Notes by the Way
Bigger Armaments Under Labour Government
In the course of an explanation why taxation is so much larger than before the war, Mr. Douglas Jay, M.P., Economic Secretary to the Treasury, recently repudiated the view ‘that it is solely due to expenditure on social services. He was speaking to the Westminster Savings Committee, and went on to tell them of another reason: —
“Equally important is the growth in defence expenditure (£750 million to-day, compared with £200 million before the war), and also in debt interest due to the war.” (Daily Express, 4.10.49.)
Mr. Jay was seemingly content with his explanation but he should now answer the question “What has happened to the Labour Party’s promises that when they came to power they would know how to settle international problems peacefully and drastically cut down the Armed Forces?”
Instead they have to accept responsibility for peacetime conscription—opposition to which is now left to Tories and Liberals—and for maintaining the Armed Forces at far greater strength than in 1939. The number now is 765,000, just over twice as many as before the war.
One consequence of the Labour Party being responsible for running capitalism and keeping its Armed Forces up to standard is that that Party moved far away from the vague pacifist sentiment of the nineteen twenties. When recently the Assistant General Secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union published in the Union journal an article appealing to young members to consider joining the Auxiliary Forces he made the comment below:—
“When 1 first became an officer of this union, an article on the Armed Forces of the Crown (unless it had been the purpose of the writer to condemn them as the tools of outworn imperialism, deplore their existence, and dissuade young men from having anything to do with them) would have been unthinkable in the Record. (Record, September, 1949.)
The Nationalistic German Social Democratic Party
Just as the Labour Parties of the world pay lip-service to Socialism without in any way giving up their real aim of administering capitalism in the form of State capitalism or nationalisation, so they all pay lip-service to internationalism while remaining strongly nationalistic.
The German Social Democratic Party has just issued the opposition platform on which it will oppose the new German Government. It refers to “socialisation’’ of industries, meaning nationalisation, but makes no reference at all to Socialism and is a document similar to the programme of the British Labour Party. It does, however, include a new phrase, “The S.D.P. rejects all forms of nationalism . . .” But any one who thinks this is to be taken seriously need only look at various nationalistic demands elsewhere in the list of demands. One is, the Party rejects the present German frontiers and wants to re-occupy territory in the East annexed by Poland, and the Saar region in the West.
No doubt the S.P.D. leaders will say that they seek these ends by peaceful means, but those who seek to change or to defend the territorial arrangements of the capitalist world must logically be prepared to go to war, and in practice all the Labour and Communist Parties are prepared to do so.
And if any Labourite supposes that the British Labour Party is different he should take note of the utterances of that one-time opponent of conscription and war, Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of War.
“The lion’s tail is flying high and we don’t care who knows it.” (Speech to Territorials, Manchester Guardian, 26.8.49.)
”. . . Commonwealth unity is a reality. It has survived two great wars and is as vital to the economic and political interests of Britain as European unity. I am not prepared to abandon the British Commonwealth for all the tea in China.” (Daily Telegraph, 5.9.49.)
A Leaky Umbrella for the Unemployed
One of the claims of the Labour Party is that they “led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment’’ meted out to the unemployed by Tory Governments in the years before the war. And when they came to power they promised to fix higher rates of unemployment pay to provide proper social provision “against rainy days.” (“Let us Face the Future,” Labour Party, 1945.)
They are proud of what they have done as was shown recently in the House of Commons by Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance. A Labour M.P., Major Bruce (North Portsmouth), asked how much was spent on unemployment benefit in 1938 and was told it was £52,400,000. (Hansard, 18th October, 1949. Col. 460.)
He also asked how much the Government would have had to spend in 1938 on employment benefit if the benefits at that time had been at the higher rates now paid by the Labour Government.
Mr. Griffiths replied that “If current rates of unemployment benefit and family allowances had then been in force the disbursements would have been rather less than £90,000,000.”
Here, surely, is a cast-iron proof of the benefits of Labour rule? A Tory Government gave the unemployed £52½ million, and a Labour Government would have paid them £90 million. Shall we say “good and faithful servant,” or has Mr. Griffiths overlooked one small detail in his arithmetic? He has; and we can complete the sum for him.
The detail is that the cost of living has gone up by about 80% since 1938. What could be bought with 20s. in 1938 now costs at least 36s. So that the seemingly higher rates of unemployment benefit now in force have to be heavily reduced in order to compare them with the rates in force in 1938 when money bought more.
Mr. Griffiths’s “rather less than £90 million” will actually buy only as much as could be bought with £50 million in 1938, and that is “rather less than” the amount that the Tory Government paid out to the unemployed.
So all that the Labour Government has done is to raise the scale of benefits to a point which will nearly, but not quite, compensate for the rise in the cost of living and now the cost of living is rising again.
Capitalism it is
In the House of Commons on 27th October there was an exchange of views between Churchill and Attlee about the system under which we are living. Both of them talked nonsense but as Churchill managed to be right on one important point the victory goes to him. Attlee was hampered by things he has said in the past.
Churchill led off with his one true statement: “It must he remembered as we sit here to-night that Britain is a capitalist society, and that 80 per cent. of its whole industry is in private hands.” (Hansard, 27.10.49, Col. 1625).
