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PARTISAN REVIEW
was able
to
announce the vote in favor of abolition. Not many lives,
of course, will be saved by the abolition of capital punishment, but
the death penalty for murder involves an ethical principle which is im–
portant to the humanitarian tradition. There is something admirable
in England's deep concern for it. The same attitude showed to a some–
what more muddled purpose in the winter's abortive hullabaloo over
easing the law against homosexual relations to permit them between
consenting adults. The English law is sometimes applied in strange ways,
as Peter Wildeblood's fine book showed, but the humanitarians got badly
bogged in the arid thesis that homosexuality and adultery are similar
sins.
In the economic sphere the English are, from laborer and small
shopkeeper to expense-account executive, reluctant to change habitual
ways of doing things on the chance of finding better ways. "Restrictive
practices," as they are called, exist here on a scale which makes our
feather-bedding and resale price maintenance look pitiful. With England
in a desperate battle for the carrying trade, for instance, the union keeps
two huge new unloaders out of operation for months arguing against an
efficient reduction of the crews from twelve to eight men, and the
losses from which-union-drills-what-holes disputes is staggering. When
the small shopkeeper lacks (as he frequently does) what the customer
wants, he is likely to say with cheerful but purely theoretical interest,
"You know, a great many people ask me for that." The Tyre Manu–
facturers' Conference explains that the price of tires
is
uniform in
England, not because prices are fixed, but because any manufacturer
who charges less will be thought to produce an inferior tire. As
The
Spectator-generally
considered to represent a genteel anarchism-re–
marked, if this is true, the whole argument for competition and free
enterprise disappears. With such arguments, nonetheless, the industrialists
have emasculated the new anti-monopoly bill.
The complications created by the general acceptance of a "class"
wage structure are also characteristic. For some time now the printers
have been "working to rule" (a form of the slowdown) . They are doing
so because they want their present take (made possible by an ingenious
use of "overtime") made their regular wage. The point of this is not
to get more money but to get an official wage which will clearly indicate
their status as "craftsmen." Similarly, the demonstration badly paid
secondary-school teachers gave recently actually endangered their chances
of increased salaries by an outburst in defense of their "professional"
status (much stimulated, it must be added, by the minister, Sir David
Eccles, who was stupid enough
to
tell them they were "putting on a
song and dance") .
