Cheap at the price
The latest figures for crime in London — or at least that part of it which the police get to hear about —offer encouragement to neither the hangers and floggers nor the carers and tolerators. Overall, recorded crime in the capital fell by four per cent last year although violence against the person (not the sort committed by the police) street robberies and other robberies rose by between 11 and 13 per cent. Parliament's refusal to re-introduce the death penalty, even with the offer of the then Tory MP Peter Bruinvels to be the public hangman in his off duty days, did not set London's killers on the rampage; murders fell from 210 to 195.
The Metropolitan Police, despite its self-image as the elite force compared to which the rest are bumbling wallies. manages a detection rate of only 16 per cent. As there must be an intrinsically high rate of detection for some offences, such as murder and rape, this means there is a strikingly low clear-up rate for other crime. Obviously, the Met. will not be in the running for the Sherlock Holmes Trophy for 1987.
The figures for London, like those for other areas, provide no evidence to support the claim from all types of reformers to have a policy for the elimination of crime. The hangers and floggers argue that harsh punishment would stamp out the problem, ignoring the fact that it did not work that way in the past, when the crank, the treadmill, the quarries and the Pentonville style of repression brutalised prisoners rather than reformed them. The do-gooders look for the cause in social or personal disabilities, blind to the fact that this social system must always produce such problems and they have no idea of what to do about that.
Crime is an aspect of capitalism's basic conflicts and inadequacies; while this society lasts it is inescapable. The property rights of capitalism — which is another way of saying its denial of access to wealth to the majority — are so comprehensive that it is practically impossible not to offend against them. With the majority denied free access to the wealth we have produced, while the privileges of possession are extolled as the ultimate social cachet, it is not surprising that there should be a widespread effort to grab some of the wealth in ways not legitimised by capitalism.
The privileged hold their position legally; the laws say that their right to the wealth and their right to exploit the rest of us must be protected and enforced through a system of police, courts and prisons. So every day courts throughout the land are crowded with people who have been restrained after offending against capitalism's laws, to be dealt with according to the whims and prejudices of whoever happens to sit in judgement on them that day.
This is a hugely cumbersome, hugely expensive, affair (it costs an average of around £250 a week to keep someone in prison — an experience unlikely to re-build their respect for capitalism s morality). But for the job it has to do — to assert, defend and emphasise the fact that this is a society divided into the exploiters and the dispossessed — it is cheap at the price.
Fortresses
Social Security offices, which have never been friendly places where one could enjoy a confidential, therapeutic discussion of one's financial embarrassments over a relaxed cup of coffee with a helpful counsellor, threaten to become like fortresses amid bedlam as the new DHSS regulations take effect.
The Thatcher government will always be remembered for the sleight of hand with which they have distorted the current reality of poverty. The unemployment figures, for example, can easily be reduced by drawing up regulations which force out-of-work youngsters into what the government calls training but what the youngsters call sweated labour. State benefits for the unemployed, the elderly, the sick and the disabled can be cut by rearranging the rules which govern them and then calling the whole thing by a different name.
So it comes to pass that what was once Supplementary Benefit is now Income Support; what was once a Single Payment is now a loan from the Social Fund. The intended effect, with time, is that many workers who depend on state benefits for their survival, will have much less to survive on.
Another effect — unintended but foreseeable — will probably be that violence against DHSS staff, already running at an alarming level, will get worse. If this happens, the government's response will be to call conferences where bureaucrats will gravely discuss the stresses which their underlings are subjected to; to fortify the offices even more; and to provide for stiffer punishment for those who. in their impoverished frustration, go for the staff, smash the windows, kick in the doors. . .
The government are hoping that charities will fill the gaps opened up by the new regulations. Some people may think this is taking Thatcher's version of Victorian morality too far; in any case what happens when the charities are unable to help? Will they too have to bolt down the furniture, install toughened glass, erect protective screens around their workers?
The loud protests which the poverty lobby launched against the new set-up was understandable, for benefit-dependent workers, at the lowest end of the poverty scale, need a cut in their payments like a hole in the wallet. In spite of their valuable work of research and indictment, the poverty lobby draw the wrong conclusion — that the workers' poverty is rooted in an inability to be employed and that it can be eliminated through higher state benefits.
Poverty afflicts the working class whether they are in work or out; it is an unavoidable consequence of the class ownership of the means of life. A working wage keeps a worker generally at the level of reproduction of their energy; not to be able to get a wage can mean falling below even that miserable standard.
This is the fundamental social condition which must be dealt with. Then the poverty lobby can stop pummelling the statistics — and the claimants can stop taking it out on the DHSS clerks.
Run out?
With the passing of time — with a widening waistline and narrowing achievements — Ian Botham has changed from everyone's Boys' Own hero into a rip-roaring public villain. Headlines no longer boast of his deeds with bat and ball on some sun-soaked cricket field; the preoccupation now is with his offensive behaviour in public places and fights in dressing rooms.
But of course Botham has always been what the media hacks love — a sporting character. Nicknamed Guy after the gorilla — he was always ready for pavilion japes like placing his hot spoon on some team mate's arm just after stirring his tea.
Most of his feats, which have been written into cricket history, have been inspired by Botham's all-consuming ambition always to be on the winning side. Now this sort of drive is among the most prized of personal attributes in a society which esteems nothing higher than a determination to get to the top no matter whose neck gets trampled on the way up. In industry, commerce and social standing the equivalents of Ian Botham receive respectful adulation while the rest are of little consequence.
Capitalism glorifies its heroes and heroines as examples to us all, as living proof that anyone who is an insignificant member of the working class has only themselves to blame for their situation. Of course the heroes and heroines sometimes misbehave — or rather behave in a way to be expected of someone under the constant stimulation of the media spotlight. But that need not be a disadvantage since it often serves to heighten public interest, sell more newspapers, push up the ratings and box office receipts.
It requires a super-powerful effort to resist these pressures — to act like an everyday worker while all the expectations of capitalism demand otherwise. That is why the entertainment and sporting business is littered with examples of the Ian Botham disease. the principal symptom of which is the realisation that headline-hogging behaviour has reached the depths of tedium.
This brings a pathetic conclusion to what set out as famously glorious. Botham's sacking by his cricket employers in Australia may have its repercussions in this country, for it is said that he is too disruptive an influence for any team to want to have him. Who would be to blame for this sorry end of the golden boy of English cricket? The man himself? Or the interests which depend on building up prima donnas in order to attack them for it?
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