Janet Carter

I just discovered via Spintcom, the SPGB discussion list, the incredibly sad news that Janet Carter has passed away. 

Janet originally joined the Socialist Party in the 1960s, and was an active party member during all her years of membership. I originally met Janet in the late 1980s when she was the secretary of Central Branch and, as a young Central Branch member, I remember her kindness and encouragement. She later served as the General Secretary of the Party for a number of years and, to the very end, Janet was an regular participant in the Socialist Party Friday night zoom meetings. She was predeceased by her husband, Joe Carter, eight years ago, who was also a very active member of the SPGB.

I am sure an obituary for Janet will appear in a future Socialist Standard, but I just wanted to mark her passing on the blog. Socialists like Janet are the backbone of the SPGB, and she will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

On the thread on Spintcom, Mike Foster posted the text of an interview that Janet gave as part of the programme for the Socialist Party's 2019 Summer School. I think it's worthwhile reposting the text of that interview here:

Mike Foster wrote:

"In 2019, Janet kindly agreed to be interviewed for an article in that year's Summer School publication, which had the theme of 'being a socialist in a capitalist world'. Carla Dee put together some questions and wrote up Janet's replies about her life as a socialist and the people she met. Here's the text of the interview":

Carla: How did you first come across the Socialist Party?

Janet: I went up to Trafalgar Square during the Vietnam demonstrations in 1968 and I was wandering around collecting various leaflets from people and came across this older man looking rather dishevelled, standing in front of me holding a bundle of Socialist Standards; Jim Doherty, I think it was. There was one copy that took my eye with a cover slogan of ‘Who Needs Leaders?’ and that rang a bell with me so I bought it.

I had been investigating left wing politics and was starting to get political, but under my own instigation, for which I pride myself because there was no-one in my family or no-one that I knew who was political - no conversations at home or anything like that. I was going to the library and reading various left wing articles on Marxism and it all seemed to make sense, but there was no-one really to talk to, so I suppose I must have been a thinker. I’d already discarded religion in my teens.  

The Aberfan disaster in 1966 really affected me, and I saw how nothing had been done to avert a disaster in the name of profit and that propelled me towards the party too.

When did you join the SPGB and which branch?

I joined the party in 1969ish at the old Wood Green branch, which held meetings at a kind of evening class place in a community hall, I think. I remember the application interview as if it was yesterday. There was Jack Bradley, a leading member of that branch at the time; I was very fond of Jack though I didn’t know him very well then. John Lee, Ken Leggett and another chap whose name I can’t remember were there too. I can tell you I got a bit sweaty under the collar because it felt like a bit of an inquisition.

Were there any women in the branch?

No there wasn’t. It seemed like I was always the only woman in the branch.

How did your family react when you joined the party?

They would say “oh she’s getting on her soap box again”. I was getting the Standard delivered, reading it and giving it to everyone I knew, but there was no sympathy or interest, which I found frustrating but I was never a chatterer so I tended not to bring up the subject of socialism. I regret that, and I wish I had been more forthright, more combative.

How were you affected by the party case?

Absolutely delighted when the penny dropped! At last I thought I was sane and it was others that were mad, whereas it was the other way around before. I felt enlightened, if I hadn’t found the party I think I would have gone on thinking that I was a little bit mad. 

I was attending meetings and studying on my own. Well, I had the time as I didn’t have any children in my twenties, and I can’t imagine being able to be so active if I had children to attend to and clinics to go to.

When did you meet husband and fellow socialist Joe Carter?

I met Joe at Wood Green branch; he had been a member for about three years. He was very active and I had been to a couple of outdoor meetings where Joe was speaking and was quite impressed by him. We also shared a great enjoyment in long distance walking and wish we had done more of it.

You said there were no women in your branch but there were quite a few women in the party 

Yes. Though I can’t recall any women outdoor speakers there were some very impressive women like Eva Goodman and Florrie Evans - who was general secretary during the war - and Phyllis Lawrence and a woman called Helen whose surname I can’t remember. She was married to a bus driver; they were quite an impressive couple.

