News in review
Nurses: Low wages
The nurses were among the last to be caught in the official period of the pay pause. Who cannot sympathise with their indignation at the government’s refusal to offer them more than a 6d. in the £1 rise for one of the hardest and most unpleasant jobs there are?
We all know by now the official reasons for nurses having low wages. The most frequent is that nursing is not just a job like copy typing or cigarette rolling. Nursing is a vocation. Start throwing rises about and soon the hospitals will be full of flibbertigibbets who are not there to serve but to make money. The only way, apparently, to get the right type for nurses is to keep their pay down.
This was not, of course, the argument which the government used over the appointment of Dr. Beeching, when they said that the only way to get the right type for a tough job was to offer him £24,000 a year.
Beeching was strongly enough placed to demand a very high wage, but this does not apply to the nurses. The weapon which other workers can wield—the strike—they will not use, although the very reasons for them not using it would make it a terribly strong weapon in their hands.
Many of them prefer to show their resentment by leaving the work altogether. There are now over twenty-five thousand nursing vacancies in England and Wales. Forty per cent. of the qualified nurses in this country do not nurse, although some of these have left through marriage.
So the government has the nurses on a skewer. And, despite all the hypocritical sweet talk about humane service and duty, they are quite cynically roasting them.
Russia: Anti-Semitism
It is a reasonable assumption that many of the Jewish people who support the Communist Party do so because they believe that the Soviet Union is free of the discrimination they meet in other countries.
What will such people make of the fact that, of the fifteen or so death sentences which have been passed for economic crimes in the USSR since last summer, at least ten have applied to Jews?
Perhaps they accept the Russian government’s explanation, which claims that Jews tend to get more easily involved in such activities because they are predominantly engaged in commerce.
Jewish organisations over here say that this cannot be true. That Jews make up only a small part of the Russian people and that the Soviet press shows economic crimes to be prevalent in all sections of the population.
Certainly, Moscow’s excuse is awfully similar to those used by the Nazis to justify their anti-Jewish campaigns. It is possible that, like the Nazis again, the Soviet government is using the Jews as scapegoats for its economic difficulties. There is probably as much latent racial prejudice waiting to be stirred up in Russian workers as in any others.
Whatever the truth may be, there is a larger issue which is affected by it-Russia claims to be a Socialist country, in which there is some sort of equal standing about wealth ownership.
How does this line up with the reports from Moscow of the currency speculators, the commercial fiddlers and the black marketeers?
The answer is that it does not line up, Most people in Russia are poor and will stay that way. A few people there can get rich. Sometimes legally, sometimes illegally. Sometimes they get away with it. Sometimes they get caught.
By-elections: A Victory?
Will the government ride the by-election results and win its way back by the next general election? They have done the trick before, but Orpington was a heavier blow than Tonbridge and Torrington put together.
Elections, of course, are not so straightforward. Here are some of the comments of the candidates who fought he Blackpool by-election in March:
TORY: It is quite clear from this small poll that there is not a mass revolt against the government or, indeed, dislike of the government.
LIBERAL: This is a message from Blackpool to the radicals of the country that the Liberals can and will win . . .
LABOUR: If you compare the Labour vote and the anti-Labour vote in the last general election with the respective votes in this election it will be seen that we have done very much better.
From these optimistic words alone, nobody would infer that two of the candidates were defeated. In fact the Tory held on to the seat by the very seat of his pants, while the Liberal vote bounded up and Labour’s dropped a little.
It is common for the political parties to dress up election results to show that, no matter how many votes or scats they have lost, the whole thing is a great victory for them.
This probably goes down well. Workers seem to vote for anything except the permanent solution to the world’s problems.
This is hopeful for the Tories, who have proved themselves masterly vote catchers. The chances are that, whatever knocks they dish out in the meantime, the workers will help themselves at the next election to another few years of Tory rule over British capitalism.
Cancer: Smoking
Even the most addicted smoker must find it difficult now to sidestep the conclusion that heavy cigarette smoking is for a lot of people the deciding factor in whether they develop lung cancer.
The report of the Royal College of Physicians was grim news for many ears.
Grim news for the tobacco companies, with their enormous factories, modern machinery, complex organisation—and big profits. They took the cautious line, refused to commit themselves and merely reminded us that they are still looking into the matter.
Grim perhaps for the government. They are skimming over £800million from the tobacco companies, most of it in tax on cigarettes. If this was seriously reduced bv a fall in cigarette sales, the Chancellor would have some rearranging to do. No wonder he was recently heard to murmur that he hoped not too many people would give up smoking.
Grim for the advertising agencies, some of which grow fat on the millions spent in trying to persuade us that it is smart or sexy to smoke a particular brand.
Grim for some politicians, who may soon have to take a definite line on this widespread habit. One M.P. attacked the report as “tosh.” He has a big cigarette factory in his constituency.
There are an awful lot of monied interests involved in the lags we light up. This means that smoking and lung cancer is going to be another of those problems which capitalism finds it difficult to face up to.
Which makes it grim for the smoker.