(Militant No. 286, 9 January 1976, p. 5)
What the ruling-class really think
When Cecil King published his diaries in 1972 – covering the period of 1965 to 1970 – it caused uproar [see Militant nos. 132 and 141]. The capitalists were outraged that their innermost thoughts, their fears and hatred of the Labour Movement as related to King, usually over expensive lunch, had been revealed for all to see. No less incensed were the Right Wing leadership of the Labour Movement whose contempt for the rank and file of the Labour Party was seen to be matched only by their fawning over King and his like.
Cecil King has now published another “gripping” instalment which covers the period between 1970-74. In contrast to the first books this volume has attracted little attention in the press and the TV. But it is no less valuable for active workers in the Labour Movement. It lays bare the mechanics of capitalist “democracy”, the plotting and intriguing of the ruling class. This is despite the fact that the second half of the book was written after the publication of the earlier Diaries and therefore, as King remarks, those who spoke to him in the latter period were not as communicative as they might have been!
King gives a vivid account of the complete demoralisation of the British ruling class and if anything an intensified hatred of the working classes – who they blame for their decline. This is shown in the comments about the Heath Government. Thus King says of Barber, then Tory Chancellor, “If you were told there was a bright young man behind the counter of local Boots, who might made the grade as a manager one day, you would feel Barber about fitted the Bill”. Heath of course comes in for ritual abuse and the boss of GEC, Arnold Weinstock says of Tory Attorney General Peter Rawlinson, “…he is so stupid it is hard to see how he passed his bar final.”
Collision
This worthy also fulminates against the “excessive” claims of his own workers… “Weinstock also said that equal pay for women, to which this Government and the last were pledged would cost his company £25 million… He thought the logical argument unanswerable, but the only practical solution was to pay the men the same as the women!”
But the book mainly records the discussions between King, the Tory leaders, and an assortment of businessmen on how to break the power of the Labour Movement. When the Tories came to power in 1970 Militant predicted that the Tory Government was set on a collision course with the Trade Unions which could have resulted in a General Strike. This was dismissed as fanciful not only by Right Wing Labour leaders but also by sincere Lefts within the Movement. The Diaries confirm the analysis we made.
Thus within a month of the 1970 General Election King was discussing with the “liberal” Whitelaw the possibility of a general strike. A month later he is discussing with Defence Minister Carrington the same issue… “He has certainly thought of a confrontation ending in a general strike”.
Shortly after this Heath realises that a major strike in the public sector will have to be fought. It might end in a general strike or its equivalent.” The intention of the Tory Government to bring the Trades Unions to heel was no perversity of Heath but reflected the desperation of British capitalism which has now become even worse.
They looked to the Heath Government to arrest the remorseless decline of British capitalism at the expense of the working class. Campbell Adamson, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, spokesman for the employers, agrees with King’s prediction of a General Strike and the ruthless measures to ensure victory for the capitalists. “I said I thought a clash with the trades union movement would build up into something like a mild civil war and would have to be fought with the Government’s gloves off – no unemployment pay, no out-relief for families, freezing of union funds etc., etc., including censorship. Adamson went along with the rest but not with censorship!”
Adamson, who still leads the CBI, is the employers’ representative in which the Labour Government places so much trust and faith following the recent Chequers accord between the “Government, the employers and unions!”
King shows the capitalists and their representatives as they really are: gangsters who are prepared to starve the families of strikers, drive down living standards and if necessary use force in an attempt to crush the Labour Movement. Subsequent events, particularly the 1972 miners strike, forced them to re-assess their tactics. It is interesting to note in this respect the grudging compliments which Harold Macmillan, a shrewd representative of capitalism, paid to the miners. “Macmillan came in expressing surprise over the bungling of the miners strike. Mac said he had fought with the miners in the trenches – and they never gave in.” In the battles that loom the capitalists will discover that the British working class as a whole and not just the miners possess these same qualities!
At the moment the ruling class are looking towards a Labour Government to carry out their demands for ruthless cuts in living standards. The threats of “Colonels coups” and Army intervention has receded into the background. But when it is seen that the Labour leaders will be unable to deliver the goods, due to the inevitable resistance of the working class, the capitalists will re-activate their earlier plans. In the first place they will look towards a National Government to check the Labour Movement but also envisage that if this fails at a later stage dictatorial methods will have to be employed against the working class. In unvarnished language King’s big business friends spell this out.
Thus the former industrial correspondent of the “Labour” paper the Daily Mirror said to King in September 1970… ‘So your revolution is coming nearer!’… I asked him what he meant and he said he thought the Conservatives would run away from a real clash with the unions and he foresaw the eventual outcome as a dictatorship of the Right. This feeling is evidently gaining ground in all sorts of unexpected quarters.” Weinstock also confesses to King… “He thinks all the talk of a free society is now obsolete. Circumstances are compelling us to have an authoritarian state, though there is as yet no indication how we get there… Weinstock held forth on the failure of our present Parliamentary democracy and the need to replace it with something else.”
Nor were the British ruling class alone at this time in feeling that a bloody settling of accounts with the working class will eventually be necessary. One of King’s banker friends… “prophesised civil war in Italy” and “His man in Paris sees Couve De Murville (leading Gaullist) every week and Couve tells him that the future of France will be settled on the streets”. In passing, in reference to last year’s coup in Cyprus, he show’s just how hypocritical are all the denunciations of “terrorism” by the capitalists… “The coup in Cyprus seems to have been a complete success – the island is quiet and Makarios is on his way to New York. It is a pity he was no killed”.