Funnily enough when we attended general meetings you would see a lot of the women knitting. I think it must have been a throwback from the days when women couldn’t be seen doing nothing. It was also considered to be saving money by making your own woollens. It was very fashionable, and I even started knitting myself.

Looking at the world now through ‘socialist eyes’ what are your thoughts?

I’m exasperated, sad and disappointed.  When I first joined the branch, Joe and I used to get the bus from Muswell Hill where we lived down the hill to Wood Green, and I would look around the bus with such optimism and think that very soon all the people on the bus would be socialists. Society is in such a mess and so many horrendous things are happening that it’s no wonder people are suffering from depression and anxiety. I don’t believe in hell of course but it seems that society is going to hell in a handcart.

Why do you think socialist ideas don’t seem to have been more popular?

The party has worked so hard. We must have tried everything to get our ideas across. But the party case is not easy, contrary to what some members say, especially the economics side: the explanation of surplus value for instance and the idea that the working class do not pay taxes. People have got distracted by single issues, charities and identity politics and blaming individuals for the mess. I don’t blame people for being exasperated with politicians.

But I have no regrets and cannot ever imagine not being a socialist - it’s who you are, isn’t it?

Shamima Begum, the Demon Bride (2023)

From the January 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Jihadi bride’ Shamima Begum and her fight for repatriation are back in the news. This time there appears to be evidence to suggest she and her two companions were trafficked, with various newspapers carrying the latest story. It may come as no particular surprise that Shamima and her two school friends Khadiza Sultana, now dead and Amira Abase, presumed dead, were recruited and helped with their journey from the UK via Turkey to Syria in February 2015. All the girls were between 15 and 16 years old.

A BBC online news article on 30 August reads ‘Shamima Begum and her two friends were smuggled into Syria by an intelligence agent for Canada’ (bbc.in/3h7Cbbd). In Reuters Europe (21 November) it says: ‘Likely a victim of child trafficking her lawyers also said that Begum and her friends entry into Syria was “facilitated” by a Canadian agent working for ISIS’ (reut.rs/3VUKFB7). It seems that the information for those articles comes from a claim made in the book The Secret History of Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj. Five Eyes is the network of intelligence sharing between Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This information may have been known as early as 2015.

There was a Reuters (Ankara) news article on 12 March 2015 by Tulay Karadeniz in which the writer states: A spy who worked for a country in the US-led coalition that is fighting Islamic State had helped three British girls to cross into Syria to join the militants has been caught, the Turkish Foreign minister said on Thursday’ (reut.rs/3iJGLN5). This information came only a month after the girls left the UK. The British public will have heard about this only recently.

Shamima is now 23 years old and is still languishing in a detention camp in Northern Syria. Her UK citizenship was revoked in March 2019 by the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid. The British government is not in theory allowed to deprive a British citizen of their citizenship if that is the only form of citizenship they have. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘Arbitrary deprivation of nationality which means deliberately moving to make a citizen stateless is prohibited under these instruments’.

The UK government contended Shamima could apply for Bangladeshi citizenship as her parents were Bangladeshi nationals and as she was under 21 at the time she supposedly could automatically qualify for Bangladeshi citizenship. Bangladesh has continuously denied that possibility. In any case Shamima was born in the UK and has never even been to Bangladesh, her culture is British.

Shortly after arriving in Syria she was married to a Dutch fighter and convert to Islam and went on to have three children who all died young. Her youngest was born in a refugee camp and died within a month of a lung infection. The conditions in these camps were appalling, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius in summer and below freezing in the winter, bad sanitary conditions and almost non-existent healthcare.

Responding to the death of her last child in the camp Jeremy Hunt stated ‘Shamima knew when she made the decision to join Daesh she was going to a country where there was no embassy, no consular assistance, and I’m afraid those decisions awful though it is, they do have consequences’ (bbc.in/3iLmkzi). But how could a 15-year old have had any idea of what was in store for her when she left the UK?

