Festival of thieves (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Approaching from a distance it seemed as if it could have been a meeting of the Youth section of the Bulgarian Communist Party: flags attached to poles were held high by blank-faced patriots who clapped occasionally with all the passion of a fly drowning in a glass of water; on the makeshift platform stood grey-suited, makeshift leaders whose faces seemed to blend in to the empty slogans which were written on the solitary blue banner; the hum of conformity was in the air and, approaching, it became clear that the three hundred or so people assembled in Hyde Park stood beneath a banner which announced that this was a “RALLY FOR FREEDOM”.

Freedom, eh? Certainly not the Bulgarian CP, then. On closer inspection they might have been a regiment of newly-recruited Boy Scouts — or perhaps a crowd of extras waiting around for a re-make of Mary Poppins. But then came that all too familiar clapping sound — that sound which tells you that “Britain" or "Our Boys” or “Long Live Maggie" have been mentioned — the sound of non-verbal consent and complacency which is Nature’s little way of telling us that Conservatives are around. There is no mistaking the Tory clap; your reporter had stumbled upon a Young Conservatives’ rally — a rally for freedom, no less — freedom under capitalism. The Houdinis of British politics were about to perform live — well, almost.

The flags were upside-down Union Jacks and their holders were young Tories who had come to cheer their leaders who had come to tell them that there could be no sweeter freedom than that which capitalism offers. An exiled Hungarian general was brought on to frighten the crowd with horror stories about “Hungarian Communism”. “We must keep the flame of democracy burning” he said (by which he did not mean that we should burn down the House of Lords) and “the Communists must be opposed with all our might". The crowd applauded heartily, not realising that by “Communism” the general meant a society based on authoritarian government, impotent trade unions, intense militarism and national chauvinism (all of which are features of state capitalist Russia and all of which also happen to be Tory objectives) and that by “freedom” he meant the right of the rich and powerful 10 per cent to exploit the propertyless 90 per cent. The deception of rhetoric is well disguised by a long, hard Tory clap.

Next comedian to mount the podium was Rhodes Boyson, government minister for indoctrinating the wage slaves. Ex-headmaster Boyson spoke with all the arrogance of a village idiot who has become drunk on a pint of shandy, thus acquiring the confidence to open his mouth as if he knew what he was talking about. He referred to the Berlin Wall and the need for respect and said that meetings like this could certainly not take place in Red Square. He was right about the last point — in Moscow they are able to assemble even more deluded patriots in their cynical attempts to manipulate wage slaves in the name of “freedom". The crowd clapped Rhodes Boyson until they were exhausted (for some of them this was the most energy they’d expended in months) and fifteen seconds after his speech ended the next contestant to be Tory Twit of the Year ascended the platform.

The third man was concerned about “defence”, by which he meant attack, and felt that fifth columnists were at work in our schools, by which he meant that it was terrible that not all teachers are in favour of telling children that when they grow up they must go out and kill people. He said that “we need to get back to teaching the basic values of civilisation; we need to explain . . .” “Yes, the basic values of sending workers to kill each other in your commercial wars" interjected a bearded heckler in the front row. He was soon surrounded by three or four Tory stewards w ho wore Union Jack shirts and looked as if they had failed the intelligence test allowing them to join the National Front. No questions allowed at Young Conservatives meetings: so that’s what they mean by “freedom”..

The star speaker was John Biggs-Davison who announced that the theme of the rally could be summed up in one word which was . . . um . . . er (reaching for his prompt cards) “Ah yes, self-determination — that's what we stand for. The right of people to live as they choose to live." He failed to mention that this “right" would be denied to the vast majority of the population who produce the wealth of society. Capitalism offers workers no more than the right to live as we can afford lo live. The freedom to be impoverished — to be alienated from ownership and control over the world we live in — is no freedom at all.

In the subway leading to Hyde Park there used to be a couple of old con-men who obtained fivers from gullible Americans by performing the three-card trick. One day they were arrested and now they are conning tourists in a different area of London. But what of the Tory con-men for whom freedom means exploitation, liberty means inequality and peace means oppression? Trading on the political ignorance of the exploited class, these people have police protection while they perform the political three-card trick. But nothing will defend the advocates of capitalism against the genuine case for social freedom. Be they Tory. SDP or Labour, the misleaders of the working class will not succeed forever.

Steve Coleman

Political Notebook: The tale of the arrogant man . . . (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tale of the arrogant man . . .

