Make-Believe Revolutionaries: Two Case-Histories of Direct Action (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A commonplace response to the Socialist case, by people who find it unanswerable, is that it is “all right in theory”. The implication is that there is something separate from and superior to theories, called Practice. This is, to start with, a misunderstanding of the nature of theory. Theory does not precede or stand apart from practice: on the contrary, it is the conclusion from practice — from what has happened and what is observed.

The sort of Practice implied, therefore, is action which does not give a hang for the known facts. The practitioners never state it like that, of course; they are Getting Things Done, and Striking a Blow for this or that. In recent years its special manifestation has been Direct Action, the doctrine of people taking things into their own hands and launching themselves against the system. Looking at some well-known instances, it is possible to see Practice in practice. Does direct action work?

Squatting

The squatter movement began in 1968, as a venture by the East London Libertarian Group. “Venture” is an accurate enough term: it was preceded by agitations over housing conditions at Coventry Cross, conditions in an unmarried mothers’ home in Walthamstow, and claimants’ grievances at the local Social Security office. For several weeks the squatter campaign consisted of Sunday afternoon visits to examples of inequality in housing. Invited groups of libertarians met without knowing where they would be taken — mystery tours, as a delighted anarchist described them without qualms over the leadership principle.

The general history of the squatter battles at Ilford and derivative episodes elsewhere, when the occupation of empty property began, is well enough known. Demonstration about homelessness became an infection in the Left; the north-west anarchist federation’s bulletin described it as “the highest form of revolutionary activity possible in Britain today”. But in fact the campaign’s first casualty was the proclaimed revolutionary content, the deadest mortality the anarchist slogan “Do it yourself”. For the avowed purpose was to promote direct action among the working class, and it never happened. The families which squatted in empty houses were taken to, installed and defended in them by the libertarian groups. No one did it himself.

Scalps & Souls

The Ilford episode ended in a treaty with the Council, which undertook — on certain conditions — to make condemned houses available for homeless families. The terms re-invoked the original presumption of the mystery tours: they were made not by the house-seekers or by collective decision of the agitators, but by the East London Libertarians’ leader Ron Bailey. Among the conditions was one that the houses where the siege had raged were to be given up, including a house in which a group of libertarians had made their own commune. On their eviction Freedom had a bitter, passionate article headed “The Soul of a Movement”. It was, they felt, as if the Redskin chief had started trading his own braves’ scalps to the white man.

Freedom Press was enthusiastic for squatting, and for the London hippies who occupied buildings in the Drury Lane-Piccadilly area: the “commune of the streets”. In 1969, after successive evictions, some of the hippies went to Freedom, cited the paper’s persistent encouragement of them and pointed out that the Freedom/Express Printers building in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, had empty rooms galore. The building had been acquired and renovated in the previous two years. The Freedom group felt a moral compulsion — they had supported, vindicated, egged-on; so they let the army of hippy squatters in. In the next two weeks, the building was turned to a shambles. Hell’s Angels stood guard, demanding subscriptions from anarchists who went there. The culminating incident was lead-stripping — from the roof above, from the printing works below. Describing it all in an article, the Freedom group asked unhappily: “What were we to do?” The movement’s soul was certainly a soul in torment.

Uncritical Support

At its height, squatting had a great deal of public sympathy. It had the Left and libertarian groups working together; and it illustrated succinctly all their misdirections and failings. “Direct action” failed, in circumstances most favourable to it. Indeed, the term “squatting” was a misnomer, implying people spontaneously taking possession. As has been said, that never happened: “installation” would have been more accurate. Nor is this mere carping. What has to be seen is that the do-it-yourself revolution was a myth, and the reality was a series of simple charitable acts. And today the energy and good intentions of the squatter movement appear to have made useful auxiliaries for local councils in their housing administration and welfare services.

As for the hippy squatters, it may sound ungracious but is true to say they were not homeless people at all. In general, they had homes but chose to be away from them; perhaps with reasons, but that is a different question. Their being on the streets was due chiefly to the demise of the Drury Lane Arts Laboratory, where anyone and everyone kipped. But the Freedom Press dilemma — “What were we to do?” — originated in uncritical support for any semblance of direct action. Otherwise, it would be hard to account for the presence on Freedom’s doorstep of Hell’s Angels, who are the nearest thing to pre-war Fascist youth in Britain today.

Bombs & Bullets

The most recent demonstration of direct action has been the “Angry Brigade” bombings. There is, no doubt, a division between those who would actually have done this kind of thing and those who would not; but there is no doubt either that it had the sympathy of practically all direct-actionists. A pamphlet published shortly before the Old Bailey trial, by the “Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group”, tries hard to suggest that bombs and firearms are now the method of radical activists at large:

The state is also alleging that bombings and shootings claimed by the First of May Group, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Wild Bunch and Lotta Continua are also part of this conspiracy. In fact just about every single guerrilla action undertaken by groups from very different political areas within the movement over the past four years has been put down to them. The prosecution is attempting to create falsely the image that the political offensive carried out by the movement in the past four years is the work of a very small isolated gang of madmen.

