>
<p>Ridley congratulates customs in the Commons and says, “We knew nothing about it.” But very embarrassingly up jumps a Tory MP who says. “Oh yes, you did. I told you about it in 1988.”</p>
<p>The second embarrassing event was that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Suddenly the whole public attitude is whipped up against Iraq. Everyone is in favour of prosecuting the merchants of death.</p>
<p>Customs arrest the engineer in charge of the supergun project and the managing director. Guilty as hell of breaking the export law, a straightforward conviction is expected.</p>
<p>Except that customs are called in by the attorney general, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who says it is not a good idea to prosecute. He told customs they were free to do it but he would stop them going ahead with the prosecution. Customs withdrew – but they proceeded against another company called Matrix Churchill.</p>
<p>The directors were appalled. They said we did this in concert with the government and intelligence. One of the key intelligence agents in Iraq at that time was a man working for Matrix Churchill. Paul Henderson. He was managing director and a government intelligence agent.</p>
<p>They started to leak documents. One document leaked to the <strong>Sunday Times</strong> said that Alan Clark, when he was minister of defence, held a meeting of all the machine tool manufacturers. He said from now on when you want to sell arms to Iraq put it under general engineering.</p>
<p>It was leaked the first Sunday John Major was in Downing Street. Before he got into the office on Monday there had already been a meeting in the cabinet office to discuss the leak. There was not an elected person in sight. They decided that what Clark had said was true, but they were going to deny it. When they saw Major they said it’s quite untrue and Major says it’s quite untrue.</p>
<p>All of this was revealed in Scott’s investigations.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>THE SITUATION staggers on until 1992 when there is tremendous panic growing in the ministries about the Matrix Churchill case.</strong></p>
<p>It is obviously going to come out that the defendants did what the government told them to do. They were guilty of selling arms to Saddam Hussein, but not half as guilty as the people who were cooperating with them in the government.</p>
<p>When the defendants wanted to prove the government had known about their illegal exporting, the government issued a public immunity certificate. Most people think this certificate has something to do with security. It has nothing whatever to do with security. It defends the discussions between civil servants and ministers from any revelation or disclosure.</p>
<p>But at the trial the lawyers forced the government documents out, the trial collapsed and the Scott inquiry was set up.</p>
<p><em>There has been the most tremendous attack against the Scott inquiry from the establishment. The ruling class is trying to protect itself from the revelations. Many of the people named in the Scott report have been promoted.</em></p>
<p>I will end with two quotations which sum up what I’ve said.</p>
<p>The first is from the prime minister speaking to the Scott inquiry:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“One of the charges at the time of course was that in some way I must have known because I had been the chancellor, because I had been the foreign secretary, because I had been the prime minister. And therefore I must have known what was going on, but I didn’t.”</p>
<p class="fst">The second quote is from the Russian revolutionary Lenin:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Bourgeois democracy, although it is a historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical. A paradise for the rich and a snare and a deception for the exploited, for the poor.</p>
<p class="quote">“The whole point is that a bourgeois state which is exercising the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie. It cannot tell the truth and has to play the hypocrite.”</p>
<p class="fst">That is still happening today.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of the page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="updat">Last updated on 2 No vember 2019</p>
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MIA > Archive > P. Foot
Paul Foot
What Have They Got To Hide?
Tories, arms and the Scott report
(19 August 1995)
From Socialist Worker, No. 1456, 19 August 1995, p. 10.
Copyright © Estate of Paul Foot.
Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot.
Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
THE TORIES have again delayed publication of the investigation into politicians involvement in arms deals. The Scott report will now not be published until next year. What will it reveal and why are the Tories so anxious to keep its findings hidden from us?
We print extracts from PAUL FOOT’S recent speech at the Marxism 95 conference in London this summer on the scandals that have already emerged.
PEOPLE ASK what is so important about the Scott report. Isn’t it a report by a high court judge who learnt law in white South Africa and helped to sequester the miners’ funds in the 1984–5 miners’ strike?
I can sum up in the answer in a single word, “secrecy”.
One of the reasons the ruling class in this society survive is because they keep from us what they do in spite of parliamentary institutions. The ruling class have to protect themselves against democracy and that’s what this story is about.
The Scott inquiry is the most important public inquiry ever held in the history of British politics for this reason.
It was set up in a tremendous panic. The government had their backs to the wall, and in order to convince people that it wasn’t just another whitewash they insisted all the old rules about previous inquiries would be dispensed with.
There was a circular from Sir Robin Butler, the head of the civil service, saying the Scott inquiry is paramount. A large number of civil servants responded.
THE STORY begins with Iraq declaring war on Iran in 1980.
The foreign office immediately said it was absolutely opposed to war of every description. And in no circumstances should “lethal equipment” – that was the expression – be exported from Britain to either side in the conflict.