What makes a girl not yet 16 willingly leave her home, travel to Syria to marry a man she had not even met? Is it romantic notions of marriage and children of her own, a life away from the boredom and monotony of Bethnal Green, or the seduction of going to help her religious compatriots in the face of perceived injustice and alienation, or was it just an ill-thought-out teenage adventure? Shamima maintains she was just a housewife looking after the house and children and said she was assured they (Isis) would take care of her and she would have a perfect family life, but whether she was just a housewife as she claimed or she allegedly sewed explosives into suicide bombers’ vests we probably will never know.

The hypocrisy of accepting that girls of the same age and older were trafficked and abused in the Jeffrey Epstein case but not for Shamima and her even more unfortunate school friends is striking. She has been vilified and demonised in the press, and the British public seemed to be in agreement with her being made stateless. Could it be that women are traditionally regarded as the caring nurturing sex and Shamima was an abomination, or was she made the scapegoat, an example of the government showing it was doing something, picking on the easy target of a young girl?

Since the fall of the Caliphate, the international community was faced with dealing with more than 52,000 ‘foreigners’ stranded in Syria. Thousands returned to their respective countries independently and unmonitored and thousands of others were repatriated to some, including women facing arrest and imprisonment. Out of more than 400 former fighters believed to be back in Britain only about 40 (in 2019) have been prosecuted, most have been placed in rehabilitation schemes. It not as easy for women and children to make their way back home.

The Guardian (26 November 2020) reported that 35 children and 15 British women were being held in barbaric conditions at a camp in Northern Syria. A report by the Rights and Security International charity described conditions as inhumane and degrading, unsafe environments, physical violence common and psychological trauma. Children living in the camps suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and hypothermia with the effect on these children of starting the whole cycle of alienation again. You have to wonder what kind of society turns a blind eye to deliberately causing suffering to women and children, somehow making them responsible for nationalism and war.

The Shamima Begum situation brings up so many issues. The fact that the government can take away what we consider fundamental rights but which turn out to be mere privileges which can be given or taken away arbitrarily. What constitutes a danger to security and the state, your political beliefs, like being a communist in McCarthy’s America? What constitutes an illegal organisation, one that is contrary to the status quo? The misogyny of not only the Islamic fighters wanting what could be described as ‘comfort women’ and the attitude of the British government towards making an example of a young girl. Islamophobia and nationalism rearing its ugly head, seeing them as the savages, fanatics, the ‘other’, dividing workers with god on both sides. The state’s lackeys, the media, constantly pushing the official narrative, hiding news from the public, guiding our opinion to suit the state agenda. We have no idea what is ‘fake news’ anymore.

The world is divided with constantly changing borders, constant wars. The arms industry is the second biggest industry in the world. How many other Shamimas are out there? It does not have to be like this, we could live in a borderless, stateless moneyless society where we co-operate rather than compete. All it takes is a little imagination and the belief that we humans are not the greedy aggressive creatures we are told we are. We are family after all.

Carla D.

Letters: Transgender Issues and Capitalism (2023)

Letters to the Editors from the January 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’d like to take up a couple of points made in the ‘Transgender Issues and Capitalism’ article from the December Socialist Standard.

Whilst I agree with the first half of the article that gender is a social construct and gender roles are learned, I would argue that biological sex is significant. Women the world over tend to be smaller physically, obviously with exceptions, and is the sex that, if she chooses to, carries a pregnancy and breastfeeds a child, which, certainly in this society affects an equal place in the workforce.

Further into the article, I read what appears to be a contradiction. ‘Many binary transgender people often seem to not challenge capitalist gender at all but rather perform its stereotypical features aggressively to make themselves the gender they identify as’. But the writer then goes on to say ‘A person who is willing to cross the lines of socially conditioned gender is revolting against ideas of womanhood and manhood’ As if being transgender is a revolutionary act.