Grand Delusion

What is a “political offensive” in these terms supposed to achieve? The authors of the pamphlet, which is called A Political Statement, assert that the Angry Brigade’s terrorism was an integral part of a working-class uprising:

Being part of their revolution they are sensitive to the needs and desires of that revolution. On January 12th we had a one day strike, we went on huge marches all over the country, we planned strategies for the future and we bombed Robert Carr.

The implication intended is of a massive number of workers united in all those activities. But one has only to ask who are the “we” of the dramatically italicized sentence, and its meaningless ranting is immediately exposed. On January 12, 1971, some trade unionists demonstrated against the Industrial Relations Bill; Left-wing groups distributed leaflets and had euphoric syndicalist dreams; and, in complete dissociation from all of that, a secret handful planted bombs which caused outrage but little harm.

The absurd delusion of a grand “political offensive” is further emphasized in a photograph of Carr’s front door, under the heading “The Minister’s Palace Destroyed”: which is quite untrue. Indeed, if the object of the “bombing and shooting” has been to kill representatives of the State, its incompetence is almost comical. The pamphlet claims at least 107 bombing episodes: not one person was hurt by them, it seems. If, on the other hand, the aim was not to kill but to alarm, that is even more ludicrous. It is reminiscent of the old yarn about the man who, finding his wife in bed with the milkman, went outside and kicked the milkman’s horse. What sort of “offensive” is that?

Serious Questions

Nevertheless, behind the puerile fantasy lie serious political considerations. At a simple everyday level, those most likely to be killed and injured by bombing are not establishment-figures but working men and women; Northern Ireland, to which the pamphlet refers repeatedly, demonstrates this only too well. For all the cant about “we” and “the movement”, bomb-planting is the negation of class-consciousness and democratic practice. Anarchists and direct-actionists may approve of the faits-accomplis, but that does not alter the fact that at the time they had no knowledge or control of what was being done in their name. Early in 1971 when publicity for the Angry Brigade explosions was at its height, the libertarian gossip and speculation were that the bombs were the work of agents-provocateurs with the object of raising public opinion against the Left. So much for “we”!

The knowledge that opinion — and repressive measures — are thus raised is another reason why terrorist tactics should not be supported. The State and the newspapers do not distinguish between “pretend” revolutionaries and real ones: direct action has done great harm to the growth of the Socialist movement. The “political statement” pamphlet complains of these consequences of the actions it is acclaiming:

This is a long hard struggle . . . It will be even more difficult in face of attacks from the political police which have grown enormously in organisation and number in the past year. The fact that there have been so many raids, the fact that they now habitually seize all political documents that they come across in their raids. The fact that innocent brothers and sisters arc locked up, some of them for many years.

Up to recent times anarchists were wont to respond to the traditional accusation of bomb-throwing by saying they had given it up because they had learned that governments did it better. That was at least a realistic view. The “urban guerrilla” and the saboteur may be problems to the state, but there is no question of their being able to match or weaken its armed power. Engels was able to point this out in military detail to would-be insurrectionists in 1895, in his preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. Speaking of the German bourgeoisie’s readiness to let rebels engage in physical battle with them, he said: “We are not so stupid.”

The State

The most important question of all, however, is: who are the enemy? Against whom is the “offensive”? The Angry Brigade’s targets were representatives of the State. The “political statement” of their supporters has not a single reference to capitalism, but insists on the state as adversary:

It began when it became clear that the state can and will smash the movement if it feels it can win. The bombings started.

And when he [Heath] talks of civil war, he is talking of a military/political offensive against all who oppose the corporate state.

The Stoke Newington Eight are . . . militants who have been active in the resistance to the corporate state and in the revolutionary movement.

Six years ago anarchists were wearing badges and carrying banners which said: “The state is your enemy”. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong. The deprivations, conflicts and miseries of the world we live in are caused not just by governments but by capitalism. The State’s rôle is to enforce them with the coercive machinery against which direct-actionists stub their toes and knock their heads. What the working class has to do is organize to abolish capitalism — by gaining control of the state machine with conscious intent to that end.

Consciousness

Socialists have no sympathy with those who believe bombs contribute to a social revolution. Of course rage and the desire for reprisal are emotions we have all experienced — who has not felt something like the poet’s “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”, or wished to kick-in the huge grinning teeth of some inflated politician? But the futility and self-destructiveness are clear. Indignation becomes constructive only when it is translated to consciousness. The direct-actionist asserts that consciousness can be a result of the act, that to cajole or push people into being hammered by capitalism’s force is to spread comprehension of what it is all about. There is not a shred of evidence that this has ever happened. On the other hand, the evidence provided by case-histories of direct action and terrorism is that they are at least fatuous and at worst horrifyingly pernicious, and always anti-working-class.

