The Passing Show
Pensions and Hypocrisy
I am looking at the Labour Party’s manifesto for the 1964 General Election. In the section dealing with “social security”. I see:—
“For those already retired and for widows, an Incomes Guarantee will be introduced. This will lay down a new national minimum benefit. Those whose incomes fall below the new minimum will receive as of right, and without recourse to National Assistance, an income supplement.”
Now I will ignore for the moment the fact that it was the previous Labour Government which introduced the “means-tested National Assistance benefits” as the same booklet dubs them a few lines further up the same page. Nor will I make too much of the information (given by Assistance Board Chairman Lord Runcorn, in May) that some 71 percent of the total of weekly allowances made were to elderly people, about 1,386,000 of them at the end of last year. I will ignore all this, if only to avoid having to listen to the tedious reply that pensions have already been raised by a few bob and that anyway there has not been time yet to introduce more far-reaching measures.
Whatever their intentions may have been, the Labour Party never seemed in much doubt before the election of the plight in which many pensioners found themselves. Indeed, it was only the Tories who, in face of umpteen surveys of one kind or another and a mass of statistics, tried to pretend that pensioners were not so badly off; and they lost the election anyway. Labour’s policy was to exploit this situation and promise to remedy it.
And what do you think would be the way to do it—that’s if you are naive enough to think that such problems can be dealt with effectively under capitalism? Why, to give the pensioners an immediate and very, very substantial increase, of course. And if you are that innocent, you may think that this is Labour’s intention any day now. But you would be wrong, very wrong. After donkey’s years of books, pamphlets and enough newspaper cuttings on the subject to fill a library, all we get is—just another survey.
Ah, but you haven’t heard the best of it yet. This survey really has the edge on all the others. Just listen: —
“. . . 11,000 pensioners in Britain are to be interviewed to see how they are managing and to find out any difficulties they may be having, the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance said yesterday.” (Guardian, 14.5.65.)
Just read those words again slowly and savour the full, damnable impertinence of them. And when you have stopped gasping at their sheer unctious condescension perhaps, with me, you will view them as just another exercise in the hypocrisy in which all governments dabble. On one hand, there will be efforts to give the impression of earnest and helpful action, and on the other a nett result, as far as the pensioners are concerned, of nothing. And if by now the Ministry do not know the sort of “difficulties they may be having”, then they must be deaf and blind to a scandal which has been common knowledge for years.
Old age pensioners are generally out of the run of productivity so beloved of capitalism’s economists and politicians, and that’s why they are chucked on to the scrap heap. It also explains why they are so conspicuously unsuccessful in their efforts to secure any worthwhile improvement in their miserable lot. They just haven’t the bargaining power of their younger brothers and sisters who are still at work.
But they do have a vote and there are some millions of them, so they cannot be ignored entirely. This explains why the Labour Party, among others, is careful to include them in its election pledges, only to try and fob them off with a crumb or two and a patronising pat on the head afterwards. Yes, pensioners are at the bottom of the priority list, and capitalism will see that they stay there.
Nothing is sacred
When he was a Labour M.P.. Lord (then Mr.) Brockway talked once in the Commons on the sacredness of a newly born child. No doubt he believed what he said, and if you were to ask many people about this today, they would probably agree with him.
While not denying that these attitudes may be all very worthwhile within the limitations of their social conditions, we should not deceive ourselves that childhood is really considered all that sacred in a modern capitalist-society. True, the young ones are given extra attention by the authorities, but the outstanding reason for this is that they are soon to become the new workers, and capitalism has long learned the need of an assured supply of labour power. But sacredness? Not on your life.
If you have any doubts on this, try to find an hour to waste watching commercial TV at some time or the other. Note the frequent interruptions for adverts, and in particular the number of times they feature children—some of them little more than toddlers. Children cramming revolting quantities of sweets into their mouths, children guzzling gallons of soft drinks—both very questionable from a health point of view, or children talking in a most unchildish manner about the effect of this or that detergent on Mummy’s hands (silly Mummy believes it too, apparently). The firms who purvey this rubbish are well aware of the feelings of tenderness which are roused in an adult by the sight of a child, and they exploit them quite shamelessly in the name of that which is sacred before all else—the profit motive.
If you think this is far fetched, take a more critical look at that TV screen next time. Nothing is left untouched; wherever human feelings can be publicised to commercial advantage, the ad-man digs his claws in deep. His subjects range wide, from boy and girl love to the pride of a housewife in a basketful of clean clothes at the end of a washday (Alan Freeman exercises a particularly obnoxious technique here).
And have you got a tiger in your tank? This is perhaps the most blatant of the advertising stunts yet, and to all accounts it has paid off very handsomely. Maybe the sheer cheek of it has had something to do with its success—free publicity through the sticker on the car window— and here again, the kids do not escape. Listen to Miss Molly Tarrant (“Mass observation and motivational research specialist”) in The Guardian on May 31st: —
“Children might have something to do with it . . . Many drivers will agree to put a sticker on if their children ask for it . . . although often the driver uses the children as an excuse.”
No, nothing is sacred under capitalism, except the profit motive, which is not after all surprising. If capitalism is to be assured of continuous and unfailing support by its workers, then the necessary indoctrination in its debased standards must start at the earliest possible age, in all sorts of ways—some more subtle than others.
Gaspers
“Rising prices are no new phenomenon. They have faced every government since the war, as an intractable problem, to which no solution has yet been found.’’ (Mr. George Brown—Commons debate 12.5.65.)
“China is conducting necessary nuclear tests . . . and is developing the nuclear weapon for the purpose of . . . abolishing all nuclear weapons.” (Chinese communique, following their second atomic explosion, 14.5.65)
“Both our countries are totally opposed to the use of force for the settlement of international disputes.” (Indian Premier Mr. Shastri, speaking in Moscow 12.5.65.)
“In the held of National Assistance the number of clients today, at nearly two million, is undoubtedly much greater than Beveridge envisaged it would be.” (Lord Runcorn, National Assistance Board Chairman, 15.5.65.)
E. T. C,