The News in Review
AT HOME
Crime
The continued search for the Cheddington mail robbers, enlivened by some startlingly intimate newspaper reports of the details of the crime (one paper said that the master mind is a miser who lives in Brighton) once again highlighted the fact that the working class are always on the lookout for an easy way out of the joys of their social situation.
The discovery of some of the money in hiking country around Dorking set off a Sunday afternoon equivalent of the Pools, as crowds of people combed woods and fields for what they hoped was going to be a lucky find. There was no lack of discussion about what they would all do if they came across some of the loot. Stick to it? Turn it in and claim the reward? On one thing, everyone seemed agreed. If such a piece of luck came their way, they would use it for all they were worth to help themselves get out of the working class.
Now this puts something of a perspective upon the remarks of Dr. John Mays, Lecturer in Social Science at Liverpool University, who said this about the cause of crime to a Howard League conference at Nottingham: “When they see people enjoying a better standard of living they ask why they should not have it. That leads to some of them to snatch and grab for themselves.”
Anyone who expects a Lecturer in Social Science to come up with conclusive answers to the problems which his researches uncover, may have dreamed of Dr. Mays pointing out that most crime exists only because capitalism exists. If capitalism were abolished, this crime would simply fade away into history. But the Doctor came as near to this as anyone could reasonably expect: “The nation’s business is to make a good life available for a greater number of people.”
And that is just what capitalism is failing to do. The crime figures are only one aspect of this monstrous, vital fact.
Lord Nuffield
While we are on the subject of rich men, we should comment on the death of one who became famous not just for what he owned but also for what he had given away. Capitalism, which is based upon the exploitation of the masses by the few, hypocritically teaches us to respect the man who gives away his money. Provided, that is, it is all done in a way of which capitalism can approve. Such a man was Lord Nuffield, whose bequests to charities and the like were variously estimated at his death at between sixteen and forty million pounds.
The press flew into action when their hero died, with long obituaries telling us how generous he was, how grateful we should be for his open-handedness, how sad it was that he should go the way of all flesh. None of them, in the thousands of words they spewed out, asked, the obvious question.
Where did the millions which Nuffiekl gave away come from, in the first place?
And, equally, none of them gave the only tenable answer:
From the exploitation of the workers in his factories.
Diet on the dole
Evidence of what the good life means to many people has come from County Durham, where the West Hartlepools Council has devised a diet to feed a family of four or five pounds a week. West Hartlepools has three thousand people out of work at the moment and, if the economic portents are being read correctly, can expect a lot more as the winter draws on. It is also the place, as we recorded last month, where Cerebos Ltd. panned to dump a hundred tons of meat and fish paste into the sea because they are changing the shapes of their jars.
There were no reports of the West Hartlepoals unemployed, nor of their long suffering wives, protesting at the insult which has been added to their injury. There were only photographs of patient, if bemused, housewives at the demonstration of the diet. It has not, apparently, occurred to anyone that there i something insulting in supporting a social system which cannot secure even a meagre livelihood for its productive members, and then lecturing them, when times are hard, on the techniques of living on short rations.
Are the working class too buffeted, too loaded with the degradations and the insults of capitalism to care? Perhaps they are. On the very same week as the diet was being demonstrated in West Hartlepools the Sunday Telegraph reported that Minister of Labour Mr. John Hare would soon be able to wrestle with the problem of the unemployed in a new home in Holland Park. He, poor fellow, has been driven from his former home in Sussex Place, Regents Park, by an expiring lease. Never mind. The new Hare home, after one or two alterations, will be worth over £100,000. Mr. Hare is married to a sister of “immensely rich” Lord Cowdray.
Perhaps the unemployed in the Hartlepools do not read the Sunday Telegraph. Nor, perhaps, its sister paper the Daily Telegraph, which told us a few days later about some of the people who will never have to worry about their food budget because to all intents and purposes, they own, among other things, Scotland (which after all is not very far from County Durham). Here are just a few of the owners:
The Duke of Buccleuch, 500,000 acres.
The Duke of Sutherland. 250,000 acres.
Cameron of Lochiel, 150,000 acres.
Col. David Greig, 90,000 acres.
The Scientists
Answers were hard to find, too, at this year’s meeting of the British Association. All sorts of problems are aired at this annual orgy of scientific speechifying but, apart from technical matters, it is virtually impossible to find, among the thousands of words, a hint of the solution to society’s ailments. The scientists can pose the question very nicely, usually with a mass of supporting evidence. But the answer? That is a different matter.