I also agree with the latter part of the article in that ‘capitalism as always sets people against each other’, but the writer gives a one-sided example of this with the story of Lily Cade calling for the lynching of transwomen. No mention is made of the hundreds of death and rape threats from trans activists against prominent feminists whose crime is to fight to preserve women-only spaces.

The mainstream media and capitalist hegemony deliberately endorses and encourages identity politics as a way of dividing the working class. Instead of obsessing over personal pronouns workers should be promoting class consciousness with a view to ending this oppressive and divisive system that we live in.

C. Dee

A defence of Christmas

Call it Yuletide or Winter Solstice festival if you like. I am aware that many socialists don’t celebrate Christmas. Do they know that in disdaining it, if for different reasons, they are behaving like the evangelical protestants today, and the early Christians too?

Every society cosies down for Winter and marks the season with festivity. In the Roman world, Christmas was the Saturnalia, where revelry was practically compulsory. Christians disdained it, and the Church Fathers banned Christians from garlanding their homes with holly, ivy and mistletoe. Pagan homes were lavishly garlanded.

In the Middle Ages Christmas lasted the whole Winter, from November 11th until February 2nd. All garlanding was in, including Christmas trees, holly, etc. No one did any work, except for castle servants, and to replenish firewood. The serfs had got in the harvest and, unlike today’s wage-slaves, had no clock to tick, but plenty of time for festivity.

With the rise of the bourgeoisie came Christian puritanism and the cutting down of Christmas. Wage-slaves cannot be allowed too long without producing surplus value for their masters, whose only god is money. The churches complied.

The old festival was always about excess and revelry. People today who moan, ’Christmas has lost its meaning’, blah, blah, are Christians who want a Christian-based memorial to the Jesus myth along Puritan lines. They are not, in their moaning, going back far enough! Yuletide isn’t Christian.

I don’t see why socialism wouldn’t retain Yuletide. Regions of the Earth will have inherited cultural traditions, and I don’t see why those which are harmless wouldn’t continue – especially the universal one of being cosy and festive over Winter.

Anthony Walker

Reply: 

We tend to agree. Socialists for obvious reasons concentrate their current fire on the ills of capitalism, but we are not the fun police, and think it very likely that people in a post-capitalist free society will find any and all excuses for festive celebrations, whether based on celestial calendars, harvests, anniversaries or some other pretext.

After the Revolution: Life in a Socialist World (2021)

Party News from the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party's Summer School

6th-8th August 2021

Fircroft College, Birmingham.

A socialist society will only come about when a sizeable majority of people worldwide want it and democratically and co-operatively work towards it. As such, it can only happen after many of today’s attitudes have changed, once people have rejected capitalism and its institutions of states, employment, money and classes. Instead of the dead-ends of reformism and division, society will be working together to make a world which satisfies everyone’s self-determined needs and wants.

We can’t say anything certain about what life would be like in a socialist world. That’s for the people at the time to decide, and would vary between communities and regions. How things run will also be shaped by future advancements in technology, and also by what environmental damage has been inherited from capitalism. Although we can only speculate, we can say that a socialist society could only succeed by being based on the principles of equality, democracy and voluntary co-operation.

This weekend of talks and discussion is an opportunity to imagine some of the possibilities of this new world. How might decisions be made? What kind of job roles would we have, and what would motivate us? How might friends and families spend time together? How would free access to goods and services work in practice? And how would we balance a world of abundance with safeguarding the environment?

The event includes an exhibition, bookstall and exclusive publication.

Talks and sessions during the weekend:

Socialist Recipes

Richard Field

Humanity makes its own history, and socialists in the process of building a post-capitalist society will make choices based on what they believe to be possible and desirable. The success of the socialist project will rest in some measure on the choices made. So what arguments can we make now to ensure a positive outcome?

