“Never before”, declared a delegate to the recent A.E.U.1 annual conference “has a man had to work a week to buy a pair of boots”.

This apt comment of an engineering worker, crystallises in one sentence the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the population. Never before have price increases continued so relentlessly as during the past twelve months. Never before has so much talk been wasted on the subject of price controls – and so little done. There is no need to mention the innumerable items which have increased in price. It is sufficient to say that it now takes a week’s work to buy a blanket and eight years’ wages to buy a house – if you can live on air in the meanwhile.

Since the beginning of this year, official estimates admit that the cost of living has gone up by some nine per cent, or eleven shillings a week to the average worker. Still there is no sign of respite. Wholesale prices have, in the last six months, gone up by 30 per cent. This means that, by the end of the year, the average £6 a week worker will be 30s a week worse off. To offset this, the government would have us believe that we are, on average, receiving seven shillings a week more in the pay packet. This increase, of course, exists mainly on paper. The chief beneficiaries are such people as the higher-paid civil servants, who received, not long ago, pay increases of up to £15 a week. In view of the present size of the Civil Service, this represents a not inconsiderable factor – and a great strain – on what is now termed “the national economy”.

Smash and Grab

In answer to this fantastic situation, what, it may be asked, has the trade union movement done. Mr E.F. Fryer, Chairman of the T&GWU conference held at Whitley Bay a few weeks ago, gave the answer. He urged that a policy of wage restraint was still necessary and that union members – who include 95s a week railwaymen – should not adopt a policy of “smash and grab”. The only hope he could hold out was that they would not see union members suffer "in the general wages movement which is now taking place" The conference then went on to discuss workers who were abusing sickness benefit schemes and robbing the boss.

The record of the Labour Government, in this respect, is no better. Week in and week out, senior ministers appeal to the industrial workers, "not to use the present favourable employment situation as a lever to raise their wages." With the same monotonous regularity, the President of the Board of Trade meets the barons of industry to discuss general price increases.

We know, from our own experience, that talk of price controls is useless. Despite the fact that industrial production is nearly half as much again as before the war, and exports last month reached a record figure for all time, our standard of living is deteriorating. The armament economy of the entire world is absorbing the world's wealth. This, of course, quite apart from the fact that, whenever the workers' organisations fail, as they are doing at present, to conduct at active struggle for higher wages at the expense of profits, organised capital reaps even greater dividends at the expense of wages. A glance at any issue of the "Financial Times" will show that profits have never been better than at the present time,

Fighting Machines

The only successful struggles that have been waged during recent years have been unofficial. The trade unions, integrating themselves with the state machine, and bent on getting governmental positions for their leaders, have no time or use for the dangerous road of really fighting for wage increases. The unofficial movements and committees, operating very much on syndicalist lines, have replaced the trade unions as the fighting organisations of the industrial working class.

We believe that these movements should not regard themselves as temporary "pep groups" within the trade unions, but as the workers' organisations of the future. Not only as the fighting machines for the day-to-day struggles for improved wages and conditions, but as the means of ending the profit system and the rule by one class over another. Nobody who has vested interests, as the trade union leaders have, in maintaining the triangle of employers, government officials and trade union bureaucrats can accomplish that. Only the industrial workers, in whose interests it is to end the system, will do it.

• 1 Amalgamated Engineering Union

One way of writing history is to take a social group, in one place and at one time, leaving the broad drama of great events, and treating the subject as a microcosm, letting the minutiae of humble lives interpret the greater story. In thus taking one corner of the Durham Coalfield as my subject I might as well be writing of the coalminers of Scotland, South Wales, Yorkshire or almost anywhere.

When the General Strike of 1926 ended, I lost my job in Coventry. Four weeks after the Strike I decided to go North, but at Coventry station I was told: “We can issue a ticket to Derby only. The railways are so disorganised we cannot guarantee any travel beyond that distance.” So, with three tickets and four trains, I reached Newcastle (about 185 miles) in 18 hours. The Government had boasted of their skeleton blackleg service and this was the result, even four weeks later.

From Newcastle I went to live in the small mining town of Birtley, part of the urban district of Chester-le-Street in Durham, and found and made a home in Elizabethville (though not in the Congo). Here in 1914 about 600 temporary houses, a school, church and hospital had been built for Belgian refugees, hence the title. In 1919 the refugees went home and the government locked the empty buildings and – the village was surrounded by high spiked iron railings – the heavy iron gates and refused to allow homeless people to occupy the huts. Then, in the course of three days the place was taken over, mostly by ex-soldiers and the gates removed and dropped in a brook. The police were ordered to expel the squatters who promptly formed a defence force and posted round the clock sentries. After a few months, authority decided it was better to accept the fait accompli and charge their unwelcome tenants rent – 7s. 9d. a week.

When, on May 21 1926, the national lock-out of coal miners took place, Durham had already been out for two weeks on a county issue. That and a long series of single pit strikes had left the strike fund broken (at that time each mining county in England had a separate union, linked in the Miners Federation Of Great Britain). But Durham went, with the rest, solidly into the battle.

How, then, did the miners’ families live? There was a national miners relief fund which was big, though not nearly as big as the distress it was to relieve. Durham received its share but there were 120,000 men plus wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter and most of that had to be found at home. The Guardians gave relief to the strikers but soon that was drastically curtailed. The Boards were under the control of the Minister of Health who ordered all relief to single or married able-bodied men to cease. Relief, and not very much at that, was to be given only to the wives and children.

The County Council, with a majority of miners, gave free breakfast to schoolchildren over five years of age. The same body had formed clinics for children under three. Here a fortnightly medical check of the babies was made and a weekly allowance of one pound of full-cream dried milk and a bottle of codliver oil given for each baby. Children’s clothes were sold at cost price. The garments were almost half the price the mothers would have paid in the shops and the goods were certainly superior. Most of the work of these clinics was organised locally and done by volunteers.

Then someone discovered that an Education Act allowed the Council to institute primary schools for children between three and five but without supplying the money for such a venture. So it was put to the Council that they could pass a resolution to establish primary schools for the under fives without fixing a date, then give school meals to the primary scholars. This legal hocus-pocus was carried out and the kids got their free meal quite legally.

The local co-operative, with some backing from the CWS, [Co-operative Wholesale Society] was able to give some credit to the miners’ lodges – as always. And, always, such credit was repaid weekly, from the second week of the return to work, until the whole of the debt was paid. There is a strong traditional streak of puritanism in Durham and the repayment of such debts of honour was considered not only just, but sound business – there is always a next time.

The local co-op was small, nothing like the city giants, but like many small co-ops was efficient. It owned the only large store in town and the only cinema. It had meeting rooms and a hall, a barber’s shop, a billiards saloon, allotments, a farm producing fresh meat, milk and eggs, with cottages for its labourers.

Rent did not trouble the majority as long as the strike lasted. Many lived in coal companies’ houses and a rent strike was automatic. Any attempt at eviction would have been met by a thousand-strong picket. Coal was got by searching the waste heaps which, like young mountains, adorn the coalfield scene.