The Liberal Party goes on a lot about ‘The Great Spirit of Liberalism’ which it so passionately cherishes. In his essay ‘On Liberty’ John Stuart Mill argued that liberals should be prepared to debate all subjects from every point of view so as to arrive at the correct conclusion.

Cyril Smith is a Liberal MP. So when Bolton branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was looking for a defender of capitalism to debate with, they wrote to him anticipating a liberal-minded response. Smith replied thus:

Thank you for your letter. No, I do not provide audiences and publicity for my political opponents, much less ones with whom 1 totally disagree.

Firstly it is supreme arrogance on the part of the Liberal Party to imagine that we would have to rely upon the personality of Cyril Smith to provide us with an audience for a debate. Secondly we wonder which of his political opponents Mr Smith does not ‘totally disagree’ with. Thirdly it is a pity that the Honourable Member for Rochdale’s mind is not as broad as his backside.

. .  And the ignorant man

Dr Rhodes Boyson MP does not claim to be a liberal. He is a firm believer in the highly disciplined inculcation of the correct attitudes in schools and Universities. Which in layman’s terms means that he believes in training children to be efficient wage slaves. He recently received a letter of criticism from one member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (who presumably had a second-class stamp that she could find no better use for). She received a reply which demonstrates the confusion of the MP for Brent North’s mind. He wrote, “You may have noticed that, since the socialist reform and the comprehensive schools came in, less working class children are going to University.’’ 

What socialist reform does he mean? Socialists have never concerned ourselves with the reform of the capitalist education system. Rhodes Boyson makes the fundamental error of referring to Labour as a socialist party. He then goes on to use another incorrect definition of socialism:

All one would need is to look round the world where Socialist Governments are in control and see the inequalities there are far wider than in Britain . . .

Which socialist governments does he mean? If he is referring to the state capitalist dictatorships which the SPGB has consistently opposed, we would have expected him to show great admiration for the system of suppressing free trades unions, enforcing the law by means of brutal terror and organising education on the basis of strict discipline which has been mastered by the Russian and Chinese regimes. They are, after all, the very policies which he advocates in the name of freedom. Rhodes Boyson is clearly a man of many illusions, such as that Labour is socialist and state capitalism is socialism. He shares his illusions with millions of members of the working class. But Dr Rhodes Boyson is currently a government minister with responsibility for Higher Education. Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Free Press? Free Speech?

Copies of the following letter were sent to The Guardian, The Bolton Evening News and The Manchester Evening News. As they would not publish the letter, we reproduce it here.

Dear Editor,

That Britain is supposed to be a free country in which all shades of political opinion are given an opportunity to be heard is one of the more persistent myths of capitalism. On Saturday 28th September a crowd of over one hundred people in the Bolton shopping precinct were given a chance to observe socialist freedom of speech in action. An outdoor meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was in progress; the speaker was presenting our party’s case for a society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution; a number of interested people were usefully and critically joining in what is a traditional and long established medium of free discussion. Then the police arrived. Not because they suspected our speaker of being a criminal or because they believed that there was any danger of violent disorder or even, because as members of the working class, they wanted to find out what was in their interest. Their announced intention was to stop the meeting because it did not have the prior authorisation of the police. One and a half hours later, after a long wait in an interview room at the Bolton Central police station, two members of our party were charged, nominally for causing an obstruction to the highway (which did not occur until the police arrived and shoppers came to see what was going on), but in fact for attempting to address people in public without consulting the police.

There are two principles involved here. Firstly, the opportunity to set up a platform and address a crowd without police authorisation has been an accepted political tradition in Britain for most of this century. If it is now to be denied to us, may we know whether this is a government decision or, as we suspect, a further example of the increased use of police powers at the expense of the freedom of the weak and the powerless? Secondly, we consider that the freedom of assembly of those of us who are prepared to commit rational ideas to public scrutiny in the shopping centres, the parks and the factory gates should be recognised at least as much as the freedom of others to hold military processions, commercial displays, slogan-shouting demonstrations and pre-election walkabouts.

When our members appear in court they will plead ‘Not Guilty’. If the magistrate is typical he will accept the word of the police regarding the obstruction and will be indifferent or hostile to the principle of freedom of speech as it affects the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Next time I am on an outdoor platform and I am told that such a privilege would not be allowed in Red Square (which is part of a system that we have consistently opposed since 1917), 1 shall remind those present that state oppression is not confined to the state capitalist dictatorships, but is alive and kicking on the streets of Bolton.