But at the same time British businesses were determined to make money.
So, while the foreign office was putting out that statement, John Nott, the secretary of state for defence, wrote to the Iraqi ambassador in London about a contract to build an entire munitions complex in Basra, Iraq, in which British firms played an enormous part. He said if anything goes wrong we will pay for it.
This difference between selling them arms and saying they were not selling lethal equipment went on until three politicians – Sir Richard Loose, Sir Adam Butler and Paul Channon – decided that something ought to be done about it. These three had all – by complete coincidence – been at university together and they were the ministers of state at the foreign office, the defence ministry and the department of trade.
They drew up a series of guidelines. The first was that we should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side. The second was that, subject to that overriding consideration, we will attempt to fulfil existing contracts and obligations. Huge sighs of relief went through all the big companies which sell arms equipment. The third added we should not in future approve orders for defence equipment which in our view would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong the conflict.
Then a curious thing happens. Having decided on these guidelines, the three decide they are not going to publish them. Why?
The guidelines went to the prime minister – Margaret Thatcher – and she said, “Hold on a minute. I am negotiating the biggest arms deal in the history of the world with Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia are friendly with Iraq.”
They didn’t publish the guidelines for a whole year until Thatcher and Michael Heseltine – who declares himself completely clean on all these matters – signed the £20 billion contract.
They set up a working group at the Ministry of Defence to interpret the guidelines. It was controlled by an organisation called the Defence Export Sales Organisation (DESO). DESO was set up by a Labour government and was a part of the Ministry of Defence whose sole purpose was to flog weapons abroad.
At one arms working group meeting – it has emerged in the Scott inquiry – there were seven people, of whom six were marketing directors for specific arms companies, deciding who gets an export licence.
So how much – in terms of arms – went to Iraq from 1985 until the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988? The government always say very little – only £226 million of military equipment. But they left out of their calculation what I call “the plucky little king” syndrome. Every time you hear the “plucky little king” it only ever applies to one person – the King of Jordan, their oldest ally.
Alan Clark – the nutter who lives in a castle – was a minister throughout all this period. Because he is mad he blurts out things. He told the inquiry half the stuff went through Jordan. All the trickier items – that was his expression. “Were they nuclear?” he was asked. But he didn’t know.
AT THE end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 there was enthusiasm In the West because Saddam Hussein was building up a whole armoury in Iraq. There was a tremendous opportunity to make money.
The problem was the guidelines. So in December 1988 three ministers of state – Waldegrave at the foreign office, Alan Clark at the Ministry of Defence and Trefgarne at the department of trade – held a secret meeting to devise new guidelines.
They changed the rules so it was alright to send arms for defence. As a result the amount of equipment that went to Iraq grew by ten times in the first year and by 100 times by the time the scandal came to light.
These three ministers decided not to publish the fact they had changed the guidelines.
When anyone in parliament asked, “Have you changed your policy because the fighting is over?” the answer was no. There was systematic lying to parliament all through 1989 and 1990. It would have gone on forever if it hadn’t been for two terrible events in 1990.
The first terrible event was encountered by Nicholas Ridley, then secretary for trade, when he was enjoying his Easter holiday. Someone told him that customs had seized some rather unpleasant goods – vast cases of what appeared to be the biggest gun ever built, for export to Iraq.
This was lethal equipment even by Ridley’s definition. It had been made in two of the biggest engineering factories in Britain, who were in constant contact with the department of trade.
Ridley congratulates customs in the Commons and says, “We knew nothing about it.” But very embarrassingly up jumps a Tory MP who says. “Oh yes, you did. I told you about it in 1988.”
The second embarrassing event was that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Suddenly the whole public attitude is whipped up against Iraq. Everyone is in favour of prosecuting the merchants of death.
Customs arrest the engineer in charge of the supergun project and the managing director. Guilty as hell of breaking the export law, a straightforward conviction is expected.
Except that customs are called in by the attorney general, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who says it is not a good idea to prosecute. He told customs they were free to do it but he would stop them going ahead with the prosecution. Customs withdrew – but they proceeded against another company called Matrix Churchill.
The directors were appalled. They said we did this in concert with the government and intelligence. One of the key intelligence agents in Iraq at that time was a man working for Matrix Churchill. Paul Henderson. He was managing director and a government intelligence agent.
They started to leak documents. One document leaked to the Sunday Times said that Alan Clark, when he was minister of defence, held a meeting of all the machine tool manufacturers. He said from now on when you want to sell arms to Iraq put it under general engineering.
It was leaked the first Sunday John Major was in Downing Street. Before he got into the office on Monday there had already been a meeting in the cabinet office to discuss the leak. There was not an elected person in sight. They decided that what Clark had said was true, but they were going to deny it. When they saw Major they said it’s quite untrue and Major says it’s quite untrue.