New News From Nowhere

Glenn Morris

In 1890 William Morris wrote the utopian novel News from Nowhere in which a certain William Guest fell asleep and awoke in a socialist society. Glenn will focus on a few areas of what life in a socialist society might look like today over 100 years since Morris’ novel.

Do Utopias And Works Of Sci-Fi Offer Appealing Visions Of A Socialist World?

Leon Rozanov

Are there any works of fiction that offer a vision of an appealing and realistic future socialist society where one really wants to start living right away?

Town Planning For Socialist Living

Carla Dee

What could a town high street, village or city look like in a post-capitalist world? What would or wouldn't be needed and wanted? This is your chance to be designers and planners of our new world - all you need bring to this session is your imagination.

Socialist Decision Making And The Rule Of Three

Paddy Shannon

The World Socialist Movement has favoured delegate democracy as the decision-making model most likely to be adopted in a future socialist society. But that was before modern online communications made direct democracy a real possibility. Though attractive in theory, it sounds like chaos in practice. Who would get to vote on what, and on whose say-so? But that was before modern online communications made direct democracy a real possibility. The entire thing might be managed by the application of just three rules, backed by the same ethical principle that applies across every other sphere of socialist life: from each according to ability, to each according to need.

Blogger's Note:

Some of the talks (with resulting discussion) were recorded and are available here.

Summer School Report (2021)

Party News from the September 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party’s Summer Schools have been held at Fircroft College in Birmingham for many years, although last year the pandemic shifted the event online. So it was with both relief and eagerness that we were able to return to Fircroft in August for a weekend around the theme ‘After The Revolution: Life In A Socialist World’. Just over thirty of us made the journey to Brum, both regulars and new faces, party members and others interested in socialism.

The event included five sessions, starting on the Friday evening with Richard Field, who in his thought-provoking talk ‘Socialist Recipes’, considered some of the freedoms which will come in a socialist society where everyone has equal access to goods and services. The following morning, Glenn Morris discussed William Morris’ novel set in a post-capitalist society, News From Nowhere, ending his talk with a well-received update he had written, a conversation looking back on the struggles of living in capitalism. The topic of utopias and science fiction was continued by Leon Rozanov, who asked what ideas about a socialist future can be found in works such as Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Walden Two by B F Skinner, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, and the series set in the ‘Noon Universe’ by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. For Saturday evening’s session, Carla Dee ran a fun workshop where we could use our imaginations to design the kind of socialist town or high street we would like to see, with features such as free 3D printer booths and communal allotments. Paddy Shannon rounded off the weekend by asking us to consider an alternative model of democratic decision-making, based not on elected representatives but opting-in to decide on whatever issues we can relate to. Each of the talks was followed by plenty of lively and thoughtful discussion. As the first ‘hybrid meeting’ for the Socialist Party, the talks were broadcast live through the Discord platform, allowing those who couldn’t make it to Birmingham (some in other countries and continents) to take part. Recordings of the talks are now available on our website.

Between the sessions, there was plenty of time to explore the venue’s gardens, browse the bookstall, read the event’s publication and look at the exhibition on what the Party has said about a future socialist society over the decades. In particular, the weekend was also a great opportunity to catch up with friends and comrades who we haven’t been able to see in person for much too long. After other meetings, we have to make the journey back home or, more recently, just switch off our computers. Being a residential event, Summer School lets us chat over a meal or while sitting in the lounge until the small hours, with only a short amble to our rooms afterwards. And Fircroft College is an ideal setting, with excellent facilities and catering, and a timely ethos of reducing its impact on the environment. When the event came to a close on Sunday, we left with happy memories of an enjoyable weekend in good company. Plans have already begun for next year’s Summer School, with Fircroft booked for 19th – 21st August.

Summer School 2021 recordings are here.