Steve Coleman

What's Wrong With Education: Bursting of the 'Comprehensive' Bubble (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the cat is finally out of the education bag — at last. The cracks have finally broken through the paper!

The situation in the Inner London schools is now so disastrous that teachers are telling the papers how, in many of them, it is practically impossible to teach. Truancy has reached catastrophic proportions. According to Dr. Rhodes Boyson MP (late Head of Highbury Grove Comprehensive School) 500,000 children play truant every day; he says “it is creating a new criminal sub-class”. Nobody really knows how many truants there are, because without frequent spot-checks absence is uncontrollable. The kids are voting with their feet. Many of those who sit through the morning to get the school dinner vote with their eyes, glaring balefully at the monkey up front in silent vicious hatred.

All the millions in money, the shiny new glass and plastic buildings, the innumerable experts (there is no field of human endeavour with more bloody "experts” than education!) and “advisers”, the gimmicks and stunts to keep the kids at it till 16 — have, in about half the schools population, lamentably failed.

Above all, it is the dismal failure of the so-called comprehensive schools. These are the hot-beds, the fertile source of the troubles. For twenty-five years the love-child of every sentimental “Lefty”, eventually official Labour Party policy, “comprehensive” was to be the magic key to crack the education problem. It was to give “equality of opportunity” to all, including the academically backward.

Only those who are actually inside the school racket (sorry — “educational profession”!) know the full story of the incredible goings-on in the most notorious giant London comprehensives. The one in North London where the kids piled the desks and chairs in the middle of a class-room and set fire to them. The other one in South London where when the teacher shouted “Will you shut up?” thirty-three boys shouted back in unison “No, we will not!”

So bad has the situation become that the Inner London Authority now has special Truancy Centres (staffed by “experts", of course) where the kids who just will not attend, any school do what they like. According to the London Evening News “what they like” is smashing things up.

The ILEA now wants to abandon “comprehensive” policy and build no more. Having scrapped the smaller, despised “Secondary Moderns” to set up vast comprehensives, small schools have become a desperate administration’s new ideal. Quite outside all the high-minded and noble educational sentiments and theories, the main motive for comprehensives was simply economy — as it was foolishly believed: saving money.

Your contributor was actually present at a meeting of several hundred London teachers in the early days when Mr. Houghton, Chief Education Officer, told them: “I don’t care whether you are for or against comprehensives — I’ve got to find a quarter of a million places on the ninth of September!” A comprehensive school saves at least three headmasters’ salaries (about £5-6,000 p.a. each) and makes many practical economies in buildings, power, heating, maintenance, catering, etc., by working on a large scale. With the result that, with the raising of the school-leaving age, 2,000 or even 2,500 children have been crammed into schools bursting at the seams.

After the war, the Labour Government set up a committee to enquire into education. It came up with the Hadow Report, which was the Bible of the teachers’ training colleges in those days. The old system of sorting elementary-school sheep and grammar-school goats was to be replaced by juniors up to 11; then Grammar, Technical and Secondary Modern up to 15. The now-notorious eleven-plus examination would decide that each child would receive education according to “his age, aptitude and ability”.

Almost as soon as this tri-partite system was introduced, the howls of protest started. True it is that the eleven-plus produced some fantastic results (like the boy whose card was sorted into the wrong box at the office — an eleven-plus failure — who went on to get a Ph.D.). The theory behind “comprehensivation” — yes, that’s what they call it! — was “equality”. Even if a boy couldn’t do differential equations, analyze a sentence, or speak German, he wore the same uniform and played football on the same pitch (although frequently he couldn’t play football either).

Faced with the fact that various kids have different aptitudes — and certainly Socialists have never thought otherwise — an elaborate system of “streaming” and “sets” was set up, to shove some through the university-animated exam, system. The teachers themselves got together and drafted a completely new examination, the Certificate of Secondary Education. Still only a few responded. A flood of learned books has poured out; teams of research sociologists have “proved” that a boy (or girl) in a “home” where money is tight, the telly never stops, there is no spare room and, above all, the parents can hardly read and despise learning—has little chance against a well-fed, contented child with ample room, warmth, light, and (most important of all) the practical example of a genuine delight and pleasure in books and learning.

