Labour’s Policy¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal delivers a trenchant Marxist critique of the newly elected Labour government, arguing that its policy represents no break from the Tories but rather a continuation of Churchill’s wartime programme under a different banner. The core contention is that Attlee, Cripps and Morrison are administering capitalism, not building socialism, and that their appeals for sacrifice and productivity serve the interests of British imperialism, not the working class.
The chapter draws on three recent ministerial speeches to substantiate its case. Cripps is quoted explaining that civilian consumption in 1944 was already 15–20 per cent below 1939 levels, and then implying that these depressed standards must be maintained to boost exports. The Daily Herald’s approving report of Cripps’ plans for the cotton industry is held up as particularly revealing: the government will “emphasise national as distinct from sectional interest” and “represent the consumer rather than the producer”—a formulation the chapter dismisses as absurd, since workers and their families are both consumers and producers simultaneously. The 10 per cent wage increase for cotton workers is characterised as “niggardly” and granted only because mills could not otherwise attract labour.
Morrison’s speech to the National Conference of Labour Women in Leeds comes under even sharper attack. His call for 15 per cent increased productivity over five years, yielding an additional £1,000 million, is met with a devastating rejoinder: any raw socialist worker would explain that under capitalism, harder work simply means working sections of the working class out of employment. Morrison’s promise of higher living standards “by the end of the five years” is dismissed as the usual carrot dangled before the donkey to make him pull harder; the immediate reality, the chapter insists, will be worse conditions.
The chapter situates these policies within the historical context of 1930s “rationalisation,” which workers experienced as speed-up, greater exploitation and unemployment. Nationalisation is not opposed in principle, but the chapter notes that The Times—the organ of big business—has not strongly objected to nationalising the pits, precisely because it is a matter of nationalising “losses” and decaying industries for the benefit of capital as a whole, with compensation for the coal-owners thrown in. The polemical target is therefore not merely the Tories but the Labour leadership itself, which is accused of deceiving the masses who made wartime sacrifices for promises of “a better world in the peace” only to be told now that further sacrifices are required. The chapter’s closing line—“jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but not jam today”—captures its verdict on Labour’s policy as a betrayal dressed in progressive language.