There was recreation, too. There were village fiestas, without the feasting. A procession led by at least one excellent brass band, a meeting, a sports day with athletic events for children and adults (first prize, a bar of chocolate) and, in the evening, an open-air dance or a concert. There were ladies’ football matches and comic football matches between teams of boisterous clowns and comic boxing shows – at times everything comic. But frequent meetings were important too, for they served the part of a Press.

Rival to the silver bands, some well known, were the bazooka bands, the “bazooka” [kazoo] being a sixpenny instrument one hummed into. About 40 of these, with drums made quite a noise. All the bands – there must have been a few hundred of them in the country, including children’s bands – were in costume, a condition being that the costume should not cost a great deal. Sometimes 20 bands would take part in a local carnival, tramping miles to the site. I recall one fat man who, dressed as a sultan in the remains of a bedspread, marched at the head of his “harem” of 40 women, a very proud sultan he looked, and the “Tramps”, each wearing a battered bowler and spats, who played their tune, then sang, “We’re on the road to anywhere” like a choir. There were bands of Zulu warriors, Red Indians, knights in tincan armour, battalions of Fred Karno’s Army, bands of mermaids (the most difficult of the lot) and of pirates (the easiest).

But as that long, warm summer began to fade into autumn, the struggle became grimmer. The first serious blow was made, against the Chester-le-Street Board of Guardians, who had refused to obey the Government’s order to cease relief to single men. The Tory Government deposed the elected Guardians, whose work was unpaid, and put in their place three highly-paid commissioners. The new regime stopped all relief to men, single or married, who might be able to work. The only relief was to wives, 8s. [shillings] a week, and children, 1s. a week. Thus a family of six received 12s. a week in the form of a food voucher, no money, compared to the dole of 29s. a week. This measure of economic terrorism was applied not only to strikers but to all unemployed “on relief”, miners and other workers, and was continued after the strike for a few years. Following the strike, these people without money were dunned for rent. The only ways to get money were to sell part of their meagre rations, or pick coal from the waste heaps and try to sell it. 4-5s. for a week’s hard work, less to the unlucky.

The police acted against the strikers picking coal from the heaps; the men went in larger groups, the police were reinforced. The miners begun prospecting for coal in the fields like gold diggers but this meant spreading out. Pressure increased with the coming of cold weather. A nearby wood of commercial fir, belonging to Lord Lambton, was completely felled and sawn up. A coalowner magistrate, whose large house on the North Road had three tall gateposts of 18in. square oak, found, one morning, that they had been sawn off six inches from the ground.

Then the Notts. Miners’ Association, led by Labour MP G. A. Spencer, broke away from the Federation and returned to work. Heavy police reinforcements appeared in Durham, the biggest, heaviest constables from distant counties; and attempts were made to re-open strikebound pits. Scarcely a miner, with the exception of a few in South Shields, could be found. The blackleg gangs were token forces of bankrupt shopkeepers and of professional layabouts from the town.

The pits were usually closed after three days. Sometimes after the first day, and the owners resorted to surprise but there was always a strong picket awaiting the scabs at the end of their morning shift. Scouts took to following on bicycles the truckloads of police: this in turn led to the police making dummy concentrations to lure the men to the wrong pits but there were always enough pickets to go round.

News travels fast in a mining area and even the sound of running feet and a shout would bring out men, boys and women in a mass picket – yes, women pickets, and punching ones, too! It was hard, bitter fighting: usually, before the scabs could be reached, the charge of six-foot-plus, 15-stone policemen swinging batons in arm-breaking, skull-cracking blows had to be met and broken.

The pattern was for the picket to gather early, to prevent a surprise getaway. The police would try to disperse them, but would soon gather about the pit yard. The scabs would wait at the pithead for 2, 3 or 4 hours, then the police would make their big charge and the main battle was on. A prisoner always went to jail for 6-12 months. The wounded were, if possible, carried off by their comrades.

I recall one such episode on the old North Road near Gateshead; where a colliery had “reopened”. The Birtley men gathered there. Two tramcars came to pick up the scabs, the police were pushed back, the trolleys pulled off, all windows broken, starting and steering handles removed; one tram derailed and the tramwaymen sent home, all in a few minutes. We hung about for three hours, then half a dozen scabs dashed from the back of the yard, down the hilly fields, towards the new North Road.

From the hedges sprang small, slim, youthful figures, who ran like hares after them and did nothing but trip them up, then pounding behind came heavier figures and in two minutes the scabs were unfit for work for a week or two. On the main road the fighting broke out again. At night some of the scabs who lived in Gateshead were visited in their homes; they did not return to the pit, which, in any case, closed after three days.

At another pit, which lasted only one day, a sergeant lifted his baton high to give the signal for a charge and was at once felled by a stone. At another a sergeant (the supers, like the Duke of Plaza Toro,1 led their armies from the rear) appeared to give an order to charge and rushed into the crowd, while his men stood still. I never found out where he went to.

One surprise nearly succeeded, but a few young fellows, very early in the morning, went to the “reopened” pit, to be charged by treble the number of police and sought refuge on the waste heap. These heaps of loose stone are tricky and one runs up them zigzag fashion. The police tried to run straight up and every man started his own avalanche. The men on top helped these, too, and pelted the constables, but they were marooned in a sea of blue serge. Then, after several hungry hours, they saw columns marching from every village for miles around. Lucknow was relieved.2

All this time hunger was growing. Over a nearby hill a miner’s wife was picking late blackberries. She was hungry, ate some without washing them and died of poisoning a few days later. Said the coroner: “There is no doubt that the poor woman was very hungry.”

In December, a national ballot of the miners favoured a return to work, except in Durham, which voted by a big majority to stay out. In the face of a national return, however, the E.C.[Executive Committee] had to disregard the vote. Out from mid-April to December, the miners went back, the strike was over, but not the fight. Their union was intact, their spirit unbroken.

Yet, apart from the social war, it was a peaceful community, more peaceful and ethical than London W.1, though the police were regarded as an occupying army. A woman or a child could walk alone in the dark, doors were left unlocked. A sociologist, speaking of this and the following period in Durham, said that the absence of crime was the most remarkable feature of the depression and attributed this to “steady living and the steadying influence of the Union.” ([Charles] Muir, Justice in a Depressed Area, p. 32-33 [1936]). Later, the Pilgrim Report said that there was here little self-pity, but a determination to fight the effects of poverty and unemployment. Yet, it said, 71 per cent had been out of work for 5 years or more, compared to Liverpool’s 23 per cent and Deptford’s 3 per cent. (Men Without Work, 1938).

It was a consciously working-class community, self-reliant and ready for spontaneous action, best when its leaders were in London. There was, of course, a deal of petty gossip and such in a “Coronation Street”3 way, but in struggle they were loyal to one another and in some local pit disasters – even unto death.

Thanks to 1, The Tyneside Anarchist Archive which posted the issue of Direct Action containing this article https://tynesideanarchistarchive.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/tom-brown-in-birtley/ and 2, the Tom Brown who put the typed or scanned text online.

From: Direct Action vol.4 no.7 (25) July 1963, page 6-7.

Footnotes by Kate Sharpley Library.