Outside the school, the lure of money is compelling. A hefty well-built lad of sixteen can get a job as a hod-carrier at a man’s wage. Small wonder that the bait of examination passes fails to attract!

Thousands of teachers leave training colleges annually filled with a genuine vocational idealism and the intention to dedicate their lives to the education of our children: only to have “their hearts broken” (as they say) and leave to do anything — barmaid, petrol pump, shop — rather than “be driven mad” teaching. Four out of five girls leave in the first year.

The zealous educational reformer has now to swallow the bitter bread of humiliation. The old submissive obedience has gone. The kids are sceptical, intensely suspicious and inquisitive. To them we would say: “Why waste time and effort harassing and barracking the teacher? They are victims of the capitalist system no less (even more) than you. They are working men and women trying to do an extremely onerous and impossibly demanding job. There is something to be learned from even the worst teacher!” And: "Ignorance never helped anybody ’ (Marx).

To the teacher we say: You will never get educational equality in capitalist society. All you can do is maintain an efficient Union to protect you from abuses.

During the recent General Election the school debating society at a large north-west London comprehensive ran a mock election. The Socialist candidate, a sixteen-year-old boy, denounced the Labour Party and exposed nationalization. To cheers from the audience he declared : "We’ve got to learn, we’ve thought too much about Lenin; we’ve got to find out more about Karl Marx!” And they will, too. After all, they are finding out about practically everything else!

Horatio

So They Say: Corrective Education? (1975)

The So They Say Column from the February 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corrective Education?

Among the other learned voices raised against the “lack of discipline” within schools is that of Dr. Rhodes Boyson. He is concerned that children are being exposed to

  cells of neo-Trotskyist, new left teachers who wanted to use schools to destroy our way of life. Unless these destroyers and wreckers were watched, every history lesson became a study of some peasant or racial revolt against real or so-called oppression.

(The Times 31st Dec. 74) 

We have no doubt that Dr. Boyson considers himself satisfactorily qualified to do some of the “watching”, having, as a Conservative MP, a clear idea of the correct “order, belief and structure” that society should take. His concern has a practical application for capitalism of course. He feels that teachers have lost sight of what schools are for:

  the three R’s, passing on our culture, preparation for outside work, and a development of individual talent.

There is nothing so useful to private property ownership than reasonably literate workers steeped in the idea of capitalism, and who are prepared to run it. If a worker has particular talent which may be exploited, so much the better.

Lesson Two

This theme is echoed by Dr. Joyce Morris, a BBC adviser on language usage. She said at a conference on education in the North of England on 2nd January, that “crazy and dangerous ideas” in education techniques have led to an increase in illiteracy, and urged those attending to restore reading “to the central pivot of the curriculum.” The dangers she sees in increasing illiteracy among secondary school pupils are similar to those of Dr. Boyson:

  As technology advances the need for unskilled labour decreases and the illiterate must face the prospect of almost certain unemployment in the not too distant future.

(The Times 3rd Jan. 75) 

Her call has not yet reached the eyes of Lt. Col. Stuart Townsend, headmaster of Prince Charles’s old school, Hall House Junior School. Townsend has his own ideas of education and has recently been explaining his views to the parents of his 500 boys, who pay up to £600 a year in fees:

  Today in London many school children have no manners, are destructive, look dirty, slack and lazy. Some Hill House School boys come to school like this and are a disgrace to the uniform. These boys should be removed.

(News of the World 12th Jan. 75)

The punch-drunk Colonel does not say where they should be removed to, but emphasises that good manners and discipline are of paramount importance, not least among members of his staff.

  There’s a battle going on in education. Someone has to make a stand. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ll win. I just get rid of anyone who doesn’t agree with me.

One thing which does not appear to trouble the Colonel, however, is illiteracy, at least not in his own case. One parent complains:

  He boasted to me that he never answers letters and when I went to meet him I saw a waste paper basket full of unopened letters.

Unread maybe, but surely not unopened? How could the Colonel have extracted all those cheques for £600?

Patent Mistake

A document for patent assigned to the Secretary of State and filed in 1962 has recently been taken off the secret list and is available to anyone visiting the Patent Office. Its title “Improvements in the manufacture of organic phosphorous compounds containing sulphur” reads like an improved formula for manure. It is in fact a detailed document explaining fully the chemical processes employed in the production of VX, one of the deadliest nerve gases ever to be invented.