All of this was revealed in Scott’s investigations.
THE SITUATION staggers on until 1992 when there is tremendous panic growing in the ministries about the Matrix Churchill case.
It is obviously going to come out that the defendants did what the government told them to do. They were guilty of selling arms to Saddam Hussein, but not half as guilty as the people who were cooperating with them in the government.
When the defendants wanted to prove the government had known about their illegal exporting, the government issued a public immunity certificate. Most people think this certificate has something to do with security. It has nothing whatever to do with security. It defends the discussions between civil servants and ministers from any revelation or disclosure.
But at the trial the lawyers forced the government documents out, the trial collapsed and the Scott inquiry was set up.
There has been the most tremendous attack against the Scott inquiry from the establishment. The ruling class is trying to protect itself from the revelations. Many of the people named in the Scott report have been promoted.
I will end with two quotations which sum up what I’ve said.
The first is from the prime minister speaking to the Scott inquiry:
“One of the charges at the time of course was that in some way I must have known because I had been the chancellor, because I had been the foreign secretary, because I had been the prime minister. And therefore I must have known what was going on, but I didn’t.”
The second quote is from the Russian revolutionary Lenin:
“Bourgeois democracy, although it is a historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical. A paradise for the rich and a snare and a deception for the exploited, for the poor.
“The whole point is that a bourgeois state which is exercising the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie. It cannot tell the truth and has to play the hypocrite.”
That is still happening today.
Top of the page
Last updated on 2 No vember 2019
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">Harman</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Chris Harman</h2>
<p> </p>
<h1>Paul Foot 1937–2004</h1>
<h3>(24 July 2004)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>Obituary</em>, <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, No.1911, 24 July 2004.<br>
Copied with thanks from the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/"><em>Socialist Worker Website</em></a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<table align="center" width="80%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="c"><em>Socialists across Britain are mourning Paul Foot, who died on Sunday. Chris Harman looks at his extraordinary life</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">Paul was a brilliant socialist writer, a speaker more able than any other to make people see what was wrong with capitalism, a tireless campaigner against injustice, and an investigative journalist whose revelations caused the resignation of a Tory cabinet minister and exposed the corruption of businessmen, big and small.</p>
<p>He became a revolutionary socialist when he was a young journalist working on Scotland’s <strong>Daily Record</strong>.</p>
<p>He came from a privileged background. His father was governor of British-run Palestine and then British-run Cyprus, and Paul attended Shrewsbury public school, joining the Liberals when he was at Oxford University.</p>
<p>It was contact with the realities of working class life and the working class movement in Glasgow in the early 1960s that transformed his ideas. He was never to look back.</p>
<p>Within a couple of years he was editing the precursor of <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, <strong>Labour Worker</strong>, and then went on to write three devastating books.</p>
<p><strong>Immigration and Race in British Politics</strong> detailed the scapegoating of successive generations of immigrants, from East European Jews in the 1890s to Afro-Caribbeans and Asians in the early 1960s.</p>
<p><strong>The Politics of Harold Wilson</strong> tore apart the record of the Labour government elected in 1964. And <strong>The Rise of Enoch Powell</strong> showed how the political establishment – including Labour – capitulated to the racism of the far right.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Paul was also exposing the faulty evidence that had led to the hanging of James Hanratty for murder in 1961.</p>
<p>In his fortnightly column in <strong>Private Eye</strong> he began an investigation into the network of corruption around the systems-building of high rise flats.</p>
<p>This led to the jailing of Labour’s Newcastle supremo T. Dan Smith, and the resignation of Tory home secretary Reginald Maudling.</p>
<p>He was at the heart of the wave of struggle of the 1970s, from the occupation of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971 through the miners’ strike of 1974.</p>
<p>It was then that he began a six-year spell working full time on <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>.</p>
<p>He used his journalistic skills to bring the spirit of the struggle into the paper, to show the machinations of the upper classes, and to convey socialist ideas in a language that was accessible to people who had never come across them before.</p>
<p>His book <strong>Why You Should Be a Socialist</strong> took the message to thousands of people.</p>
<p>His energy did not flag with the downturn of the struggle in the late 1970s.</p>
<p>He was with the miners when they were driven down to defeat in 1984-5 just as much as he had been with them when they were victorious ten years earlier.</p>
<p>His weekly page in the <strong>Daily Mirror</strong> of the 1980s became a beacon of light in the dark Thatcher years.</p>
<p>It ensured that the meetings he did in all parts of the country, often two or three times a week, always got an enthusiastic audience.</p>
