News in review
Respectable revolt
Straws which are currently in the wind of British capitalism are rumblings of militancy in the so-called middle class, and the re-occurrence of the plea for more unemployed.
Some teachers and doctors have recently considered withdrawing their labour power, the former from schools and the latter from the National Health Scheme. Their reasons, basically, were concerned with their pay.
Doctors and teachers have long considered the strike as unprofessional, and in bad taste. But capitalism does not exempt any worker from the need to fight to maintain and increase his standard of living; and if doctors and teachers remain quiescent their standard of living must suffer.
Before the war when unemployment was widespread the “secure” teachers grumbled about their pay. Doctors got their patients in a free market, and many in the poorest working class districts were little better off than their patients.
Now both groups are complaining about their financial rewards; they are finding that a sense of vocation is no weapon in this competitive society. So they are considering the withdrawal of their labour power—in other words, using the weapon which marks them as members of the working class.
There is another way of losing your pay.
Lord Plowden, former Chief Planning Officer and Chairman of the Economic Planning Board, also chairman of Tube Investment Co. Ltd., and director of four other companies, was reported in the Daily Telegraph in January as wanting …”better use of the labour force . . . this would lead to transitional unemployment … to do everything possible to mitigate the resulting hardship.”
“This is what we mean when we say that we want increased productivity, and why should we be mealy-mouthed about it?”
Capitalists are not opposed to unemployment if they think it necessary. Plowden wants to replace the carrot with the stick, on the theory that there is nothing like a dose of unemployment to increase productivity.
Is Lord Plowden himself prepared to live on the dole? Or is that a fate reserved for the workers on whom he so coldly theorises? These are questions which no highly paid servant of capitalism should want to duck.
Unless, that is, he is being mealy mouthed.
Everlasting Milk
The news which came out during the first week of last month, that British scientists had developed a method of treating milk which will make it last for months, was greeted in the newspapers with all the customary enthusiasm.
The chairman of the Express Dairy, Mr. W. E. D. Bell, helped the enthusiasm along a bit by proclaiming: “At last, we can feed milk to the two-thirds of the world that is starving.” He might as well have said that at last they could break into a market which up to now has been held by dried milk, which is easier to handle and transport than the liquid.
The Express are not, of course, about to throw in their hand with OXFAM and become a charitable institution. They quickly set up a new company to deal with the export of the new milk. Orders have been received from Central America and some shipping lines, and more may follow from the British and United States Navies.
It was not the desire to feed the hungry which was responsible for this haste. Mr. Bell made it clear: “We must,” he said, “Pull our fingers out and get this project going before the Swiss or anybody move in.”
At the time of writing, the new process has not been approved by the government for milk sold on the home market. Exported milk is not covered by the need for official approval. If the new milk is approved for home distribution, there will probably be considerable savings for the dairy industry whose bugbear, like other branches of agriculture, has always been the expensive business of rush distribution.
Agriculture is as much tied to the need to make profits as any other industry, and it is constantly looking for ways around its distribution problems. Hence the development of massive, mechanised farms, of the broiler hen and the beef factories. Hence the rise of the frozen food industry.
Some people, derided as crackpots, have questioned the effects which all this has on the food. But as long as there is a profit to be made, or increased, who cares about quality? Capitalism
encourages the shoddy rush job in many of its industries, and there is no reason why agriculture should be an exception.
This is the motive behind the everlasting milk. The Sunday Times thought that, apart from anything the Express will get out of the new product, “… it offers a way of giving the dairy farmers more for their milk without raising the price to the public.”
The profit priorities of capitalism affect every aspect of our lives. Everywhere we go, everything we wear, the very air we breathe, everything we eat and drink, is polluted by it. And all the time there is the smokescreen of hypocrisy about human interests—about, for example, feeding the world’s hungry when the real motive is to make life more comfortable yet for the privileged few.
Vietnam
For some reason, it has suddenly become fashionable for journalists to use some peculiar words about the war which is currently being fought in Vietnam.
They have called it the “unnecessary” war, the “tragic” war, the “forgotten” war. As if all wars are not tragic, unnecessary affairs.
The Americans, deeply involved, have their own description of the war. It is, they say a vital war, because it is being fought to defend freedom. Every time the American jets go in, President Johnson claims that they fire their rockets in the cause of liberty.