Educating our sons (2021)

From the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the last few years the abuse of women and girls has been prominent in the news and on social media. From the ‘Me Too’ movement which started in 2016 but gained momentum with the Harvey Weinstein affair, to the highlighted significant increase in domestic violence in the current lockdown, to the Sarah Everard protests where at least one placard read ‘Educate your sons’. Well, it seems our sons have been getting the wrong kind of education.

Soma Sara is a 22-year-old young woman and founder of the Everyone’s Invited website set up in 2020 and where she shared her personal experience of what she describes as ‘rape culture’. In a few days there were over 10,000 posts, testimonies of abuse, harassment and assaults in schools and universities from pupils and ex-pupils. The majority of reports were from girls and young women but a few from boys and young men.

‘Rape culture’ is the normalising and trivialising of sexual violence, from inappropriate sexual language, misogyny and non-consensual touching through to assault and rape. Many of the posts were initially from posh private schools and mainly in London but reports quickly showed the problem to be country wide and equally prevalent in state schools. Heads have been accused of covering up the problem regarded by some as an ‘open secret’, and even some teachers have been accused of sexual harassment.

Most incidents of a more serious nature occur outside of school, at friends’ houses or at parties, and the stories make disturbing reading. Date rape is not an uncommon experience especially in universities. The vast majority of assaults are not reported for various reasons, embarrassment, not wanting to cause trouble, not being believed or simply accepting that these things happen. Inappropriate sexual behaviour towards others has even been observed and reported in primary schools.

How did we get here? Sex sells. It is a cynical and manipulative exploitation of a basic human need. Pre-teens are targeted and sexualised by cosmetic and clothing companies and dumbed down and mirror imaged on social media. The porn industry is a multi-billion-dollar concern and its most violent and degrading content is readily available to young boys on their smart phones. Gone are the seemingly innocuous images of the 1940s pin-up girls and gone are the porn mags on the top shelf of the local newsagents, embarrassingly purchased and packaged in concealing brown paper. Most likely young boys wouldn’t have been able to afford too many and would probably find it harder, with an eagle-eyed parent about, to keep it secret.

Parents who have or have had teenagers know that they are online almost constantly. A 2018 Ofcom report revealed that more than 450,000 children aged 12 to 15 spend between 6 and 8 hours a day online at weekends. A survey commissioned by BBC3 of over 1000 young people aged between 16 and 21 showed that one in four had seen online pornography by the age of 12. Gender differences were clear with one in five of the young women questioned saying they had never seen internet pornography, but only 4 percent of young men saying the same. A common response given in the survey was that young men expect young women to behave like porn stars and that porn also gave young men unrealistic ideas of women’s bodies. Often a young person sees online sexual images by accident or through natural curiosity looks it up for the first time, however, thanks to internet algorithms it’s not long before sexual content will just pop up without initiation and gradually get more explicit and violent as it goes on.

The online world is giving boys some very clear but misleading messages about women, sexual violence, feminism and sexism. Anti-feminist jokes, memes and videos on social media can be extremely unpleasant, and peer pressure from messages from online forums perpetuate dangerous assumptions, such as that women are lying about sexual assaults. The boundary between online and offline becomes increasingly blurred.

How are young men supposed to develop healthy, loving and consensual sexual relationships when women are objectified and abused? Trying to choke a girl while having sex, as described by one young woman on the Everyone’s Invited site, is shockingly not the way to do it. How far removed is a desensitised attitude to abusing women from the explosion in global domestic violence? Pornography on smart phones has been cited as a contributory cause of rape in countries like India, named the rape capital of the world though cultural attitudes towards women and girls are doubtless also responsible. Despite national poverty most young men there have or have access to smart phones where they can share often violent images.

Sex and relationship education is still not compulsory in all schools and plans to introduce it will give faith schools an opt-out. Hopefully it is not – or will not be – restricted to the mechanics of sex and contraception, but will include education on sexual attitudes to the ‘other’ and mutual consent. It would seem something is going horribly wrong. A report into the issue of sexual harassment and violence in schools, and overseen by Conservative MP Maria Miller was published in 2016 by the Women and Equalities Commission, but it appears nothing has been done since. Instead we are continuing to see peer abuse in schools with the authorities either ignoring the problem or trying to cover it up.

