News in Review
The Polls
Over the past few months, watching the so-called public opinion polls has almost become an obsessive national activity. Glassy, fascinated eyes have watched the graph lines of support for the two big political parties snaking up and down.
Even the Stock Exchange has reacted, becoming more optimistic as the forecast support for the Conservatives has increased.
The two big polls National Opinion Polls in the Daily Mail and Gallup in the Daily Telegraph have differed in their assessments. NOP turning up figures more favourable to the government than Gallup. Both have agreed that the Tories have steadily gained ground.
Who Knows what the polls are worth? Naturally, they protest their own accuracy; they are now big business employed by famous companies and advertising agencies to estimate what razor blades we use, what size washing machine fits into our kitchens.
In the political field, the polls have never really lived down their massive boob in the American Presidential Election of 1948, when Truman won against all their forecasts. They blamed that on to an unsuspected flaw in their method, which they now claim to have eliminated.
But none of them, of course, can interview an entire electorate and inevitably their sampling methods come in for some criticism. When the election is over, the polls do some furious figure juggling and, not surprisingly, claim that their forecasts were accurate.
The political parties welcome or deride the polls, according to whether they are currently favourable or not. Some time back a constituency Conservative Party which was fighting a by-election suggested that the polls were undemocratic, because they actually influenced people to vote for the party which they tipped to win.
In that by-election, need we add, the Tories were doing badly when the opposite is true they do not complain about the polls.
The whole thing is, in fact, a rather amusing game. And. like a game, it has no real effect. We can make one forecast now, without the aid of the polls.
Whichever of the parties wins the election, and whatever the composition of Parliament when the votes have been counted, capitalism will remain. It will be business as usual for everyone, including the pollsters.
Restrictive practices
Sam Goldwyn has long been famous for his super-colossal films and for his snappy wisecracks. He has always been the newspapers’ caricature of a Hollywood tycoon expansive, ebullient. But now he is under something of a cloud.
The great Sam recently sold fifty of his films for showing on television. Now everybody knows that the one word which is likely to make the cinema owners see red, in the most glorious, panoramic technicolor, is television.
So Mr. Goldwyn’s sale is regarded by the cinema interests as a stab in the back or, as Mr. Ellis Pinkney, secretary of the Cinema Exhibitioners’ Association, put it. biting the hand that fed him. Goldwyn was not around when this remark was made: had he been, he would doubtless have made another funny crack in reply.
But the CEA are not joking. They are pressing all cinema owners in Britain not to show any more Goldwyn films. As they claim a membership of over ninety per cent of cinema owners, including Rank and Granada, their ban may well be effective.
Now the film industry was once famous for the demarcation rules which its workers’ trade unions applied in the studios. These rules were strict; no carpenter would stick up so much as a square inch of plaster, no plasterer would knock in the smallest nail.
The employers complained bitterly about what they called these restrictive practices. They implied that the workers were childish, that the rules would ruin the industry and would deprive the public of their films.
In fact, the unions were using an old established weapon to try to defend some hard won improvements in working conditions. This may mean some tough fights, but that is the way it is jungle of capitalism’s class struggle.
And toughness, and restrictive practices, are not confined to one side. What the cinema owners are now going to do in their fight against Goldwyn can only be described as a tough restrictive practice.
Naturally, they try to justify it by using the same tones of moral indignation as they use when they attack the film workers’ demarcation rules. But morality does not come into it.
Both sides arc only trying to protect their interests and that is something that goes on all over the capitalist world. Even that part which is the preserve of the tinsel unrealities of the film men.
Johnson’s fortune
Nobody expects elections to be other than dirty businesses but sometimes, in their anxiety to throw mud the parties of capitalism achieve some strange results.
Consider the case of Johnson’s fortune. The exact amount of the American President’s wealth has become something of an issue in the election over there, so much so that Johnson has engaged a firm of accountants to report on the matter.
The conclusion of this investigation was that the Johnson family is worth about three and a half million dollars. This estimate has been questioned, because it is based on the original cost of the Johnsons’ interests, whereas their present market value would be somewhere nearer $14 million.
For some strange reason, this dollop of wealth is regarded as a possible electoral liability to the President. The delusion about the barefoot boy who rose from log cabin to the White House apparently persists in the United States, even after all that the Kennedy family did to destroy it.
Yet why should his wealth lose Johnson votes? A rich man, after all, is capitalism’s highest form of life—he is successful. Does not Johnson, therefore, fit in with the prejudices and presumptions which dominate elections? Is he not the sort of man the American workers would want as their national boss?
Perhaps there are doubts about the methods which were used to amass the Johnson fortune. And these, too, are humbug.
Even the most illegal ways of building up wealth—and there is no proof that the President has ever done anything outside the law—are no worse than the simple, legal method of the exploitation of the working class.
No method is more degrading, more repressive. No method leads to more violence and unhappiness. Property, Proudhon said, is theft and that sums it up.
From this we can see that Lyndon Johnson is eminently suitable to administer American capitalism, with all the ruthlessness that it may require. He has also shown that he can accept, and turn to his advantage, any of the system’s anomalies.
At the same time as his fortune was being counted, Johnson was pushing through Congress his so-called Anti Poverty Bill, which is supposed to rescue millions of Americans from the depths of destitution.
Perhaps some of them will get the point, and remember it when the time comes in November.
Matter of importance
From the London Gazette of 1st September, 1964:
“In future, on occasions when it is desired that decorations be worn invitations should state either “evening dress decoration” (signifying white tie with full orders decorations and miniatures) or “dinner jacket, decorations” (signifying black tie with orders decorations and miniatures as described above).
When “evening dress decorations” is prescribed those not in possession of full evening dress may wear orders decorations and miniature badges and medals as described above with a dinner jacket.
How comforting to know that, in this world of hydrogen bombs and hire purchase, of malnutrition and mental illness, there is still a spark of dignity.”
How nice to know that the Queen, ever alert to the onward march of democracy, has graciously consented to unbend the once inflexible regulations on the wearing of decorations with evening dress.
What ease of mind it brings to us all, to know that “. . . orders, decorations and medals may be worn with dinner jackets . . . with shirts having a stiff collar or soft collar.”
What an uplift for the soft collar, to be put at last on a par with the stiff! How satisfying a fruition of human struggle and endeavour.
And how sick it makes you feel.