• 1From Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers.
• 2An ironic nod to the Siege of Lucknow, during the Indian revolt of 1857.
• 3Famous British soap opera, which started in 1960.

At 5am, Saturday, 24th August, 100 policemen and ten bailiffs brutally evicted Mr and Mrs, Cobb, and their children, from their crumbling basement flat. at 40, St Stephens Gardens, Paddington.

Mrs. Cobb has been a tenant in the basement flat since August 1957 (Just after the RENT ACT). As a tenant in a furnished flat she therefore had no security of tenure.

This building is owned by Glen Powis properties, one of over 40 companies specialising in slum houses which Mr Kaye and Mr Phillips control.

Why the eviction? It is claimed by Kaye that the Cobb family were in arrears with rent. Wereas in fact they were up to date apart from a disputed sum of £2.19.9d. which has been outstanding for some time.

The palatial mansion of 40 St. Stephens Gardens is occupied as follows, top floor flat occupied by a Miss Harker who has a twenty year old gentleman named Joseph Keana living with her. They pay £10 per week rent including water rate and rates. While the eviction of Mrs. Cobb was in progress she was in touch with Kaye by phone.

The next two floors down are empty, Kaye is asking anything from £150 to £300 for fittings (key money) depending no doubt, on what he can get. Ground floor previously occupied by Mr and Mrs. Ahtuam and five children. Mr. Ahtuam had a mortgage on the house; he became mentally ill and was taken into a mental home. The. property passed into the hands of the Official Receiver from whom Kaye obtained the mortgage. Mrs Ahtuam at this time was seriously ill in hospital in childbirth. Kaye evicted her while she was in hospital. She is now at Newington Lodge1 and her five children are in different homes. She is contacting her MP for assistance to retrie.re her furniture which is still at number 40. The ground floor is now occupied by a gentleman who has paid £150 (key money) for fittings, and pays £5.10s a week rent. He does his own decorating.

The basement is indisputably in a disgusting, condition occupied until the eviction by Mr and Mrs Cobb and children. Mrs Cobb had previously been the tenant of Mr Ahtuam. I understand from Mr Cobb that paid his rent religiously. The only outstanding rent was £2.19.9d. which Kaye refused to take.

It seems obvious that the Cobbs were an inconvenience to Kaye. In 1962 they had complained to the Health Department regarding the appalling condition of their flat, thus forcing Kaye to undertake repairs which according, to him were carried out.

To be perfectly frank Kaye is in business. for “Profit" NOT TO PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH HOME, and obviously he could get more rent for the flat therefore the Cobbs were in the way, and had to go.

Housing accommodation in the 'Never had it so good' society is a racket, Building Societies, estate agents, land and property owners are 'PONCING' on the homeless, the only action one can take is 'Direct Action' the law is on the side of the racketeers, one or two of the administrators of the law are sympathetic to the homeless, but in the final analysis they are bound by the LAW. Strong Tenants Associations are the only protection.

• 1A former workhousein South London that became a facility for homeless people. It was demolished in 1969 and the Aylesbury Estate was built on the site.

It is now 14 months since Rachman1 died. Thanks to Mandy Rice-Davies and the Ward trial2 , the press found they were on a good thing. There were a few months of seven-Sunday weeks, when everybody came to know of Rachman and his activities. News of the World reporters took rooms in St. Stephen's Gardens and reported "I Lived in a Slum"; Panorama moved into Westbourne Park Road. Then other stories took over the front pages and the small storm of public indignation died down.

The Milner Holland Committee has been appointed and the government has been forced to introduce its Housing Bill. But despite these supposed cure-alls, Rachman's ghost still looms over Paddington and North Kensington. Admittedly, when the story first broke there was something like panic among the closely-knit group of Paddington slum-landlords. Raymond Nash, of Venus Properties, sold all his Paddington houses by September (he has since re-acquired them) and the others hurriedly began repairing leaking pipes, renewing lightbulbs and bannisters and issuing rent books.

But that was six months ago and now that "Housing" is last year's news they feel safe to come into the open again; as this little incident shows. Capital and Suburban Properties Ltd. is registered at 84 Queensway, W.2, just round the corner from the old Peter Rachman Ltd. hang-out at 91 Westbourne Grove. It is only one of the many companies run by friends and associates of Rachman and using methods made famous by him, which specialise in West London slum property. Its managing director is Peter Alfonso Davis, one of Rachman's most successful managers and, possibly, the "experienced coloured man" referred to in the Commons debate.

Recently, Capital and Suburban bought 125 Gloucester Terrace, Bayswater, in the name of Davis' girlfriend, Hilda Ludlam from Hamburg. There were a number of controlled tenants in this house and Davis made it known that he wanted to get rid of them. Knowing his reputation, most accepted a cash statement. One tenant—a Miss Linscombe—however, refused to leave. She came home one night and found that her room had been entered and ransacked. All the furniture, including the bed, had been overturned and sheets, clothes and personal belongings scattered over the floor. This happened several times and, although nothing, not even her transistor radio, was ever taken, Miss Linscombe found it impossible to carry on living in that house.

So things have not changed much. Despite newspaper sensations and "official action," Paddington in February, 1964, is much the same as it was in February, 1962. With one notable exception, the old gang, Nash and Shabaini, Cyril Kaye and Peter Davis, is still in control. Now that no paper will touch the story the old conditions have returned. Peter Rachman with his Heavy Glove Gang was no isolated figure, but just one [????] in a huge network that is not only slum-landlordism but the whole of the property business.

And where do the authorities stand in all this? Paddington Borough Council seemed to be taken aback by the Rachman "disclosures." Although the people of Paddington had known about the housing situation since 1957, the majority of their elected representatives had to rely on the national press for their information. Paddington, with its millionaire mayor and some of the worst slums in London became an even dirtier word than it had been before.

A face-saving operation was needed and a house-to-house survey of the St. Stephens Gardens area was attempted. This was impossible to complete, because of the difficulty of tracing owners of particular properties (one house in St. Stephens Gardens itself changed hands six times between the 23rd and 30th of September). The result of this was that Closing Orders have been haphazardly placed on various houses in the western end of the Gardens and in adjoining parts of Ledbury, Shrewsbury and Westbourne Park Roads, as well as in some areas of Bayswater and North Paddington. The landlords have found it cheaper to evict tenants and do without the rent than to make the necessary repairs, so that the houses could be declared " fit for human habitation." For the tenants it has meant that a leaking roof is exchanged for no roof at all. "Ah well," said one of the council officers, " you have to be cruel to be kind to these people."

Neither is the LCC record too good. Although, theoretically, they have nothing to do with it, they must take at least some of the blame for the situation in Paddington. They have consistently refused, on density grounds, consent for housing development in the working-class districts. Last December, though, they granted it for the "high quality " development of St. George's Churchyard site (facing Hyde Park and two minutes from Marble Arch).

In October the LCC made a compulsory purchase of four large houses in Leinster Square and over a hundred tenants, including a number of old age pensioners, had to move. These houses are still empty and there is no sign of any work being carried out on them. Closing Orders have even had to be placed on one LCC property in Paddington (243 Gloucester Terrace). These authorities claim that their hands are tied. The Town Clerk of Fulham spoke for all Metropolitan Borough Councils when he said that a Council cannot probe too deeply into housing questions or it will "find itself footing substantial bills at the ratepayers' expense."