The means to change society exist and wait to be used, as Engels went on to say:

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the 'revolutionaries’, the 'rebels’—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt . . . we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

Robert Barltrop

Criminals or victims? (1972)

From the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent months so-called British Justice has frequently been called into question. The main points of contention have been the trials of OZ, Jake Prescott and Ian Purdie of the ‘Angry Brigade’, Pauline Jones, who kidnapped the baby Denise Weller, and the ‘Mangrove Nine’, a group of black immigrants living in Notting Hill. These trials have caused quite a stir in the Press, and several valid points were raised and questions asked by some of the newspapers. For instance, in the OZ trial Judge Argyle said that as the convicted men were not rich a fine would not be relevant, and therefore a prison sentence would be more in order. Some of the newspapers came to the realisation that by this token someone with money could bribe his way out of a prison sentence and that capitalist society was on the side of money, not people!

Jake Prescott was found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to fifteen years in gaol. His actual crime was addressing three envelopes which contained letters informing the police that certain explosions were the handiwork of the self-styled Angry Brigade. In the Press, especially the underground press, the length of Jake Prescott’s sentence was contrasted to the sentence of two to three years meted out to two youths for throwing a fire bomb into a West Indian party and severely injuring ten black people. The fact that the punishment for the Angry Brigade bombings (which were directed against property) was harsher than the punishment for the injury to the West Indians only goes to show that under capitalism property is always more important than people, as we learned with the thirty year sentences some of the Train Robbers received, while murderers are sometimes freed before serving ten years.

Pauline Jones was sentenced to three years (now reduced to twenty-one months) imprisonment for kidnapping a baby while under mental stress. The Press was quick to point out that this punishment could not benefit the parents of Denise Weller, the kidnapped child, or in any way compensate them for their anguish, or rehabilitate the disturbed Pauline Jones. The papers did not go as far as to say, though they should have, that no one has ever been helped by prison sentences, and that capitalist “justice” is always obsessed with punishment, not rehabilitation, in a crude attempt to protect the position and the property of the ruling class and to keep an innately unworkable system stable. The philosophy is that anyone causing an inconvenience to the maintenance of a profit and property motivated society, whether ideologically, as in the case of OZ, or Prescott, or unknowingly, as in the case of thieves etc., must be restrained as cheaply as possible.

In the early days of capitalism it was simple; people were hanged for all sorts of petty offences. The capitalists could not afford prisons or orphanages to fit the requirements of the age, so destitute adults or children could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, or in some cases for vagrancy. Since, however, modern capitalism has found it necessary to engender an educated and versatile working class these old methods are no longer acceptable. Prison and Borstal are the punishment for those whose behaviour is fashioned by their deprived circumstances; for remember, it is rarely that members of the ruling class find their way into penal establishments.

The Mangrove Nine were charged with various offences from assault to disturbing the peace, for their part in a demonstration in Notting Hill. There were allegations of police brutality and deliberate incitement of black people. While many journalists were able to write that perhaps the relationship between the police in Notting Hill and the black immigrants of the area “left much to be desired”, apparently no one realised that this was just another manifestation of the old capitalist maxim “divide and rule”, for while white members of the working class are arguing and fighting with black members of the working class, the working class as a whole will not concentrate on the real problem of abolishing capitalism.

While many valid points were raised in connection with these trials, as is to be expected, the real vital questions were not asked. For instance, there was no enquiry into the role of “justice”, and while the press often sympathised with the accused, no one asked “Why are these people criminals? Is not society to blame in some degree?” As already shown, the role of “justice” is merely to keep the present corrupt system running as smoothly as possible. Although the alleged obscenities of the underground Press are no more than amusing or deliberately sick, the fact that so many of the younger generation spend a good deal of time actively and overtly mocking and rejecting the values of the society they find themselves in, is symptomatic of the fact that that society is in a state of decadence.

When one considers the case of Jake Prescott, one must look again at the environment of the society in which he lives. Although no Socialist could condone bombings as a constructive revolutionary activity, he could quite easily understand what motivates someone of Prescott’s background to unreasoned violence. Prescott has spent his entire life being shunted around from orphanage to foster home to Borstal, to prison, and so on, a victim of the fact that capitalism cannot or will not take care of those who do not fit readily into the normal pattern of things. Capitalism’s need for a mobile working force is not met by the “extended families” and pattern of semi-communal living of the old rural economy and this has given way to the more insular and mobile nuclear family, consisting solely of man, wife and children. Naturally enough there are many who cannot fit into the scheme (the unmarried, old age pensioners whose children have grown up, orphans, illegitimate children), and capitalism being what it is, they have to suffer for it.