<p>When a new management purged left wing journalists from the <strong>Daily Mirror</strong> in 1992, Paul was in the forefront of those putting up resistance and lost his job as a result.</p>
<p>His journalism in these years exposed one of the great miscarriages of justice – the case of four men convicted of “the murder on the farm” of Carl Bridgewater.</p>
<p>It also brought to light the amazing story of how Colin Wallace was used by British intelligence in Northern Ireland to smear the 1974 Labour government and then framed for a killing in a south coast town.</p>
<p>Paul was first taken ill five years ago, and that reduced his capacity to speak at meetings.</p>
<p>But his commitment continued, with a fortnightly political column in the <strong>Guardian</strong> and a fortnightly page in <strong>Private Eye</strong>.</p>
<p>He ran for mayor of Hackney as the Socialist Alliance candidate 18 months ago, and stood on the list for the London Assembly as a Respect candidate last month.</p>
<p>Just a fortnight ago he was promising to resume his regular column in <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, and just a week ago he had an audience spellbound at the Marxism festival of socialist ideas as he laid into New Labour.</p>
<p>He will be missed by everyone on the left, by every active trade unionist, by every opponent of racism, and by everyone who simply wants a better society.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of the page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="updat">Last updated on <!-- WebWriter AutoDato -->13 December 2009<!-- WW --></p>
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MIA > Archive > Harman
Chris Harman
Paul Foot 1937–2004
(24 July 2004)
Obituary, Socialist Worker, No.1911, 24 July 2004.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Socialists across Britain are mourning Paul Foot, who died on Sunday. Chris Harman looks at his extraordinary life
Paul was a brilliant socialist writer, a speaker more able than any other to make people see what was wrong with capitalism, a tireless campaigner against injustice, and an investigative journalist whose revelations caused the resignation of a Tory cabinet minister and exposed the corruption of businessmen, big and small.
He became a revolutionary socialist when he was a young journalist working on Scotland’s Daily Record.
He came from a privileged background. His father was governor of British-run Palestine and then British-run Cyprus, and Paul attended Shrewsbury public school, joining the Liberals when he was at Oxford University.
It was contact with the realities of working class life and the working class movement in Glasgow in the early 1960s that transformed his ideas. He was never to look back.
Within a couple of years he was editing the precursor of Socialist Worker, Labour Worker, and then went on to write three devastating books.
Immigration and Race in British Politics detailed the scapegoating of successive generations of immigrants, from East European Jews in the 1890s to Afro-Caribbeans and Asians in the early 1960s.
The Politics of Harold Wilson tore apart the record of the Labour government elected in 1964. And The Rise of Enoch Powell showed how the political establishment – including Labour – capitulated to the racism of the far right.
Meanwhile Paul was also exposing the faulty evidence that had led to the hanging of James Hanratty for murder in 1961.
In his fortnightly column in Private Eye he began an investigation into the network of corruption around the systems-building of high rise flats.
This led to the jailing of Labour’s Newcastle supremo T. Dan Smith, and the resignation of Tory home secretary Reginald Maudling.
He was at the heart of the wave of struggle of the 1970s, from the occupation of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971 through the miners’ strike of 1974.
It was then that he began a six-year spell working full time on Socialist Worker.
He used his journalistic skills to bring the spirit of the struggle into the paper, to show the machinations of the upper classes, and to convey socialist ideas in a language that was accessible to people who had never come across them before.
His book Why You Should Be a Socialist took the message to thousands of people.
His energy did not flag with the downturn of the struggle in the late 1970s.
He was with the miners when they were driven down to defeat in 1984-5 just as much as he had been with them when they were victorious ten years earlier.
His weekly page in the Daily Mirror of the 1980s became a beacon of light in the dark Thatcher years.
It ensured that the meetings he did in all parts of the country, often two or three times a week, always got an enthusiastic audience.
When a new management purged left wing journalists from the Daily Mirror in 1992, Paul was in the forefront of those putting up resistance and lost his job as a result.
His journalism in these years exposed one of the great miscarriages of justice – the case of four men convicted of “the murder on the farm” of Carl Bridgewater.
It also brought to light the amazing story of how Colin Wallace was used by British intelligence in Northern Ireland to smear the 1974 Labour government and then framed for a killing in a south coast town.
Paul was first taken ill five years ago, and that reduced his capacity to speak at meetings.
But his commitment continued, with a fortnightly political column in the Guardian and a fortnightly page in Private Eye.
He ran for mayor of Hackney as the Socialist Alliance candidate 18 months ago, and stood on the list for the London Assembly as a Respect candidate last month.
Just a fortnight ago he was promising to resume his regular column in Socialist Worker, and just a week ago he had an audience spellbound at the Marxism festival of socialist ideas as he laid into New Labour.
He will be missed by everyone on the left, by every active trade unionist, by every opponent of racism, and by everyone who simply wants a better society.
Top of the page
Last updated on 13 December 2009
|