Here, for example, is Professor C. F. Carter, Vice Chancellor of Lancaster University, worrying about the problem of economic growth:
“Britain is showing increasing signs of tiredness not only in government but in the Civil Service and in some parts of industry, and it badly needs the energy of a fresh generation . . . Britain could have a five per cent growth rate if people worked harder and longer but people would not work hard to create material wealth unless it was considered desirable and respectable to enjoy the fruits of their labour.”
And here is the Professor’s solution to the problem he has stated:
“The economic system must be organised with reasonable efficiency and honesty. The vigour of new ideas must not be suffocated by a dead weight of orthodoxy and the energy of the young must not be frustrated by the power of the old.”
It is difficult to believe that Professor Carter—and perhaps some of his audience—are unaware of the fact that there is nothing new about his suggestion. They must surely have noticed that, whether young people or old are in charge of capitalism, the anomalies, the frustrations and the inhumanities of the system remain untouched. There is, further, nothing especially unorthodox in suggesting that the younger element be given their chance. Nor anything especially hopeful or inspiring. Is this the best that the scientists can offer us? Apparently so.
The tragedy about scientists, in fact, is that they never seem able to hit on the real solution to capitalism’s problems. With all their training—some of it training in how to think straight, how to assess evidence and to reach a defensible conclusion—they never seem to grasp one of the most obvious facts of present day society. Very, very few of them ever consider the idea that there may be something in the basic nature of capitalism which is always going to prevent it from settling its own difficulties.
Scientists, in other words, are just as ready as any of the great unscientific mass outside their conference hall to support capitalism, with all its anomalies and illogicalities. They turn not a hair at helping to make the devilish devices with which rival nations fight their wars. They are always on hand to look into, and to try to control, any of capitalism’s problems. This year’s British Association learned that Professor R. V. Jones, professor of natural philosophy at Aberdeen University, will soon be joining the Ministry of Defence to advise on scientific matters. To advise, in other words, on the scientific aspects of the war effort of British capitalism. Professor Jones himself said that it was “a little unfortunate ” that the news of his appointment had leaked out at a meeting of the Association. It is even more unfortunate for the human race that long training and extensive knowledge should be diverted into the modern war machines instead of being applied to the benefit of society.
ABROAD
Civil Rights March
The Civil Rights demonstration in Washington was, in terms of its numbers alone, massively successful. But it was no more than that.
The Negroes in the United States, just like all other oppressed racial groups everywhere else, are discriminated against because of the false ideas of those who do the discriminating. In some ways, capitalism needs an ignorant working class—and these are the very people who will try to explain away the system’s shortcomings by venting their spleen on the Jew, or the Negro or some other Minority group. At times, a government will actually foster such ideas—in wartime, for example, it helps to have a working class who think that the other side is inherently bestial and possesses inferior fighting abilities.
This kind of ignorance cannot be cleared out by demonstrations, however massive they may be. Capitalism thrives on ignorance of one sort or another; the only people who are immune to racial theories are those who have realised that the private property system is not in their interests and who work for its abolition.
South Africa & Nyasaland
Not only race theories, but race lunacy, in South Africa, where the dour censorship of the Nationalist government often makes them look foolish. The latest victim of the Pretoria blue pencil is the Peter Sellers film Heavens Above, which is in trouble in the Republic because it shows, among other scenes, the white vicar taking tea with his Negro churchwarden, the same churchwarden at the font at the christening of a white baby, helping the vicar off with his coat, and so on.
It is tempting to say: “How stupid can you get?” and to leave it at that. But, of course, the vicious race oppression in South Africa deserves more comment. For that is the country where racial theories are actually holding back the very advance of capitalist society, where the economically powerful industrialists find that their hopes are so often frustrated by the Nationalist government’s primitive ideas and fears of black revolution. In some ways, it is a deeply frightening spectacle. The immediate outlook for South Africa is not happy. It is dark with the promise of savage conflict, with little hope for humanity and reason in it.
It is small relief to turn from lunatic South Africa to some of the countries where the Negro nationalists have come to power. Ghana, as we all know, is a classic example of an intolerant government. Everybody can remember the self destructive anarchy of the early days of independence in the Belgian Congo. In other parts of Africa, too, the erstwhile fighters for independence have shown that, when they are in power, their followers would be wise to forget the more purple passages in the speeches they made in the old days of struggle.
