Cwu au cayenneneso cmole o ue means of production that money has emerged S UC BOS TECU0nus Seen as the sole purpose of human life, and capitalism, the means of acquiring it, is accorded the status of a "holy" law which is practised and venerated without question.
Overloaded with anachronistic privileges, choked by the weight of its own superfluous weailh. the City staggers beneath a proliferation of traditions and rituals whose sole purpose is to affirm and re-affirm the god-like status of money.
Tris not surpnsing tnat tne ponacal affiliations of the City should crystallise within this mercantile feudalism into a naive and shallow form of extreme right-wing Conservatism. If you attend Common Council, the meetings of the local government body for the city, open to the public, and held on alternate Thursdays at 1 p.m. at Guildhall, you will hear expressed the kind of facile cliches of reaction, the brand of unconditional veneration of the status quo, and opposition to every sugestion of change which one thought was only voiced by cartoon tycoons in the revolutionary press.
The City's attitude is utterly predictable; it pressos as lar to tae gat as tu can wilnou! ecoming labelled as Fascist by the Bourgeois which it epitomises.
The real power within it is concentrated in the hands ot men who have personaliv benefited inordinately from the exploitation of the capitalist system; they are simply not interested fortunes and the spread of wealth -as distinct in political theories as the actual rewards of capitalism are proved for them in the wealth and slowly, but there is no doubt that the standards power which they have amassed. Their attitude provides one of the most shining examples of vested interest imaginable.
City Politics & Southern Africa Last month, when the floor of the Stock Exchange erupted in a spontaneous demonstration of support for Rhodesia, initiated by mining jobbers, one saw again the fact that in the City's eyes, the artificial creation of wealth was a virtue so absolute that The Red Mole 14th Mav 1970 Page 4 Predictably, the City remains one of the most vociferous supporters of the South African regime. An article which appeared in The City Press on April 9th summed up a prevalent attitude-having extolled the virtues of South Africa's agricultural and mineral wealth, and the fact that there is over £1,000 million of British money invested there, it continues:
"There is a wealth of enterprising businessmen. The Dutch and Jewish element have long been strong there and when you combine that with the English and the American element, you can imagine how fierce the competition can be.
"Add the fact that there is little to do except enjoy the good life surrounded by sun and servants (politics, because of the attitude of the outside world has been crystallised into a proor anti-apartheid approach) and it is easy to understand why active and alert minds find an outlet in money-making with 170 new millionaires arrived on the scene in the 1967-9 period alone.
"Mr. Harry Oppenheimer heads Anglo-American and is recognised as the leading mining figure in the world. He stays clear of politics but conditions of employment in his EnC dic CAtei!
"Next come the Schlesingers who are in mutancc ana, uke me wopenneimers, nave wealth in the region of E350 million which puts them in the league of being among the richest men in the world.
It is no good saying their wealth could be distributed. They work hard at managing their from its dissipation -can only be achieved of the native population are being raised fast.
'The newer millionaires are a colourful lot. There is even a Dr. Mickey Finn-he dug swimming pools with a shovel during the day. studied by night to become a doctor and was recently featured on BBC2 television.
"Millionaires may not always be likeable but they have one endearing quality about themthey usually create much more wealth than they consume which is not the position with students." political naivety, and stupid, rampant neofascism cannot be dismissed as the absurd and eccentric belief of the financial editor of The City Press, John Heffernan. It is a genuine and accurate summary of beliefs which are held and praised within the City, to the exclusion of all others.
It is against such attitudes that Warwick University is struggling in its attempt to free itself from Corporation control- because these are the attitudes of the big Corporations, and of Graduated Fascism the men in the Citv who formulate them. based A final quote sums up the City's political on the single, unalterable assumption that a man the-road Tory MP wrote an article in The City is never so innocently employed as when he is making money.
The City is naturally not overtly racist-it clings like a limpet to canons of orthodox "respectability yet it takes the insight of a child to see that behind this intractable capen did otras, there isan implicit racialism. from infuriated stockbrokers condemning him When did you last see a black worker in an English-owned City bank? How many coloured for his "leftism", "liberalism" and urging that jobbers are there on the floor of the Stock Exchange? Where are the coloured members of Lloyds, the gigantie insurance syndicate, or of the City's scores of "Livery" companies?
Powell and the City One politician has emerged as expressing the voice of the City more accurately than any olher: Enoch Powell. Predictably, the City does former Mayor and Alderman of Bromley who not grasp immecately at his racism. it prefers to support Powellite economics, of which total denationalisation, "floating" rates for the public committee meetings, who is in favour of raciausm is a natural extension. Powel argues pound, abolition of government grants to industry, and a lifting of all economic restrictions (including a control to a free market social welfare in rents). This, of course, is the capitalist paradise a state in which comnetitive production for profit is the only motivating Jacor ana wner ne conomes lewit advocation of slashing reductions of Corporation suficient reason to call him a liberal, or some Tax. and the aboltion of surtax one can see that he has many of the City's richest and most equally offensive word?"
powertnl men applauding him in ecstasy. If Powell wanted to stage a full-scale political come-back, it would undoubtedly be backed by Percy Ingrams the City's vested interest.
It is perhaps for this reason that he keeps cropping up at unlikely and upublicised meetings within the Square Mile, as a guest at livery and other City functions.
recently Mr. John Hunt, a middle-ofPress in which he was foolish enough to sugest that all was not perfect in Rhodesia, and that England could, perhaps, be a little less repressive itself over such things as pornography and OHSCXLaNLy He immediately evoked a torrent of abuse ne ici une tarty.
One City man, Mr. A. G. Carter, raised a voice in defence of John Hunt; almost unbelievably this is what he wrote:
"As a long-time resident of Mr. John Hunt's Bromley constituency, I take exception to the attempts being made through your columns to -depict him as a kind of left-winger or liberal.
*Mr. Hunt is a respectable stock broker, a always upheld the Aldermanic dignities and never gave in to left-wing demands such as for restoration or hangine, the retention of fee-paying public schools, and the scaling down of "In face of such a record is his hesitation over recognising Mr. lan Smith's right to rebel against the Crown or his belief that the holding of a British passport should imply some rights even if one's skin is the wrong colour, a tas palacac euter undernes tae Ciy s inability to think in any other political terms except those of a graduated Fascism