In liquid form, a pinhead sized drop of VX on the skin is lethal.

(Sunday Times 5th Jan. 75) 

It appears that the patent was taken off the “classified” list by accident, and that the Defence Department is confused as to how this particularly nasty skeleton emerged from the cupboard. A spokesman attempting to defend what will doubtless be considered an error of judgement said:

  Information on how to make an atom bomb is freely available, but people don’t go around doing it.

That not everyone “goes around doing it” is quite true. However we are all aware that too many “people” have already done it, and continue to do so. In regard to VX itself, the production details were passed to the us some years ago “under a long standing agreement on the free exchange of chemical warfare information” with the inevitable result that the US

  eventually manufactured it on a large scale and put it into store.

Having learned who our friends are, MPs have been writing to Mr. Rodgers, Minister of State for Defence, not apparently concerned with the reasons for the production of this deadly gas, but appalled that the details of manufacture are now public knowledge. They will doubtless be happy to learn that Mr. Rodgers ordered a review of de-classification procedures on 6th January.

Black Power

Leaders vary in the degrees of subtlety they employ to maintain their positions of power. President Nguema of Equatorial Guinea is one who believes in taking the gloves off, straight away. On January 7th his constitution was approved by a referendum. Among other things this

  confirmed his dictatorial powers for life by threatening to torture or kill anyone who voted against it, refugees said in Madrid. The President had made sure of the outcome of the referendum by making members of his single National Workers’ Party the sole election judges. The balloting slips were printed beforehand, the vast majority of them with the word Yes. Anyone bold enough to pick up a slip from the ‘No’ pile and put it in his voting envelope, risked reprisal.

(The Times 8th Jan. 75)

Opposition spokesmen have so far failed to comment. Or materialize.

In the Clouds

Mr. Michael Burbidge of the sociological branch of the Department of the Environment said on the 6th January that many Local Authorities would be housing families in “unsuitable high-rise blocks for years to come”. The reason appears to be the same as that for climbing Everest — because they are there. Families thus housed will be those who are already suffering greatly from poor housing conditions. Speaking with reference to particularly unsatisfactory high-rise estates, he said:

  The more choosy tenants will move out and only disadvantaged families with no alternatives will be persuaded to take up the resulting vacancies.

He does not mean “perusaded” of course, but forced. However an angel of wisdom has since appeared on the scene in the shape of Prince Phillip. His rôle as president of the UK Council of European Architectural Heritage Year (i.e. 1975) led him to make some informed comment on the plight of the poorly housed.

  The public should complain if they disliked a building. He wanted people to say ‘Look, we don’t like living 16 furlongs up and the ideas of having more open space at the bottom is totally useless to us.’ 

After such practical advice, we viewed with some suspicion the comments of Lady Dartmouth, chairwoman of the executive committee of the European Heritage Year campaign, who remarked the following day:

  Architects and planners thought the best thing was to raze everything and start again. But now re-cycling was the vogue and the aim of conservation should be to re-cycle buildings.

(The Times 3rd Jan. 75)

A. D'Arcy

They said it . . . (1993)

From the January 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

• It is tough out there in every industry— Michael Heseltine’s son Rupert after being made redundant 
• Conservatives do not stab people in the back—Rhodes Boyson MP 
• No aristocrat has ever died of this disease—Bert Connor, chairman of Clydeside Action on Asbestos.
• The Prince and Princess of Wales do not have a bottomless pit from which to draw money—Buckingham Palace spokesman.
• To be identified as the child of a politician is just terrible—son of a former Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Tory Party.
• If a woman upsets you, alright. It's part of their function in life—Judge John Lee, Hereford Crown Court.
• What we see is obscene and should not happen in a civilised society—Director of Kent Social Services on the homeless.

Herewego — Where next? (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Today the ones who are looking for trouble do not wear scarves. They wear expensive clothes and a nice watch. People think they are all mods and rockers — they are not. The London boys might be wearing about £200 of clothes. Chelsea "fan", Guardian 20 May

As certain types of social violence escalate, the media, politicians and "experts" of all sorts are clamouring to tackle the problem. It is necessary, however, to look at incidents of violence in their wider social setting to discover what causes them and therefore what needs to be changed in order to eradicate destructive behaviour. The conventional social attitude to organised violence is confused. Consider the following announcement:

  Last night two hundred young men engaged in an organised assault. They violently attacked another group of men whom they had never met before.