Pauline Jones is another victim of the family structure which has been instituted by capitalism. She became pregnant while unmarried; the stigma of this in a nuclear-family based society is enough in itself to cause the greatest anxiety. She then lost the baby through a miscarriage. The resultant psychological instability led to the kidnapping of Denise Weller, and capitalism’s solution to the whole sordid business is to incarcerate Pauline in gaol! The disturbing fact is that, despite the unusually large publicity given to these people, their cases are by no means exceptional. Britain’s gaols are full of people who, like Jake Prescott, have never been given a chance by capitalist society. Britain’s other prisons, the mental asylums, are also full of people for whom the system has been too much. In fact, no one is safe from the corrupting influence of capitalist society. Any child born into a working class family stands a very good chance of facing the authorities charged with some petty offence at some time in his life. Many people will be driven into mental asylums because they cannot fit into society’s “norms”. Sexual deviants, unmarried people, women who are sterile yet would love to help rear children, are all subject to neuroses deriving from their treatment at the hands of capitalism.

Most crimes are directly concerned with money or want, neither of which would exist in Socialist society. Freed from the strictures of the economic unit that is the nuclear family Man would become a far more social animal, and become, in the words of Marx, “Truly human for the first time”. The loneliness, bewilderment with, and hostility towards, society would not exist, and would not therefore, give rise to the many neuroses which lead to crime today. Capitalism is a dangerous system from which no one is safe — the “criminals” of today, including those discussed in this article, are more sinned against than sinning.

J.P.L.

A Bang or a whimper (1971)

From the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Carr — controversial figure. Tory M.P. for Mitcham; head of the Department of Employment and Productivity; supposed to solve strikes; responsible for getting the Industrial Relations Bill through Parliament. A controversial figure but also, according to those who know him, a Very Nice Man (Tom Jackson, leader of the Union of Postal Workers, said that Carr was “very decent indeed” about the postal strike.) Also the man whose expensive Georgian home in a posh London suburb was damaged by two bombs, planted by someone so impressed by Carr’s actions that they disregarded his personality.

The panic which followed the bomb attack, with armed guards for Ministers and the police visiting known “militants”, prompts the question: what next? According to Carr “We always imagine in Britain we would be free from this sort of thing” and although it is true that actual attempts on politicians’ lives are rare in this country recent events may mean that he was being rather optimistic. In the last few months there have been bomb attacks on the homes of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and of the Attorney General; the Department of Employment and Productivity’s building has had another attack and Carr’s deputy, Dudley Smith, has received a threat to his life. Then there was the incident when the M.P.s, who are responsible for the use of C.S. gas in, among other places, Ulster, were treated to a dose of it from a man in the public gallery. Apparently they acted under this assault with rather less than the sort of reckless courage they are continually urging in others.

A perceptible element in protest nowadays is a lack of respect for our political leaders. Ministers, whoever they are, are not always listened to reverently. Some politicians are actually assaulted when they go to certain university towns; men like Ronald Bell must be getting quite hardened to it by now. This is not a novel situation, even in Britain; the Suffragettes, for example, were much more violent, much more original, much more persistent.

Yet with all that British politicians have remained relatively safe and we have to go back some time for an example of an assassination. In May 1812 Spencer Percival, the Prime Minister, was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons. The man who did it was a bankrupt merchant who blamed Perceval’s policies for his ruin (Perceval had also been Chancellor of the Exchequer) but this was no isolated act of violence in a placid age.

Perceval’s ministry was a time of Enclosures, of 16 hour child labour in factories and of the Combination Acts. Poverty was at its cruellest; in the House of Lords a few weeks before Perceval’s death Byron lamented: “. . . never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness” as he had seen in England. Most notably it was the time when workers who had been displaced by the new machines and factories hit back in the only way they knew, writing the name Luddite into the language.

It was during Perceval’s premiership that the Luddites began breaking machines to a systematic plan of action. The ruling class hit back, in no gentle fashion, raising the penalty for frame breaking from 14 year’s transportation (which was terrible enough) to death. Thereafter it was not unusual for multiple hangings to follow an attack on a factory. In April 1812 Cartwright’s mill at Rawfolds was attacked. There were soldiers waiting (one who refused to fire got 300 lashes) and the Luddites were beaten off. Two of them who were mortally wounded would not reveal the names of their comrades but in the end many were caught and four of them hanged.

A century later there was the killing of Field Marshall Wilson who was shot by two Irishmen outside his home in London in June 1921. Officially Wilson was described as a soldier but his activities during the first world war and in the struggle between the British government and the Irish nationalists made him more a politician. He was killed (the nationalists said “executed”) on the orders of Michael Collins, although it was not clear when the order had been issued. By the time it was carried out Collins may have preferred to forget it; he was then a respectable member of the Irish government, fighting a civil war against some of his old friends. He was himself killed in an ambush a couple of months after Wilson was shot down.

Here again, then, we were in violent times. The struggle in Ireland was a bloody, ruthless affair. After 1918 the British used battle-hardened soldiers, many of whom held life cheap. They were embittered by unemployment and the fear that they could not exist outside the Army. They were not gentle and their methods were matched by the other side. In one incident the Irish took a couple of Black and Tans hostage for an elderly woman held by the British as a suspected IRA supporter. Nobody seemed to expect that any of the three would be seen alive again and it was not clear whether the British shot the woman, or the Irish threw the Black and Tans into a furnace, first. The civil war which followed the treaty between the British and some sections of the Irish was no less ugly.