Yet Paddington, the most deeply involved of all the councils, finds nothing strange in spending £500 a week of the ratepayers' money on, of all things, time and motion study! And who are these ratepayers who must not be offended, anyhow? Of course—the landlords! So everything fits into place. The councils need the landlords and make no distinction between bad and "good" landlords. They are all bound up together, all part of a system. They won't go until the system does. And only then will Rachman's ghost be finally exorcised.

• 1Peter Rachman was a notorious slum landlord in Notting Hill, West London
• 2Chistine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies had both been associated with Rachman prior to their involvement in the Profumo scandal.

The tinkers of Ireland (known officially as itinerants) have much in common with gypsies, principally their nomad-type of existence. To some people theirs seems a romantic, carefree life, while to others they are shiftless, lazy and dishonest. The falseness of both images was perfectly, demonstrated by the campaign recently waged in Dublin by the Itinerant Action Group, to secure for their children a decent education. It showed them in a truer light as loving parents and resourceful, responsible, citizens, and was a classical justification of the Syndicalist philosophy of direct action.

The difficulties encountered by nomadic or itinerant peoples, in the effort to live their type of life, arise from the enclosure of land and the development of large urban agglomerations, with their stifling bye-laws on the one hand, and the pressure towards conformity and integration by bureaucracies, which hate what they don't control, on the other.

In Ireland the problems became so acute that the State set up a commission to examine the tinkers' plight. For three years they waited anxiously to hear what would be done to educate their children. Towards the end of last year, the Report was published. The education situation, it said, was desperate and immediate action was essential. The sparks of hope were soon quenched. Official reaction to the official report—Nothing could be done for at least two years. The tinkers had waited years for the Commission, then three more while it gathered facts, but now another two (at least!) was just too much.

However, their innate instinct for self-reliance prevented despair. The Itinerant Action Group was formed and announced its intention of building a school on an unoccupied Corporation1 site. The result was an immediate and enthusiastic reaction from a dozen quarters—a contracting firm offered free materials, teachers offered their services on a rota basis, a soldier made a set of classroom furniture, two doctors offered a clinic service, subscriptions were sent to supply books and meals. Tinkers from all over Ireland converged on Dublin with their children.

On Monday, December 30, Peadar O'Donnell, one of Ireland's best-known writers and a veteran socialist, performed a simple opening ceremony. The ramshackle wooden building contained 50 eager children and there was an atmosphere of enthusiastic determination. However, the heavy hand of officialdom was soon to cast its shadow. Dublin Corporation served a week's notice of eviction, threatening prosecution for trespass, etc.

The dignified reaction of the tinkers and their determination earned them increasing public support and help. When the week was up the perplexed Corporation dithered uncertainly for another day, then sent along, a squad of workers, backed up by police and officials, to carry out the demolition of the little schoolhouse. The tinkers put a picket round the site, appealed to the workers not to pass it, and pledged that whatever happened they would not offer any violence or resistance. The workers refused to pass, but there was some doubt how long they could sustain this gesture without losing their jobs, so the tinkers announced they would move, but in their own time. Some hours later they withdrew in orderly fashion to another corporation site and. settled down again, stating, "We will stay here until we are moved on again. We will not resist, but we will camp in one site after another until the government do something about the Itinerants' Commission."

Throughout all this the school continued to function and the children showed an eagerness for knowledge. The Corporation alternated between indecision and dire threat. The tinkers staged protest demonstrations and when again evicted they marched their caravans across the centre of Dublin to a new site. Support was now pledged from the civil liberties organisation and student bodies.

At length the Action Group decided to bring matters to a climax by staying put and letting the Corporation carry out its plans to destroy their school. A contingent of 30 workmen was sent to do the dirty work. Almost half of them refused to obey their orders and were promised Union support. The rest found themselves obstructed by students and members of the public, who lay across their path in protest. Eventually, with the help of police reinforcements, they broke through the barricade of caravans and bodies and finished their task. By this time, however, the campaign had focussed public attention on the tinkers' position and won great sympathy for them.

One of the campaigners on behalf of the itinerants. 25 year-old pacifist Grattan Puxon2 , is now remanded on bail in the sum of £500, charged under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act with possession of explosives—a trumped-up charge, in an effort to discredit the Itinerant Action Group.

A protest demonstration and march, in support of the itinerants and Grattan Puxon, organised by the Syndicalist Workers Federation, was held from Hyde Park to the Irish Embassy in London Sunday, April 26, supported by the Irish Socialist Republican League.

• 1Dublin Corporation – they local government administrative body for the city of Dublin.
• 2Puxton would go on to be a lifelong supporter of travellers. There is more on his arrest and detainment here https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-10128589.html

Tom McAlpine1 , visionary—or waster? This has been a topic of conversation in libertarian circles. He has been lauded by the Christians, Social democrats and pacifists; but this is only to be expected, as it seems to them that if the Factory for Peace2 succeeds (as it will not) there will be no need for the revolution which they all fear. The left wing press have dedicated whole pages to this subject and there have been TV films made about this experiment below the co-operative sausage factory off Scotland Street, Glasgow.

I worked in the Factory for a month—enough for me to get an insight on its nature. I was paid £2 10s. for three days' work, the idea being that on alternate days we would sign on at the labour exchange, thus giving us added income.

The manager, according to the constitution of the factory, was supposed to be elected by a meeting of the workers, and so Tom became manager. A mystery exists here who elected Tom McAlpine? This question is comparable only to that of the Marie Celeste.

A foreman was elected (by Tom) and then part-time labour was introduced in order to begin production. This system of part-time labour worked well for a week, and then, when production had to be stepped up, the manager asked the other boy who was working part-time to come into his office. When he came out I was called in and asked whether I would be willing to work full time for a wage to be decided.

I had not been informed what the other boy had been offered and, as I had no knowledge of engineering, felt £7 would be enough. Later, when I talked to this other boy, I discovered McAlpine had offered him £10, but when McAlpine discovered I would work for far less, he reduced it to £8. This boy told the manager he was quite happy with the present state of affairs and would not work for less than £10 a week, as he was a fifth-year engineering apprentice and entitled to more.

This obviously annoyed McAlpine and at the Council Meeting the following Friday he proposed that the boy should be given a week's notice. As two other young, lads had started work that week, they voted with us and McAlpine's proposal was flung out of the window. He told the meeting he would bring this up the following week and, if it was rejected again, would take it to a higher authority. This higher authority is a Council which has nothing to do with the shop floor, but to make sure we don't make any H bombs, and who also decide the wages of the personnel.

The following week, just as we were going into the meeting. I was told by McAlpine that he was sorry, but he had forgotten to tell me that my friend and I were not allowed to vote. Seemingly it is in the constitution that only those who had worked for three months were allowed to vote. If that were the case no one would be allowed to vote as the factory had only been opened a fortnight previously. This friend of mine resigned after that; can you blame him?