If, for instance, three young men were singled out as most responsible for causing mayhem and destruction, what would society do to them? It depends. A government spokesperson asked that question would need to know whether the thuggery was committed by “our boys" in the Falklands or "our boys" in Frankfurt. For distinctive violence ordered against an official "enemy" the soldiers receive pious praise, possibly a medal and commiserations for any maiming they may have suffered to body or mind or both. For distinctive violence which the government has not ordered, the louts in the Union Jack boxer shorts who marauded through German cities in June's European football championship received nothing from the authorities back home but grave censure and contempt. Some of these latter thugs, suffering from a surplus of patriotism and a shortage of brain cells, went on the rampage in Germany wearing "ENGLAND ON TOUR 1914, 1939, 1988" T-shirts. The folly of propertyless workers being patriotic is one thing, but even the capitalists who own Britain (the top seven per cent own about 80 per cent of the wealth) were upset by this piece of gratuitous jingoism.

From an aerial view, British society is fraught with violence as part of its ordinary processes. Apart from the development of organised running battles associated with "football hooligans", there is clear evidence to suggest a proliferation of clashes between rival gangs, and between gangs and police, in rural and costal towns. Every year hundreds of children are treated in hospital for serious injuries inflicted on them by adults, often their parents or guardians. Each year thousands of women leave home to seek refuge in hostels from the brutality of a cohabitant. Then there is the Sadism Industry. which operates on two levels: the illegal and the legal. Below the line of legality lurks the trade in "video nasties", where depth of depravity is the gauge of a film's attractiveness. Pathological disturbance is presented as an art form. Above the line there is a prominent genre of films which portray killings, massacres and annihilation as nothing much more than exciting, glamourised drama They are aimed at a wide market for box office or video success.

Overshadowing all this, though, is the gigantic scale of institutional violence and force. The role of the Police Force is, as its name implies, to use force to keep people in line. Were society civilised we would not need to threaten people to make them conform. Over 50,000 men and women are currently caged up in British prisons and the majority are there for offending against property laws. The military are the Youth Training Scheme in Destruction and Delinquency. The services, especially the Army, present themselves as agencies for travel and tourism, an apprenticeship and the opportunity to develop such things as "life skills"; in reality, recruits are swiftly knocked into a routine of hardship, indignity and idiocy. They have to be trained to obey any order without question or thought. Each soldier is to the Army what a bullet is to a gun — ammunition in a murder machine. And since the business of the Army is orchestrated violence, it is scarcely surprising that the outfit produces barbaric perverts of the kind recently prosecuted for over-zealous disciplinary techniques.

Many factors have been cited as the "main cause” of recent outbreaks of thuggery. What is the socialist analysis of these arguments?

Slack schooling and permissive parents?

  Our current education system equips the bottom 80% of the population for nothing better than sitting in betting shops or being soccer hooligans.

Sir Rhodes Boyson (The Barnet Advertiser, 23 June)

With all the compassion and understanding of a nineteenth-century workhouse Governor. Rhodes is prone to encourage acceptance of his views using physical force. As Headmaster of a north London school he was a firm believer in the educational value of "correcting recalcitrance" by beating young people with a wooden stick. His regret about the current operation of the education system is ironic. If he was entirely candid, he might have gone on to say: " . . . the ruling class needs the rising generation of workers to be moulded into regimented, industrious, compliant wage-slaves who won't play up and disrupt the process by which social wealth is appropriated by capitalists. Such disruption requires a larger slice of profits to be spent on paying for a larger, more powerful police force. It is simply more efficient to educate workers into docility." Indoctrinating young members of the working class to assume the role of poverty-trapped wealth producers is a big problem. It becomes much worse when advertising and media imagery everywhere offer lifestyles which are tantalising. unobtainable and, in reality, largely synthetic pleasures of a cash-culture society. The problem becomes aggravated even further by the reduced chance of even becoming a wage-slave in the present economic environment. This is annoying Rhodes Boyson. He continued his remarks with the words

  I'm sure that about one third of those unemployed are quite happy watching TV, doing the garden, sleeping — and getting paid for it by the tax payer. I envy them.

Surely Mrs Thatcher will rebuke her knight for referring to members of the House of Lords in such terms.