Labour Leaders
But this longing for “strong measures” according to King also communicated itself to the right wing Labour leaders like Ray Gunter, “he volunteered the fact that ‘in his darker moments’ he did not see how a dictatorship could be avoided”! Thus this “terribly nice man” – as King describes him – was prepared to countenance the coming to power of a dictatorship and the crushing of the Labour Movement. Let it be remembered that Gunter was no unimportant functionary but Chairman of the Labour Party in 1965 and Minister of Labour in the Labour Government of 1964-70! And he used his powerful position within the Labour Movement to hound the Left within the Party. Some of those who are now eager to begin a witch-hunt against the Left within the Labour Party now, sat on the same committees and collaborated with Gunter in his Parliamentary war on the Left. And how many Gunters still exist within the Labour Party?
The discussions with King by leading Labour Parliamentarians shows how far removed in outlook and life-style from the rank and file of the movement they are. Thus shortly after the victory of the Tories in 1970 he reveals that Douglas Houghton, then Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said to him: “that Labour’s defeat did no harm unless Heath is a failure”! (our emphasis). The victory of Tory reaction, which was viewed as a catastrophe by the working class, was considered to be harmless enough by this luminary. After all a Tory Government would not interfere with his wining and dining with King and his ilk.
King also recalls a conversation with Callaghan at a “Charitable Corporation dinner.” He remarks that Callaghan “gave a solemn warning of the effects of inflation unless speedily curbed… I spoke to Callaghan and said his Party’s policy was surely for further massive inflation. He said he was not dealing at that moment with the Party Conference.” In other words speak with one voice to the capitalists and with another to the Party Conference! In reference to the practice of paying Labour MPs for writing articles for the capitalist press King remarks: “Hugh Cudlip [then boss of the ‘Mirror’ group] told me that when Denis Healey signed the letter in the Guardian with 100 Labour MPs advocating joining the Market, he asked Denis to write a piece for the ‘Mirror’ on why he had changed his mind. Previously he had been mildly anti-Common Market. Denis duly wrote the article and received £250. Three weeks later he changed his mind back again.”
It is impossible for the leaders of the Labour Movement to reflect the socialist aspirations of the ranks of the movement while they hob-nob with the rich and accept subsidies and expensive meals from them. The revelations of King add enormous weight to the demand of Militant for the Labour MPs to receive no more than the average wage of a skilled worker – exclusive of expenses which should be audited by the ranks of the movement.
Equally that part of the book which details the behind-the-scenes discussions on the possibility of a national government are a terrible warning to the Labour Movement. King clearly shows that the capitalists feel that they have it in their power to determine which Government can be brought to power and what the policy of that Government should be. He writes for instance: “Jules Thorn (Chairman of Thorn Electrical Industries)… asked for an interview with Barber for himself, Bernstein, Thorneycroft and Spencer Wills, but they are being fobbed off with the Financial Secretary… The idea of Barber being too busy to see four men, all more important than him, is quite silly”!
Even the most powerful Ministers are looked on as mere company clerks who must do their bidding. And if Governments hesitate to carry out their orders then they will use their economic and their political power to bring the Government into line. This is underlined by a discussion with Murdoch, owner of the ‘Sun’ in 1972, “He think Ted might win an election, as neither Rupert nor the ‘Mirror’ could support Wilson, Benn and the Labour Party in an election.” In other words what’s good for the press barons is good for Britain! When they decide that the time is ripe they will not hesitate to use the enormous power of the media to whip up support amongst the middle class and the politically uneducated workers for a coalition. The present retreat of the Labour Government is ploughing up the ground on which such a government could grow. In the four year period covered by this book the possibility, the inevitability, of a national government at a certain stage is accepted by the rich and powerful who come to King’s dinner table.
He writes that “Arnold Weinstock… met Harold Macmillan and said there were three alternatives before the country: (1) an extreme left wing government; (2) an extreme right wing one (3) a national government. Macmillan thought the last much the most likely. I said that I thought a national government inevitable, and had thought so for a long time. I assume it will be a failure and will be replaced by some autocratic regime of the Right or Left.” It is only the leader of such a government which is a subject for debate. Thus “Weinstock considers that the Labour Government will not be able to pay its way by printing money for more than a few months, and a national government under Callaghan would ensue. He did not think Wilson all that keen to stay on as PM.” The capitalists can confidentially consider a coalition as one of their weapons to use against the Labour Movement only because they know they can rely on the right wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party to support them.
In their ideas and sometimes even their standard of living some of these MPs share the standpoint of the capitalists. Thus King writes: “Lunch yesterday for Brian Walden. He told me he is making between £25,000 and £30,000 a year.” No wonder Walden views the elimination of the “mixed economy” with such horror!
Cecil King’s book was not written for workers. Yet it is the active workers in the Labour Parties, the Young Socialist branches and unions who would derive the greatest benefit from reading it. It would open the eyes of workers. They would see the plots and conspiracies of the ruling class against their rights and conditions is not an invention of Marxism – as it is sometimes portrayed by the Labour leadership. At the same time on every page almost, are shown the divisions, the fears the lack of confidence of the ruling class. They recognise the colossal potential power of the working class in modern society and are not at all confident that they would be victorious in a trial of strength with the Labour Movement: “I said we were heading for a dictatorship… and much would turn on the attitude of the Army, (Lord) Gledhill said the Army could play no part – look at their impotence over the strike in Northern Ireland (the Ulster Workers strike). I said a sufficiently ruthless man with all the machine-guns and the power of the Government behind him, could surely be decisive. Greenhill would not agree, but when I said, ‘Do you think a Communist takeover inevitable?’ he wouldn’t answer.”
This impotence of the noble Lord reflects the weakness and senility of the British ruling class. They understand more about the real relationship of forces in society than do the present leadership of the Labour Movement. But they can only be made to vacate the scene of history if the mighty British Labour Movement is re-armed with a real socialist, i.e. a Marxist programme. This is the message of Cecil King’s Diaries.
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