The news in review

By-elections
As we go to press it is too early to comment in detail upon the results of the November spate of by-elections.

At the moment only a few facts are clear. Lord Sandwich is causing a stir in Dorset South by beating his own track through the Tory undergrowth there— something which is becoming a habit with this rich aristocrat. This has pained Tory candidate Angus Maude, who was once on the Sandwich (when he was Hinchingbrooke) coat-tails over Suez and perhaps looked for better reward than this.

We know that a number of servicemen are testifying to the delights of being part of capitalism’s military machine by working a legal fiddle to get out of the forces by having themselves nominated as candidates in the by-elections.

But most of all we know that for Socialists all over the world one of these contests is especially notable. For the first time—in Woodside, in Glasgow—a Socialist candidate has been nominated to fight in a Scottish Parliamentary constituency.

This news will hit no headlines in the capitalist press. We do not expect our candidate to receive many votes. But, as usual, we shall strive to make sure that whatever votes are cast for him come from people who want to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a world of peace and plenty which will be worth living in.

In contrast the Labour Party Deputy-Leader, George Brown, has promised that his party will make their campaign “as exciting and lighthearted as possible . . . in an attempt to stimulate the interest of young people.” He added (as he had to) that this would be “short of gimmicks.”

This is typical of the hard-headed vote-catching of the parties of capitalism. Yet it will be uphill work to persuade anyone to be lighthearted over Cuba, say, or the current figures of London homeless and Scottish unemployed. And hasn’t capitalism got enough excitement already? Nothing gets us more het up than a narrow escape from nuclear war.

Mr. Brown will have his gaiety and his excitement and he will get his votes as well. The Socialist in Woodside will get none of these, but for all that his is the only significant and worthwhile campaign among them all.

More unemployed
Obstinately, the unemployed figures creep upwards. The October total of over half a million was the highest since April, 1959, and represented 2.2 per cent, of the total working population. Scotland is the hardest hit and after that the North West is the worst sufferer.

At the same time the number of available and vacant jobs has decreased, and at a faster rate than is usual at this time of the year.

The immediate reasons for this situation are simple enough. Firms all over the country are finding it harder than ever to sell their goods, at home and abroad. Profit margins are under strong pressure because, at the same time as selling is getting more difficult many costs of production are going up. Competition in some markets is keen to the point of cut-throat.

Many industries are in considerable uncertainty. Others, like the mines and the railways, have an air of doom as the efficiency experts and the accountants move in and redundancy spreads.

Yet uncertainty was one of the things which capitalism’s experts are supposed to have banished for ever. Are not they all dedicated Keynesians, who can revitalise an economy by the simple process of manufacturing bootstraps for it to lift itself up by?

Have they not assured us, many times in recent years, that they had at last solved the problem of boom and slump and unemployment? Was it not all something to do with planning the economy?

Countries abroad, like Canada and Italy, have already shown up the fallacy of the experts’ claims for themselves. Now our own lengthening dole queues mock the helpless experts and the promises which they have made.

None of this, of course, will prevent them making similar promises in the future. Neither will it prevent the working class falling for the facile assurance from the expert. But some, at any rate, of the workers will get the point

However much capitalism is meddled with, and whatever promises are made for it, it cannot help but remain the same uncontrollable mess it has always been.

China and India
As India has emerged into the family of capitalist nations it has often suited her government to pose as an honest broker in the disputes between both sides in the Cold War.

This has gone home with a lot of workers, who now imagine India as a perpetual peacemaker, always willing to send her men into the Congo or Suez to sort out the mess left by the more ambitious disputants of international capitalism.

Even more confusingly, the government in Delhi is expected to behave like the pacifist which Gandhi is mistakenly thought to have been.

In fact, Ghandi was simply an exponent of the technique of passive resistance to the presence of British rule in India. Had he lived to lead a government, he would soon have had to discard the surface idealism so necessary to any aspiring leader’s days of struggle.

So there was nothing inconsistent in the Indian adventures in Kashmir and the annexation of Portuguese Goa. The Indian ruling class has shown that, when its interests demand it, it can be as belligerent and as ruthless as any of the old colonial powers.

Now that India herself is under attack, her government has run true to form. Passive resistance? Not likely. Mr. Nehru has called for the “Dunkirk spirit” and those of us who can remember what that meant for the British working class can shiver for our Indian brothers.

The Chinese in India have suffered in the way of all such people in an enemy country in wartime. If they own shops, these have been attacked by mobs. By government decree, they have been stripped of their Indian citizenship—a move obviously designed to play up to popular nationalist sentiment.

This is particularly dirty work. The harshness of British rule, boosted as it was by racial theories which went against the Indian, should have taught the Indian worker that such theories are pernicious and inhuman. But he has shown himself as ignorant, as ready to be deceived by his leaders and as .proudly nationalist as any Empire builder of the old days.

Just another job
Boy, are you looking for a job?

Listen, stop worrying. I’ve found one.

It’s great. Nothing to do with good works or anything like that. It’s so easy.

Listen, there’s this female and she’s at Oxford, at the University, I mean, and she’s a research worker.

Sounds good, you say.

Now she’s been finding out something about how people live. Nothing to do with how well we could live. It’s all about how little we could live on.

And has she come up with the goods. Listen.

She says that a family with a mother and a father and three kids can live spending less than four pounds a week on food.

If they want to, that is. But, of course, they don’t, and this research worker, she sounds a bit cross about it.

She says—in high tone, of course, because after all she is at Oxford—that when a family’s wage goes down they sometimes cut out essential foods instead of buckling to and making the most of the cheaper stuff.

She thinks that we should teach kids in school to cook so that when the wage drops they’ll know just how to get food that a research worker approves of.

Now I wonder whether she worked all that out with those statistics things or whether she’s lived on low wages herself and eaten poor food with them.

Because k says nothing for the modern world that it has to present ordinary, useful human beings with problems of living which make subjects for nice lady research workers at Oxford to look into, does it?

And it isn’t so surprising that, when subsistence is a problem, these useful humans don’t act like the humming, foolproof computers that the lady might use in her researches for all I know, but like—well, like human beings.

Now you don’t need to be a university research worker to think that one out. I’m sure I could do that girl’s job for a lot less than she’s getting.

Think I’ll apply. Wonder how little she could live on?

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