Notes by the Way
“No Slump,” Mr. Morrison tells Lancashire cotton workers
We place on record for reference during the next slump Mr. Morrison’s assurance that it won’t happen. Addressing a meeting of cotton workers in Manchester on 17lh April, 1948, he spoke as follows :
“Mr. Morrison dismissed as a ghost from the past Lancashire’s fear that slump must follow boom, the fear that the cotton people might ‘work themselves out of a job.’ …. For years to come, the home market alone could probably absorb nearly all that Lancashire turned out last year. Even if the rest of the world was only half as hungry for Lancashire cotton goods as it is today, you’d still be perfectly safe as an industry to go all out. If you make the right stuff at the right price, you’re in a safe position as far ahead as any man can see.” (Report in Sunday Dispatch, 18/4/48.)
Bankruptcies Booming
During the war the number of bankruptcies dropped to a very low figure just about one-tenth of the number in 1938. Now the situation is rapidly changing.
“In 1946 the number had dropped to 370. In 1947 it was almost doubled to 718. In the first quarter of 1948 there seems to have been an enormous increase. … It appears that there were 634 bankruptcies in the United Kingdom during the first quarter of 1948, compared with a quarterly average of about 850 in 1938.” (Manchester Guardian, 24/4/48.)
The People’s Flag is deepest red, white and blue
Singing the Red Flag the London Communists marched in the May Day procession to Hyde Park carrying a fine array of Union Jacks, Red Flags, and the national emblems of Russia and the other Eastern European dictatorships. In many groups the flags were, four abreast, two red flags in the middle lanked on either side by Union Jacks.
But just to show how inconsistent they are even in their tortuous pandering to anti-socialist sentiment the Russian authorities iu their zone of Germany forbade the carrying of German Republican flags or the flag of Saxony—all had to be red. (Manchester Guardian, 2.3/4/48.)
In Defence of the Labour Government
The Tory Press naturally seizes every opportunity of jeering at the Labour Government planners every time (which means almost weekly) one of their plans goes wrong and has to be amended or scrapped. The Labour Government gets what it asked for. For years its spokesmen declared how different things would be when we got their planned system instead of chaotic private enterprise. The Sunday Express (9/5/48) is entitled to recall the statement by Mr. Wilmot when he was Minister of Supply that “except by some failure of organisation, there is no reason why we should ever again contemplate depression and slumps.”
It is true, as the Express says, that the Labour Party “claimed to know how to even out the recurrent booms and slumps which make up the trade cycle.”
A few days before the Sunday Express wrote the above, the Daily Mail (30/4/48) had a leader taking the same line. Where both these critics go wrong is in their claim that the Labour Government is worse than the Tories, and that the Tories really could avoid booms and slumps. Writing of the present chaotic ups and downs in the, brick-making industry the Sunday Express says “The ‘no-more-slump’ boys seem to have served this industry far worse than anything it knew in the bad old days of capitalist ‘anarchy’.” And the Mail says: “What Britain needs are fewer coupons and more cash trading, fewer restrictions and more goods. In short—less Planning and more Free Enterprise. And she could still iron out those booms and slumps.”
Actually the Mail writer answers himself in the same article, for he admits as a fact that in the old unplanned capitalism ”we had the trade cycle. Boom followed slump, and slump followed boom. Slump began when the country was overstocked with goods. Demand fell and people were thrown out of work.”
There weren’t any coupons or government industrial plans but there were slumps and so there will be again. There is only one thing as fantastic as the Labour belief that capitalism can be “planned” into order and made to serve human happiness, that is the Tory belief that all would he well if the plans and controls were withdrawn. The Tories failed ‘just as disastrously as the Labour Government.
Communist Good Wishes
On 28th April a farewell party of newspapermen was held in honour of Lord Beaverbrook who was leaving on a long visit to Canada. The Evening Standard (29/4/48) reports that “among those who sent messages of good will was the editor of the Daily Worker.”
G, B. Shaw on Socialism
Writing in the Daily Herald on 13th May Mr. Shaw rehashes his well-known case for dictatorship—”our Parliamentary system is too slow for Socialism.” He displays his usual inability to understand that capitalism and socialism are two well-defined, different and incompatible social systems, blethers about the “Socialism in a single country” that he imagines exists in Russia, then calls it Communism, then tells us that our civilisation already rests on the broad basis of Communism, and winds up by informing us that “Fascism is only the new name for Tory Democracy dressed up in National Socialist or Fabian clothes, and that we are up to our eyes in it. . . .” He also tells us that it will soon be impossible for Socialists to remain in the Labour Party but does not tell us what they would have been doing in it anyway.
It is easy to see why Shaw with his lasting disbelief in the capacity of the workers to think or to act for themselves, and his Fabian creed that the “intellectuals” must lead and direct the workers, should have been the slavish admirer of every jack-booted thug who has shot and bawled his way to dictatorial power in the past quarter of a century.
