Jimmy Reid's "Rat Race" speech

Jimmy Reid’s Glasgow University rectorial address delivered on 28th April 1972 (aka as his ‘Rat Race’ speech)


Jimmy Reid


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Jimmy Reid (9 July 1932 – 10 August 2010) was a Scottish trade union activist and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow. His leadership of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in attracted international recognition. He served as Rector of the University of Glasgow and subsequently became a journalist and broadcaster."


‘Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways by different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal anti-social behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially dehumanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else.

They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think, have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.

It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However it is wrong. They are as much products of society and a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop out. They are losers. They have lost essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women.

The big challenge to our civilisation is not OZ, a magazine I haven’t even seen let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations. Let me give two examples from contemporary experience to illustrate the point.

Recently on television I saw an advert. The scene is a banquet. A gentleman is on his feet proposing a toast. His speech is full of phrases like “this full-bodied specimen”. Sitting beside him is a young, buxom woman. The image she projects is not pompous but foolish. She is visibly preening herself, believing that she is the object of this bloke’s eulogy. Then he concludes – “and now I give ...” then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire sherry. The woman is shattered, hurt and embarrassed. Then the laughter. Derisive and cruel laughter. The real point, of course, is this. In this charade, the viewers were obviously expected to identify not with the victim but with her tormentors.

The other illustration is the widespread, implicit acceptance of the concept and term, the rat race. The picture it conjures up is one where we are scurrying around scrambling for position, trampling on others, back-stabbing, all in pursuit of personal success. Even genuinely intended friendly advice can sometimes take the form of someone saying to you, “Listen, you look after number one”. Or as they say in London, “Bang the bell, Jack, I’m on the bus”.



‘To the students I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”

Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a giveaway. It’s more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy.

Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society.

From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants’ books.

To appreciate fully the inhumanity of this situation, you have to see the hurt and despair in the eyes of a man suddenly told he is redundant without provision made for suitable alternative employment, with the prospect in the west of Scotland, if he is in his late forties or fifties, of spending the rest of his life in the Labour Exchange. Someone, somewhere has decided he is unwanted, unneeded, and is to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap. From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.

The concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of decision making in the political institutions of society. The power of Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades with more and more authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see for local government is as a counterbalance to the centralised character of national government.

Local government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for decentralising as much power as possible back to local communities. Instead the proposals are for centralising local government. It’s once again a blueprint for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few years when asked “Where do you come from?”, I can reply: “The Western Region”. It even sounds like a hospital board.



‘It stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of Glasgow conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these proposals – where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a community? Or a community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human considerations do not feature in their thought processes.

Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under “M” for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.

If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our wealth producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.

Even this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions of government and where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as to involve the people in the decision making processes of our society. The so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficiency for the value of the people’s participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this argument.

To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone’s development.

In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in communion with, and in service to our fellow human beings can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.

‘Universities must be in the forefront of development, must meet social needs and not lag behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great University of Glasgow should be in the vanguard initiating changes and setting the example for others to follow. Part of our educational process must be the involvement of all sections of the university on the governing bodies. The case for student representation is unanswerable. It is inevitable.

My conclusion is to reaffirm what I hope and certainly intend to be the spirit permeating this address. It’s an affirmation of faith in humanity. All that is good in man’s heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an unashamed acknowledgement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit.

In “Why should we idly waste our prime,” he writes:

“The golden age, we’ll then revive, each man shall be a brother,

In harmony we all shall live and till the earth together,

In virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,

And time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature”.

It’s my belief that all the factors to make a practical reality of such a world are maturing now. I would like to think that our generation took mankind some way along the road towards this goal. It’s a goal worth fighting for.

HUGO CHAVEZ

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POLLING DAY IS HERE!!!!

Time To Really Vote For Change.
Vote Scottish Socialist Party!!!  

Today the 6th of May 2010, sees the British public take to the polls to decided on who runs our next government. We at the Scottish Socialist Party have 10 candidates in various seats around Scotland.
Whilst the media talks about the 3 main parties and the 3 main parties all talk of change. But a vote for these parties is not real change it's still the same. If one thing the prime ministerial debates showed us was that there is very little difference or variety of choice by voting for the any of the big 3 or even SNP who will quite happily jump into bed with any of the potential prime ministers.

We at the Scottish Socialist Party represent Real Change.
We represent the real alternative option to the mainstream capitialist parties. We are a party that promotes a real fairer future. We are the only party commited to bringing a Free Scottish Socialist Republic.

