Labouring in Vain

“Whoever is in office, the rich are in power” 

Ed Balls announces that the next Labour government will cap numerous benefits and end universal entitlements to some in what is being described as the return of means-testing (as if it had ever gone away). Balls and Miliband are determined to prove to the City of London that they are fit to rule us. The response of those on the Left is to cry “Betrayal" (once again and so predictably).

Welfare in Britain is a complex of legislative measures, passed for many different reasons and at different times over the last hundred years. Generally, the elements contained in the body of welfare legislation are very wide – more commonly, the health service, housing policy, education, unemployment and sickness benefits etc., are items most people would think of but also laws limiting exploitation, setting minimum standards of work and quality of goods, controlling public health etc. Thus, the Factory Acts, Shop Acts, Mines Acts, minimum wage legislation, laws on the arbitration of disputes as well as trade union legislation are often included. The motives at stake in any given piece of welfare legislation range from the crudely opportunistic to the sincere reform. However, whatever the stated reasons, the effects of welfare legislation add up to an evasion of the real problem – they serve as a substitute for the transformation of society. The problem of poverty remains untouched – its effects being simply partially ameliorated. Welfare legislation as a whole takes the question of  ownership of wealth off the agenda.

Why Labour fails

This week the Labour Party holds its conference. A comrade writes:

The Labour Party never was a socialist party but it did once see its role as trying to shift the balance of power and wealth under capitalism in favour of working people. They never did do this of course nor, given the nature of capitalism, could they have done so. But this was what they said and this at least showed that they thought capitalism was far from being the acceptable economic system they now think it is.

Incredible as it might seem today, Denis (now Lord, of course) Healey told a cheering Labour Conference in 1973 that he was going to squeeze the rich till the pips squeaked:
"Our job is to get power, and we join battle armed with the most radical and comprehensive programme we have had since 1945. Its aim is honestly stated, to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families . . . We are going to introduce a tax on wealth. We are going to turn the estate duty into a real tax... I warn you, there are going to be howls of anguish from the 80,000 rich people."

Labour got to power, but it was working people who ended up getting squeezed till the pips squeaked. The result was a massive wave of strikes in the public sector over the winter of 1978/9 – and the election of the Tories under Thatcher pledged, as she openly boasted, to undo everything Labour claimed to champion. Which, as demanded by capitalism's worsened economic conditions, she did and, spiteful woman that she was, with glee. State industries were privatised, council houses sold off, local services axed, welfare payments slashed and the health service subjected to market forces.

Power for what?
Today all that Labour has retained of Healey's rhetoric are the first six words: "our job is to get power". Since radical phrases, indeed any definite policies, are now perceived to be a drag on this drive to get power they have been ruthlessly abandoned. Just attack the Tories as incompetent and clapped out, the marketing team advise, and, anxious for power, the Labour politicians oblige.

But power for what? In the end, since they are only projecting themselves as better and more competent managers of the status quo, it amounts to power for its own sake. The Labour leaders want power because they are professional politicians and the ambition of every professional politician is to become a government minister.

Is this being too cynical? Can they be that bad? Perhaps not, but it doesn't really matter since even if they were sincere (and, on the law of averages, some of them must be) they still wouldn't be able to make the capitalist market economy work other than as a system that puts profits first and so as a problem-ridden system incapable of meeting human needs properly.

In so far as they might have a theory of what they would do if they get power it will be no different from that behind the failed policies of ail previous Labour governments : trying to redistribute profits towards socially desirable projects such as a better health service, better education and better housing.

This involves accepting the profit system – not a problem of course for the Labour Party leadership – and allowing firms to make the maximum profits, justified on the grounds that this also supposedly maximises the resources available for social spending.

The trouble is this makes what a reformist government can do depend on the profitability of capitalist industry. As Richard Crossman, a Labour politician who was to become a senior Cabinet Minister in the 1964 Wilson Labour government, wrote following Labour's defeat in the 1959 election on such a classic reformist programme:

"A Socialist Government, it is often argued, would be able to finance the huge extension of welfare, education and other pubic services by encouraging a much faster rate of development in the private sector of industry and then taxing away a sufficient amount of the profits. This was the policy put forward by the Labour Party at the last election and in the short run any Labour Government would to attempt it. But experience should have taught us that the run might be very short indeed. In the Affluent Society no Government is able to give orders to Big Business. After one budget a Labour Chancellor who tried to squeeze private industry too hard would soon discover that he was not master in his own house and that there is a relatively low level above which taxation rates, whether on the individual or the company, are only raised at the cost of provoking tax evasion and avoidance so widespread that revenue is actually reduced. If the motive of your economy is the profit-making of large-scale modem private enterprise, a Labour Government must be prepared to allow very large profits indeed and to admit that the number of golden eggs he can remove is extremely limited." (Labour in the Affluent Society, 1960)

His answer was that Labour should therefore seek to establish an enlarged state sector so as to give a Labour government more room to manoeuvre. The present Labour leaders would recoil in horror at such as suggestion, not that anyway it would have worked to protect a Labour government from the economic pressures of capitalism to keep costs down and profits up. Nor that the Labour governments of which Crossman was subsequently a member made any real attempt to do it.

