Roundabouts
Roll up! Roll up! All the fun of the fair! Who can resist the call of the jingling mechanical music, the raucous voices, the gaudy colours, the light-hearted throng of people, the crack of the wooden ball at the “coconut shy,” or, – for the unlucky – the dull thud on the dingy sheet behind the serried ranks. Yes—these are the places to cure the misanthrope, delude the unwary, or entertain the pleasure seekers. How much senseless joy there is in the roundabout ride. On we get, pay our tanner, and away we go.
On the move, faster and faster, the sea of onlookers becomes a hazy mist arid we may indulge in dreamy thoughts of riding through glorious fairylands as though in a magic carpet. The barrel organ blaring at the hub, the weird animal shapes, the pagan designs in gaudy paint all foster our illusions. But, alas! Our sixpennorth is done. Grinding to a stop we find ourselves back where we started!
Back where we started. Ah, yes—that reminds us of politics.
As after the 19148 war, there is an opinion gaining support in the minds of numbers of workers that if only they could get back to pre-war years they would be much happier and contented. We do not pretend to be psychologists, but we assume that this frame of mind must spring from man’s fear of the unknown,
The future is unknown and insecure; the past is known and the insecurities of the years forming it are forgotten.
Compared with the instability apparent to-day in economic affairs the years immediately preceding 1939 must seem quite stable to those people who have the happy knack of having a very short memory for the unpleasant realities of a worker’s life under capitalism.
Such a one is Mr. Ernest Bevin, at present Foreign Secretary in a Labour Government. According to The Star (28th May, 1948) Mr. Bevin, speaking at a conference of women trade unionists, said that after four years of Marshall Aid Britain would be back to 1938 standards of living.
“When we emerge from those four years,” he added, “we shall have so closed the gap that we shall have brought up the standard of living not only here but in the 16 or 17 European nations involved.”
So far as the ordinary worker is concerned, with little or no knowledge of the economics of his everyday existence, we can understand his thinking how nice it would be to be transported back to an era of 1938 prices with his pocket containing 1948 wages! But no such illusion should mar Mr. Bevin’s judgment.
For the benefit of our fellow workers (not for Mr. Bevin’s, for at the time he was General Secretary of the T. & G.W.U., and surely must remember the facts) let us re-quote the following: —
“Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, who estimates that at present prices, it is impossible for a family of man, wife and three children to live decently under 55s. a week in a provincial town, estimates that ‘more than 40 per cent. of the adult urban male workers earn less than 55s. per week and over 33 per cent. earn less than 50s’.” (News Chronicle, March 16th, 1938).”
Mr. Rowntree dealt, of course, with workers who had a job—let us not forget those without a job of whom there were approximately 1¾ millions in the middle -of 1938. No one will disagree that there was little difference between conditions in 1937 and 1938, so let us also re-quote from the SOCIALIST STANDARD (July, 1938) which said when dealing with some aspects of the Report of the Unemployment Assistance Board for 1937 that “half the male applicants declared normal wages of less than 50s. per week,” and also drew attention to the astounding fact- that some applicants for unemployment assistance were better off when out of a job !
In four years’ time, with the aid of dollars from capitalist America, the standard of living in “Socialist” Britain will be raised to that of the halcyon days of 1938. “Let us Face the Future” (Labour Party Election Manifesto, 1945) certainly never promised the workers a prospect so, rosy—it certainly looks as though the workers will have something to face in 1952, after seven years of the “future” have elapsed.
It is rather strange that Mr. Bevin should wish to go back to 1938. If we put the roundabout in reverse for a while we land back in 1938 to find a National Government with a large Tory majority in the House of Commons. Strange that Mr. Bevin should want to return to the standard of living provided by a Tory controlled capitalism !
If he wants to send the roundabout gyrating backwards why doesn’t he go back to the Labour debacle of 1929-31 ‘or the “Labour-in-office-but-not-in-power” days of 1924? Surely these limes would be much preferable to Mr. Bevin, or—perish the thought—can he believe that by 1952 the Tories will be in power again to provide the workers with his much boosted 1938 standard?
Following most peculiarly on The Star’s report mentioned above came next morning the< em>Daily Herald’s version of Mr Bevin’s address to the women trade unionists.
According to the Herald he told them that “they should keep before the rising generation the knowledge of what things were like between the two wars.” By this, according to the headline over the report, he meant, “Tell the children of the hard times.”
The Star omits mention of this advice on the education of the children to the horrors of the inter-war years, and the Herald blows no trumpets regarding the return to the promised land of 1938. What are we to make of these contradictory reports?
Let us look at Bevin’s second proposition stated in the Herald. Having said that the rising generation should know what things where like between 1918 and 1939 we think he, or the Herald, might have devoted some time and space to this important matter and given us some information. But no, apparently we must seek this for ourselves, if we are interested.
Here again surely it would have been mentioned that between the two wars there was one Labour Government in 1924, and another in 1929/31, followed by a National Government with Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister with a coalition cabinet until 1935. These Labour Governments during their periods of office led the workers through such prosperous and happy times that on each occasion when next they had an opportunity to vote they sacked the Labourites, and reinstated the Tories! This story of the hard times suffered by the workers in between the two wars because of Tory mismanagement of affairs is a line of Labourite propaganda churned out with much repetition and emphasis. It must, however, not be forgotten I hat for three of these years Labour Governments were in office and for a further four years (1931-1935) the Prime Minister was J. R. MacDonald, the former chosen leader of the Labour Party. He and other ex-Labour Ministers, including Snowden, claimed that they were carrying out Labour Party policy as far as the crisis would allow a plea that the present Government echoes.
Between the two wars the workers have been for many rides on the political roundabout. The man in charge may have been a Labourite at one time and a Tory at another, but the workers have still been taken for the same ride on the same roundabout and every time they have come back to the place from which they started. During the last, war they were still riding on the same roundabout although the hobby horses had given way to tanks and aeroplanes. Now that it has been repainted and the tanks and aeroplanes largely replaced by the old hobby horses again they are still being taken for a ride! What a fascination this roundabout of capitalism has for the workers.
Just as the visitor to the fair is inveigled by the showman to enjoy a ride, so the showmen of capitalism entice the workers to continue supporting them. When the political roundabout stops at election times the music blares forth in the shape of flowery phrases from the lips of demagogues and the gaudy paint bestowed on the capitalist economic machine distracts the eye from its cheap crudity and ramshackle construction likely to result in a breakdown at any moment.
Why, fellow workers, do you find such enjoyment in this deceitful monster? Think, for one moment, that if you walk the other way, away from the dusty and noisy fair ground, along the road to the country there you will find the cool forest glades, the green meadows, or the pleasant river banks. Here is no harshness, no gaudiness, no deceit, no unhappiness; here is happiness and honesty, beauty and serenity.
So, fellow workers, you can turn your back on the rotten, sordid ugliness of capitalism and make your way to the happiness, security and beauty that is Socialism.
Remember next time you cast your vote—will it be for another ride on the roundabout or will it be a sane gesture for a complete change—a real journey under your own initiative, following your own path in the joyful company of fellow Socialists, to a land where things will be produced not for the profit of the few but to satisfy the needs of all, where all shall be free and none be slaves.
N. S.