Review

At Home
The railway wade dispute continued during the merry month of May, providing the government with evidence that their anti-union laws have little hope of working differently from similar laws in America, where it was found that “cooling off” periods, compulsory ballots and the rest only made the strikers more solidly determined than ever. Railway workers are struggling to win back some of the standard of living they have lost over recent years. This is a pretty typical affair, since the class divided nature of capitalism must throw up class disputes about the division of wealth. No law will ever change that; governments, as well as unions, have to make the best of it they can.

Meanwhile, the current dispute in the docks, which is costing the Transport Workers’ union £55,000 in fines up to now, showed up the confusions and limitations of trade union action. The dockers have been refusing to handle lorries carrying containers which had been packed in inland depots by non-dock labour. This arrangement was precisely one of the main motives behind the massive capital investment in container ships, docks and traffic—to reduce the loading time of ships in the docks, where the dockers were so powerful. But the dockers’ efforts to keep up their position of strength has met with opposition from the workers who do the loading at the depots and from the drivers who deliver the containers—members, in fact, of the same union as the dockers. All the workers involved in this dispute would do well to realise that there is no advantage in struggling against other workers. The only worthwhile battle is against the capitalist class, over not a share of the wealth the workers produce but over all of it.

If anyone had any doubts about the motives of capitalist society, they must have been effectively cleared up by the announcement of the plans for the proposed “development” of Piccadilly Circus. These plans, together with the connections between the various interests involved in the proposals, were too much for even the most hardened of capitalist newspapers to stomach and the plans met with widespread howls of protest. Nobody can pretend that Piccadilly is a particularly attractive place at present, but the proposals promised to turn it from a rather tatty jumble into an organised assault by concrete. Those who protest at this should remember that it is all done in the sacred name of profit, which knows no beauty other than a fat payout on the share capital.

Abroad
The mining of Haiphong by the Americans had as much to do with their domestic politics as with the war in Vietnam. The war is now a massive electoral liability but the American ruling class cannot afford to pull out; leaving the South Vietnamese to fight on the ground while satisfying the bigotries of patriotism, the war lovers and the ignorant by a show of American strength can be seen as a two-way bet by Nixon. The point is that it is a bet; it might just lead to a situation comparable to Cuba in 1962. But when big stakes are being played for, capitalism takes little account of the possibility of wiping out a few million ordinary people.

Away from the bloodletting of Vietnam, the American presidential election turned up again with its own show of violence, as George Wallace was gunned down just as he was about to win the primaries in Maryland and Michigan. Wallace, who poses as the spokesman of the ordinary American worker, as the man who always speaks his mind, has noticeably altered his stand as his ambitions have grown; now his main appeal is not for outright segregation but, more subtly, on the issue of whether school children should be transported about by ‘bus to ensure schools of mixed colour. Like any other capitalist political hack, he will change his line to win votes. Violence in politics is a futile business, which can often have (as it may well have done in the case of Wallace) the opposite effect to that intended. Yet whenever a political leader of capitalism is attacked in this way, there is a certain irony about it. They are men who repeatedly, coldly and calculatedly, incite violence in others (who more so than Wallace?). They sow the wind and cannot complain if they reap a whirlwind.

Politics
Local elections take place in May and this year, as usual, it was possible to tell from the results which party is in power at Westminster, since the voters make a practice of voting against a government for most of the time it is in power. Now the Tories are the government, the workers are busily showing their dissatisfaction by voting Labour; when the Labour Party eventually take over again they will turn back to the Tories. This is more than a dissatisfaction with the parties. It is a comment on their inability to do anything about the problems of capitalism but as such it is also a protest against those problems, and a plea for them to be solved. But at present the working class will go no further than this futile fumbling; they are not prepared to take a constructive look at capitalism and its politics. Until they do this the problems and the futility will remain.