News in Review
Algeria
In Algeria and in France the blood still flows.
The shootings, the bombings, the threats—even the publicity-worthy attempt, by the OAS to extort money from Brigitte Bardot—are typical of a bitter struggle between nationalists and colonialists.
Recent events have been bad enough. But according to some correspondents they are only the lull before another terrible storm breaks over Algeria.
What has happened to de Gaulle, the strong man who was going to clear up this mess? Whatever local influence the French President has had on the struggle—and there is no denying that he has had some—he is pretty well powerless to resolve the basic dispute.
The Moslems are still adamantly for an Algerian Algeria. The settlers stand firm for French control of the country.
Post-war history has been notable for its bloody nationalist struggles as the colonial powers have been pushed out of country after country, not always going without a fight.
This is what can be expected when capitalism throws up its disputes over property and the right to exploit a country’s workers.
That is basically what the trouble in Algeria is about. Within capitalism such struggles must go on.
Weak politicians can certainly do nothing about this. Strong politicians may make a show of doing something but end up no better than the rest.
Pay Pause
There was, of course, much moaning in the House when they got the news that the pay pause had been defied by the award to the electricity workers.
No moaning in the power stations, though. The workers were bound to resist the pause, because it is a threat to their living standards. That is what drove the teachers to demonstrate and what may cause the civil servants to start working to rule.
For the workers, then, it is simply a matter of fighting for their interests.
And for the employers?
For some of them the pay pause was a welcome thing. But for others it was not so simple.
Some weeks before the electricity award many private employers in the road haulage industry had chosen to ignore the Minister of Labour’s ruling that a pay increase and a cut in hours could not operate until the first of this month. The employees of these firms got their rise and reduction in hours in the middle of last November.
Why did the road haulage firms give in? Simply, they reckoned up the cost of surrender. Then they balanced it against the cost of the strikes and other protests which would follow a postponement of the rise. They found that capitulation was the cheaper course. So they paid up.
Which goes to show how capitalism’s divided interests extend to the employers themselves and often defeat the capitalists’ own ends.
Scooter Slump
One by one, the never-had-it-so-good industries are feeling the unaccustomed draught of recession.
Cars, television sets and refrigerators have already had their slumps. Now a side-show industry in the post war consumer goods boom has taken a fall.
Scooters and mopeds took their share of the boom, winning a lot of young people away from the bicycles they used to pedal around. Like the rest, they had their glorious summer in 1958 when the H.P. controls were off and everything sold like hot cakes.
This was the time when Raleigh Industries, already famous for their pedal cycles came in to try to take their share of the scooter and moped market.
Since then times have become hard. Lambretta recently had to cut their prices drastically in answer to their competitors’ reductions. Now Raleigh, who have already suffered in the slump in bicycle’ sales have announced that in March they will close their factory at Smethwick which turns out their scooters and mopeds. Fifteen hundred people will probably lose their jobs.
Perhaps this only amounts to a recession from which the stricken industries will soon recover. But there arc enough of them in trouble now to cause fear that it is more serious than that.
Capitalism is still a system of ups and downs. Its spells of relative prosperity cannot have any permanent value. Workers should not wait until they are on the dole queue before they learn the truth of this.
Lib-Lab?
it is early days yet for the Labour Party seriously to consider an alliance with the Liberals. Mr. Gaitskell still has enough hope of becoming Prime Minister in his own right to explain his description of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s suggestion of a Lib.-Lab. link-up as “silly.”
It is safe to assume, though, that the suggestion finds rather more favour among the Labour Party members who arc getting sick of being on the losing side. If the Tories give them one or two more drubbings at the polls, anything could happen.
Nothing new in this, of course. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 blamed their alliance with the Liberals for their failure to run capitalism. They swore that they would never again allow their hands to be so tied.
But having the 194.5 government to themselves made no difference—the Labour Party failed again. The best that some of them can now suggest is to revive the idea of a Liberal alliance— which they themselves told us was discredited by the events of 1924 and 1929.
There is nothing surprising in this. The Labour Party do not exist to propound political principles. Like any other capitalist party, (hey are out first of all for power.
This goes for the Liberals as well. They have made it plain that they would only consider an alliance which was worth their while in terms of Members of Parliament.
All good, clean, cynical fun this. May we be excused if we do not see anything to laugh at?