The News in Review
Hurrah for the NCB
Who was it who once prayed to be protected from his friends?
When he was plain Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, Lord Chandos was a prominent member of the Conservative opposition which duelled with the Attlee government over its nationalisation bills. They fought in the House of Commons all day and. sometimes, all night as well. So effective was their propaganda that to many voters nationalisation became a very-dirty word.
But what is Lord Chandos saying about nationalisation now that he is a big industrial boss, chief of the mighty Associated Electrical Industries combine and of the Institute of Directors?
“Nationalisation of a fairly substantial sector of industry has come to stay. Whatever I may have thought in the first place about the wisdom of this policy, it is quite clear that every loyal citizen must try to make our nationalised industries work efficiently … As an industrialist I want cheap fuel and reliable supplies and I believe that with a little more working together that is what you [Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board] will secure for us.”
Lord Robens need not feel embarrassed at this new friendship. Nationalisation was designed to give just what Lord Chandos wants — cheap and reliable supplies of vital commodities.
The only pity now is that Lord Chandos did not tell us this some years ago, when he was spreading the fairy tale that nationalisation had something to do with Socialism.
New Hospitals
One one of the things which have missed out on the post war boom is the hospital. Over a fifth of those taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 were built before the American Civil War. Nearly half of them were built before the beginning of this century.
What has been done to put this to rights? Since the last war only one large general hospital has gone up—in Northern Ireland.
To the reformers who have been worried about this, the recent government White Paper must have come as a ray of hope. For plans arc being laid to spend nearly £800 million during the next ten years to give us, in the words of the White Paper.” . . . the physical equipment and the pattern and the setting which will everywhere place the most modern treatment at the service of patients.”
This sounds fine. Who can disapprove of bigger and better hospitals? But we have heard this sort of promise before.
We heard it about the roads and the railways and about the Health Service itself. For Capitalism is full of problems which are left to fester until a government decides to tackle them with heavy expenditure.
Many of these grandiose plans have been axed out of recognition in successive economic crises, when, the government has been looking for ways of reducing its expenditure.
There will be more economic crises. Which means that there will be more cuts in expenditure. Which means that Health Minister Powell’s beautiful hospitals may never see the light of day.
Expensive Royalty
Many tongues were clucked al the news that the Royal Family is to have some more money spent on them.
It must cost around £400 a year in fees alone to send the Prince of Wales to Gordonstoun School. The fees, says the school, vary with the parents’ financial circumstances; which does not mean, of course, that the school is full of clever, deserving boys whose parents pay no fees because they cannot afford them.
It will cost about £85,000 to renovate the wing of Kensington Palace where Princess Margaret and her husband are living—£15,000 more than the original estimate.
Some critics say that Prince Charles should be sent to a comprehensive school, like a sizeable part of his subjects. Others think that the Princess should be content to live in a council semi-detached, which to them seems roomy enough for a couple with only one child.
These views are way off the mark. The Royal Family stand for the possessions, rights and privileges of the British ruling class. It is, therefore, only appropriate that they themselves should live in lavish privilege.
And nobody has yet explained how sending a prince to a council school, or sticking a princess in a small house, would help the working class parents who struggle to keep their children at school past the age of fifteen and who have to renovate their house during their summer holiday.
These problems are typical of what faces workers all over the world, under monarchies and in republics.
While the tongue-cluckers do their measly, pointless sums, Capitalism grinds merrily on, providing a fat living for a few of its people and condemning the rest to dull poverty.
Tory Unrest
The Government took on a slight list last month, under the blast of criticism from many quarters.
The strikes of railwaymen and engineers encouraged The Guardian to sigh that, although they reproved the strikers, industrial unrest was the inevitable result of the Government’s policy on wages. Other critics thought that the trouble was caused because the Government had not explained the pay pause properly to the workers.
Some standard bearers for free enterprise were disappointed at the Government’s refusal to interfere with the free enterprise take-over bid from ICI for Courtaulds. Labour had a go on Lord Home’s criticism of UNO. To cap it all Tory M.P. Sir Harry Legge-Bourke suggested that fellow Old Etonian Macmillan is getting past it and should hand over to a younger man.
It would be interesting to hear how a government could explain a wage freeze so that the frozen workers accepted it. Workers sell their energies to their employers, which means that they are bound to resist any effort to keep down the price of those energies, whatever tricky name it goes under.
Such problems are typical of the confusion of Capitalism and are bound to cause unrest as the Government—any government—grapples with them. Critics and rebels may flex their muscles impressively, but when it is their turn to do the grappling they never shape any better than the men they have criticised.
The fact is that the individuals who say they are in charge of the affairs of British Capitalism really have little control over events. And that goes for their critics as well.
So it does not really matter whether or not Macmillan manages to ride this latest storm. We shall still all be in the same boat together.