These issues reflect a systemic power structure whose hegemony filters down and becomes part of our culture almost as if we invented it ourselves. We live in a violent world and a society where everything is for use or sale including men and women. Instead of co-operation and empathy we have competition and exploitation and women and girls seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order. Gender stereotyping and sexist attitudes can start young, boys being seen as stronger and more technical, girls being the weaker and more caring sex. We’ve all heard the jokes about the mother-in-law and women drivers, and women’s aptitude for housework. It seems harmless but it’s a drip-by-drip reflection of the power men often have over women in capitalist society.

Until all power structures are dismantled both social and economic, until we live in a world as equals, where buying and selling is obsolete and respect for the ‘other’ is universal, these problems will not go away. Men and women have to work together but as long as there is distrust and disrespect between the sexes, as long as there is sexism and fear of the ‘other’, women may not always feel totally included in the struggle for socialism and as women make up over 50 percent of the working class that could mean no socialism for anybody.

Carla D.

It could never happen here (2021)

From the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may not have not escaped the notice of some, the irony of the police response to the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common. There were scenes of big burly policemen man-handling women, peacefully gathered to mourn the death of Sarah a 33-year-old woman snatched from the street and murdered, allegedly by an off-duty police officer. Women not only came to mourn but to express their anger over domestic violence, street harassment and sexual assault, mainly perpetrated by men against women and girls. The protest had been ruled unlawful due to the restrictions of the 2020 Coronavirus legislation, but women obviously felt that this was too important to adhere to the rules. Also in March a 61-year old nurse was issued with a £10,000 fine for organising a demonstration of about 40 people protesting against the government’s paltry 1 percent pay increase for NHS workers.

Governments need to keep control, even if this means quashing dissent and stifling anti-establishment ideas. States are passing ever more draconian laws, whittling away perceived freedoms workers think they have. Laws that are rushed through in response to calamities like the attack on the USA Twin Towers and the Coronavirus pandemic were and are supposed to be temporary, however, these laws so often never get repealed.

The USA Patriot Act, designed to counteract terrorism, was signed into law by George Bush in October 2001 six weeks after the attack on the towers. The Act expanded the abilities of law enforcement for surveillance, including the tapping of domestic and international phones, and abuses of the Act led to government spying on innocent individuals. It had to be periodically reviewed because of concerns that certain provisions could be used to violate privacy rights. Most of the Act, however, been written into permanent law.

In 2020 the UK Coronavirus Act over-rode Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act which refer to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. The Guardian (3 November) commented:

  ‘Protections for protestors are set to be removed from the Coronavirus rules under the second national lockdown. An exemption that permits demonstrations to take place with additional conditions to mitigate the spread of the virus is expected to be omitted from fresh regulations being drawn up from this Thursday. The police had allowed and facilitated some demonstrations, however there have been questions as to whether the prohibitions on demonstrations were impartially and proportionately policed’.

Once the pandemic has subsided and we go back to no restrictions as promised, one wonders whether these laws will be repealed or will they be dragged out every time there is a demo or protest, citing health concerns.

Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, currently going through parliament, protestors causing ‘annoyance’ could theoretically be jailed for up to 10 years. The government has passed almost 400 new laws and regulations in the past year, only a few of which have been approved by parliament.

Online social media groups are now being censored. The Department for Education has instructed schools not to use materials from organisations working to overthrow capitalism. There have been state shut-downs of the internet all over the world. Protestors have been using the internet to organise online and to assemble and protest offline. Governments are increasingly resorting to shutdowns in times of crisis, arguing they are necessary for public safety or curbing the spread of misinformation. Misinformation potentially meaning information contrary to what the government wants you to have. The worst offender is not some openly authoritarian state but India, the so-called ‘largest democracy in the world’. In Germany Netz GD is a network enforcement law which compels social media companies to remove ‘hate speech’ and other illegal content, illegal content as defined in the 22 provisions of the criminal code. This has been criticised by the Human Rights Watch saying ‘this law sets a dangerous precedent for other governments to restrict speech online by forcing companies to censor on the government’s behalf’.

