1970 was a typical year for the Honours List: liberal handouts to capitalist exploiters and drooling lackeys-and all endorsed by your very own "socialist" Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.
There were the obvious reactionary idiocies, a knighthood for Walter Adams, LSE directorwell, perhaps he does deserve one. After all, it was because of an LSE Socialist Society pamphlet exposing him back in 1965 that the student movement really got under way in England. Just to underline ruling class solidarity with the LSE authorities, Frederick Seebohm of the Standing Committee of Governors also gets a knighthood-he is also the chief executive of Barclays Bank DCO, which draws most of its profits from South Africa. There was even an MBE for H.W.S. Clark of the Ulster Special Constabulary and a bigger pat on the back-an OBE to be exact-for the Kensington and Chelland is done within the confines of the law. He is, in fact, the epitome of the capitalist lackey, steering the City's mighty potentates through the jungle of legal intricacies. His contribution to the national good includes such momentous achievements as writing a pantomime mocking the Land Commission, one of the Labour Government's few attempts to curb the excess profits on land development. More seriously, he harassed that Commission's genuine socialistic aims by discovering a way for large-scale evasion of its proposals.
Just after the Land Commission was instituted to collect a levy on the wealth created when a piece of land is developed, a special concession was made. Land on which work had already begun was exempt from levy. Heap discovered that if one owned land, then one should immediately dig a hole in it, and send a photo of the hole, with workmen standing round it, to the Board of Trade. Then one could say work had begun, and escape levy. Naturally, he told all his fat, rich land-owning masters, who immediately implemented his discoveries, thwarted the government of many millions of pounds which would otherwise have moved from private to public hands, and wen on to win a knighthood. Great stuff, just th kind of thing the City wants to honour.
Mr. Murphy, the City's ex-Deputy Town Clerk, who grovelled insignificantly around the distance between these workers and the civil vices to self are virtually synonymous. A man is being honoured because he had made himself a heap of money, from the top of which he can well afford to wave the flag of patriotism: that's capitalism.
THE TIMES One particularly stupid feature this year was yet another award for Press Baron Thomsonhe gets a GBE. Thomson's singular contributions to that hideous institution, the British Press, include viciously undermining the Guardian, which, since its death is only a matter of time, is perhaps a public service. Also he has allowed the Times to slip into the decadent pro-Establishment diatribing of its competitors.
It is widely rumoured that Lord Thomson keeps the Times going as a act of expansive charity, for social and humanitarian reasons rather than for business purposes.
It is often pointed out that, on paper, it costs him well over fl million a year.
Anyone who wonders whether this really can can be in keeping with the real character of this notoriously money-minded individual, who began life as a radio salesman and entrepreneur engaged in activities whose sole value was mercenary, is asking the right question.
In fact, Lord Thomson bought the Times for less than the value of the land and property on which it stands. By buying the paper, he got the shortage is not the Catholics, but the econalmost anything in the City, if you make enough money out of it. Take J. Wellings, for example, Chairman of Cohen's 600 Group, perhaps most notable for the number of cars they crack up each year in their destruction yards (services to export, of course).
And if you are anywhere near the centre of the capitalist machine, like Frank Kearton, Chairman of Courtaulds, the giant textile concern, who is bumped up to Baron status, or Leslie O'Brien, Governor of the Bank of England, who becomes a Privy Counsellor, your Machia vellian manipulation will be rewarded.
However, even the Honours List seems to have a certain morality about it. You will very rarely find a property boy getting any kind of award at all: bankers, industrialists, all manner of entrepreneurs, yes, but straight property wheelers and dealers-no. The only land hustler ever to be honoured with a knighthood was Sir Harold Samuels, who pushed up his company's assets from £19,000 to £330,000,000 in under 25 years-and even a socialist must admit, that looks like doing it the hard way!
This is the level of hypocrisy which one faces in the City: the hypocrisy of men who have become rich through exploitation, and who dread above all things progressive or socialist thinking, which they feel will wrest their wealth from them. Their fears are well-founded Percy Ingrams