Another boy whose work was exactly the same as mine was being paid a pound more, because he was 21 and I was not. I brought this up at a meeting and McAlpine said he was not willing to raise my wages, but would rather lower the other boy's. A shocked silence followed. A so-called socialist lowering wages already below subsistence level! I pointed out that I did not wish this boy's wages to be lowered, as I had already guessed that this would have been the answer, but the reason why I brought this up was because I wished to show the bourgeois elitist nature of the Factory for Peace.

A young socialist who worshipped McAlpine with naive sincerity had been working in the factory since its opening. This young socialist had no previous experience in sheet metal work, but because he paid homage to the Court of McAlpine he was paid according to needs. While fully-apprenticed tradesmen were getting less than £12, he was paid a salary of £56 per month. This caused quite a stir among the rank and file.

He defended his position by saying he had a family to support—a mother and dog, and his mother had a private income! Only two people were paid according to needs—McAlpine, £19 per week, and this young socialist. Needless to say they were the highest-paid members of the factory.

As I lived more than 14 miles away, almost beside Tom McAlpine, I arrived every morning, at nine o'clock precisely. He kept nagging at me about my late coming and eventually brought it up at a council meeting. When he had finished his diatribe I asked at what time he arrived in the morning. There was a hushed silence when he answered between 10.33 and 11 a.m. I just left it at that.

These points show only too clearly the fallacy in the idea of giving the workers control.

The workers had no impetus, they did not look upon the machines as theirs. One boy took a morning of the first week he was there to go and look for another job, which shows how effective is McAlpine's brand of industrial democracy.

Last of all, McAlpine himself told me that the factory was not under workers' control and never would be, unless the workers took it over themselves and, as far as he was concerned, it was just an industrial experiment.

• 1Tom McAlpine 1929-2006 was active in Scottish CND, the IONA Community and was Labour and Scottish National Party councillor. Obituary - https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/tom-mcalpine-appreciation-2469561
• 2A postive account of the Factory For Peace by McAlpine appeared in Anarchy #26 in 1963 https://libcom.org/library/factory-peace

Content warning - includes brief example of racist language, from an anti-fascist perspective.

The recent electronic and automation exhibition at Olympia is reported to have been a phenomenal success, both from the point of view of attendance and of business deals. A boom in automation isn't news these days, but it is of permanent interest to the potential victim—the industrial worker.

Why this must be so is effectively illustrated by an article in a special supplement issued by the Financial Times to coincide with the Exhibition. The head, “How to automate without being obvious," is itself provocative to make one sit up and take notice, but the contents are equally alarming.
The article is about Elliott-Automation's scheme for gradual conversion of industrial plant to total automation on a step-by-step basis—rather like a kid's brick-building or add-to Meccano set (Elliott, along with English-Electric Leo and ICI-Ferranti, is one of the big names in the British Electronics world.)

The article first of all points out as obstacles to the advance of automation the stupidity and hidebound conservatism which apparently typify our managerial executive class. It earmarks as a strong contributing factor towards this conservatism their fear of workers' reaction against the threat of redundancy. It is quite obvious from this that the Ferrantis and the Elliotts find that their ability to sell their products is strongly limited by the resistance of workers to any automation, which is concerned only with increasing capitalist profits, instead of benefitting all members of society equally.

Being profiteers and not social reformers, their answer to this problem is to a find a way of introducing automation under the unsuspecting worker's nose—and there's no reason why it shouldn't work if we're not very alert to the danger.

One can just see the picture: the Union man comes back from negotiations with good news - 2d. an hour more than we expected and the old crib about canteen facilities is settled . . . and, by the way, they're going to try out a new machine in the packing section, but nobody will lose his job. Joy all round—and the Monster is in. Six months later they "try out" another new machine; again nobody loses his job, but vacancies just aren't filled. A while later the O & M boys and the Operations Researchers are around with charts and statistics, to show the boss the benefits of his little bit of automation and estimates of the profits to be had by going the whole hog.

Dangle those extra profits in front of him long enough and he'll find courage to damn the workers and automate the lot, or he can be more subtle and just keep on adding little bits till everybody's inched out painlessly. As there is little about modern industry to inspire contentment in, or loyalty to a particular concern or firm, the odds are that very few people will have been in the factory long enough to have seen the whole thing happening. There'll just be a few hundred less people employed and nobody knowing why--except the Mosleys and Jordans, who can confidently point out that it is all the fault of the "Niggers and Jews." Obviously the crucial stage in the whole process is at that point when the union man comes to "sell" the deal to the "general body." What is needed is somebody with a nasty suspicious mind who will be prepared to rock the boat by asking awkward cantankerous questions about the "new machine." If he can back this up with a bit of knowledge about the sort of thing that's liable to happen (it doesn't matter how garbled or vague the "info" is) so much the better. This is a case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing—for the other side.

The workers will benefit from automation only if they fight doggedly for their share of its products. In the long run this means achieving a totally new social system. But we must recognise that the society we want is very far from being achieved and the workers' day-to-day struggle must be waged on a bread-and-butter basis.

You can't have Anarchy next Friday, but you can have an extra 10s. in your pay packet; you can't have your fair share of the benefits of automation this year, but you can have a 40-hour week, or avoid redundancy and it's all moving in the right direction if we keep up the pressure long enough.

If you can't get your rights in full, then you've got to settle for whatever you can get, but there's a big difference between workers who have automation slipped in under their noses as part of a "good bargain" which they accept in ignorance --and workers who eventually accept it because they have to, but only after gouging every last concession out of the pockets of the capitalists or State. The moral is that workers must educate themselves to recognise a "pig in a poke," whether it's the boss or the union that tries to sell it to them —and from now on the fattest pigs in the biggest pokes are going to come in the shape of new machines.

One’s first day at work is an important day. In my case it was also a very long day. Hurrying along the damp, dark streets at 5.30 on a winters morning, with a tin tea can and a parcel of bread (there were few canteens at that time), I felt like a workman, though a very small one. The first world war was still raging and my first inside view of the factory was of rows of 60-pounder and 18-pounder field guns, anti-aircraft and mountain guns, tanks and anti-sub artillery, then lines of machines turning gun barrels or milling breech blocks.

It was noisy, bewildering and rather threatening, but youth is buoyant and I soon adapted myself to my new environment. I soon learned that some persons were jolly, some indifferent and some aggressive. Many of the latter wore bowler hats and thick watch chains, one was known as Simon Legree1 . The jolly men taught me that when you are pushed, you push back. I was an apt pupil. I was too small to do any actual heaving, but, like most of the lads, developed a form of public relations which appeared to be based on ju-jitsu.

But it wasn’t always like that. There was one foreman who claimed he remembered the days when his like were allowed to strike apprentices. One day he found six of his boys warming themselves in the smithy. Taking a hazel rod from a pickle tank, the proverbial “rod in pickle”, he crept up behind the boys and lashed out at them. Though taken by surprise, they quickly recovered and four of them held him down while two lashed him with the hazels, to the sound of his yells and the laughter of the smiths.