Compared to then (and to other countries now) England is peaceful, secure. Heath does not suffer the claustrophobic guard which surrounds Nixon. No British politician endures anything like the threats which became almost routine (and sometimes nearly reality) with De Gaulle. Yet poor, nice, Robert Carr is bombed and all he has done is try to restrict the unions and help control wages.

He might think that in this he is doing no more than any other politician; he is only doing his job of protecting the interests of British capitalism. This is hardly a reason for killing him, especially as his Labour predecessor tried to do the same job in almost exactly the same way. Carr might also argue that, whatever a militant minority might think, most British workers support his Bill. After all, most of them voted either Labour or Tory and both parties stand for new curbs on the unions. In fact one militant minority of workers showed what they thought of the attack on Carr’s home by working round the clock to repair it in record time.

But Carr can complain only so far. He said he refused to believe that “. . . this is going to be the way British life and society conducts itself” when he should know perfectly well that capitalism here and all over the world is a society of violence. A lot of this violence, like the massive social effort to manufacture weapons of obliteration, is legal and respectable but nevertheless must have the effect of conditioning us all to accept other violence which may not be legalised. In a world clouded with hydrogen missiles, how serious is a gelignite attack which damaged a couple of doors and some windows? And when political leaders exist (as they must) by cynicism (for example the Tories fought the election on a promise to hold prices; the pound of last June is now worth 97p.) can they wonder, or protest, when the extreme cynicism of violence is turned against them?

This is not to say that any socialist will be found planting gelignite. If the attack on Carr’s home stimulated anything among the workers it was sympathy for the man and his family. If it had killed Carr the sympathy would have been overwhelming, which would have been a useful mood for the new head of the department to come in on and start pushing the Bill through. In other words, Carr would have been replaced by another capitalist politician for the workers to vote for at the next election.

In the meantime the fumes of the bombs obscured the real issue. The legislation of capitalism is not dreamed up by politicians. It arises from the needs of the system and the system is kept in being by the support of the working class. These workers are ignorant in the sense that they are unaware of their own interests and it is that ignorance, not the results of it, which must he attacked. Are we recommending, then, bombs at all working class homes? In fact violence does not attack ignorance — it may stimulate it and sometimes produce it in its ugliest form. For the purpose of establishing Socialism, of making a better world for people to live in, violence is an obstacle.

If they ever catch the people responsible for the bomb they will charge them with all sorts of offences; the bombers will probably be convicted and get the sort of sentences which are supposed to teach us all a healthy respect for the morals of capitalism. Their real crime — confusing and delaying the revolution for a peaceful, humane society — will go unnoticed.

Ivan.

Proper Gander: Counter Culture (2018)

The Proper Gander column from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

 A shop marks the end of the long journey which a pair of socks or a tin of beans has taken to reach us. And the last of the innumerable workers who contributed to getting it to us is often the ‘shopgirl’. Shops and their staff, therefore, have a crucial place in the economy, on the front line of consumerism, as highlighted by the BBC’s Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind The Counter.

 This documentary series focuses on how the role of the shopgirl has changed over the decades, and the wider trends behind this. Presenter Pamela Cox, professor of sociology at the University of Essex, tells the story in an engaging, cheery way, linking up personal accounts with the bigger picture.

 Shop work was for men only until the mid nineteenth century, and at least one woman (dubbed a ‘romantic freak’ in the press) twice disguised herself as a bloke to get a job in a shop. The ever-increasing number of mines and factories which were springing up led to an ever-increasing number of stores to sell their products in. This meant more people were needed for the labour market, so the proportion of women employees grew. The widespread assumption that women were more suited to domestic duties put them at a disadvantage when competing for jobs, meaning they ended up in low-status roles, especially in shops. Many shop staff ‘lived in’, meaning their job came with accommodation: usually bleak, strictly-run dormitories. By providing accommodation, employers could both keep and control their staff. Working hours were long, pay was low, and there was constant pressure to perform. ‘The more obsequious and helpful the assistants were, the better you did [as a business]’. Many of their tasks were monotonous and useless, such as winding and unwinding ribbons to give the impression of busyness. Lengthy days without being able to sit down were called ‘the standing evil’, one of many damaging effects on shopgirls’ health detailed in the 1884 report Death And Disease Behind The Counter. Despite the government knowing about the harm which shop work caused, little changed for decades.

 One group aiming to improve conditions was the Co-Operative Women’s Guild, which was founded in 1883 and only closed in 2016. It was set up to provide mutual support, not only for work-related issues, but also with education and welfare. However, many workers were reluctant to organise together, not least because joining a union could lead to getting the sack. Margaret Bondfield was a prominent member of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks who campaigned for union membership and also wrote a series of articles exposing the shop worker’s lot. In her later career, she sided fully with the establishment, becoming the first female cabinet minister when she was appointed Minister of Labour in 1929. 