11 point plan from the Scottish Socialist Party

• We want Scotland's wealth shared out equally
• The rich will pay higher taxes
• Our public services, including oil, fuel and transport, will be publicly owned
• Our minimum wage right now would be £8 an hour
• Wages, benefits and pensions will rise by £50 a week, across the board
• All school children will receive free school meals
• Women will get equal pay for equal work
• Young people will get the same national minimum wage as everyone else.
• The abolition of nuclear arms in Scotland and the continued campaign for the worldwide abolition of nuclear arms.
• The council tax will be scrapped in favour of a local tax where the rich pay their fair share
• Free public transport will be brought in to ease congestion, pollution and global warming
• Our troops will be brought home from the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are the only party to have constantly campaigned against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We
 are the party that will NOT only abolish the £100 billion Trident nuclear system but we would continue to campaign against Weapons of Mass Destruction on an international level. We are the only party that opposes all publice sector cuts. We are a party that will support a fairer and cleaner political system based on real proportional representation in which politicians will take a workers salary and we will continue to campaign on these issues. To be the real voice of change in Scotland, on this day the 6th of May we ask you, when it comes time to vote. Vote for a party that will give us a true champion voice for Scotland in Westminster. A party that is on the street listening to the needs of the Scottish people.
This 6th of May vote SSP.  Check Out All SSP candidates here

Letter from Ally Hendry Printed in West Lothian courier 29/04/2010

As a socialist, I want the current capitalist economic system to be replaced by a socialist system based on equality and social need rather than private greed. This would involve taking control of the banks, insurance companies and the major industries and placing them in the hands of ordinary working men and women. The creation of a socialist society would help bring an end to poverty, injustice and war.
Socialists wish to see everyone being given the opportunity to fulfil their true potential and not having to spend their lives as ‘wage slaves’ in the capitalist system. How many great musicians, skilled doctors, great scientists and engineers etc have there been amongst children of working class families who were never able to realise their goals because economic constraints forced them to take lesser paid jobs to augment the family income?
If elected to Westminster, I would oppose cuts in Government spending which, it has been reported, in West Lothian would result in a minimum of one thousand compulsory Council job losses and drastic reductions in our vital public services.
To encourage small and medium sized companies to locate in West Lothian (and other areas), I would propose a policy of offering a rates moratorium for a period of 1-3 years and a financial contribution to the wages and training costs of long-term unemployed people given jobs by the incoming companies.
Although a devolved issue, another of my priorities would be to highlight the campaign for the full reinstatement of all services to St Johns Hospital. The reduction in services was part of the policy of the previous Labour-led government in its insidious drive to privatise the National Health Service.

Scottish Socialist Party election broadcast

PARTY ELECTION BROADCAST FOR 2010 GENERAL ELECTION

The Scottish Socialist Party's Westminster election party political broadcast was shown on the 23rd of April on BBC1 and BBC2. To watch the video please click on the link

Scottish Socialist Party 2010 general election broadcast

Ally Hendry on televised leaders debate.

Reflections on the Party Leaders’ Debate on domestic policy

The most striking impression I got from the Party Leaders’ Debate was how similar the so-called ‘major parties’ are when it comes to economic policy. They all agree that there will have to be deep cuts in government spending as a result of the economic recession which will severely affect public services. However, during the debate all three leaders sought to disguise what is in store for families the length and breadth of Britain by putting forward schemes that will supposedly shield the public from hardships.

We in the SSP, unlike the ‘major parties’, maintain that the general public do not have to bear the brunt for an economic recession which was none of their making. There are alternatives to the cuts that would in fact mean an increase in public spending to improve public services and create jobs. These include:

• Taking control of the UK banks assets and capital, estimated to be in the region of £5 trillion and £560 billion respectively.
• Taxing the rich by for example imposing a 90% tax rate on income over £100,000.
• Raising corporation tax which has been cut by successive governments from 45% to 28%. A doubling of corporation tax would yield about £45 billion annually
• Reducing defence spending by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and scrapping nuclear weapons would save over £30 billion every year.

Scottish Socialist Party launches 2010 election manifesto.

from left to right; Ally Hendry, James Nesbitt, Frances Curran, John McAllion and Colin Fox

Last Tuesday the 13th of April saw the launch of the Scottish Socialist Party's 2010 election manifesto. The manifesto focuses on 5 main points

• Public sector cuts
• Employment (focusing on youth employment.)
• The continued occupation of Afghanistan
• The reform and clean up of the process' of government
• The formation of an independent Socialist republic in Scotland.

Colin Fox party co-spokesperson and John McAllion

Party co-spokesperson Colin Fox said: "After 13 years of New Labour, the thought of a Tory government still sends a shiver up the spine.

"But it's clear to anyone who's watching this election that politics in Scotland is about to be turned upside down.
"Let's be clear from the outset, that if the Tories do return to power at Westminster, the blame for that lies with New Labour and the failure of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown these last 13 years, who have quite frankly exploited working people, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit hardest."

To read the 2010 election manifesto please follow the link below
2010 General Election manifesto