50 Years Ago: The Labour Government's Prisons and Detention Barracks (1996)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisons and detention barracks are not accidental happenings due merely to the stupidity of governmental and military officials. They have a purpose, that of intimidating would-be offenders against civil laws and military discipline. Can you destroy the institution without first destroying the conditions that make it necessary? Without going into the details of the different kinds of crimes under the law it is obvious that in the main crimes are directly concerned with capitalist property laws or with the attempt to force unwilling conscripts to fight. Let Forward and other supporters of the Labour Party administration of capitalism start at the right end. If they are content to maintain capitalism and to wage capitalism’s wars, then let them not deceive themselves into supposing that they can materially lessen the brutality of imprisonment in civil and military prisons. (. . .)

If the supporters of the Labour Government are really concerned to abolish the prisons, then let them recognise that, instead of persisting in their efforts to reform and patch up the capitalist system, they have got to get down to the job of abolishing it.

(From editorial in April 1946 Socialist
 Standard)