 By the end of the nineteenth century, the rising number of women employed in shops had reached nearly a quarter of a million. In 1909, a branch of Selfridges opened in London, its stylish brand imported from America, along with working practices uncommon in Britain. Selfridges’ shopgirls didn’t live in and were trained to be more confident and less deferential. Grand shops with showy window displays were a visible sign of the growth of commercialism during the twentieth century. Perhaps it was because of this that Suffragettes targeted shops by lobbing bricks through their windows.

During both world wars, men were conscripted and more women joined the labour market to replace them, often taking roles still not considered ‘women’s work’, which in the retail sector meant managerial positions. And when each war ended, men returned to their old jobs and many women returned to the home. 

 By the early ‘50s, three quarters of a million women worked in retail. The way shops were run continued to follow trends which began in America, such as personality-sapping training in ‘customer service’ and the self-service store. The idea that customers would have to go to all the trouble of choosing things from a shelf, dropping them into a basket and actually carrying them to the counter took a while to catch on in Britain. Before self-service, the customer would go to the counter and the shopgirl would encourage them to buy whatever, measure out how much they wanted, and then wrap it up. The packaging on the goods lining the shelves did the same job, starting the shift towards the shopgirl role meaning shelf-stacking and sitting bored behind a till.

 Not so for a shopgirl in a with-it fashion boutique in the ‘60s, though. They were hired to look fab and hang out with the customers, with any hard selling being seriously uncool. But the groovy image of the boutique didn’t convince everyone. In the early ‘70s, feminist magazine Spare Rib published a report on how shopgirls in boutiques were exploited, and the Angry Brigade bombed a branch of Biba, accompanied by a statement that criticised its staff for their uniformity. But it was changing shopping habits which had a greater impact on the boutique’s decline, as they were squeezed out by the growth of department stores and clothing chains. And into the ‘80s, Thatcherite policies like deregulation of planning and employment laws encouraged the shift towards supermarkets and out-of-town malls. 

 The programme crowbars in a mention of Margaret Thatcher’s early years living above a shop in Grantham, which Cox ridiculously claims taught her ‘that the power lay with the customer. She believed in the “right to buy” in the broadest sense, that the customer should have what they wanted when they wanted it’. It’s doubtful that Thatcher had such a naïve view of capitalism, although she probably wanted us plebs to believe it.

 Today, retail workers are the largest group of private sector employees, almost two thirds are women and almost half work part time. Staff today cite pressure to perform, low pay and the stigma of being a shopgirl as problems, as others have in previous times. The efforts of unions, campaigners and reformists haven’t been able to create ideal conditions for shop staff. As the programme shows, wider forces such as the profitability of emerging ways of shopping, and wars, have done more to shape how shop work is carried out. And it’s still changing: now, the role of the shopgirl is being pushed out by the popularity of online shopping and the spread of those annoying self-checkouts.

Mike Foster

The Truth About Freedom (1976)

Book Review from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Political Police in Britain by Tony Bunyan. (Julian Friedmann Publishers Ltd., £4.95.)

We recommend this book to all those starry-eyed people who blissfully go round believing in the myth of “British freedom”. Tony Bunyan has done his homework very well, his book is crammed with detailed and relevant information. Most of the sinister and ugly features usually associated with tyranny and dictatorship, have their counterpart in what to the popular mind is a free country. Just as in dictatorships, a servile press helps to fashion a climate of opinion. To be accused is to be deemed guilty. Particularly in matters concerning “security”, the attitude is we cannot be squeamish about condemning a few conspirators; the national interest must come first. If, after many months in prison, charges are dropped or the case fails for want of evidence, then the “free” press can be relied upon to make capital out of those cases resulting in convictions and ignore the rest.

The sheer number of distinct police agencies carrying out a vast range of surveillance, infiltration, spying and oppressive activities, is bewildering. Apart from the “ordinary” uniformed police force (which is itself supplemented by Special Constables through Acts of Parliament going back to 1831) there are D15 and D16, the former dealing with foreign espionage and “subversion” inside Britain, the latter with external spying. Then there are the Special Patrol Groups. These are specialist riot police who go round in unmarked cars and carry arms as a matter of course and are trained in the use of CS gas. They were set up in 1965 and are not to be confused with the Special Branch, which goes back to 1883 and played its part in combatting an outbreak of Irish bomb attacks during that period.

From the beginning the Home Office had a direct concern in the “political intelligence” activities of Special Branch. Spies were planted in groups of minority activists such as the Legitimation League. In the early years, superintendents appointed under the Factory Act of 1833 were used to spy and report on workers’ activities.