Profits first
In fact Labour ministers ended up making speeches accepting that profits should be encouraged. Here is how one of them (Harold Lever who, like Healey was later ennobled) put it:

"Labour 's economic plans are not in any way geared to more nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of the profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership know as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel." (Observer, 3 April 1966).

This could be any of the present Labour leaders speaking and well sums up what will be the only economic policy that any future Labour government will be able to pursue. Profits First, that's the economic law of the capitalist system, which all governments of capitalism have to accept and apply.

If you accept the profit system, then you have to accept that profits have to be made and all that this implies, including opposing strikes, restraining wages and keeping taxes on Big Business low. Labour does accept the profit system, much more openly than they have done in the past.

Nobody who is against the profit system has any place in the Labour Party. If you want more Law and Order, more Family Values, more Prudent Public Spending, you might as well join Labour as the Tories. But if you are a socialist and want to get rid of the profit system you should be in a democratically-organised socialist party campaigning for socialism and nothing else.

schools for slavery

SOYMB is not in the least surprised by the intent of Andy Burnham. We are surprised it is being presented as some new approach. Any secondary school pupils not planning to go to university would be given a clearer "route into work" under new Labour Party plans. The shadow education secretary plans would aim to give every secondary school pupil a path to employment. "Latin is in and engineering is out . Why? It is the thinking of the 1950s," Burnham said. "Government is in danger of preparing young people for a world that no longer exists, by prioritising Latin over engineering and not listening to what employers want." More vocational subjects would be included, such as engineering, business studies and information and communications technology.

State schools have always turned out various grades of worker. In a class-based society such as capitalism education, like much else, is subordinated to the interests of the ruling class. Those interests fundamentally involve the creation of profit which is a vital source of the wealth of the capitalists. Most of education is already geared to the demands of industry and commerce. The main aim of education is to provide the knowledge and skills base necessary for employment in capitalism. Maths, English, science and information technology were established as compulsory subjects up to the minimum school leaving age of 16. In contrast, under the 2002 Education Act, subjects such as history, geography, foreign languages, art and music could be dropped at the age of 14 since most of them were thought to be less relevant to the employment process. The whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an atmosphere of competition and stress, together with a weeding-out process which segregates those with supposedly superior talents from those less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, examinations and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon ultimate occupations and potential earnings. The young already find themselves involved in an intensive training programme, presented under the guise of education.

A detailed description of what would education be like in a socialist society cannot be given since it will be up to the people at the time to decide upon exactly which forms education would take. However, it is very clear that, in complete contrast to capitalism, socialism will put human need first. The welfare and needs of people, both as individuals and as a community will be treated as a priority. The importance of developing to the full, the mental, physical and social abilities and talents of everyone, as individuals, will undoubtedly be recognised. Most significantly, education will inevitably be considered a life-long process and certainly not something to be compartmentalised into time slots, like happens under the present system. Humanity will be able to move forward, considerably through genuine and effective education, towards real progress, both as individuals and as a community.

The knowledge and skills needed to run a society which inherits the best from the past and rejects the worst will be circulated and developed, and the ability to think creatively and critically transmitted from generation to generation. True education, the developing of each individual towards his own well-being and that of society, has not yet been attempted. What is necessary for it is the re-organisation not of schools, but of society.

One Foot in the Grave

Needless to say when a "great" politician dies the media crow on about his greatness . Politicians , allies or antagonists , compete with tributes .Brown describes Foot as a "man of deep principle and passionate idealism". Thatcher said he was "a great parliamentarian and a man of high principles".

Blair said Mr Foot was "a giant of the Labour movement" and went on further to say "I will always remember his personal kindness to me.., he was immensely supportive and kind." Indeed , since it was a letter of support from Foot that assisted Blair being adopted as the Sedgefield constituency Labour candidate.

Michael Foot was a member of the 1974-79 Labour government which spent £1 billion on the new reconstruction of Polaris. During the Falklands War the real star of the Labour benches was Michael Foot. Belying his reputation as a doddering, ineffectual bungler, the Labour leader lashed the government for their "betrayal of those who looked to it for protection" (he was not talking about workers struggling to live on social security). "We should not", he raged, "see foul, brutal aggression successful in our world". (He was not attacking the record of past Labour governments on Korea, Malaysia, Biafra, Vietnam . . .) . Foot's speech was applauded by the MPs as a flag-waving, drum-banging demand for the war in which, of course, he would not personally be in the front line. It was only a few months previous that he won an affectionate ovation at a Labour Party gathering by describing himself as "an inveterate peacemonger". Many Tory MPs were delighted with Foot's performance. One sure way of winning their respect is to make a speech calling for workers to be sent off to war. The Labour Party has never flinched from the prospect of workers dying in the conflicts to protect their masters' interests.

Left Foot, Right Foot

Michael Foot the former leader of the Labour Party has died at the age of 96. His political obituary appeared in the Socialist Standard of January 1990.

Many a premature obituary was provoked by Michael Foot's announcement that he will not be standing for Parliament again. There was no dissension from the opinion that he is a learned, courteous and sincere man. Another thing provoked by the news wouId be a massive flutter in the ambitious hearts of all who hope to become a Labour MP in the near future, for down in his Blaenau Gwent constituency Tories are like a threatened species and Foot sits on a majority of nearly 28,000. As the late Richard Crossman pointed out in his Backbench Diaries, the comfort of an unassailable majority works wonders for an MP's moraIe and has a perceptive influence on how the lucky Member views the topics and crises of the day. Whoever gets the Blaenau Gwent nomination will be one of the most comfortable and morale-full in the Commons.