Dr. Banda, who suffered imprisonment for his advocacy of independence for Nyasaland, is a man who must be trying to do a lot of forgetting. In his case, the usual strictures upon the people of the country to work harder, to serve diligently the cause of Nyasaland’s aspirant capitalist class and to become, in other words, meek, respectable citizens, has been accompanied by an attempt to impose a degree of public adulation which is as ridiculous as any of the antics of the censors in Pretoria.
When he is out and about, Dr. Banda likes to have the road to himself. That is why the Nyasaland Legislative Assembly has recently been debating a Bill which will compel motorists and cyclists to pull up at the side of the road when Banda’s convoy approaches. Is this not ludicrously reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin with his globe and his microphones in The Great Dictator? There is only one comment which fills-the bill. We shall give way to the temptation which earlier we resisted. How stupid can you get?
BUSINESS
Whistling in the dark
One of the lively minds who, the ads. tell us, write The Guardian, has found something in the world of business to be cheerful about. “Optimism,” said the papers City column on August 27th, “Is in the air . . . most people appear to take the view that the way lies reasonably clear ahead for the next six months at least.”
In some sections of industry and commerce, this is at least partly true. The shipbuilders report a brighter outlook, estimating that by the end of this year their orders will be over the million ton mark, compared to 610,000 tons for last year. The Guardian’s conclusion, as we might have expected, was that this is all due to the measures in last April’s Budget and to the other financial juggling which the government has since tried, such as the £60 million loan scheme for the shipbuilding industry.
But there is another side to the picture. Other industries are not doing so well. On the same day—indeed, on the same page—-as The Guardian was carolling its optimism abroad, it reported that The Metal Box Company is worried about the lack of orders and finds that the tax “incentives” have had little effect upon its markets, Still on the same page, Rael Brook, the shirt company which rose so dramatically a few years ago, was also said to be on harder times; its current dividend has taken a cut by half, mainly as a result of an unsuccessful venture into the production of trousers. Among the other firms which are suffering from a pronounced lack of optimism are Metal Industries (predicting lower profits for this year) and John Brown, the shipbuilders (profits expected to be “clearly not … as great for the next two years”).
Only a few days later The Guardian sobered its cheerfulness with the news that the long forecast upsurge in consumer spending has not come to pass and that the retail sale figures for July were well short of the hopes which had been held out for them. And July, let us not forget, was the month when the tax adjustments of the last Budget were supposed to be flooding the working class with excessive spending power. The Guardian hesitated not at turning the necessary somersault:
“This is sad news for the optimists— including Mr. Maudling—who have been scanning the figures eagerly each month for signs of the genuine recovery that they felt was on the way.”
Now if this makes it seem as if The Guardian does not know its own mind on the subject of the business of British capitalism, we do not have to look very far for the reason : “Just why consumers generally are still holding off from spending more freely is anyone’s guess.”‘ (Sept. 3rd) and: “But no one can say for sure what sort of time lag we must expect before the next investment boom gets under way.” (August 27th).
The point is that the men in the Treasury—and those who write clever articles about them in the newspaper—claim that they can do better than guess about the economy. They should be sure about investment booms. It is illogical, to put it mildly, to support capitalism in one breath and in the next to admit that it is an uncontrollable system of guesses and uncertainties. And, in these circumstances, it is even worse to take up talk about “optimism” when we know that capitalism’s anarchies can abruptly and ruthlessly make a mockery of the most confident of whistling in the dark.
BEA’s hidden profits
British European Airways has announced that it has cut its previous year’s loss from £1.5 million to £265,000. At the same time, BEA pointed out how generous a deal its shareholders have got from the nationalised industry. The loss was reached after—and not before, as is the case with private industry—BEA had paid out £3,081,521 in interest on capital. In other words, BEA’s actual profit last year was £2,816,220. Which shows up for the nonsense it is the talk about a nationalised industry being an automatic money loser.
BEA’s profit came, just like any other, from the work of the people whom it employs. Pilots and air hostesses, and the ground crews with their baseball caps, may seem glamorous beings to their earthbound fellows. Yet they are all exploited because that is what capitalism sees is done to all its workers, on land, sea and in the air.
It is, incidentally, worth noting the order in which BEA, in sound, traditional capitalist manner, put human welfare and its own commercial interests. At the Press Conference to introduce the Corporation’s report, chairman Lord Douglas of Kirtleside was asked for his views on the Noise Abatement Society’s proposal to reduce the offensiveness of London Airport by moving it to Foulness Island in the Thames Estuary.
Lord Douglas is famous for not mincing his words.
“Bloody crazy,” he replied.