We are, as usual, invited to accept the story that in Vietnam one side (the North —theirs) stands for brutal dictatorship and the other (the South—ours) stands for liberty and brotherhood.
But the South Vietnamese have shown what they mean by freedom and brotherhood by the manner in which they maltreat their prisoners. One of their recent tricks was to use a wounded prisoner (who later died) as a human mine detector—to send him wading across a river to detonate any mines on the bed.
This is only one piece of the surface evidence which shows up that it is barefaced nonsense to claim that the war in Vietnam is for freedom. In fact, the United States are involved in the war for familiar, classical reasons.
They are interested in the strategic position of Vietnam, and in the bases which they have set up there. They are desperately concerned that the expanding Chinese threat to the established powers in the Far East should be held in cheek.
The British capitalist class, who have their own troubles a little further south, are reluctant to become involved in Vietnam. British influence in the Far East was extensively diminished during the last war, and although there is still a lot of British capital invested out there, the protection of it is largely the concern of the U.S.A.
The Soviet Union is also reluctant to get involved, but is having its hand forced. They also fear Chinese ambitions; hence the belligerent words from Moscow —which remain no more than words.
The Economist’s prophesy of the outcome of Premier Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi was remarkably accurate:
“Mr. Kosygin is virtually certain to proclaim . . . that (American) attacks would involve the risk of nuclear escalation. In exchange, the Russians may well urge the North Vietnamese not to push their present military advantage in the south too far.”
Vietnam is a typical local struggle in the wider conflict of interests between the great blocs of capitalism with China, struggling for its place in the world power line up, an aggravation. China’s belligerency is customary for an upstart capitalist power; customary also are the efforts which the established powers are making to stifle her.
This could mean that the Vietnam battle will not escalate (ugly word) into a major nuclear war. But mistakes and miscalculations have been known before.
If Vietnam does prove to be the first spark in a world wide conflagration the result will be an unnecessary war, a tragic war but one which, if there is any-one left to remember it, will not be forgotten.
Gordon-Walker and immigration
The defeat of Patrick Gordon-Walker at the so-called safe seat of Leyton provided both press and politicians with a iield day for comment and speculation. A number of reasons for the surprise result were suggested; in a survey just after the by-election, The Observer placed coloured immigration at the head of the list, with Labour voters the majority to voice dissatisfaction on this problem.
When the Conservative government introduced a bill curbing the flow of immigrants into this country, the Labour Opposition resisted it, creating the impression that they were in favour of unlimited free entry. Disastrously for a party seeking mass support, they overlooked the political climate. It is possible that their slender majority at the general election was caused partiy by this. Gordon-Walker had the job of opposing the Tory bill in Parliament and this has made him an obvious whipping boy in what the press is fond of calling the white backlash.
At Smethwick, his Conservative opponent, by using an extremist minority as his supporters, played on the electorate’s prejudices, and their fears of the growth of a large coloured population in Britain. While the fascists ranted and raved and worked on a suppressed sore, the Tories got the benefit. At Leyton the racial question and immigration were smothered by the three main candidates, but Gordon-Walker was pestered by Nazi gadflies.
Most workers, irrespective of colour and race, fear a sudden mass influx of foreign workers because they see them as a threat to their jobs and as an aggravation of the housing shortage. On top of this is a fear that people coming from less developed areas may be willing to accept lower wages and social standards.
Immigrants have entered Britain before, but they have been mainly European and were therefore quickly assimilated. It would, for example, be difficult to trace the whereabouts of the Germans who came to Britain in Edwardian times. The recent wave of immigrants is vastly different. The colour of their skin makes it impossible for them to be quickly submerged and forgotten. They stimulate a multitude of primitive fears among the working class.
But what will happen if the coloured population of this country increases enormously? Most coloured people are just part of the working class, subject to the same rough end of the economic stick as their white brothers. In time the demands of industrialism will destroy their own customs and they will appear similar to the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Poles etc, that go to make up the British population.
Smethwick, Leyton and Gordon-Walker are examples of how it is impossible to operate vague humanitarian concepts in a capitalist society. The government has in fact already announced much stricter screening of coloured immigrants at the points of entry. Thus do capitalism and a non-socialist working class destroy the best laid plans of mice and men.