But back to those obituaries, which said so many nice things about Foot, among them that he will be sadly missed in Westminister not just for his sincerity and courtesy but also because he is something called a "great parliamentaian". It is clear that "great parliamentarians" are pretty rare in all sorts of ways, for example a leftwinger like Foot can be one and so can a rightwinger like Enoch Powell. In fact between these two, who in theory should be sworn enemies until the end of time, there has long existed a state of mutual admiration. "He speaks beautiful English", said Powell of Foot. "The greatest master of clear exposition of British post-1945 politics", wrote Foot of Powell. Perhaps on the principle that it is not what you say that counts but how elegantly you say it, Great Parliamentarians stick together, offering the kind of speeches which bring MPs flocking from the tea-room and the bar. They know a lot about parliament's history and its arcane proeedural devices. They deeply respect its power to uphold the private property system on the basis of popular votes from the working class, The question is, whose advantage does this serve and what is its relevance in the case of the soon-to-be-ex-Member for Blaneau Gwent? 　

Accustomed pose

Except for those who are aware of how capitalist politics tames its rebels - in the case of the Labour Party, moving them smoothly from left to right - it is strange to recall the revulsion which Foot once provoked, in his own party as well as among its opponents. Only Aneurin Bevan was considered to be wilder and more threatening among the bogey-men who would nationalise everything in sight and so undermine the nations morals that not a single Knightsbridge nanny would be safe. Foot was among the most restless and damaging of the critics of the Attlee government after the war, a moving influence in the operations of the Tribune Group which was named after the gadfly journal of which he became editor in 1948.

From the time when he was first elected to parliament in 1945 until he became a Cabinet minister in the 1974 Labour government Foot could be relied on, whenever the Labour Party were under pressure to accept some inconvenient reality of capitalism, to strike his accustomed pose as the incorruptible guardian of Labour's virtue. He usually did this with some passion. which impressed those who agreed with him. At the 1959 Labour Conference, for example, when the party were being forced by their third successive defeat at a general election to consider how many of their supposedly eternal and cherished principles they should abandon if they were not to suffer yet another mauling at the polls. Foot came to the rostrum to defend nationafisation to, according to the Guardian, "a tremendous roar of applause". At their 1960 Conference, in the debate on nuclear disarmament when Gaitskell promised to fight and fight and fight again, Foot "was given a clapping, stamping, cheering ovation as he took the microphone". When the Labour whip was withdrawn from him, over the same issue of unilateralism, in 1961 it served only to reinforce the adoration in which he was held by Labour's tireless leftwingers. Here, they drooled, was a man who could always be trusted, a steadfast martyr in the defence of what they imagined were the principles of socialism. 　

In fact from the beginning Foot showed evidence that he was a lot more selective and flexible in his principles and his concern for working class interests. During his first spell as editor of Tribune (1948-52) the journal was critical of the Attlee government but as long as Bevan was a member of that government Tribune gave it general support. This stance caused it to support a number of obviously anti-working class measures, among them the NATO pact (the formal recognition of a nuclear-armed, European power bloc, dominated by American capitalism and aimed at Russian expansionism), the Berlin airlift (in response to an attempt by Russian capitalism to strengthen its position in Eastern Europe), and Britain joining the Korean War (a defence of the interests of western capitalism, in particular of America and Britain, against a threatened incursion by a developing capitalism in China). Anyone professing to be concerned with working class interests and with the international unity of the workers - especially anyone editing an influential journal like' Tribune - had no argument for taking the side of any of the capitalist powers. They should have pointed out the nature of the conflicts and their underlying cause. They should have urged workers everywhere, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, to stay out of the disputes of their ruling classes and instead work for world-wide working class solidarity for socialism. 　

Of course, Foot joined CND and was one of the few bigwigs to actually to complete the Easter march, as distinct from joining it briefly at a place chosen for its photo opportunity. His rebelliious stand against those bits of Labour policy which he found it inconvenient to support landed him in frequent trouble with the whips. According to Castle, in June 1966 he was complaining that the Wilson qovernment should have applied a "soak the rich" budget policy and that people like judges and doctors should have had a pay cut while the seamen (who were in dispute with the Labour government over their wages) had a good cause. In February 1968 he was willing to risk a defeat for the government ræher than support their proposed expenditure cuts which, among other things, abolished free milk in secondary schools. As a resuIt there was a general assumption that Foot would never be a member of any government, that he would never sell' his principles in exchange for office. 　

Minister of Unemployment

However in the 1970s it became apparent that Foot was not, after all, entirely lacking in ambition. He stood three times for the Deputy Leadership before, in 1974, he became a minister. By that time he was re-established as an MP, after inheriting the old seat at Ebbw Vaie of his hero Bevan. To bring Foot into the Cabinet was a typically Wilsonian masterstroke. After the three-day-week chaos of Heath's battle with the miners, who better to put in charge of the Department of Employment with the clear and simple brief of buying the miners' return to work? Wilson was trading on Foot's reputation with the grass-roots and, whether Foot was aware of it or not, the ruse worked.