I soon realised that the new life I had entered was a kind of social war, the scene suitably furnished by the ever-present artillery. On the one side were the overseers, the lowest agents of the invisible but powerful enemy, the informers, the anti-unionists, the few who hankered after being scabs and who whispered, “Don’t trust unions and such like, keep your nose clean and you’ll get on”, and the management. Facing them, bold and contemptuous, were our people. I was learning sociology without books.

I soon went on to learn that there were issues in this conflict that a man or a small group could not win by themselves and men turned to “the Union.” This I thought I understood. I had seen the pictorial banners of Northumberland and Durham miners, the favourite picture showing a boy trying in vain to break a bundle of about a score of sticks and an old man breaking his sticks one at a time. The slogan beneath proclaimed “United we stand, divided we fall”, or “Unity is Strength”.

But while we had one enemy, the employer, backed by “the authorities”, and we were one in circumstance and purpose, “the Union” was really many unions. The craftsmen had their own unions, each craft at least one separate union, the engineers several unions for one craft, and the “semi-skilled” machinists their union. The “unskilled”, after generations of being shut out, were now in several general unions. But women, now nearly 50 per cent of the labour force, were not allowed to join any union and had to form one for themselves. Only some of the draughtsmen were members of a union and the clerks disdained to be organised, accepting a lower wage in return for an intangible “dignity”.

Even worse, the machinery of the trade unions, like the Labour Party, had become part of the war machine, giving away all hard-won rights. My school-bred and newspaper-fed patriotism was cracking at the edges, for the class enemy had not suspended his predation. What had happened to the banner and slogans of unity?

But “Union” was more than officers and organisation, it was an idea. Almost within living memory, men and women had died on the scaffold for that idea and still men knew that Union meant bread, human dignity and the hope of liberty. War or no war, the social struggle went on. I learnt two new terms, Syndicalism and Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. Soon they seemed to mean the same thing, though I was some time in understanding them. The first had a 1789 sound, I thought, like the Committee of Public Safety, but the latter seemed apt to engineering.

Later, when I became involved, I found that the new ideas stemmed from European Syndicalism and the IWW2 , the latter having small groups in Britain and support from Wobbly seamen from the US and Australia. The Socialist Labour Party also advocated industrial Industrial Unionism, having been affiliated to the IWW, which they left after having disagreed with the “without affiliation to a political party” clause. The Syndicalist, like the IWW groups, were small but the influence of all these groupings was enormously greater than their numbers would seem to justify. Little wonder that the Government and the employers imagined a vast and wealthy organisation, plotting against the powers that be. But a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

I recently read in Anarchy the pontifical statement, “it seems to me that Malatesta’s main contentions still hold good that those anarchists who are prepared to act in the industrial sphere should work within the existing unions rather than propagate the idea of a new union movement.” (Anarchy 40, p. 173)3 . Unfortunately, while many of us know of Tom Mann, James Connolly and Larkin, no one knew about Malatesta and his alleged advice. A man without a pope is apt to be a pragmatist, so these grimy workers just did the best they knew – and very effective it was.

Firstly, the trade unions, through their officials, had gone over completely to the side of the State at war, and were as much a part of the war machine as were the Brigade of Guards or the Royal Navy. With a stroke of the pen, all the rights won by a century of hard fighting were signed away. While rents and prices soared, there was to be no wage increase. Safety measures were swept away, a working week of more than 66½ hours was compulsory, industrial conscription was agreed to by the unions, with penal measures against the rebellious or weary. Military conscription reinforced this dictatorship. Even the Webbs had to admit, “the individual workman realised that the penalty for any failure of implicit obedience to the foreman might be instant relegation to the trenches”. (History of Trade Unionism, p. 639).

In return, the employers’ war profits were to be limited (to a certain, highly inflated, standard), but this “Munitions Levy” was never enforced and within a year was formally abolished.

On the Clyde, factory committees of syndicalist and IWW form were created and, because their ideas suited the needs of the hour, spread with rapidity to Tyneside, the Mersey, the Midlands and throughout the land. Life would not wait until the paralytic unions resumed business, “after the war”.

The “new union movement” overcame at one bound the hundredfold divisions of the workers. All crafts, the semi-skilled and unskilled, the boys and the women, were drawn together in frequent mass meetings. They elected and withdrew their delegates, now known as shop stewards, whenever necessary. They acted as one force. In the factory in which I worked were number of Belgian workers; they, too, joined in, as did a body of soldiers who, because of their skill, had been drafted to the works.

We were now powerful. We struck work, we demonstrated, we hoisted our wages and curbed the overseers. State and employers consulted our delegates, after threats of prison had failed. The impetus of this movement has lasted until this day. Now every worker knows the value of a workshop organisation to his daily bread. It remains for us to broaden the ideas of this valuable experience. Our factory movement may not have been pure enough for coffee-bar revolutionaries, but we answered the plain man’s question: “Does it work?”

Tom Brown

Thanks to The Tyneside Anarchist Archive for putting up the copy of Direct Action containing this article https://tynesideanarchistarchive.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/tom-brown/ (and to the person who typed it out).

From: Direct Action : monthly newspaper of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (IWMA), August 1964 (vol.5, no. 8 (38)) p5-6.

Taken from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/612kss - footnotes below by Kate Sharpley Library.

• 1The name of a cruel slave driver in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
• 2Industrial Workers of the World: members are known as ‘Wobblies’
• 3‘Anarchism and Trade Unionism’ by Gaston Gerard. See: http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-trade-unionism and https://files.libcom.org/files/anarchy-40.pdf

Peter Turner writes…

Tom Brown, in his article “School for Syndicalism” (D.A., September) [Actually August - Libcom] claims the best of both worlds. The organisation he describes, which “overcame at one bound the hundredfold divisions of the workers. All crafts, semi-skilled, the boys and the women, were drawn together in frequent mass meetings. They elected and withdrew delegates, now know as shop stewards, whenever necessary.” This type of thing still goes on today and is part of the unofficial rank and file movement in industry which exists within the framework of the official trade unions.

They may be based on Syndicalist and IWW ideas, but I am sure only a very few workers involved in these movements realise this. These unofficial movements should be encouraged and anarchists in industry should play an active role. But these are not the “new union movement” as Tom Brown describes them. What Malatesta means by this is a movement based solely on syndicalist lines with the abolition of capitalism as its aim.

There seems to me to be nothing “pontifical” in the statement that

“Malatesta’s main contentions still hold, that those anarchists who are prepared to act in the industrial sphere should work within the existing unions rather than propagate the idea of a new union movement.”

These were Malatesta’s views and it is exactly what workers were doing during World War I.

Where are the syndicalist industrial unions? We just haven’t got them in this country and even where they have existed, there were often strong reformist tendencies. I think that, in this country, it is better to work within the existing trade unions, propagating not only syndicalist and IWW ideas, but anarchist ones as well.

The syndicalist method of organisation can and is used in industry today, but needs extending. To knock the ideas of a particular anarchist, when they are applicable today, is rather shortsighted and dogmatic and to describe him as a “coffee-bar revolutionary” is stupid. As Tom Brown writes, “It remains for us to broaden the ideas of the valuable experience!” Surely the experience and ideas of Malatesta, Mann, James Connolly and Larkin can help us with this and the lessons learned from the present day mixed-economy capitalism can help us spread our ideas amongst the industrial workers.