The problem of quelling disorder in the profit system is growing. A survey on "Indiscipline and Violence in Schools" was recently conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers. Its findings are based on returns from 1.630 schools and suggest that

  Violence and other forms of disruptive behaviour are steadily increasing in all types of schools throughout the country.

and in the Primary sector

  Nursery-aged children are starting school already imbued with anti-authoritarian habits because of poor parental control.

(Times Educational Supplement, 17 June)

Modern capitalism requires governments to rely, ultimately, on police forces and armies to make it work. Schools, similarly, are authoritarian organisations and frustrated and resentful young people can easily, though misguidedly, respond to coercion with violence. If more children are becoming consciously anti-authoritarian then that is a healthy development. Babies and toddlers need to be guided from the dangers of traffic and electricity sockets but the use of authority to control attitudes is the hallmark of uncivilised society.

Booze and belligerence

 It is clear from the evidence that a mob of hooligans of which you were a part had spent much of the day swilling beer. This kind of conduct must be stopped. It is all too prevalent.

Judge Gerald Butler QC to Millwall "soccer fans", Southwark Crown Court, 27 June

The men addressed by the judge were part of a gang who stampeded through New Cross Gate station to ambush another group of "supporters". They were convicted of affray after many terrified train passengers had fled across live electric railway lines to escape a mob armed with lumps of concrete, planks, knives and bottles. It is popular to regard alcohol as the cause of violence in society. Used in certain circumstances and in certain quantities it will aggravate aggression, give "Dutch courage" and impair the drinker's social conscience. It is pent up tension and frustration which is usually being released, so it is important to ask why society produces these routine stresses and then promotes alcohol as a palliative.

The promotion of alcohol as an anaesthetic to most peoples problem-ridden routines is booming business in the profit-system. Over £120,000,000 was spent on drink adverts on TV alone last year. Most were aimed at young people and although some were banned (like the one for Bulmer's cider which showed cartoon woodpeckers swigging from a bottle with the slogan: "Spend some time out of your tree") shareholders in drinks companies must have been generally quite pleased with the results of the campaigns. The "George the Bear" films for Hofmeister lager were recently voted the most popular commercials among 13-year-olds.

Governments have, from time to time, sought to control the consumption of alcohol by workers. During World War I, the American Congress stopped the manufacture of alcoholic drink to conserve grain. The prohibition lobby grew in strength and the National Prohibition Act (1920) and a constitutional amendment were later passed to forbid completely the manufacture and consumption of any intoxicating drink. The law proved impossible to enforce, fuelling widespread corruption and increasing the power of gangsters and racketeers. It was repealed in 1933. The Licensing Laws in force in Britain until last month were introduced during World War I because it was feared that munitions workers were spending too much time in the pub.

The organisation, Action on Alcohol Abuse claims that drink kills ten times as many people as do drugs and is a far greater cause of illness and social disturbance. There are always plenty of schemes being devised to reduce alcohol abuse — only recently the Home Office Working Group on Young People. Alcohol and Violence produced a list of 50 recommendations — but such exercises are about as useful as asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to pray that things get better. The only way to solve the problem of alcohol-related violence is to remove the cause of it — the grind, strain and unfulfilling nature of people's lives.

Network nightmare

  Children are likely to be particularly disturbed by violence in a setting which closely resembles their own. Thus an accident in which someone who looks like a child's father strikes someone who looks like his mother is probably very disturbing, threatening as it does the child's sense of security in the home.

(Guidelines on TV Violence, BBC 1979. Omitted from current guidelines)

The extent of wife-battering is unknown, largely because the pressures on women to remain in the home and the shame and stigma associated with this type of violence means that reported cases are merely the tip of an iceberg. Television does not cause the problem — it is usually committed by men who have been humiliated and victimised in some way in their passage through the rat race. Embittered by their circumstances and usually in a state of drunken rage, they embark on the one conflict they can "win". This is not the crazed conduct of a few men with congenital brain disorders but a widespread social problem. Children watching it on TV will undeniably be disturbed but trying to keep it secret from them will hardly help to solve the problem

Using killing, torture and destruction as key ingredients of exciting television for young people is bound to produce some unsavoury results. A recent documentary suggested that a young American who watched an average of three hours of TV a day would have seen about 10,000 killings before reaching the age of sixteen. This cannot but desensitise the mind to real trauma and misery left in the wake of a violent death. Every so often violent incidents appear to imitative: a spate of crossbow attacks occurred, for instance, after one was used by Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. Overall, however, television is not the cause of social violence. At the start of this century, hundreds of people were murdered every year in Britain. Violent disorder on the streets was rife — in fact the word "hooligan" was coined in Edwardian times. Hundreds of thousands of workers were slaughtered every year in the First World War and the final death toll ran into millions. This was all before television. The earliest broadcasts were not until 1936 and they were quickly suspended on the outbreak of another world war, this time one which was to wreak destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Madame Medusa

 The crimewave, which has now assumed typhoon proportions, is the direct result of Tory policies and Tory philosophy. The thug with too much money and too little conscience is the monster which has mutated from Margaret Thatcher's open advocacy of selfishness and greed. Crime is contagious and the disease is being spread by Downing Street.

Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of Labour Party (Daily Telegraph, 23 June)

It is facile and misleading to attribute violent crime to particular personalities or political parties. Whether the profit system is run by parties like the Conservatives, which is avowedly capitalist, or the Labour Party which is allegedly "for the workers" makes little difference. It will operate the only way it can — by producing wealth for sale and profit and not for human need. It will be a society in which the wealth producers live in relative poverty while the socially parasitic wealth owners live in luxury. It will be a society of wage-slavery for the majority. It will be a society ridden with competitive anxiety and beset with the insecurities of employment and the persistent threat of war. These are symptoms of a social system. They are as irremovable from the profit system as are death and injury from warfare.

If Roy Hattersley really believes that street violence in its current forms is largely the consequence of Thatcher's Tory policies, how does he explain the eruption of exactly the same type of problem in many other countries? Margaret is not Madame Medusa. She espouses a particularly callous doctrine to defend class-divided society but poverty, evictions, strikes, homelessness and militarism have been presided over by every Labour government. If Hattersley travels thirty miles across the water to France, he will see that the wretchedness of capitalism is not something which appeared in a blue hat in May 1979 to plague Britain alone. Hattersley, in fact, knows better than this. He is a careerist politician who, if he ever became Home Secretary, would be the man in charge of the police and prisons.

Capitalists get rich by employing workers. Sir John Sainsbury, for example, owns £1,000,000,000. Garry Weston boasts £1,500,000,000. The person who creates their bank statements must have an extra-durable "O" fitted to their printer. In any event, you do not acquire wealth like that by putting in a lot of overtime. You get it by exploiting a large number of workers — that is, by paying them less than the value of what they produce. You call it Employment and tell members of the wealth producing class that they’re lucky if they can get it. Roy Hattersley, therefore, is in favour of a society where he would put the robbed in gaol and use the police to protect the bounty of the robbers. When speaking of "the crimewave which has now assumed typhoon proportions ”, he may have misread his notes. It is in fact of "tycoon proportions".

Why?

Why do babies starve
When there’s enough food to feed the world?
Why when there’s so many of us
Are there people still alone? 

Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they’re aimed to kill?
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home?

Tracey Chapman, from her namesake album, 1988.

Capitalism is based on the ownership and control of the earth's resources by a minority class. The owners permit the production of wealth only so far as it can be sold in the market for a profit. At the British Army Equipment Exhibition earlier this year, 386 companies specialising in the production of high tech hooliganism on a Hiroshima scale displayed their wares to visitors from all around the world. True to the "democracy” that the Army will tell you it exists to defend, the public were not admitted. You can imagine the cost of the weapons and the social effort required to produce them from the fact that one company spent £450,000 on the exhibition, including £100,000 on the stand alone. In exhibition week, thousands of people died of malnutrition and hundreds of children went blind through vitamin A deficiency.

Young people are conscripted to fight in wars begun by governments in furtherance of the bosses' interests. Trade routes, strategic regions on the map, areas for market expansion and those rich in mineral deposits are the reasons behind war. No workers' interests are ever at stake in their masters’ struggles.

A society of money, banks and property deeds is a society of handcuffs, prison cells and homeless people. A society of Army exhibitions and young men trained to kill like machines is a society of mindless gang fights and street violence. When a majority decide democratically to put an end to class rule we can consign law and disorder to the history books. As soon as we bring the commercial system to a close, its endemic violence will cease. Only then can we establish real civilisation.

Gary Jay

Priorities (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Torvill and Dean were cheered by MPs in the House of Commons last night. Winding up a debate on housing benefits, the Social Security Minister of State, Dr Rhodes Boyson said to cheers: "I do think even housing benefits are put into perspective on occasions like this". (Guardian, 15 February, 1984.)