The Official Secrets Act of 1889 dealt with spying and breaches of official trust by state employees. The 1911 amendment extended powers to act against journalists and newspapers for receiving and publishing information. Further strengthening Acts were passed in 1920 and 1939. Brendan Mulholland of the Daily Mail and Reginald Foster of the Daily Sketch were sent to prison in 1962 for failing to reveal sources of information. The phrasing of this legislation is very loose, lending itself to wide interpretation. The ruling class, through the government of the day, has a formidable array of oppressive powers at its disposal.

Books can be barred from publication or “doctored” to suit the Ministry of Defence, to which all ex-military personnel are required to submit their manuscripts. Examples are Sir Compton Mackenzie’s book Gallipoli Memories (1929) and a book by Anthony Nutting (a former Privy Councillor) on the Suez Crisis of 1956.

The Franks Committee, set up in 1971 by the Tory Government to look into Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, produced a report running to four volumes. Neither the Tories or the following Labour government took any action. The issue arose out of the use of D-notices against the Daily Express and the Sunday Telegraph. Three people were sent for trial at the Old Bailey over an article dealing with Biafra. The Public Records Act enables governments to suppress information for up to one hundred years.

Our “heritage of freedom” or rather the privileged position of the capitalist class, is further safeguarded by laws like the Statute of Treasons, dating back to 1351, and the Riot Act of 1381 (year of the Wat Tyler rebellion). The Tolpuddle Martyrs were condemned under the Unlawful Oaths Act of 1797.

The Incitement to Disaffection Act of 1934 is aimed against the circulation of “seditious” literature to members of the armed forces. They must be trained to kill, not taught to think. Under this Act a man was sent to prison for two years in 1972 for possessing literature likely to cause disaffection, namely a pamphlet concerning the war in Northern Ireland.

Bunyan produces an illuminating résumé of the Angry Brigade trials. Of the twelve people arrested and charged, two had charges against them withdrawn, five were acquitted on all counts, and five were convicted on conspiracy charges. Prescott was sentenced to fifteen years in prison; Purdie was found not guilty after having spent nine months in jail. The press in general and the Evening Standard in particular applauded the sentence and ignored the acquittal. The conduct of the police in gathering evidence and making arrests, was somewhat devious. Purdie was arrested “for questioning, which is illegal. He was not cautioned nor was any warrant made out for his arrest”.

The police have powers to seriously restrict press coverage of trials. The Metropolitan and City Police Press Card is the means by which the number of reporters has been reduced from eight thousand to a trusted two thousand whose names and credentials are registered. Sir Robert Mark, promoted to power by Roy Jenkins and Reginald Maudling, is behind this censorship by the backdoor. According to Bunyan, Commissioner Mark is contemptuous of the legal processes he is supposed to uphold: trial by jury in particular. No doubt for him the ideal situation would be one where the police also acted as judge, jury and jailer.

Further specialized units are the National Drugs Intelligence Unit and the National Immigration Unit. All streams meet at and have common access to the Police National Computer Unit at Hendon. It is estimated that by 1979 more than 36,000,000 names and a variety of other details will be almost instantly available.

The staggering edifice of repressive legislation has been steadily built up over more than a hundred and fifty years. Particular emergencies, such as two world wars and outbreaks of social disturbance, have prompted a reactionary and obsolete ruling class to try to strengthen their hand to preserve a little longer their parasitic position as a privileged owning class. Organizations like the Angry Brigade and the IRA help to create an atmosphere of fear, which provides the ruling class with their excuse to act in the name of security. The backlash of increased repression effects everybody.

In recommending Tony Bunyan’s book as a useful source of information on an important subject, we do not share his conclusion. He denies that the elected government controls the institutions of the state and is vague about how capitalism can be ended.

However ugly and menacing the coercive machinery may be, it will not avail against the rising tide of working-class understanding of and desire to establish Socialism. In fact, the whole set-up can only operate against a background of working-class acquiescence. The most useful lesson to be learned, is, that the vote is all-powerful. The state cannot be smashed. It can and must be captured by a conscious working class, in their quest for freedom.

Harry Baldwin

What We Say About The Angry Brigade Trial (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The quarter-million-pound trial ended last month. Four were found guilty of conspiracy and sent to jail, and the Left yelled as always that justice was not done. The sentences were severe ones — what else did they expect? The ruling class believes itself to have been threatened by the Angry Brigade, and has reacted accordingly.

Let the Socialist attitude to this episode be clearly stated. We have not a shred of sympathy for those who believe that bombs and guns are tools to change society. The activities of the Angry Brigade have done nothing but harm to the working class and our movement: by deluding the romantic-minded, by fostering the belief that revolution means conspiracy and violence, by giving governments justification for repressive measures and the diminution of the political and personal freedoms that exist.

Nor are we on the side of “law and order” in this matter. The judiciary, the police and the rest of the apparatus which brought the "Stoke Newington Eight” to trial and convicted four of them are part of the State’s coercive machine which exists to sustain the rule of capitalism. This is what justice is — the will of the established order being seen to be done. Unlike direct-actionists, we are conscious of the State’s rôle. They, apparently, never learn: while the Eight were being disposed-of by it, their supporters continued to argue that the State had no political significance and the power to change society lay elsewhere.