In China the citizen identification number system or ID card is the only acceptable document used for everything from opening a bank account to registering for a mobile phone. It is used to buy train tickets and pass through security checkpoints and can be inspected by police for any reason; these cards also state the holder’s ethnic identity. Boris Johnson had at one time scoffed at the idea of ID cards and referring to China said it would never happen in Britain. At the moment we have to have special permission by way of a form or permit to travel out of the country, reminding one of the old USSR. There is the ongoing debate in parliament regarding the introduction of health passports which seem highly likely now despite murmurings to the contrary.

How long before these ‘ID’ cards carry more information than our supposedly private health status?

At the moment surveillance technology is mostly used for law enforcement and selling us stuff but information could theoretically be shared with companies or departments without our permission and used to monitor us.

An article in the South China Post (18 November) tells us:

  ‘Facial recognition technology has been increasingly deployed by countries to secure access and improve surveillance especially during the pandemic. The technology is controversial not just because data leaks are common but because of its potential to exacerbate racial or gender biases’.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, several companies including IBM, Microsoft and Amazon announced they would either pause selling their facial recognition technology or stop producing it entirely.

We are now encouraged to snitch on our neighbours for not following the rules, snitching on those in receipt of ‘undeserving’ benefits or lately on Covid ‘non conformers’. Workers turning on workers leaving the establishment unfettered.

The Socialist Party does not advocate reforms but we do denounce the worst excesses the state can dish out. What we cannot afford is complacency and the conviction that it could never happen here.

Carla Dee

SPGB Summer School: The Environment (2017)

Party News from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Summer School 2017

21st - 23rd July

Fircroft College,

Birmingham 

These days, concerns about the environment tend to get pushed into the background by issues like Brexit, Trump’s presidency and ongoing austerity measures. But climate change, pollution and extinctions don’t go away just because the headlines are filled with other events. 2016 was the warmest year on record, with implications for sea levels and habitats; more and more waste is produced for future generations to deal with, and many hundreds of species continue to become extinct every year.

Legislation places some restrictions on the use of dangerous materials, hunting and waste disposal, for example. However, legislators can only work within a system which is structured to safeguard the interests of the wealthy elite, rather than everyone. And of course laws don’t always prevent environmentally-damaging methods from being used if they save or make money. Capitalism turns the natural world into a resource to be exploited for a profit.

The Socialist Party argues that the environment can only be managed responsibly if society as a whole is managed co-operatively and in everyone’s interests. If our industries and services were owned and run in common, then we would be able to produce what we need and want in the most reasonable, sustainable way.

Our weekend of talks and discussions looks at the current state of the environment, and its prospects for the future we make for it.

Talks and Events include:

• Glenn Morris: Destroying the Hand that Feed Us - Why Capitalism Cannot Solve Our Environmental Problems. A talk on the case for a new society which works alongside nature instead of destroying it.
• Janet Surman: World Military versus The Global Environment. War is one of the most profitable arms of capitalism. We investigate the negative impacts of militarism on the global environment.
• Paddy Shannon: The Vegans Are Coming! Attitudes to meat production and consumption are changing. This session explores the various arguments with a view to clarifying what our position as socialists ought to be.
• Carla Dee: One World, Our World - A Quiz. What do you know about climate change, the natural world and urban environments? Test your knowledge here.
• Brian Gardner: Socialism saves the World! How quickly could Socialised Production Resolve Climate Change? How will economic decisions be made in the absence of the market and will production for use save the planet in time?

The event will also include a bookstall, and exhibition about the SPGB's approach to environmental issues over the decades and an exclusive publication.