Two years later Wilson's successor as Prime Minister, Callaghan, pulled yet another stroke when he made Foot leader of the House of Commons. At other times this would have seemed the unlikeliest of alliances; Foot had once called his new boss PC Callaghan and Callaghan had been in favour of Foot's expulsion from the party. Those were difficult days for the Labour government as they struggled to weather some typical economic storms and to hold down wages, without the security of a reliable majority. It then became clear that Foot was not only a "great parliamentarian" but also a master of Commons procedure and of bending the rules in order to push through unpopular legislation. One trick he used to get approval for some cuts in expenditure was to make them the subject of a vote on the adjournment, the idea being that a defeat would have been interpreted as a rejection of the adjournment and not of the cuts. In 1978 Foot traded an extension of homosexual law reform - a concept which should have been dear to his libertarian heart - for the votes of the Ulster Unionists.

The difficulties of that government were largely those of holding back the wage claims which came in a flood after the years of restraint under Heath. Labour's restraint had a different name; it was called a Pay Code and there were guidelines (that is, before the attempts at imposing the policy by law). The most active proponent of the government in its battles with the workers was Callaghan's Leader of the Commons, described by Castle as "more rigid than Jim Callaghan was in his Chancellor days". Obsessed with the need to keep in power a government which was industriously attacking working class living standards, Foot applied his ability to defuse and divert criticism. Castle recorded, whether in wonder or outrage is not clear, that at the 1975 Tribune rally Foot "even managed to make the pay policy sound like a socialist crusade". He did not manage to work the sane trick over unemployment, to make being out of work sound like a crusade; which was just as well because during his time as Secretary of State for Employment unemployment doubled.

The Voters' Judgement

When it came time for the voters to pass judgement on that Labour government it was clear that they did not have the same order of priorities as Foot. But was there really any need for the Labour Party to become so unhinged by their defeat as to elect Foot as their leader - as they hoped - for next Prime Minister? Was this what all those years of passionate rebellion had been for? Looked at in terms of the ugly game of capitalist politics this was arguably one of the most unwise decisions ever made, for whatever qualities Foot had they did not match up to what is considered necessary in a political leader. But Foot could not be accused of not trying; the aptitude for manoeuvring he showed in trying to keep his party In power was just as evident when he was trying to get them back in again. At the 1981 Labour Conference he assured cheering delegates that "nothing that I've seen persuades me that CND was wrong". But any hopes among Labour's unilateralists that at last they had a leader who would see to it that the British forces scrapped their nuclear weapons were soon dashed. Fifteen months later Foot was telling the Guardian (6 December 1982) that CND's policy of immediate unilateral nuclear disarmament was, if not wrong, then only something for a vague future: "We want to move towards a non-nuclear defence programrne".

At the 1981 Conference, in a typical splurge of rhetoric, he described himself as "a peacemonger, an inveterate incurable peacemonger" but by the outbreak of the Falklands War in the following April his peacemongering had been cured enough for him to swallow the specious Tory propaganda about the war being in resistance to brutal Argentinian aggression and their repression of the islanders, assuring Thatcher in the Commons:

"It is because I subscribe to that principle (sic) that I support the despaich of the task force".

The militancy of his peacemongering was also measured by the revelation from the odious Robin Day that Faot had approved the sinking of the Belgrano which, as it cost the lives of a few hundred Argentinian rather than British workers, was not classified in this country as an act of brutal aggression.

Foot's cymcal groping for power came to its peak in the 1983 election when he enjoyed himself stumping the country, making fiery speeches to packed halls but not meeting with the approval of the image-conscious pros of his party. His legendary scruffiness had always been tolerated, for example by Callaghan who thought "that it springs from his unspoken assumption that these are but the trappings and that a man should be judged by the sincerity and passion of his convictions". How then should we judge Foot's submission to the image-makers who strove to create a more acceptable, a more voter-friendly appearance for him, barbering his hair, dressing him in smart suits and even replacing his famous spectacles with their blinkers with a more telegenic pair? It was, politically speaking, not a pretty sight and of course did not win the votes because Labour's defeat at that election was their heaviest since 1931.

Squalid scene

And what of Foot since he relinquished the leadership for the more easeful life of a back-bencher with a solidly comforting majority? Has he been reborn as a fanatical lefty, a looming threat to the tea-rooms of Bournemouth and Tunbridge Wells? Since he was succeeded by Neil Kinnock (who in his younger days as a leftwing rebel was a protege of Foot's) the Labour Party has been trying, as much to Foot's dismay it had done in 1959 to look as much like the Tories as it can. Once again they are debasing what the membership are supposed to cherish as immutable principles without which there is no reason to be in politics. In 1983 the party at least professed to have a timescale, however loose, for running down British nuclear weapons; now there is no such thing. They have abandoned the policy of "squeezing the rich" through taxation and replaced it with vague discussion of "fair" taxation (as if it matters either way). To the trade unions they offer no commitment to scrap all the restrictive Tory legislation but float the idea of a "balanced package" which is another name for the Social Contract, Pay Code and all other such attempts to restrain pay claims. Whatever opposition to these changes there has been in the Labour Party it has not been warmed by any incendiary words from Foot. He has sat mute and compliant and when the time comes he will undoubtedly give the whole disreputable exercise his active support, in speeches which will convince the disappointed Labour supporters that anti-working class policies are steps towards the Promised Land when all people will be free and equal.