That Shaw never got very near to understanding Socialism is innocently betrayed by him to is biographer, Hesketh Pearson. He told Pearson that he was completely floored by, and unable to find an answer to, the woman in his audience who asked, if she had £50 under Socialism what would happen to it. What the difficulty is neither Shaw nor Pearson explains. If the £50 were in coin form the children might like to play with them, and if it was notes and they were small and well-designed what about using them as book-marks’?
Heaven knows what would happen if someone asked the great man a really difficult question like “How many beans make five?”
The Employers Take the Offensive in U.S.A.
Speaking on the radio on 5th May Mr. Joseph C. Harsh took as his theme for “American Commentary” the sharp change that is taking place in the negotiations between employers and the trade unions. “Industry,” he writes, meaning the employers, “is now on. the offensive.” The unions ought not to have been taken by surprise because there have been many warnings.
“The first was the passage of the Taft-Hartley Labour Act, a piece of legislation enacted a year ago winch revived the legal use of the injunction against certain types of strikes and in many other ways whittled down the favourable legal position Labour had gained during the Roosevelt era. Then the early weeks of spring produced another departure from the fifteen-year pattern. Labour has been fought to a standstill in a series of strikes preliminary to the big round of contract re-negotiation now beginning. New York Stock Exchange workers won nothing from a month-long strike. A number of printers’ strikes against newspapers have ended disastrously for the unions. Instead of winning their demands, the Printers’ Unions have only succeeded in driving the publishers towards new printing processes which eliminate typesetting altogether. The cable workers’ strike in New York ended with no gains for the Union and the loss of contracts with three companies. Packing-house workers have been getting nowhere in a strike now in its seventh week. And then there was the coal strike over the pension dispute, in which the Mineworkers’ Union, even, though led, as usual, by the formidable John L. Lewis, emerged with a settlement less favourable than the one it could have had without striking.” (Listener, 13/5/48.)
Mr. Harsh ended his broadcast with the verdict, “The trade unions are back on the defensive, as in 1920 to 1933.”
The banner under which the employers are fighting is that of an alleged desire to reduce prices; higher wages they say, are “inflationary,” they will put up prices.
It will be observed that U.S.A. wages and prices policy under Truman bears many resemblances to the policy of the Labour Government. They too oppose wage increases, and by announcing that they will no longer raise controlled prices merely because the employers have agreed to wage increases they are stiffening the employers’ resistance to wage demands. Simultaneously by curtailing non-export production in many branches of industry they are strengthening the hands of these employers who can now use unemploy¬ment as a weapon against the demands of their workers.
The real explanation here and in U.S.A. is that certain markets are already becoming over-stocked, demand is falling off and the employers are correspondingly better placed to resist the Unions as happened three years after World War 1. Now, as then, the short-lived post-war boom will fade away though it is, of course, impossible to say whether the big showdown is yet here.
That’s democracy, that was!
The “U.S.S.R. Handbook” (published by Gollancz in 1936) was compiled from information supplied from Russia. It includes a diary of events in Russia since 1917. The following items record the fate of the first (and last) democratic elections to take place under the Communist government at which other parties besides the Communist Party were permitted to exist and to put up candidates.
January 18th, 1918.—”Constituent Assembly opens in Petrograd.”
January 19th. 1918.—”Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.”
It was dissolved, of course, because the Communists found they were in a minority. Now they arrange tilings better. The only candidates allowed’ to stand for election are Communists or candidates approved by them.
Capitalism and Food
Sir John Boyd Orr who is retiring from the post of director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is to devote his energies to a campaign warning the governments of the world that soil erosion and the waste of labour and materials on armaments threaten the world with famine. Speaking at Southampton he said:
“The whole human race is rumbling on to destruction. There is only a fifty-fifty chance of getting over this food problem. If it is not solved there will be chaos in the world in the next 50 years. The nations of the world are insane, they are spending one-third of their national incomes preparing for the next war. They are applying their energies to building up a war machine instead of applying the world’s steel and. industrial production to conserving the resources of the land. That is the only basis of civilization.” (Times, 5/5/48.)
The Russian Bondholders
It was announced early in May that the-Russian government was raising a new loan of 20,000 million roubles (£900 million at the official exchange rate). This is additional to the vast national debt on which the government is already paying large amounts each year as interest or lottery prizes. The Manchester Guardian (4/5/48) quotes the Finance Minister to the effect that on this new loan an amount equal to 4 per cent. will be paid out in lottery prizes ranging from 50,000 roubles (£2,300) to 100 roubles. According to further information in the Times (4/5/48) one bond in every three will receive a prize, the others receiving no interest. The loan will be repaid in full in 20 years.
As the prizes are free of tax Daily Worker,4/5/48) it will be seen that the average return to the bondholders (4 per cent) is much higher than is paid on government loans in Great Britain.