He followed with the amplification, “. . . what we have here now is a capitalist society on which we are dependent for our daily life and survival. . .”
This was, and may have been intended as, a rebuke to woolly-minded Conservatives as well as the woolly-minded Labourites; but he followed it with numerous absurdities. He repeatedly described Attlee’s party as “The Socialist Party” and his Government as a “Socialist Government,” charged it with making a “deliberate attack on the capitalist system,” and then informed the M.P.s that under Communism “society is reduced to a strong hierarchy and army of officials and politicians by whom the proletariat are ruled under a one-party system.” What he meant by the last phrase was Russia; but had he viewed the Russian economic system as clearly as he views the British he would have seen that there is no Communism (or Socialism) in Russia and that all the main features of capitalism are robustly in operation there.
Mr. Attlee had to reply and took the line that “we live in the days of a mixed economy. The Right Hon. gentleman is quite wrong when he suggests that this is a purely capitalist economy. It is neither purely capitalist nor purely Socialist, but a mixed economy in a transition period.” (Col. 1633.)
The only mixture is not the economy, which is capitalist through and through, but Mr. Attlee’s conception of it; and the answer to him is to be found in Labour Party literature and in his own writings. “Socialism and Peace” (Labour Party, 1935) declared that the choice is between a vain attempt to patch up a rotten capitalist society “or a rapid advance to a Socialist reconstruction of the national life. There is no half-way house . . .” (Our italics.)
Now Mr. Attlee is trying to justify “the half-way house,” which he believes to be partly capitalist and partly Socialist but which is nothing but Labour Party administration of capitalism. And in his own “Labour Party in Perspective” (1937, page 123) he admitted that it would not be a Socialist Party that could administer capitalism:—
“The plain fact is that a Socialist Party cannot hope to make a success of administering the Capitalist system because it does not believe in it.”
And here are a few more statements that Mr. Attlee will find difficult to square with his own present declarations.
He thinks now that we are in a mixed economy. Only a few months ago he told an audience at Walthamstow that “The social reforms which we introduced have not been patchy; they have represented a new social order . . . We have had a great experiment in democratic Socialism.” (Manchester Guardian, 12.1.49.)
And Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance still thinks we have got rid of capitalism for he declares “I believe the people of the world have made up their minds not to go back to the old crazy capitalist system of poverty, conflict and insecurity.” (Daily Herald, 7.4.49.)
The Doctor Blames the Patient
Some of the Labour leaders are becoming spiteful—at least in their attitude to the workers. Mr. Alfred Barnes. Minister of Transport, speaking at Chatham said: —
“I don’t think the men of this country have played the game since the end of the war. Wc carried out our mandate against adverse conditions, and we are entitled as a Labour Administration to call upon the great mass of men workers to turn out a greater quantity of goods than are at present pouring from the factories.” (Daily Mail, 24.10.49.)
It is a curious situation and prompts the question whether Mr. Barnes thinks that the workers go into politics for the benefit of Mr. Barnes.
The Labour leaders offered themselves to the working class (at a price—Mr. Barnes draws £5,000 a year as Minister of Transport) with a promise to cure them of the economic ills from which they were suffering; and the doctors certainly didn’t start off by saying that the cure consisted of prolonged austerity, repeated crises, harder work, more armaments, higher prices and no wage increases. Now, after four years, the doctor turns on the patients and blames them for not making things easy for the doctor!
How refreshing it would be to see a Minister resign his job with a frank admission that the Labour doctors were wrong from the outset and that they can’t make capitalism tolerable for the workers.
The 1931 Economy Cuts over again
In 1931, when MacDonald formed a National Government to deal with the crisis and the bulk of the Labour Party went into opposition, economy cuts were imposed, most of which had been agreed to by the Labour Government before its resignation. In some respects the present cuts in Government expenditure are similar to those of 1931, e.g. cuts on armament expenditure, and on education, but the supporters of the Labour Government are insistent that they are not following the example of the MacDonald Government by reducing Civil Service pay, and cutting unemployment benefit by 10%.
The difference is quite illusory. In 1931 when the Government cut unemployment pay and gave a lead to the employers to reduce wages the cost of living was falling, the official index figure falling from 155 at December, 1930, to 148 at December, 1931, and 143 at December, 1932.
This time the cost of living is rising and the Government is trying its utmost to prevent wages from rising in keeping with the cost of living. The effect is just the same as in 1931.
The official cost of living index figure has risen from 100 in June. 1947, to 112 in September, 1949. The effect is that the purchasing power of unemployment pay has been cut by 12% since June, 1947, so that in terms of 1947 prices 26s. a week benefit is now worth about 23s.
One similarity between the two crises is the Government’s action over devaluation. In 1931 the Labour Government declared over a period of months that they would save the £ and not go off the gold standard—then MacDonald went off the gold standard. This time it is Cripps (instead of Snowden) who devalued after saying for months that he wouldn’t.
One difference between the two cases is that the MacDonald Ministry did have the grace to reduce the salaries of Ministers and M.P.s; by 20% on salaries of £5,000 and over, 15% on £2,000 to £5,000, and 10% below £2,000. including M.P.s.
H.