Michael Foot is not unique, for there have been many other Labour leaders who have first established their credentials as heroes of the grass-roots and then exploited their popularity to justify policies which were clearly opposed to what they claimed to stand for. This is part of the continuing process in which the working class are deceived that this social system, and its political parties, do not have to be as they are but could be better under a different government, under more humane leaders. This is among the most dangerous of illusions, for it conceals the urgency of abolishing capitalism, at once and entirely. Foot is soon to leave this squalid scene and he has no cause to be proud of his contribution to it.

IVAN

Decent housing - "all but impossible"

We read that eight years ago, the government pledged to bring all social housing in England up to a basic standard by 2010. According to a manifesto pledge, all homes would be made warm, weatherproof and have reasonably modern facilities.

But there are 700,000 properties in England which the National Audit Commission projects will miss the target.

According to the latest data from the Homes and Communities Agency , 22 councils across England have as many as one in two "non-decent" social homes. In East Durham, nearly nine out of 10 homes fail the standard.

The Audit Commission report on social housing published in September said the government's "high ambitions" for the Decent Homes scheme had not been "matched by reality". It concluded that, given the deterioration in the economy, meeting the 2010 deadline was now "all but impossible".

For a socialist approach on housing see here , Building Profits Versus Building Homes

The best laid plans

On Monday the Labour government presented its long-prepared plans to reduce benefits to the long-term unemployed and sick with a view to forcing them back to work for an employer. They have made it clear that they think that “too generous” payments for incapacity have undermined the proper functioning of the wages system by weakening the economic pressure compelling workers to sell their labour power to some employer to get money to buy the things they need to live.

Under the plan the Labour government hope to throw up to a million people off the welfare rolls and onto the labour market. But to work this requires that a million new jobs become available. This was over ambitious anyway but, unfortunately for them, their plan was announced just as the economy is entering its downturn phase, and perhaps the worst slump for many years, and think-tanks are predicting a steep rise in the number of unemployed over the next few years. For instance,

“The number of people out of work will reach two million by 2010, the highest level since the early days of new Labour, according to a think-tank. The unemployed number will rise from 1.6 million to 2 million for the first time since July 1997, according to the Ernst & Young ITEM club.” (Times, 21 July)

The reason why the unemployed benefit part of post-war Beveridge Plan eventually failed was that it was premised on an unemployment rate of 2-3 percent, whereas by the 1970s and 1980s this was more than twice that. The new plan is likely to fail for the same reason - a higher than anticipated levelof unemployment.

Not that this will really worry the government - or its successor - as, if the people thrown off incapacity benefit cannot find a job, they’ll move to the lower benefit paid to the unemployed. And so save the government money.

In any event, the whole episode is yet more evidence that Labour governments are just as anti-working class as the Tories, basically because all government, however well-intentioned towards workers (not that this one is), cannot make capitalist work in the interest of those forced to depend for a living on working for a wage or a salary.

If you accept responsibility for running the political affairs of the capitalist class, then you have to do their dirty work. Which the present Labour government has shown itself all too willing to do.
ALB

Labour embraces militarism

At one time - a long, long time ago now - the Labour Party used to project itself, and was even seen as, the party of peace. The present series of Labour government, having committed British troops to two unpopular wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) is now seen by many as the party of war. Far from being ashamed of this, the Labour Party is revelling in it. According to a report in the Times (20 May):

"A Bank Holiday to celebrate the work of the Armed Forces is under consideration by the Government as part of a drive to improve relations between the military and the public. Legislation is also to be introduced to make it a criminal offence to discriminate against military personnel in Service dress or combat fatigues. This is an attempt to encourage members of the Armed Forces to wear their uniforms in public as often as possible. Anyone who physically attacks a serviceman or servicewoman in uniform will also be charged with an "aggravated offence", to underline the seriousness now attached to the well-being and security of Armed Forces personnel when in the public eye.

The recommendations are in an official report, National Recognition of Our Armed Forces, drawn up by Quentin Davies, the MP and former Tory defence spokesman, who switched to Labour in June last year. He was asked by Gordon Brown to investigate ways of improving the relationship between the military and the civilian public ( . . .)

Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces Minister, confirmed that the government had accepted all the recommendations in the report."

This is a logical enough position for any government of capitalism to take. The armed forces don't exist just for decorative purposes. They exist to allow a country to have some credibility and clout in the rivalry built-in to capitalism between all capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets and strategic points and areas to protect these. Normally this involves peaceful diplomatic negotiations but always against a background of threats, direct or understood. Sometimes it involves sabre-rattling. But sometimes it involves war, the organised use of force to kill and destroy. In any event, an effective fighting force is a valuable thing to have in a world where might is right.

Although governments can ignore "public opinion" over going to war (as the Blair government did over Iraq), hoping to win people over once it's started, they'd like to have this support from the start. One way to achieve this is to glorify the armed forces and present them as heroes doing their duty to defend the rest of us.

But it is equally logical for Socialists to reject and combat such militarist propaganda because we don't want workers to kill workers from other countries in pursuit of capitalist interests. We want the members of the armed forces to be seen for what they really are: trained hired killers for the ruling, capitalist class.

