The Passing Show
If you have tears ….
“Are we being fair to the Kents?” demanded the Sunday Express on January 29th. The language is puzzling. You may have thought there was only one Kent, the county next to Sussex. So it ought to be explained that this is upper-class slang, with which the Sunday Express fills its columns in order to edify the snobs who read it, those white collar workers who like to pretend that they aren’t workers at all, but really “middle” class or even upper class. The “Kents “, in this upper-class slang, apparently means the Duchess of Kent and her children. The Express revealed that they had had no regular income from the Civil List since 1942, when the former Duke of Kent was killed.
It is true that King George VI and Queen Mary made payments to the Duchess out of their “private fortunes. It is true that £25,000 a year is available out of the Civil List towards meeting “the unavoidable expenses of those members of the Royal Family for whom no financial provision is otherwise made.” It is true that “it is probable” (says the Express) that the present Duke of Kent “has now begun to draw on some of the money left him in trust by his father”. It is true that both the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra appear from the papers to be able to afford fairly expensive visits to nightclubs and long winter-sports holidays. But that isn’t the whole story, wails the Express. The Duchess has been sending many valuable objets d’art to Sotheby’s lately—”silver and gold cigarette boxes, clocks, photograph frames, bell pushes” and so on, plus “a canteen of silver, with 222 pieces of silver bearing the royal cipher”. (The last item alone, it may be said in passing, would fetch enough to keep any working-class family in opulence for years.) This isn’t supposed to show that the Duchess is rich: it is presented as evidence that she is poor. For, demands the article, “would she have sold all these articles if she had been free from financial cares?”
More heart-breaking details follow. Besides the family’s country house in Buckinghamshire, they have a rent-free set of rooms at Kensington Palace. And the Duchess finds it difficult to keep a full staff of servants at both places. “With no cook ” (at Kensington) “to prepare hot meals, it often happens that the Duchess brings up to town food which has been cooked at her country home. And it has been known for the family, when in London, to live on cold meals for a week at a time.” Working-class families, of course, have to cook for themselves.
This is a question for debate among those who support the capitalist system. Royal figureheads do a public relations job for the ruling class, and the ruling class pays them accordingly. They must decide how much. But Socialism would solve this problem. For when there is no ruling class, there will be no need to have a public relations staff for them.
Too few hands
THAT wasn’t the end of the worries of the Sunday Express. On the same day, same page, there was an article pointing out the dangers of either King (of the Daily Mirro group) or Thomson (who rules a large newspaper and television network) getting control of Odhams. If Thomson were to win, for example, it pointed out that he would control 17 daily papers, three Sundays, 25 weeklies, 46 periodicals, 62 trade and technical journals, plus Scottish television. In that event, ran the article, “he can decide, if he so desires, just what millions of people are to know, and what they are not to know; what they are to think and why they are to think it”. If King wins this battle he will control an even larger empire, so the danger is proportionately greater. Clearly the Beaverbrook papers are worried that such giants might threaten the profits even of the Expres group.
The situation the Express claims to fear, where a newspaper owner “might be tempted to stem the free flow of news or threaten full freedom of expression”, has, of course, existed for years. Only very wealthy men, multi-millionaires, can now run national newspapers. And naturally multi-millionaires are not going to allow “full freedom of expression” to Socialists, who want a new society which would abolish their power. Already the Press Lords decide “what millions of people are to know, and what they are not to know; what they are to think and why they are to think it.” It ill becomes the Express group to grumble at this situation only when they think they might not benefit from it to the extent they previously did.
Back-to-work service
Why was the National Health Scheme introduced after the war? Why has it been maintained ever since, with modifications only in detail, by both parties which have formed Governments?
A recent drug advertisement in The Observer gives us some help with the answer. It quotes an article in the British Medical Journal to the effect that “loss of man hours due to sickness is 75 times greater than that from industrial disputes”. We all know what the capitalists think of strikes. Their propaganda organs attack them regularly and ferociously. And if absence from work due to strikes affects the ruling class so badly, what must they feel about something that costs the employers seventy-five times as many lost man hours?
Was the Health Service a success? Did the capitalists obtain from it what they anticipated? The advertisement again gives the answer: “latest available figures show that in terms of days lost per person from work there was a decrease of 33 per cent between 1945 and 1955”. No wonder the Conservative Party, the avowed supporters of capitalism, still operate the Health Service after ten years in power.
Notice the terms used in these quotes. There is nothing about health or illness in the general sense. The talk is of “man hours lost in industry”, of “days lost per person from work”. In other words, as Socialists have contended for so long, the service is not a Health Service, but a Back-to-work Service.
A.W.E.