Tom Brown replies…

Twenty-five years ago I was asked, by my fellow editors of the Anarchist War Commentary, to write three articles on Syndicalism. When the articles were published, Ethel Mannin urged us to reprint them as a pamphlet. We did so and the pamphlet was at once a success, having to be re-set and reprinted three times.1 . It was reprinted, too, in the USA and translated and printed in Spanish by the exiled CNT in France, into Japanese by the Japanese Anarchist Federation and into Norwegian.

During that time I heard of no-one in the Anarchist movement in Britain who objected to the principles and practices outlined in the pamphlet; on the contrary, it was accepted as an outline of our principles.

I have never departed from those principles, for I have not found anything wrong in them and events have proved their efficacy.

Since the war, however, some have thought it necessary to attack Syndicalism, while retaining the name of Anarchism, and for many years have sought an alternative to fill the vacuum. Unable to think of anything better, they have fallen back on reactionary trade unionism. Where lies this degeneration to reformism?

Peter Turner says of the workers’ committees: “This type of thing still goes on today.” Of course it does. Nevertheless, it did start as the result of Syndicalist and IWW word and deed, as the historians of industrial history, friendly, inimical or neutral, testify. The committees exist and grow because workers need an alternative to the effete unions – and whence can it come but from Syndicalist thought and precept?

Yes, few workers realise the origin of the factory committee movement, but that does not destroy its efficacy. Tonight, millions of people in Britain will switch on their electric lights, few will give a thought to Joseph Swan, the inventor, but they will not, because of that, go back to tallow candles. Countless millions now alive and well would have perished long ago, but for the work of Dr. Jenner and the country folk who guided him. Except for monuments to the father of vaccine, mostly in Latin America, his work is unsung, but nobody wishes to go back to smallpox.

Of “this type of thing” Peter Turner says it “is part of the unofficial rank and file movement in industry which exists within the framework of the official trade unions.” Here we have two opposites existing in one body. This movement is “unofficial,” it also “exists within the framework of the official trade unions.” If that’s not making the best of both worlds, then pigs do fly. I would like to ask every anti-Syndicalist Anarchist, “Do you ever listen to yourself contradicting yourself?”

The movement away from reactionary unionism was the work of what has been called “New Unionism.” In shape and meaning, this is exactly what it was. Here is the heart of the matter – and its understanding will justify this controversy. It was not Trade Unionism. True, it was only one stage of the development of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism and there are other stages yet, but this one is now accepted by most workers who are interested in their own problems. But the factory committees have never been accepted by the unions, except by force majeure, and these unions have fought a constant, though losing battle to control, tame, and even brainwash the shop stewards.

Any steward who does his plain duty finds himself torn between his stewardship and the attempted domination of the union bureaucracy. Unless he understands the inherent irreconcilability of the two opposing principles, he becomes as a table-tennis ball between two bats. The workers, to accomplish even their own defence, must break the chains with which the trade unions seek to bind them and continue to develop their organisation, self-controlled, at their place of work.

What is the term most used in public discussion of workers’ committees and strike action? Unofficial! Pick up any newspaper any day. In one week in London, a one-day strike of dockers and the promise of more to come, three-day strike of a considerable section of the tube railmen, successful action by the workers of the big United Dairies and several other actions in factories, all unofficial, all from below. Wilson, on the eve of the Election, threatened “unofficial strikers”; his Minister of Labour, Ray Gunter, a trade union official, started his first day of office with a strong threat against a proposed unofficial strike of London dockers, who at once rounded on their own officials, “Whose side is he on?”

Even before the 1914-18 war, Syndicalists warned the workers that the trade unions would become increasingly part of the State machine (it was a Liberal government then). This has been proved true under Labour and Tory governments. Churchill described the trade unions as the “Fourth Estate” – the other three are the Commons, the Lords Temporal and the Lords Spiritual.

Perhaps the best recent example of the marriage of unions and State is in the autobiography of the Trades Union Congress’s most famous secretary, Lord Citrine (Men and Work, Hutchinson, 40s.). Reviewing it, H.D. Ziman writes:

“By the end of the book, it goes only to the outbreak of war in 1939, the reader realises that the close relations that exist between the TUC and the Cabinet (whatever the latter’s politics) were created early in Lord Citrine’s 20 years’ General Secretaryship, not in or after the Second World War. The frequent visits he paid to 10 Downing Street did not leak out, since he slipped along the corridor which led from the Treasury building. He seems to have enjoyed being behind the scenes.” Daily Telegraph, 3.9.64

Work in the unions – but don’t forget those secret passages!

• 1Trade unionism or syndicalism? Published by Freedom Press, PDF at https://libcom.org/files/Trade%20unionism%20or%20syndicalism_0.pdf, reprinted in Tom Brown’s syndicalism

The Hidden Hand of Cousins1

Remember the election posters of two months ago, with the slogan "Let's Go With Labour"? When one says “Let's go", an object usually follows— "Let's go and see Chelsea"—but here was a journey without destination, just "Let's go ".

From the speeches and press statements of Labour Party spokesmen, we find Wilson is to lead us into a brave new world of mechanical men, with much vague talk of "the space age", "jet age", and "age of automation" and some cloudy references to science. None of it such good reading as Jules Verne and not nearly so precise.

Automagic

We are to expect wonders from the Merlins of automation, a word made so popular by repetition that it is fast losing any meaning. Every machine, even laborious hand work, is now being called automation, just as every self-service grocery shop, however small, has become a "supermarket". What is automation? After the war a new industrial method developed in the American automobile industry, sufficiently distinct to need a new name, so in Detroit someone dubbed it automation. Some, including Sir Leon Bagrit, head of Elliott Automation, prefer the formidable term Cybernetics, the study of communication and control, animal or mechanical. It is not just mechanisation. Machines first took over functions of human beings, acting as third hands or extensions of the fingers, but they were hand or foot driven, like the spinning wheel. Next came power, such as the steam engine, making an industrial revolution. The combination of machine and power gave us mechanisation.

Automation is distinct. Ordinary machines, including automatics, will, so long as power and material are fed to them, go on working; but if the wrong material is fed, or the tool is displaced, they will continue, mistakes and all, or smash themselves.

The Robots

The cybernetic machine, however, will slow itself down when material is delayed, correct itself if it begins to cut too much or too little from the material and, once it is fed with its instruction punch-card, will "think for itself". But there is little automation in Britain, or in Europe, and its future development, outside the USA, is likely to be slow, though it will still serve the writers of politicians’ speeches and authors of science fiction—perhaps the same persons. What we ought to be more concerned with is a much older industrial development, mechanisation and "time and motion work study.

An offensive against wages by the wage-cut wars of 1921-23, 1925-26 and the early 1930's, is, at the moment, impossible. Instead, Britain's employing class seek to reduce their labour force by faster, more complicated machines and: by pernicious "work study”

Gum Shoes and Stopwatches

Work study, in contrast with automation which seeks to give the machine certain attributes of humans—aims at the mechanisation of men. The soft shoe gang creep about the factory, timing men with a stopwatch, noting all their movements and adding and subtracting them until the sum is the greatest amount of productivity of which a man is capable, if he is treated not as a temperamental human being, but a machine.