It is not clear whether the Labour government's planned Bill to encourage militarism will mean that in future it will be a crime to make this point.

Boom and Bust

Once upon a time, former PM Blair would stand defiant at the dispatch box in the Commons and say there would be no boom and bust under Labour.

I once put it to a Labour functionary, a guest on a phone-in held by "Sky News" (and that was several years ago), that Capitalism has its ups and downs despite politician's rhetoric. He scoffed at the thought that the economy is beyond Government. He was on about Labour having sensible policies, etc, ad nauseum.

It really was a fairy tale as this piece illustrates.

Boom and bust are part of the system, and thus it matters nowt which party is in office.

the Rich List

The Sunday Times has published its rich list

The richest 1,000 people in Britain have seen their wealth quadruple under Labour, according to The Sunday Times Rich List published today. Even under Gordon Brown’s brief premiership their fortunes have soared by 15%, just as the financial squeeze and faltering house prices have hit ordinary people.

The collective wealth of the 1,000 richest has jumped to £412 billion, up from £99 billion in 1997. Total net wealth during the same period has slightly more than doubled.

“The 11 years of Labour have been absolutely fantastic for the super-rich,” said Philip Beresford, compiler of the list. “Having a friendly Labour government has almost been better than having a Tory one; it has neutered politicians on the left.”

The wealthiest man in Britain is the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal whose fortune has rocketed to £27.7 billion, up from £19.25 billion last year, thanks to strong global demand for steel. Mittal is now the sixth richest person in the world and far ahead of any other billionaire in Britain.

Does anyone believe anymore that Labour are a socialist party or a party of labour? When it is said class society is old marxist hat, just who are those people trying to kid?

The rich - the capitalist class - can thank the greatest philanthropists of all: the working class, "the Ragged Trousered Phlianthropists". They are rich because of your hard work, dear reader.

Without Comment . . .

Financial Times, 3 July an interview with Alistair Darling, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer:

“But what emerged far more strikingly was his determination not to pander to leftwing Labour prejudices against big business and the City.

On private equity, Mr Darling declared that any decisions to alter the tax structure needed to be carefully considered, despite the growing pressure for change.

“I think there’s a number of things that need to be done, but I’m very clear that if you make changes to the tax system you need to think them through,” he said.

He was equally cautious over another clamour – the demand from many in the Labour party for a crackdown on the non-domicile tax status of wealthy business figures resident in the UK.

“I am well aware of the fact that there are a number of people who do business here, and who are contributing to business here who can go somewhere else,” he said.

Above all, he was determined to be as strong a champion of the City of London as Mr Brown, expressing few qualms that the City was pulling away from the rest of the country in terms of economic dynamism.”

Epolitix on speech by John Hutton, new Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise (3 July):

“Labour is set to undergo a "serious redesign" as part of a drive to replace the Conservatives as "the natural party of business", John Hutton has said.

The business, enterprise and regulatory reform secretary pledged to be "aggressively pro-business" in his new brief.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform replaced the Department of Trade and Industry as part of a Whitehall shake-up following the appointment of Gordon Brown as prime minister.

Hutton told the FT that David Cameron's "harebrained" policies presented "a major opportunity for Labour".

Pointing in particular to the Tories' carbohydrates trading scheme, Hutton argued that Cameron had made "some major mistakes in their rebranding exercise in downplaying the importance of business".

And he insisted the new government structures - including the creation of a Business Council - were more than "rebranding".

"It's a serious attempt to redesign across government how we work with business," he said.

He added: "In the whole debate about more employment regulation, you have to be mindful of the costs to British business," he said. "You've got to be very careful and always take into account the impact and burden on business."

Referring to Brown's reshuffle, Hutton commended the "inspired appointment" of former CBI chief Sir Digby Jones as trade and investment minister.”

Comment by rightwing columnist Anatole Kaletsky entitled “Finally, Darling reveals Brown’s true nature” (London Times, 5 July)

“Mr Brown did something I have long suspected he might do, but never fully believed: he started to outflank David Cameron from the Right and to reposition Labour as Britain’s most solidly pro-business party. Mr Brown’s reasons for trying to do this are quite simple: he has always believed that the steady growth of the British economy in the past ten years has been his greatest achievement as Chancellor.
Maintaining this growth is now the indispensable condition for his success as Prime Minister, and justified the sacrifice of impractical socialist precepts he once believed. Outflanking Mr Cameron on economic policy would also be politically attractive, because it would cut the Tories off from their natural electoral heartland. But while the logic of a shift towards pro-business policies under Mr Brown was always quite compelling, almost nobody believed it would happen, and even I had my doubts.

Partly this was a matter of style. Mr Brown has always been very unpopular in the City of London and the business community and his elevation to Prime Minister has been a big source of worry to British businessmen and financiers.

Even though they could never quite put their finger on what they were worried about, the visceral distrust of Mr Brown was impossible to disregard. In the past few days, however, this attitude has been noticeably changing.
The flanking operation began with Mr Brown’s decision to appoint Sir Digby Jones, the outspoken former Director-General of the CBI, as a minister without forcing him to join the Labour Party, and invite Damon Ruffini, Britain’s most prominent private equity boss, to join the new Business Council. The pincer movement continued on Tuesday when John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Business, accused Tories of “downplaying the importance of business” and added that Labour “wants to be the natural party of business”. But these were just preludes to the real thrust of the new strategy, revealed by Alistair Darling in yesterday’s Financial Times.