The Salaries of the Controllers of Nationalised Industries
Answering the charge that the Labour government, pays extravagant salaries to the officials appointed to the Boards of the Nationalised industries Mr. Gaitskell, Minister of Fuel and Power, speaking at Leeds on 2nd May is reported by the Times (3/5/48) as follows:
“One of the favourite lines of attack was that these men were overpaid. Before the war the Tory governments fixed high salaries; they paid the chairman of the L.P.T.B. £12.500 a year, equivalent today to at least £20,000 a year. Yet the top salaries fixed by the Labour government for the chairmen of the British Transport Commission, the National Coal Board, and the British Electricity Authority were far less than half this for jobs of far greater importance and responsibility.”
To which the Tories retort that this refers only to the salary and ignores the allowances, etc.
“Factual evidence that is understood to be at the disposal of some Conservative M.P.s appears in indicate that the extent uf such expense allowances and emoluments in kind is in known instances of National Board Officials far more generous than in the case of their opposite numbers in private- business.
“. . . . they assert that in known instances Coal “Board officials were allowed the benefit of the free use of a car and chauffeur, a rent-free house, and even the wages of some of the domestic staff paid by the Coal Board.” (Financial Times, 11/5/48.)
What interests us is how Mr. Gaitskell squares the practise of £8,500 a year for the Chairman of the Con I board and £5 or £6 for the miner, with Mr. Attlee’s principle of “an equalitarian society.”
“Daily Worker” Reporting
The Labour Party membership is made up of affiliated trade unions (4,031,4), individual membership (608,487) and affiliated political and co-operative organisations (45,738). The total at the end of 1947 was a record and was duly reported us such in most newspapers. The News Chronicle (29/4/48), for example, published it under the heading “Labour Party’s Record numbers.” The Daily Worker, which often complains of the bias of other newspapers, reported it under the heading “Drop in Membership of the Labour Party” (Daily Worker, 29/4/48.) How they managed this was simple. They left out reference to the trade union membership and affiliated society membership altogether, and gave only the individual membership, which, had, in fact, dropped by 38,858 from the previous year. Thus do fakers figure.
Are the Workers better off under Labour Government?
The Daily Herald (18/5/48) reported the following statement by a delegate at the Labour Party Conference:
“Alarm at the loss of 40,000 individual Party members during the year was expressed by Mrs. Hilda Lane (St. Pancras) in moving the reference back of this s.ection of the report.
“Coming from a solidly working-class area she stressed the difficulties met by Labour Party members on the doorstep.
“Workers complained they were no better off than before the Labour Government. (Cries of ‘rubbish’ from delegates.)
” ‘In my shop,’ she continued, ‘people would come in and give almost anything for goods. Today the goods are piling up and people say they can’t buy them because they have not the money.
” ‘Let the Government and the Cabinet come down on the doorsteps instead of wining and dining with the ruling classes.’ ”
The Post Office workers at their annual conference seem to have a similar opinion. They opposed wage-freezing unless there is a 10 per cent. reduction of prices immediately. This to be followed “by a progressive reduction of prices and profits to a level giving wages the same purchasing power as in 1988.” (Daily Herald, 15/5/48.)
The Trotskyites on Profits under “Socialism.”
The following was published by the Socialist Appeal (Revolutionary Communist Party, May, 1948) in an article attacking the Labour Government for not pursuing a Socialist policy.
“In a real Socialist planned economy profits would be used to foster the technology and scientific development of industrial production and to improve greatly the conditions and standard of life of the working class. That is what the Labour Government should he doing if it were genuinely concerned to advance the interests of the working class; to establish socialism instead of propping up the capitalist system.”
It is obvious that the quarrel of the R.C.P. with the Labour Government is merely about the question whether state capitalism should, be run as the Labour Government does it or in some other way. Neither is of any good to the working class.
Portsmouth urged to prepare for unemployment
The following report of a May Day speech by Mr. Julian Snow, Labour M.P. for Portsmouth Central, was published in the Portsmouth Evening News (3/5/48).
“Mr. Julian Snow, M.P., made what he described as a ‘strictly non-Party appeal’ to citizens on Saturday to think seriously about planning the economic future of Portsmouth.
“He was addressing an open air May Day rally at Southsea when, after contrasting conditions of life in Portsmouth following the two world wars, he said we must not eliminate from our minds the possibility of the conditions of the early ’20’s coming back to the City. He quoted a report of 1921 of fainting men and women in a queue seeking relief from the Portsmouth Goodwill Fund. He said that in social democracy we could not have a revolution of our economic structure, and, therefore, conversion from one economic system to another was somewhat slow. The danger point might come in two or three years’ time, and we must have an economic plan for the City to cope with possible dockyard redundancy.
“Mr. Snow also spoke on foreign affairs.”
H.