This is the offensive of the employers against the wage workers, which so far has had very limited success. It seeks to get more work, without a corresponding increase in its wage bill; to get the same or greater production- from fewer workers. As a by-product, it will ultimately increase the wage-competing ranks of the unemployed.

Let Them Eat Bigger Cakes

While sections of the employing class, such as professional politicians, may dislike some of the Labour Party’s regime, it has much to offer them. During the election campaign no fear of the “October Revolution" was shown in the capitalist press, which at times has a distinctly favourable leaning towards that party, quite apart from the "Labour papers" owned by millionaires.

In addition, the Economist advised its capitalist readers to "Vote Labour". The Trotskyist Newsletter front-paged an appeal by super-grocer Lord Sainsbury to “Vote Labour” and alongside it printed the Trotskyist appeal to “Vote Labour"

Capitalism's best chance of inflicting its more-work-for-less-money campaign on the workers is the Labour government, though they may have to suffer a little from its bureaucratic nonsense.

Already the Wilson Cabinet are on the job with their hangman's propaganda; "just try this on for size”. With a touch of Marie Antoinette, Gunter2
says “I want to make the cake bigger". We have known times when we got a smaller slice from a bigger cake.

The “Labour" Daily Mirror tells readers stop-watching, is good for them, while Gunter threatens workers with an attack on "restrictive practices". Harold Wilson, TV broadcast of October 27, spoke of talks with union leaders and employers, adding, with regard to higher incomes, "When I say incomes, I mean not only wages but PROFITS. DIVIDENDS AND RENTS”.

He also promised a war against "overmanning of jobs", “demarcation" and “wild-cat strikes”.

This is the meaning of Cousins’ appointment to the Wilson-created Ministry of Technology... not to lead us to a brave new scientific world, but to lead the attack on industrial workers — and office workers, too – for will they not accept from a trade-union leader what they reject from a Dr Beeching3 ? Surely workers will submit to Labour measures, which if imposed by Tories, would cause a revolt?

So runs their reasoning. Fortunately, they reckon without the bete noire of their nightmares – the unofficial strike.

• 1This was originally the title of this article. Frank Cousins (1904-1986) was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. Cousins played a significant role in helping Harold Wilson become leader of the Labour Party and served in Wilson's cabinet as Minister of Technology from October 1964 until his resignation on 11 June 1966 to protest against a Government-backed law freezing incomes and prices.
• 2Raymond Gunter (1909–1977) was a British Labour Party politician and trade unionist. He was appointed Minister of Labour by Harold Wilson in 1964.
• 3Richard Beeching (1913–1985), was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the early 1960s for his report The Reshaping of British Railways, which led to over 4,000 route miles (6,400 kilometres) being removed from the system on cost and efficiency grounds. A further 2,000 miles (3,200 km) were lost by the end of the 1960s, while other lines were reduced to freight use only

"You were saying, sir", returned the Secretary, "that you considered the time had come for fixing my salary."
"Don't be above calling it wages, man", said Mr. Boffin testily, "What the deuce! I never talked of my salary when I was in service".
"My wages", said the Secretary.
- Our Mutual Friend, Dickens.

What, more than all else, distinguishes capitalism from previous social systems? Not just exploitation of labour or class society; feudalism and slave society had such characteristics. Production for sale, instead of production for use, as the primary intent applied to all goods and ser-vices, is the special trait of capitalism. Primitive society was entirely for direct use; in slave and feudal society most goods were produced for use, only the surplus being exchanged. In capitalist society all goods (with the exception of a few vegetables grown in back gardens, or model ships in bottles made in back kitchens) are made to sell.

I recall a boyhood experience. I was sitting in a work-men's cafe, when a man near me ordered a pot of tea and a meat pie. He accepted the tea, but looked doubtfully at the pie. "Do you make these pies to eat?" he asked the man behind the bar. "No", came the prompt reply. "We make them to sell. We don't care what you do with. it. You've paid".

This incident first set me thinking about the nature of the market society. Everyone is trying to sell something, selling to live. But while some have land, oil, shares or machines to sell in shopping streets or stock markets, millions, the great majority, are launched into life without patrimony. Without gold or land, what do they sell? They can sell only their power to labour, they can but look for a buyer of labour power and to him offer their commodity for sale at so much a piece or, more often, by the hour, day or week.

That time which they have sold belongs to another, part of their life has been exchanged for the means to live. The day's work done, life begins again. At the dinner table, in the pub, before the telly, in bed, the wage worker lives for a while his own life.

Of course, having sold his time along with his labour power, the worker will try by craftiness to pinch back a little of what he was forced to sell. So, any factory or office may shelter secret eaters, underground gamblers and disguised readers. What appears to be a hive of industry may be in a condition of being gnawed from within, as a log cabin is gnawed by termites. All sorts of pleasures, from crosswords to making love, are attempted.

In case anyone may think this sounds like the exploitation of capital by labour, I most quickly add that the underground have a very limited success, in some cases none at all. But when all else fails, men's thoughts tend to wander from their tasks to more personal interests. Some will think of holidays, some, like the exile, forever think of home, but one cannot tell what thoughts, sacred or profane, are passing behind the mask. I asked a Communist docker I worked beside what he thought of. “Leninism", he answered. That was all. A machinist said, "Women". "You always say that", remarked his mate, "Don't you think of anything else?" "Is there something else to think about?" replied the first man, relapsing into thought.

The social situation in which the worker sells his labour power has been named the Labour Market, I can recall even when the cobbled yards at shipyard and dock were called "The Market". In a market, what is the final deciding factor in determining the price of a commodity? Supply and de-mand, of course. Few goods, many buyers, up go prices. This social arrangement makes man kin, not to the angels, but to beer and books, caps and carrots, pots and pullovers.

Often sections of workers try to restrict new entries to their work, so that wages may be kept up. Artisans limit apprentices, dockers and market porters control new entries, journalists, doctors and lawyers do the same. Manufacturers practise "price maintenance". Whoever seeks to abolish "restrictive practices" under capitalism is going to be very busy.

From all this it follows that any social system which is not capitalist cannot have production for sale and a wages sys-tern as its major principles. What of Communism, what of Socialism? It is true that Russian economy is based on these same principles. Because of this and other capitalist attributes, we speak of the Bolshevik economy as being neither Communism nor Socialism. but State Capitalism. - As to the Labour Party and the varieties of Socialists and Communists who support it, far from abolishing capitalism and the wages system, they are pledged to support them, doing so with vague election promises of higher wages. Yet once what was called the "Movement", Socialist to Syndicalist, was against these things. Marx in his pamphlet Value, Price and Profit, said:

"Instead of the Conservative motto 'A fair day's pay for a fair day's work', the unions ought to inscribe upon their banners the revolutionary watch-word, 'Abolition of the Wages System'”

Now it seems the Syndicalists are alone and what the Marxists want is Marxism without Karl.