In this interview, the new Chancellor ruled out any rush to impose new taxes or regulations on private equity and hedge funds, as demanded by a strange alliance between the trade union movement and populist tabloids.

Much more importantly, he hinted as clearly as a Chancellor ever can that foreign financiers living in Britain would continue indefinitely to enjoy their present very favourable treatment under the nondomiciled tax regime. And he justified this favourable treatment with the most pragmatic, and hence most persuasive, reasons: “I am very well aware that people who do business, and who contribute to business here, can go elsewhere.”

More generally, Mr Darling repeatedly emphasised the importance of the City and of liberal financial markets as “absolutely critical” to the prosperity of the whole British economy, adding for good measure that Britain’s increasing specialisation in finance was something to be welcomed, not opposed.

He showed his intense awareness of just how important it is to maintain a pro-business environment by contrasting Labour’s approach with the damaging overregulation of financial markets by American politicians after the dot-com crash.”

The Haves and the Have-yachts

The rich are not all equally wealthy. According to am article in Times at the end of last year (4 December), a rift is opening up among wealthy Britons between the merely rich, and the super-rich. The reporter went to a West London nursery school – £1800 a term, or £5400 a year – and found the conversation mainly about the forthcoming City bonuses. "According to the centre for Economics and Business Research, a staggering £8.8 billion will be paid out in this next round, with more than 4200 individuals receiving more than £1 million each. Much of that money (around £5 billion) will find its way into property, half of it in London; and of the overall bonus, between 60 and 70 percent will go to non-UK residents – i.e., foreign nationals working in London, many of whom will not be liable for UK tax." Many of these latter are now the super-rich, whose expenditure is soaring above that of the rich: as Rachel Johnston put it in her book Notting Hell, it is now "the Haves versus the Have Yachts".

One of the main reasons for the rise of the super-rich is the policy of the Labour government: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and their friends do love the wealthy. "Britain has one of the most business-friendly tax environments on the planet, exemplified by the non-domicile (or 'non-dom') tax laws. In simple terms, these allow wealthy foreign nationals to hold their main liquid assets in tax-free offshore environments while operating freely within the UK - largely untroubled by the Exchequer (the same is not true of British nationals)." The result is that "London's status as the place to make and take money has only been reinforced in recent years".

With such competition, the merely rich feel jealous about the super-rich. One City fund manager (Eton and Oxford) said "Not only do they look down on us, they have made our lives more uncomfortable from a financial point of view too, by pushing up the price of traditional wealth assets - school fees, house prices, staff." An investment banker said, "the super-rich are fine. They either don't need to pay tax at all or find ways of avoiding it. I don't have enough cash to employ a clever accountant."

The Have Yachts – people "with more than £15 million to invest" – operate on a higher level. "These are people who think nothing of spending several million on a party, or having their children picked up from school by helicopter and transported to a waiting private jet for a weekend in Gstaad. They have so much money that they pay experts to help them spend it." For example, "at Quintessentially, the global concierge service, their 'elite' membership is by invitation only and costs a basic £24,000 a year. For that, members have access to finders and fixers in every major city across the world, 24 hours a day." Among the requests they have dealt with are "finding a premiership footballer to play with a member's son; sourcing twelve albino peacocks for a party with just three hours' notice; completely redesigning a London hotel room; and organizing a trip to Hudson Bay, Canada, during the one month each year when the world's largest concentration of polar bears gathers on the ice". One service in much demand is finding appropriate houses, usually in London, or by the sea in the west country.

A director of a Central London estate agency said "super-rich foreigners" were their best customers. "Between 70 and 80 percent of our top deals are with foreign nationals." The steady injection of largely tax-free money by the super-rich into the London housing market (prices in the "most exclusive districts" went up by 31 percent in the year to February 2007) keeps all prices rising, because the cost of cheaper houses follows the market upwards; so ultimately all the young people trying to get their own property, or giving up in despair, are feeling the knock-on effects of the Blair/Brown romance with the rich. If the specially favourable terms for foreign magnates are thought to be under threat, prices decline. "House prices in Central London took a considerable dip in 2004 when 'non-dom' was last under serious review; but a sustained campaign from the City and the Exchequer persuaded" the Chancellor to relent, and the super-rich breathed a sigh of relief.

The International Monetary Fund has decided that Britain is now an offshore tax haven, listing it "alongside the likes of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands - unregulated jurisdictions associated with illicit funds" (Observer, 22 April). The "non-dom" people save vast amounts by largely avoiding British income tax. "The accountancy firm Grant Thornton worked out that the UK's fifty-four billionaires paid income tax totalling just £14.7 million on their £126 billion combined fortunes" (Observer 4 March). That makes a rate of about one-hundredth part the percentage that the merely rich, who can't wangle this particular tax-exemption, have to pay on their incomes. Among the "non-dom" Londoners are Lakshmi Mittal, Roman Abramovich, and the Hinduja brothers. The Observer (22 April) has several times asked Sir Ronald Cohen, who was born in Egypt and is now Gordon Brown's "senior City advisor" (Brown has appointed him to several "taskforces") whether he is lucky enough to have this "non-dom" tax status; Sir Ronald has refused to answer. If he has this status, he has something to thank the Labour Party for, and he – like Lakshmi Mittal, who tops the Sunday Times Rich List this year ( 20 April) – is among those who have generously donated funds to the Labour Party.