Logo associated with the Angry Brigade.

Double-think

The defence in the trial was that the accused were not guilty, and that the explosives had been planted by the police. Only the unsophisticated would refuse to recognize such a possibility; the fact remains that the defendants and their supporters voiced approval of the Angry Brigade while denying the charges. The Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group has published a series of pamphlets and papers, using hands grasping a gun as emblem and reiterating the claim that the bombs and shooting were the work of a wide spontaneous movement. These publications, concerned to vaunt violent direct action as much as to contend that the Eight were “framed”, commend sabotage and arson as well as explosions and bullets. They reproduce Angry Brigade communiques and threatening messages sent to newspapers. The Orwell-word “doublethink” could never find better applications. One Communiqué claiming to have bombed, burned and machine-gunned ends: “Solidarity, Revolution, Love.” The Defence Group’s second pamphlet was called If You Want Peace Prepare For War. Badges are advertized — no-one has been seen wearing one — with the slogan “Armed Love”.

Heard It Before

Is talk like this familiar? It is. Except for the word “revolution” (and that has been debased into the Holy Writ of repression in Russia) these are the words of every nationalist and power-politician. The frantic war preparations of the nineteen-thirties were for peace, the people were told; the hydrogen bombs are for peace; the horrible dying in Vietnam is all for peace and liberty. “Armed love” is the chant of the priests blessing soldier-boys. An Angry Brigade pronouncement says “No revolution was ever won without violence”. The word “won” betrays the whole thing. Their idea of revolution is simply a seizing of power and imposition of another kind of rule. There is no difference between these would-be insurrectionists claiming popular support ("The AB is the man or woman sitting next to you”) and the coup-seekers whose success usually means dictatorship.

It is all the more important to understand this when a campaign of violence justifies itself with “libertarianism” and anti-authoritarian language. Political changes gained by violence have to be sustained by violence or the threat of it. Likewise, conspiracy at the beginning means conspiracy continued to the end. The last Communiqué, published in International Times, says: “We are not in a position to say whether any one person is or isn’t a member of the Brigade. All we say: the Brigade is everywhere.” What this means is that “the Brigade” will decide what they are in a position to let their followers know, and when, and how much. For a modern historical comparison, the Statutes and Conditions of Affiliation of the Third International, to which all the post-1917 Communist Parties belonged, included conspiratorial organization and armed insurrection as “revolutionary methods”. See where they led.

Haste Less Speed

The doctrine of the Angry Brigade is the one found written on a New York lavatory wall in 1969: “Support peace or I’ll kill you.” The comic sound comes only from making the impossible paradox between ends and means plain. If the avowed objective of a society where people can live decently and harmoniously is real, it can only be attained through the conscious, responsible collective action of the people themselves — that is, through majority understanding. “Too slow”, sneer the direct-actionists. Not long ago, a Socialist Party speaker was told by a group of left-wing militants that the people of Vietnam, for example, could not wait so long. Yet the Vietnamese have been waiting, over thirty years, while the demonstrators demonstrated and brawled to no effect; the rest of the world’s working class too. It is the direct-actionists who are sterile and who obstruct progress.

The Socialist case is simple. The innumerable “struggles” in which the Angry Brigade and their supporters regard themselves as principal agents are only aspects of the fundamental division, ignored by them, in capitalism: the irreconcilable conflict between owners and non-owners of the means of living. The oppressions and deprivations and the monumental problems of society all arise from that. The Socialist alternative is a society based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution — so that no section could impose upon or be set against another, and the economic conflicts in which world problems are rooted would disappear at once.

Responsibility

How can such a society be realized? First and foremost, by the majority of people wanting it, which implies understanding it. The desire for it is then put into effect by sending delegates to Parliament, which despite stupid assertions to the contrary by direct-actionists remains the seat of power in capitalism; and the delegates’ sole mandate is to enact the establishment of common ownership in the place of class ownership. A society characterized by responsibility and understanding can only be brought into being by them, whereas a régime brought into being by violence and minority action must remain dependent on violence and in the hands of the minority. 

Of the trial and its outcome, then, we say the lesson stands out for all to see. Attempts at violent direct action against the forces of capitalism mean political and personal squalor and inevitable defeat. The movement to change society must be a political one aiming to take possession of the machinery of government, not confront it blindly; its strength must come from comprehension of the class struggle, and not be dissipated in “struggles” which are grievances against what is irremediable as long as the basic division remains; it must be democratic, not conspiratorial and leader-ridden. Let every person who is “angry” with the capitalist world see that the statement formulated by the founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain sixty-eight years ago is the only effective course of action against that world. As for the Angry Brigade, there can be no sympathy for them. They have shown themselves as vicious and power-obsessed as those they cursed and threatened. To hell with them!

Robert Barltrop