If you think that the law says that foreigners cannot contribute to British party funds, you would be mistaken: the Inland Revenue (whose regulations are laid down by Gordon Brown) says that people living in Britain under the "non-dom" rules can still be counted as residents, who can thus legally give money to – for example – the Labour Party (Observer 18 February). So that's all right then.

AWE

The military are not that unintelligent

Everyone has heard the one about “military intelligence” being a contradiction in terms. But military planners can’t afford to be stupid – and aren’t, as a recent Ministry of Defence publication shows.

The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) of the Ministry of Defence has just published a document on Strategic Trends which sets out their view on the context for the activity of Britain’s armed forces over the next thirty years. The man in charge, Rear Admiral Chris Parry, explains in the introduction that the trends identified in the document are “probability-based rather than predictions”. The degrees of probability being will, likely, may, possible.

What emerges from the document is that the military thinkers behind it share the socialist analysis that conflicts in the modern (capitalist) world arise out of competition between states over sources of raw materials, markets, investment outlets, trade routes and strategic points to control and protect these.

Against the sub-heading “securing natural resources”, the document says:

“Key natural resources, especially oil, gas and minerals of strategic value, will continue to be sourced from unstable areas and unreliable regions. Maintaining access and containing instability risks in these areas is therefore likely to increase in importance, alongside wider developmental and stabilization roles. Where oil and gas sources are located in areas of doubtful security, military intervention may be used to protect the integrity of sites and to secure investments” ( p. 29).

In fact, the document regards “competition for energy” as one of the “hot topics” of the period. “Competition for energy supplies”, it says, “will dominate the economic landscape during the next 30 years” and that “requirements to access sources of supply in unstable regions or countries could lead to intervention to protect assets and investments” (p. 31).

“Overheating of energy markets may lead more countries to follow the example of China in establishing bilateral arrangements that seek to dominate or control the global market in their favour, possibly fuelling tension among those who are excluded or who cannot or will not compete in a market environment. This may lead to political and even military interventions in order to protect access and safeguard supply” (p. 26).

Then, there’s the trade routes:

“Most of the world’s trade by bulk, particularly energy, will continue to transit by sea and through maritime choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Straits of Malacca, in areas which will remain highly unstable. This will demand high levels of international cooperation and a continuing dependence on the deployment of maritime power.” (54)

And the strategic points:

“There is likely to be more emphasis on the active containment of aggressors, symptoms of crisis and irregular elements, to deter and defeat military threats to partners and the international system. In these circumstances, the ability to secure and maintain free access to areas of strategic and operational interest will remain vital” (p. 54).

The MoD strategists don’t think that these tensions will lead to war in the sense of “state-on-state” conflicts (“Major interstate wars will be unlikely”, p. 67), at least not until after 2020:

“Although large-scale interstate warfare is unlikely, competition for finite resources and intolerance at market forces may lead to tensions and greater potential for confrontation and conflict between 2020 and 2035” (p. 43).

“Global economic and financial interdependency is likely to reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of major interstate warfare before 2020. However, increasing pressures on resources, particularly energy, and the growing assertiveness of emerging powers such as India, China and Iran, beyond this date may result in the return of great power rivalries as the defining characteristic of geopolitics, with a consequent increase in the risk of interstate and inter-bloc conflict” (p. 48).

“Conflict and crisis will become increasingly complex and unpredictable, both in their incidence and character, during the period to 2035, with serious interstate rivalry probably expressing itself through proxy actions by hostile groups who may or may not have issues of their own” (p.67).

Even before 2020, however, the strategists think that conflict between states will take place through proxies (as already happened during the Cold War period):

“In the absence of direct, open state-on-state conflict, there will be a marked increase in the prevalence of irregular activity . . . There will also be increased sponsorship of irregular activity and groups by states, seeking to utilize and exploit, through proxy, gaps in the international system, either to assert themselves or secure advantage without exposing themselves to state-on-state risks” (p. 52).

The document is not confined to narrow trends that concern the military directly but also mentions economic, political and other issues, singling out as climate change, globalization and global inequality as the three “areas of change” which “will touch the lives of everyone on the planet” and underpin all the other trends.

On the world scale, the strategists think that “while life for most people is likely to improve materially, a significant number will continue to experience hardship, and unevenness and fluctuations within a globalized market-based economy will still mean that life will be uncertain for most” (p. 1).

“While material conditions for most people are likely to improve over the next 30 years, the gap between rich and poor will probably increase and absolute poverty will remain a global challenge. . . Absolute poverty and comparative disadvantage will fuel perceptions of injustice among those whose expectations are not met, increasing tension and instability, both within and between societies and resulting in expressions of violence such as disorder, criminality, terrorism and insurgency. They may also lead to the resurgence of not only anti-capitalist ideologies, possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to populism and the revival of Marxism” (p. 3).

Let’s hope that on this very last point they are right.

The full report can be read at http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/5CB29DC4-9B4A-4DFD-B363-3282BE255CE7/0/strat_trends_23jan07.pdf

ALB